So, you’re wondering what SEO tools will optimise your website and deliver more traffic, sales and leads, yes? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Old school Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO by, y’know, everyone) remains one of the oldest, most potent and most affordable ways to drive a website up the rankings of search engines like Google.
And, given that Google accounts for 84% of all online searches – when we say ‘like Google’ we pretty much mean ‘Google’.
After all, buyers are out there right now ‘Googling’ products and services just like yours. Play hide and seek with them in the search engines and, guess what: they’ll find your competitors rather than you.
It really doesn’t matter whether you’re a solopreneur managing your own website or a massive multi-national with a multi-story marketing department, or an agency managing the marketing of a range of clients (like we are), SEO is the Holy Grail.
Like Indiana Jones, when you’re looking for the right SEO tools to optimise your organic and paid marketing efforts … you must choose wisely.
With so many SEO tools options on the market, choosing your poison can be a real leap of faith. But, our team of marketing specialists have unearthed some treasures, so follow in our footsteps as we explore some SEO tools of “such lethal cunning”.
SEMrush
This is an effective piece of SEO software that has several features that can help improve your SEO efforts.
Features:
- Keyword research: Offers current rankings, keyword difficulty, keyword frequency and what is currently ranking for your specific keywords.
- Site audits: Allows for extensive on-site audits that offers keyword relevancy and technical SEO analysis to help you improve performance.
- Competitor analysis/SEO analysis: Allows for competitor analysis for certain keywords and phrases to improve rankings.
- Backlink analysis: Detailed information on the links pointing to your website, to help identify potential link building opportunities.
- Content marketing strategy: Analyses how well content is performing and its keyword relevancy with advice on how to improve.
- Paid traffic: Offers pay-per-click keyword research and paid advertising analysis to improve performance.
- Local SEO: Optimise website for more local searches which are great for any potential local clients, and Google loves them!
- Competitive PR monitoring: See your competitors’ mentions and review their social media presence – if they can do it, you can do it better.
- Reporting for clients: Efficient, detailed and accurate reports that make you look awesome.
Pricing: $119.95 per month for the Pro level which should cover up to five websites. The Guru level is $229.95 for 15 websites.
Advantages:
A long list of features available covering Paid, Organic and Content Marketing.
Comprehensive range of features, data and insights covering Paid, Organic and Content Marketing.
SEMrush offers various ways to visualise data
Customisable dashboards
Disadvantages:
SEMrush can be a serious cash outlay for small businesses and individuals.
Data for small websites may not be as accurate or detailed as for larger websites.
SEMrush has a lot of features and options which can make the dashboard difficult for new users to navigate and understand.
Ahrefs
Considered to be extremely accurate when it comes to keyword data across all geotargeting and search engines.
Features:
- Site explore: See competitors backlinks and keyword ranking relevancy on there specific website.
- Keyword Analysis: Allows for extensive keyword analysis with frequency and difficulty analysis.
- Site audit: Allows for technical and organic seo analysis based on a clients website.
- Content marketing strategy: Analyses how well content is performing and its keyword relevancy with advice on how to improve it.
- Rank tracker: Monitors keyword ranking for the various clients on both mobile and desktop.
Pricing: The entry-level Lite package starts at £79 per month. This covers unlimited verified clients and up to 500 keyword ranking tracks. The level above is £159 and offers many more features with still unlimited clients.
Advantages:
Cheaper than some other options with a more extensive keyword database.
Allows for unlimited clients provided they offer permission even at the lowest level
Disadvantages:
Lower list of features available compared to others.
Only covers organic traffic efforts.
MOZ
Moz is renowned for its backlink analysis with its domain and page authority metrics.
Features:
- Moz Pro: This offers an integrated package featuring keyword explorer, ranking tracker, site audits with page optimisation advice.
- Backlink analysis: Ahrefs has one of the largest backlink indexes in the industry, which means it can provide more comprehensive and accurate data on backlinks than many other tools.
- Moz Local: This offers advice for local SEO. Obviously useful for client advertising locally.
- Content analysis: Ahrefs provides data on the top-performing content for a given keyword or topic, which can help users identify what kind of content resonates with their target audience.
- Site explorer: Ahrefs Site Explorer gives users an overview of a website’s organic search performance and backlinks, which can help them identify opportunities to improve their SEO.
Pricing: The standard $99 a month package covers unlimited verified clients and up to 300 keyword ranking tracks. This is only for three clients. The medium plan allows for 10 initial clients at $179 per month.
Advantages:
Similar options and pricing with Ahrefs with a similar extensive keyword database.
Backlink tools are well regarded
Discounts are available if you pay annually.
Disadvantages:
Only covers organic traffic.
Not many initial clients/campaigns allowed per month.
Standard package is only for three clients or campaigns.
Requires fairly advanced levels of understanding to make the best use of the features.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is an agency based in the UK that developed a technical SEO audit tool called SEO Spider. They offer both a free and paid version.
Features:
Several useful features from the SEO Spider are available:
- Find broken links, errors and redirects
- Analyse page titles and meta data
- Review meta robots and directives
- Discover duplicates
- Generate XML sitemaps
- Javascript analysis
- Log file analyser
- Up to 500 URLs per website.
Pricing: £149 per year for websites larger than 500 URLs, so basically an ecommerce website.
Advantages:
Allows us to deal with technical SEO issues quickly and improve website ranking for clients therefore.
Disadvantages:
The SEO tool may be difficult for first timers to use effectively.
MyWebAudit
Allows for automated and manual web audits for both organic and technical SEO along with content and ecommerce analysis.
Features:
- Web audits
- Landing page audits
- E-commerce audits
- Google business audits
- On-page SEO audits
- Reporting to clients
Pricing: $34 per month for the Starter level which covers landing page and website audit. $59 per month includes up to 75 website audits and SEO analysis.
Advantages:
Very affordable for users who are starting out.
Could help with any initial sales pitch.
Quicker and more comprehensive audits than can be done manually.
Disadvantages:
You can’t edit reporting designs particularly well.
The tool is more relevant for sales pitches.
Subscription is paid annually.
The SEO Tool View From CMA
So, there you have it: our rundown of the SEO tools we at CMA have found useful.
Whichever one(s) you choose to use, you’ll find your website benefits from identifying and researching relevant keywords, analysing and optimising on-page elements and identifying backlink issues.
The end goal is to help improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.
And that, right there, is the Holy Grail!
