Top 40+ SEO Tools to Skyrocket Your Site

Here is an ultimate list of SEO tools (free and paid), which will massively help you to hike your traffic and business online.

A few notes: in my experience, I always try to choose original tools from particular Search Engines – e.g. Google, Bing or others. For example, Search Console or Google Speed Insights and many others. It is logical, that data in these tools will be more correct and more related to the search engine, where you want to optimize your site.

While in tools, developed by third party – of course, there are really great SEO tools – maybe there won’t be a first hand access to all required data.

There are literally thousands of SEO tools available out there for all kinds of purposes. I don’t have enough room to write down specific information for all of those tools as it would take countless of pages of text to do so, but I can narrow things down to provide the very best tools for every SEO action you need to take in order to achieve optimal results. I will cover tools that are useful for different purposes, such as Link Building, keyword research, rank tracking and content optimization.

Let’s start.

1. Google Search Console (free)

Ultimate SEO tool from Google

Search Console – one of the first tools you need to check out in your SEO efforts. It’s free and it is an original Google tool.

You can basically check all main SEO metrics here – linking domains, top pages, search queries, on-page SEO, mobile SEO, technical SEO issues, etc.

In Search Analytics tab you check number of clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through-rate) – impressions divided by clicks and an average position.

You are going to be able to find out exactly how well you are ranking in your niche and this will give you the change to discover new and useful keywords that you can use to make the most out of your SEO efforts.

2. Google Analytics (free)

Best analytics tool

Google Analytics tracks almost every aspect of traffic on your site. It also feeds some data from Search Console and gives you an insight which search queries people use to land on your site.

Reporting in Google Analytics is divided in 5 main categories:

Real-time;

Audience;

Acquisition;

Behavior;

Conversions. 

In Real-time tab you can check all your traffic in real-time.

Audience tab will give you hints about: demographics, interests, geo, behavior, technology, mobile traffic, etc.

From Acquisition tab – you will know, which sources bring traffic to your site.

In Behavior you can check most visited content on your site, site speed, site search, events, etc.

In Conversions you can track Goals.

You can also connect your WooCommerce store to GA and track sales.

My favorite feature – Goals. It’s always advisable to set goals and optimize your traffic to them. In GA you can track all types of conversions – form submissions, button clicks, newsletter signups, ebook downloads, etc.

Bottom line: Google Analytics is a world standard of a traffic analytics tool.

3. Google Keyword Planner

Keyword tool from Google

It is a part of Google Ads account. This tool gives you a great insight into your keyword strategy: monthly search volume, suggested keywords phrases and terms, competition, average CPC (cost-per-click).

4. Google in an Incognito Window

Google by itself is an extremely powerful and free tool for SEO research.

For example, you can use the autosuggest feature or related keywords in the bottom to get some keyword ideas.

You can check a number of indexed pages of your site by typing site:yoursite.com in Google.

And there are dozens of Google footprints, which will help you to analyze web.

Why use Incognito mode?

Incognito mode clears any customized search data, which can alter search results. Also use Incognito to check if you truly rank for a certain term in Google.

Access Google Incognito in Chrome browser.

And play with Google 🙂

5. Google Trends

Check recent trends

A quick browse through Google Trends can show you a rise of a certain trend/keyword – and therefore an amazing SEO opportunity.

In my experience, it’s much easier to rank for new keywords, even if you have a low domain/page authority.

6. Ahrefs

Ultimate SEO machine

IMHO, one of the best SEO tools available at the moment. It’s like Excel for SEO 🙂

The most advanced tool to explore your backlinks profile. Check number of referring domains, backlinks, referring pages, your Ahrefs rank, traffic value and many more.

With Ahrefs you can also perform SEO audit, keyword research, content (topic ideas) research, etc.

You can easily check you top performing content, based on shares or traffic.

Trial – $7 for 7 days. Regular pricing starts from $99 per month.

Bottom line: if you are serious about SEO, you will need to invest in Ahrefs.

7. Yoast

Best SEO plugin for WordPress

Some say that this is the ultimate SEO site for people who are looking to enhance their content. If you want to optimize your articles and ensure quality that is SEO friendly, you need to make use of Yoast‘s features for content creators.

With free Yoast plugin you can:

• edit Titles & Metas
• set focus keywords
• analyze SEO score and readability
• set open graph tags
• manage search appearance in bulk
• connect your search console and many more.

There is even more stuff you can do with Yoast Premium.

My favorite Yoast feature: SEO score.

It’s a fantastic feature for nailing your on-page SEO.

Just enter a focus keyword/phrase – and see all problems, improvements you can do to your blog or page.

Bottom line: it’s a great a free plugin for WordPress.

8. Copyscape

Check for duplicate content

Very useful tool, if you outsource all or part of your content.

You can check either the whole website

or text itself for plagiarism.

It works really well for guest posts as well.

If someone sends you guest post offers, always check them with copyscape or a similar tool before publishing.

9. Keywordtool.io

Top keyword research tool

One of my favorite tools for keyword research.

It combines a great database of keywords with the simplicity of use.

My favorite feature: you can research keywords not only for Google but also Youtube, Amazon, etc.

In another blog, I go in more detail with keyword research tools.

10. Moz Link Explorer

Free version gives you an ability to check your Moz Domain Authority and Page Authority. And also full range of link analysis – including backlinks to your site and also internal links.

Free option allows up to 10 domain checks per months.

11. SimilarWeb

Check your competitors’ traffic

SimilarWeb is one of the best tools to check your competitors’ traffic. You can an estimated number of traffic to any website, divided by main channels: Search, Social, Direct, Referral, Paid, Email, etc.

Great tool to get some growth ideas – just check from which sources your competitors receive a lot of traffic and try to put your website there.

12. SpyFu

Analyze your competitors’ paid campaigns

SpyFu – a great tool for spying on your competitors’ paid campaigns. For example, you can check who is bidding on a certain keyword in Google ads. Or which Google ads your competitors are running.

13. Buzzstream

Outreach tool

My go-to outreach platform.

You can just upload list of websites and Buzzstream will automatically get all emails, DA scores and social media info.

Then you just create your outreach template – and start an email outreach campaign. Always use Sequences to follow up on your original email.

After that, you can tweet to relevant sites or reach them in facebook.

Don’t forget to install free Buzzstream Chrome extension.

This way, it’s much easier to collect websites and add them to your list.

Understanding the power of link building is a complex subject, but Buzzstream will take things to a whole new level of prospecting and proper link building strategies that will help improve your business engagement significantly.

My favorite feature: Bulk Send. With bulk send you can send hundreds of emails in one go. Of course, you should do it with precaution.

14. Buzzsumo

Content research tool

With Buzzsumo it’s really easy to find great topic ideas – either for blog or social media.

You can find the most shared content in different niches and plan your content strategy accordingly.

15. Ninja Outreach

Another great outreach tool. They also feature great Ninja Outreach Chrome extension.

16. SpinRewriter

Best content spin tool

If you are dealing with a lot of content, it’s a great software to automatically replace parts of the content with synonyms or even paraphrased sentences.

17. SEMrush

Analyze competitors

One of the best tools to analyze your competitors’ keywords.

You can easily check estimate organic keywords for any website.

For me, competitors research, is one of the best methodologies in keyword research and planning.

18. Grammarly

Check your grammar

ICYMI, Grammar is a really important ranking factor.

It is free for a basic functionality, has a handy Chrome extension.

Grammarly works well with WordPress, Google docs, Word, etc.

If you are not a native English speaker – this is a tool for you.

19. Page Speed Insights

Analyze your page speed and mobile performance

Great tool to figure out if your site is fast enough.

Page Speed Insights gives your site a score – from 0 to 10. And also all kind of recommendations on how to improve your page speed – both on web or mobile.

You will see a nice table with opportunities and estimated savings.

Also, you can see what improvements you have already done and how they contribute to your page speed.

That’s why it’s also a great tool to check out your site mobile performance.

20. KWfinder

KWfinder lets you find some long-tail, niche keywords, which have low competition.

21. UberSuggest

Keyword tool from Neil Patel

If you need to quickly check out some keyword ideas, ubersuggest is a great choice.

IMHO, it’s top easy to use keyword tool.

22. Answer the Public

Visualize your keywords

This keyword tool takes a different approach to keyword research.

You can group your keyword ideas by questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabetical, related keywords.

You can also see your keyword ideas displayed as cool graphics.

23. Mention

Monitor your mentions

An important part of SEO is to know, who mentions your brand.

You can easily track that with Mention.

It can also be a great link building opportunity.

If you notice, that someone mentioned your brand or site, but without a backlink, ping them.

You can write something like:

Hey,

I noticed you mentioned my website/page/brand here – url.

But, seems you forgot to include a link to my site 😉

Would you mind adding a backlink to the original site?

I would be sooo happy. 🙂

Cheers,

Andrew.

24. Woorank

Site analysis and SEO audit tool

Just enter your site and you will see your overall score (mostly, on-page and technical SEO).

Your issues will be divided by: passed, to improve, errors.

Then, you can go issue by issue and improve your SEO.

25. CanIRank

SEO tool for small businesses

With CanIRank, you can just enter your website URL and get a great list of recommendations.

It provides not only on page SEO advice, but also keyword suggestions, backlink opportunities, competitors research and much more.

CanIRank operates also as an agency, so if you find it difficult to solve some of SEO problems they are eager to help.

To start, you just need to enter your site and your main focus keyword.

You can also suggest some of your competitors.

After that, CanIRank, will produce a report with SEO opportunities.

You can go step by step – from growing your content, improving rankings to promoting content, building authority and growing your followers.

26. Majestic SEO

Majestic provides a great insight into your backlinks. Majestic Trust Flow – is a recognised SEO metric right now.

Bottom line: Majestic SEO is recognized as one of the top SEO tools among many experts.

27. Screaming Frog SEO spider

Screaming Frog will crawl your website (up to 500 urls in a free version) and find all possible errors.

I use this tool to e.g. find all 404 errors on my site or duplicate SEO titles and meta descriptions.

You just need to enter your site URL.

And after that, Screaming Frog will crawl all your urls, which you can filter by Response codes, Protocols, Meta Descriptions, Titles, Images and so on.

28. Structured data testing tool

Validate your structured data

This Google tool can test your structured data code, suggest edits for any web page. Just copy past any code to test it.

29. XML Sitemaps

Build a sitemap

Easily build sitemaps for your site.

30. WebCEO

While this is more than just a keyword research tool, it does provide a very robust set of features for that purpose. You will find that it gives you options for rank tracking, technical SEO as well as your best keywords for any given niche.

You can also check out Webceo backlink tool.

31. OnCrawl

Enterprise SEO

Nice tool to perform SEO audits and get recommendations for massive websites.

32. ContentKing

Great tool for SEO monitoring, SEO auditing, SEO alerting, change tracking and so on.

33. Pulno

SEO checkup

Pulno is an on-site SEO analysis tool which detects optimization and development issues of a website (i.e. broken links, page speed, broken images, issues with sitemap and more). Those issues are listed and presented to website owners in comprehensible reports.

34. Seobility

There are many ways to optimize your content, but you need to start by looking into which of your pages are not being found by indexing software and you have to do your best to bring them close to your home page.

35. Agency Analytics

If you are looking to have total control of how good and how effective your content is, you will find that the reports from Agency Analytics will be a serious eye opener for your business and your online marketing efforts in general.

36. Muck Rack

If you are looking to get some optimal results from your atomization efforts in terms of backlinks from mentions, you will find that the best way to do this is to start networking with journalists from top blogs and pages. This is the ultimate database for that purpose.

37. Authority Labs

This is another tool that offers great plans for very affordable prices. While Google offers plenty of great options, sometimes these specialized services can provide even better and faster positive results.

38. Quicksprout site analyzer

SEO analysis of your website

Quicksprout tool gives you a complete overview at every SEO aspect of your site.

39. Schema Creator

Customize how your search results appear in Google

With this tool you can adjust every aspect of your schema code.

40. Browseo

See your site the same way as search bots

Search spiders don’t see page content in same way as humans – they strip everything apart from text.

So, it can be a nice tool to check, if you have your most important content in the right place.

41. Robots.txt generator

Generate your robots.txt file and double check if it’s correct.

To sum it up

Now you have a set of tool options that are going to help you cover all of your SEO needs. Make sure that you take the time to evaluate each one to see how they fit in your workflow and your general SEO strategies.

Further resources

24 Most Effective Free SEO Tools – great overview from Buffer

Back to you

Did I miss something? What is your favorite SEO tool? Which type of tools do you prefer: web tools, toolbars, web plugins, extensions, etc?