If you aren’t familiar with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the influence it has on the business world, then you may have had your head in the ground for the last decade or so. US spending on SEO is about to reach $80 billion, and 56 percent of companies have said they plan to increase spending on content marketing.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), or the percentage of visitors to a website who take a desired action, is at an average of around 2 percent. However, this can be over 14 percent for those that develop the best SEO strategies – and in a consumer environment where most business is internet driven, this can account for a considerable amount of extra revenue. Those that haven’t yet adopted SEO best practices would be well advised to do this sooner rather than later.
If your business is having trouble keeping up with the many IT responsibilities of the modern world, maybe you should outsource your computer support to reduce the pressure so you can concentrate on the things that matter.
Keywords tools
Essential in mastering the SEO game, keyword tools can help to find the best keywords for any given topic and provide an analysis on each word or phrase. Ahrefs is a leading SEO tool with the Site Audit feature that highlights areas of a website that could be improved for better rankings. Ahrefs can also locate competitors backlinks and the content that is most linked to within the topic area.
KWFinder is another popular SEO keyword tool that is useful for finding keywords, as well as analyses on backlinks and Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This tool can find long-tail keywords with lower competition, and the Rank Tracker feature determines ranking and tracks improvement.
Marketing
With a marketing approach to SEO, SEMRush offers a comparison to competitors through their Domain vs Domain analysis feature. It also features an on-page SEO checker tool for monitoring rankings and giving recommendations on improvements. Analytics reports offer insights into traffic, search data and competitors.
Another SEM-focussed tool is Majestic, which can give a summary of an online store and its backlinks, while also featuring a keyword tool, site comparisons and rank tracking. The Majestic Million is a useful tool that gives a view of the top million websites.
Google tools
Helpful SEO tools from Google include the Google Search Console, which is free for anyone with their own website, just by adding some code or submitting the site through Google Analytics. With an account, users can control what is indexed and how a website is viewed by Google users, as well as being able to monitor and check on the appearance in Google’s SERP.
Google Webmaster Tools is well suited to SEO beginners, and includes the Fetch as Google feature which enables viewing URLs from Google’s perspective, a basic method of SEO troubleshooting. Other tools from the suite include PageSpeed Insights, which allows mobile and desktop speed checks on sites, and Structured Data Testing for checking data is input correctly.
An overlooked SEO tool from Google, Google Trends gives information about keywords and trends associated with them. Searches can be made based on particular countries, and information given on popular queries, interest over time, or different parts of the country.
SEO ranking
With a special focus on SEO ranking, Woorank helps with tracking and reporting on marketing data. It helps by reporting on the performance of keywords over time and in this way gains an understanding of the specific field of business, as well as offering insights on what may be missing from a site, in terms of content and technical issues. It also monitors the keywords of competitors so you can develop a different strategy.
SE Ranking offers a range of features that include keyword position tracking, competitor analysis, keyword research, website ranking, keyword suggestion and grouping, backlink monitoring and automated professional reporting.
Keyword Tracking
A keyword finder tool that was developed by marketing specialist Neil Patel, Ubersuggest identifies keywords and their underlying search intent, by showing the top ranking SERPs for each. Reports also include information on keyword volume, Cost Per Click (CPC), competition and seasonal trends. From short to long-tail phrases, this tool is designed to determine the best keywords to target.
SEO analysis
Siteliner is a tool for website analysis that allows users to scan for issues affecting the quality of a site. This could include duplicate content, or that which is identical to other sites, broken links, page size and speed, or the number of internal links per page. All you need to do is type your URL in the search box and Siteliner will crawl pages quickly and efficiently, giving results in an organised presentation.
Online tools
MozBar is a useful SEO toolbar for the Chrome browser that enables users to view metrics on web pages and SERPs, as well as the domain and page authority scores. Different page elements can be analysed separately, the keywords of each page can be viewed, and link metrics of sites listed in SERPs can be compared.
A time-saving online SEO tool, Screaming Frog performs site audits quickly and highlights errors to fix, duplicate content, and inefficient link building. The SEO Spider tool enables users to crawl website URLs and pinpoint elements for analysis.
Free tools
SEO Quake is a Chrome extension and SEO checker that is popular and free. It allows you to run comparisons against competitors, assess internal and external links, and perform on-page site audits. The tool also does keyword analysis by keyword density, plus it has a clear dashboard and a user-friendly export feature.
A free tool that gives useful information about questions that people ask online, Answer the Public returns popular queries based on keywords, which can be used by content creators to follow the interests of their potential customers, and respond to them accordingly.
With such a wide selection of both free and paid services, SEO is an accessible industry that anyone is able to learn quickly and practice effectively. With many stats and metrics to take into consideration it can seem like a complicated discipline, but with tools that are clear and easy to understand it becomes much simpler. SEO is a language that we will all need to speak before long, so learn now and help your business to stay ahead.
