Best SEO Tools to Empower Your SEO Endeavors

Essential SEO Tools by Type and Category

If you work with particular aspects of SEO or seek options to deepen specific areas to boost search engine optimization, the following list of essential SEO tools will be helpful. It consists of the best premium and free SEO tools grouped by their primary purpose to help you accomplish your special goals prosperously.

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1. Webmaster Tools and Analytics

Webmaster and analytics tools are free SEO tools that help to gather essential data insights on website SEO performance. The most well-regarded tools in this category are Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a fundamental tool to investigate your search performance. This free tool offers genuine feedback from Google’s bots. It provides insights on overall website performance in search results, site indexing and crawling, page experience, mobile usability, Core Web Vitals, security, and manual actions. You can also use this tool to upload a sitemap to help Google find web pages quickly. The only requirement is that you must first verify your site.

Additionally, Google Search Console can also help you investigate website backlink profiles. The tool indicates external and internal link juice, top linking websites to a particular domain, and the linking text that navigates to your website.

Pricing: Google Search Console has no subscriptions and pricing packages. The tool is completely free.

Bing Webmaster

Through Microsoft Bing Webmaster, you have access to a number of perks, such as reporting, diagnostics, and useful SEO tools. You can monitor backlinks, look up keywords, and analyze your website using free SEO tools to ensure it is appropriately designed for organic search.

Bing Webmaster provides accurate data on search performance, highlighting total clicks, impressions, crawl requests, crawl errors, average position and CTR, and more. The tool also boasts robots.txt Tester enhancement that allows you to make sure your robots.txt file is consistent and error-free.

Pricing: Bing Webmaster is an entirely free tool.

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2. Keyword Research Tools

One of the essential elements of SEO is relevant keywords. A dynamic and highly competitive digital landscape requires precise monitoring and analysis of the latest search trends and queries to understand your target audience's mindset.

You want to find the right keywords that help you rank higher in search, so you'll need a tool that can enable you to:

• Find keywords with high search volumes and low competition
• Get traffic forecasts for target keywords
• Generate a list of latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords
• Select primary and secondary keywords wisely
• Identify keywords competitors are using successfully

The following top SEO tools for keyword research will help you skip the guesswork and pick the most relevant keywords for your SEO strategy.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a paid keyword research tool available through Google Ads. With it, you can find new and related keywords and their average monthly search volume over time. You can also see which keywords the competition uses to rank in search and how much it costs to bid on specific keywords.

With Google Keyword Planner, you can also reveal the top keywords your competitors rank for and get similar alternatives to broaden your search. This hint allows you to investigate competitors' keyword rankings, understand your ranking gaps, and discover new, lucrative keyword ideas to incorporate into your strategy.

Pricing: Google Keyword Planner is free. However, you need a valid Google Ads account to explore and manage keywords for your initiatives. 

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free keyword research tool that shows you the volume and interest in keywords over time. With Google Trends, you can explore a specific country's daily and real-time search trends to acquire insights on a particular topic or search term.

To get acquainted with data on certain terms and topics, you only need to specify a seed keyword that describes your input, select country and time range, and define term category and type of search. The tool will instantly provide details on interest changes and geographics, and you will also get related search trending topics and queries.

Pricing: Google Trends is a free tool.

KWFinder

If you merely need keyword research, you may not always require a feature-rich SEO tool. A fantastic tool that bridges the gap between copywriting and technical SEO work is KWFinder. You can pick keywords that aren't too challenging to rank for but could be traffic generators. The ability of KWFinder to switch between languages and geographical areas smoothly enables you to reach your audience anywhere in the world. 

Moreover, you can search by a specific seed keyword or a domain and get a precise SERP overview with essential SEO metrics. 

Pricing: KWFinder has a free plan with limited functionality and data. The free plan includes 5 free searches every 24 hours. You can upgrade your account and get profound insights. Premium options start at €49, provide multiple lookups and keyword suggestions, and grant access to SERPChecker, LinkMiner, and other tools. You can request a full refund in 48 hours hassle-free.

3. Technical SEO Tools and Website Audit

On-page SEO, off-page optimization, and technical SEO are the pillars of successful online visibility. Therefore, reliable and feature-rich SEO tools that enable thorough site auditing and technical analysis are essential to consider when assembling your best SEO tool kit.

Technical SEO tools let you gain insight into how your website is performing. You'll see what could aid or prohibit your site from ranking, which is virtually impossible without tools. With them, you can find, fix, and optimize:

• Meta tag errors
• Internal redirects and duplicate pages
• Canonical page references
• Broken links and page crawl issues

You can also see what bots see. This includes your website's load time, any 404 errors or issues with server-side rendering, and server response times. You can also see whether bots are crawling on your site or a sitemap.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a desktop SEO tool that crawls your website and gives you a list of issues, similar to Moz, which is further in this list. It provides an in-depth analysis of every issue that could impact website performance, both from a user experience and ranking standpoint.

The tool operates a robust SEO Spider, an application created especially for SEO experts. It crawls the websites you specify and checks the URLs for typical SEO problems. This application makes a time-consuming operation simpler and faster, especially for larger websites.

Pricing: Both SEO Spider and Log File Analyzer tools by Screaming Frog have free versions that you can easily download on your computer. If you want to upgrade, the one-year license for Log File Analyzer is $139, while the annual price for SEO Spider is $259.

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Slickplan Sitemap Builder

Slickplan’s Sitemap Builder tool lets website owners visualize, plan, and build sitemaps with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. You can use one of the existing free templates or build a sitemap from scratch.

The Slickplan Sitemap Builder is designed for collaborative teams that may need to collaborate to customize large sitemaps. It also has an XML export feature that can be directly added to Google Search Console for efficient indexing.

Pricing: The Slickplan tool has a free version that confines you to one sitemap, one user seat, and basic functionality with limited support. If you need to build more sitemaps, consider one of the four available pricing packages, starting at $11.99 monthly. There is a free 14-day trial, and you can sign up instantly without adding your billing information.

Seolyzer 

Use the free site-crawling, log analysis, and SEO tool Seolyzer to see how search engines like Google view your website. Seolyzer collects information the crawling bots record in your server's log files to locate and construct your SEO KPIs when they visit your website. The program also displays redirection, issue codes, and page speed results.

The tool has a hassle-free dashboard that allows you to manage all the data seamlessly. Moreover, the Seolyzer tool boasts exceptional cross-analytics features and can be easily integrated with Google Search Console. It also provides the Core Web Vitals data taken out of the Chrome UX Report.

Pricing: Seolyzer's free version limits your investigation to 5,000 URLs and allows you to examine only one website. If you need to broaden your search, there are Lite, Advanced, Premium, and Enterprise packages. The lowest-cost option starts at €39 per month. You can test the premium version of the tool by signing up for the 14-day free trial, which does not require credit card details.

4. Link Building, Monitoring, and Analysis Tools

Backlinks, which are links from other websites that point to yours, are an essential part of off-page SEO. Backlink profile investigation and analysis are the essential things that make off-page optimization fruitful and result-driven. Backing your website with quality link juice grows the authority of your domain and significantly influences your ranking positions.

Monitoring whether these backlinks are spam or relevant to your website is also a good idea. Backlink monitoring and analysis tools help you:

• Monitor website backlinks
• Analyze the most robust links to your site
• Perform competitor analysis
• Measure the ratio of referring domains to backlinks
• Identify and remove poor backlinks
• Measure citation and trust flow
• Check the ratio of link distribution 
• Track the number of do-follow and no-follow links

Take a look at the best SEO tools to find suitable options for your link-building initiatives.

Majestic

Majestic is a freemium link intelligence platform well known for its unique metrics, such as Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Citation flow refers to link volume, while trust flow refers to link quality. It also has the added feature of translating. 

The platform also offers Site Explorer, which allows you to investigate all referring domains, external inbound links, new and lost backlinks, link context and anchor text, and more.

Pricing: The free version of Majestic is limited to basic features like a backlink overview and the number of referring domains. If you need more insights, choose one of the three premium packages. The lowest price is $49.99 per month, and you have 7 days to request a full refund for the Lite and Pro plans. 

Check My Links 

Check My Links is an extension for Google Chrome that belongs to top free SEO tools and may be used to check the efficiency of your links on internal and external websites. For instance, if you conduct a phrase search on Wikipedia, Check My Links will give you information about the total number of links and the percentage of broken links.

Pricing: Check My Links is free.

Linkody

A thorough understanding of your backlinks can help you determine the effectiveness of your off-page SEO. With Linkody, you can find, track, examine, and remove backlinks from a single, simple-to-use interface. 

In addition, the program continuously monitors your links and notifies you of any changes so that you can act quickly if a connection is lost or broken.

Pricing: You can use Linkody free for 30 days without providing your billing details. After that, you will be suggested to choose one of the five pricing plans. The cheapest option with one user seat, two domains, and 500 monitored links is $14.90 monthly.

Remove'em 

During your audit, you can find questionable backlinks if you purchase a previously utilized website name or rebuild a subpar SEO plan. Artificial or unnatural links have the power to lower your search ranking significantly. Remove'em is a professional backlink removal tool that helps you eliminate those ties to save you from Penguin or Unnatural Links penalties.

The tool provides extensive data on backlinks from authoritative sources like Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and others. You can also upload the list of backlinks on your own by exporting them from Google Search Console. Remove'em gives you complete insights on link scoring, outreach, tracking, and disavowed formation.

Pricing: Remove'em is a premium tool with subscription and lifetime pricing options. You can make a one-time payment of $249 to use the tool lifetime for a single website or subscribe and pay $99 monthly. If you need to inspect multiple sites, go for an Agency Subscription plan that costs $899 monthly.

BuzzStream 

The outreach you perform during link building can resemble cold calling, even though backlinks to your website are essential for a high Google rating. BuzzStream makes finding the right contacts simple, crafting persuasive email messages, and tracking who has accepted each link request.

Whether you need to build quality links, promote your content, or achieve your goals in digital PR, BuzzStream is a go-to option. The tool allows you to take full control over your email list, improve your email design, and analyze open and response rates, placements, and team activity to enhance the results of your SEO outreach campaigns.

Pricing: BuzzStream is a paid tool with a 14-day free trial that provides access to the complete tool functionality. To try the tool for free, you would create an account and add your billing information. After the trial, you can select one of the four monthly subscription options, starting at $24.

All-in-One SEO Tools

Your SEO toolbar may include particular SEO tools that, for example, handle only keyword research or backlink analysis. However, if you manage hundreds of SEO projects, it may be challenging to use essential tools separately whenever you need to conduct an examination. Doing so will decrease your productivity and break the deadlines, as each SEO task will take too much time to perform.

In this case, you can shift your focus to comprehensive, all-inclusive SEO tools that enable managing multiple SEO duties in one place. Such a tool kit will help you cover all the aspects of search engine optimization at once so that you can handle site auditing, keyword analysis, content management, competitor spying, backlink investigation, and other crucial SEO initiatives within a single dashboard. 

We have thoroughly researched the market and investigated each tool in detail. We compared pricing, usability, data quality, and analyzed our students' reviews to arrange the top tools in the list properly. Below, you can find the best all-in-one SEO tools to help you achieve goals faster and more effectively. 

SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite is a pioneering all-in-one toolkit trusted by SEO specialists for nearly two decades. This SEO software includes four modules, each performing a specific function:

• Rank Tracker – to discover keyword ideas, analyze competitors, and monitor rankings.
• WebSite Auditor – to crawl a website, identify technical issues, and optimize on-page elements.
• SEO SpyGlass – to view any site’s backlinks and perform bulk backlink checks.
• LinkAssistant – to manage link outreach.

SEO PowerSuite has its own backlink and keyword index, ensuring you’ll have up-to-date data for your SEO projects. A standout feature of the software is that it lets you create an unlimited number of projects without any extra charges.

Pricing: A free version of the tool is available with some limitations. Premium plans start at $299 per year.

SE Ranking

The first all-in-one SEO tool is SE Ranking. It is an all-encompassing SEO software that examines the health and performance of websites, keyword rankings, and traffic. Additionally, it gives you information about your competitionrivals, which you can use to improve your understanding of the SEO environment and modify your marketing approach.

It is a comprehensive SEO tool that can also aid you in content marketing and local marketing due to a powerful AI-backed content editor, precise SERP investigation, and seamless management of your Google My Business profiles and other local listings. The tool boasts a user-friendly admin panel with an intuitive interface and handy recommendations on your website performance, which will dramatically simplify your daily SEO workflows.

Additionally, because SE Ranking is a white-label SEO solution, you may create unique SEO reports with branding and customization options.

Pricing: SE Ranking is a premium SEO tool with three monthly subscription packages starting at $55. An annual plan offers a 20% discount. The 14-day free trial gives you complete access to platform features and perks. You do not need your credit card information to sign up for the testing period.

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Semrush

Semrush is another powerful SEO tool that can help you accomplish multiple tasks and goals related to search engine optimization. Due to a range of top-notch features, Semrush can help you investigate website on-page and technical SEO, backlinks, keywords, and niche competitors.

Although Semrush can't assist you with the content score, traffic cost, data on usability and redirects, keyword grouping, and other essentials available in other tools, the tool has robust features for improving local SEO, social media presence, content marketing, and paid advertising. Besides, Semrush has a neat dashboard with a user and report management section, where you can leave important notes and check your marketing calendar.

Pricing: You can use Semrush for free with data and tool functionality significantly narrowed down. The free plan allows you to add and manage a single project and track up to ten keywords. Premium plans start at $129.95 monthly.

Ahrefs

The next well-regarded SEO toolset on the list is Ahrefs, which is known for its extensive capabilities in backlink analysis, keyword examination, and website auditing. However, the tool's functionality is not limited to these three essentials. With Ahrefs, you can also evaluate your niche competition, track page rankings, analyze the quality and relevance of your content, and more.

Although the two all-in-one SEO tools above surpass Ahrefs in identifying keyword cannibalization issues, showing user search intent, distributing organic competitors, displaying ranking changes in paid search traffic, etc., Ahrefs boasts an Ahrefsbot, the most active crawler among all available SEO tools.

Pricing: Ahrefs is a paid tool offering four subscription packages with monthly prices starting at $99. You can get two months for free when choosing to pay annually. You can also sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tool for free limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit tools within the platform.

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Moz

Moz is another great all-in-one SEO platform that gives information about website issues and ways to fix them to enhance rankings. You can review what Moz’s bot sees in its Site Crawl Overview section. This includes issues like long URLs, redirect chains, duplicate content, missing descriptions, and no-index meta tags.

Moz also has multiple metrics that are important for off-page SEO. You can see the domain authority when you type a domain name in the Moz search bar. The higher the domain authority, the more prominent search engines consider a website to be. Several factors determine this rating, but the number of quality backlinks is weighted heavily. Moz also shows the top followed links and pages, what anchor text (keywords) backlinks are using, and the number of linking domains.

Pricing: Moz provides free SEO tools like Keyword Explorer, Domain Analysis, and others, but they are limited in the number of lookups you can perform. There is also an entirely free MozBar Chrome Extension you can use to research on the go. If you need to deepen your research, opt for Moz Pro with one of the four pricing packages that start at $99 per month. There is also a free trial period of 30 days, though you need your credit card details to sign up for it.

Woorank

Woorank is a comprehensive platform for website optimization and marketing. It can assist you with lead generation, competitive research, keyword analysis, rank tracking, technical site auditing, instant website examination, and fully customizable white-label reporting. It is one of the top online SEO tools that offers accurate data on crucial SEO metrics.

Woorank's comprehensive site analysis aids marketers in identifying areas for optimization and development. This analysis considers the effectiveness of current SEO initiatives, social media, usability, and other factors. Moreover, a free Woorank Chrome extension offers SEO analysis and a complete website review, including content, mobile performance, indexing, structured data, security, accessibility, and more.

Pricing: Woorank provides a brief on-page analysis for free. To get a full review, you should sign up for the 3-day free trial by providing your billing information or instantly subscribe to the most suitable plan. There are three pricing packages, starting at $89.99 per month.

SEOquake

An add-on for Google Chrome called SEOquake quickly and free of charge analyzes a website's SEO elements. This includes exporting data files, comparing URLs and domains in real time, auditing internal and external links, and performing on-page SEO audits.

Moreover, SEOquake is one of the top free SEO tools that extensively compare websites. This SEO tool analyzes the page, domain, and backlink parameters of the competitors' websites so that you can gain insights to enhance your own website performance. It also provides an accurate keyword analysis and allows you to investigate all the data in a compact yet informative SEO dashboard.

Pricing: SEOquake is a free web browser extension.

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Seobility 

Seobility is a free SEO checker tool. It can determine whether your website complies with the most recent SEO best practices. By entering your website's URL, you can inspect it and receive suggestions about its optimization.

SEObility is an easy-to-use SEO tool that includes Website Crawling and Site Auditor, Google Rank Tracker, Backlink Checker, and Link Building Tool. Moreover, you can also take advantage of the free TF*IDF tool that allows you to spy on competitors' content and get valuable data insights on top-performing competitors' pages to identify gaps in your strategy and take action to outperform your niche competition.

Pricing: Using Seobility is free if you need to manage a single project and consent to limitations in the number of analyzed web pages, recrawls, keywords, etc. If you have multiple projects, choose the Premium or Agency plan. The Premium option offers a 14-day trial, and you will need to pay $50 per month afterward. Meanwhile, the Agency plan is $200 monthly.

5. Other Interesting SEO Tools to Consider

Give heed to some other great online SEO tools that can help you achieve your goals in search engine optimization.

HubSpot

Although HubSpot is an all-around digital marketing platform, pay attention to its Website Grader and SEO Marketing Software. The Website Grader lets you accomplish top company marketing goals—increased traffic and qualified leads. 

Simply enter the URL of your website into this SEO tool and get an immediate report card on your SEO efforts. From there, you may sign up for the HubSpot Academy SEO course, which teaches you how to improve your website's SEO and user experience (UX).

Besides, an SEO marketing software solution is available in HubSpot's Marketing Hub, and it's ideal for assisting you in establishing authority across your website. You won't miss an opportunity to optimize your content for traffic and conversions because this software integrates with HubSpot landing pages, web pages, and blog posts.

Pricing: HubSpot offers a selection of tools you can use at no cost, including the Website Grader. Consider HubSpot's SEO software in their Marketing Hub if you need more insights. Starter and Professional subscription options exist for individuals and small teams, starting at $26 monthly.

SpyFu 

SpyFu is a Google Ads competitor keyword research tool that helps with keyword research, competitive analysis of PPC and SEO campaigns, and the creation of custom domains and lists.

Moreover, with SpyFu, you can also deepen your backlink research, as the tool provides complete data on website backlink profiles. As a result, you can observe multiple backlink types and acquire data on monthly organic clicks, domain strength, ranked keywords, and outbound links for each listed backlink.

Pricing: The free version of SpyFu has limitations in the amount of data you can investigate. Nevertheless, it provides essential details on keywords, ranking history, SERPs, and more. You can upgrade by picking one of three available annual and monthly subscription options to see more data. The most affordable package is $39 per month.

UpCity Free SEO Report Card

You may assess your website and compare it to the competition using UpCity's Free SEO Report Card. Your email address and a few pieces of information are required for an SEO Report Card to provide you with a report.

Being one of the easy-to-use free SEO tools, the Free SEO Report Card by UpCity delivers detailed website investigation. It covers overall website SEO health, grading criteria with competitors and top keywords, backlink inspection, keyword rank analysis, homepage optimization, and domain and site visibility.

Pricing: Getting UpCity's SEO Report Card is free.

Internet Marketing Ninjas 

The SEO-focused business Internet Marketing Ninjas offers a bunch of free SEO tools to evaluate your website's performance against that of the competition, create and analyze meta tags, optimize web pages for specific keywords, and increase organic website traffic.

You can also optimize the imagery, find broken links and redirects, and check the HTML source code of pages. What's more, the toolset is also handy for reviewing domain age, generating meta tags, getting a snippet preview of the page, and generating keyword clouds and combinations related to a seed keyword.

Pricing: The assortment of SEO tools by Internet Marketing Ninjas is free.

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BrowSEO

You can view your webpage in a condensed form and analyze it with the help of the SEO browser BrowSEO to check its UX, content, and search engine optimization’s pits and pearls. The result will focus on your HTML when you enter the URL, allowing you to see the page's structure, optimal search phrases, and other SEO-related elements.

BrowSEO is a desktop app working as a browser and management console for all your SEO and social media marketing initiatives. It is fully curated for social networks, websites, and blogs.

Pricing: BrowSEO is a paid tool. It costs $67 as a one-time payment.

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Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of tools available—both free and paid—that can help you with on-page and off-page SEO. Take time to learn about these platforms and decide on your favorite SEO tools that work best for your project. Need more insight into SEO tools? Become a certified Digital Marketing Specialist through Simplilearn’s online training. You can further strengthen your SEO skills and take your SEO experience to the next level, you must enroll in our SEO certification course. Win in your SEO game - get started today!

FAQs

1. How frequently should I conduct an SEO audit on my website?

The frequency of conducting SEO audits depends on various factors, including your website's size, content updates' frequency, and the level of competition in your industry. Generally, it's advisable to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit at least once every six months. However, quarterly or even monthly audits may be necessary for larger websites with more frequent content updates or industries experiencing rapid changes. Regular audits help identify technical issues, content gaps, and opportunities for improvement, ensuring that your website remains optimized for search engines.

2. Can these tools help websites rank higher on Google?

Yes, the tools mentioned—such as Bing Webmaster Tools, Keyword Explorer, Keyword Tool, Yoast, and BrightLocal—can significantly contribute to improving a website's ranking on Google and other search engines. These tools offer insights, analysis, and optimization features that help address various aspects of SEO, including keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and local SEO. By leveraging these tools effectively, website owners can identify opportunities, optimize their content and technical elements, and ultimately improve their website's visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. What's the difference between on-page and off-page SEO tools?

On-page SEO tools focus on optimizing elements directly within your website to improve its search engine visibility. These tools typically help optimize factors such as meta tags, headings, content quality, keyword usage, internal linking, and site speed. Examples of on-page SEO tools include Yoast for WordPress and various keyword research tools. On the other hand, off-page SEO tools are concerned with optimizing factors outside of your website that influence its search engine rankings. These tools help improve factors such as backlinks, social signals, online reviews, and citations. Tools like BrightLocal specialize in managing local citations and monitoring online reputation, which are crucial aspects of off-page SEO.

4. How can I measure the ROI of my SEO tool investments?

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of SEO tool investments involves tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) related to your website's search engine performance and comparing them against the costs associated with using the SEO tools. Some metrics to consider when evaluating ROI include organic search traffic, keyword rankings, conversion rate, and revenue or leads generated from organic search traffic.