The Best SEO Tools
One of the major tasks that awaits you as a blogger is, without a doubt, Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This refers to the actions that you take in order to give your web pages greater visibility on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). At Network Bees, we have put together this great list of some of the best SEO tools that can be found out there. These should guide you as you set out to achieve the seemingly impossible; conquer the vastness that is the blogsphere by going where others have already been…. So, which are some of the best online SEO tools that can be found out there?
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More about Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is, as we have already stated, primarily aimed at ensuring that your site gains greater visibility on Search Engines. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Search Engines are the workhorses of the internet age, enabling us to navigate from one page to the other on the World Wide Web.
The one thing that you need to take note of is that SEO is not a once off event. Rather, it is, by it’s very definition, a set of procedures, all of which are designed to boost your web pages’ Search Engine rankings.
Motivating you should be the fact that hardly any of your target audience ever bother to go beyond the first pages of Search Results. Even placing on the second page makes you the biggest loser inasmuch as Search Traffic is concerned.
The table above contains a condensed list of some of the best SEO tools that can be found out there. These can be used to give your web pages a head start when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. You will discover that we have included both paid and free tools in our list. Although we love freebies, there are some things that we all have to pay for.
SEO Tasks
The tools that are in our list can be used in a wide variety of ways. In order to fully understand their usefulness, we will explain them in the context of the various SEO tasks that are essential to a site’s success;
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Keyword Research
Keyword Research is, without a doubt, one of the most important SEO tasks that you need to carry out as a blogger or webmaster. It is safe to say that the very success or failure of your site is largely dependent on how well you are able to understand what your target audience is saying through Keyword Research.
That is why you should always be on the hunt for the best online SEO tools for Keyword Research. We have previously written an article in which define Keywords Research in SEO. All that we can say here is that Keyword Research gives you and understanding of the number of people who are making Search Engine queries using a particular keyword in any given month.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the best SEO tools for researching keywords that you will be able to find out there. The great thing about this tool, which forms part of the AdWords program, is that it is free and gives you a wealth of data on the number of searches for your target keywords in any given month.
This is one of the tools that we, at Network Bees, use on a daily basis. Another great thing about it is that it gives you alternatives for any of your chosen keywords. Although these are not as deep as you would get with other Keyword Research tools, the suggestions are, nevertheless, crucial to those who wish to mop up all organic Search traffic by covering all angles.
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Tracking search engine ranks for your chosen keywords
This is another of the many tasks that await you as a blogger. Unfortunately, this is something that not many people are even aware of when they set out to create their sites. One thing that you will notice right off the bat is that your web pages will be, when you launch your site, placed rather dismally when compared to your competitors’.
This has something to do with the fact that Search Engine give greater prominence to older domains. In fact, it takes up to about six months for you to begin to start being ranked favorably. This is one of the things that can really put you off as a beginner blogger.
One moment you are setting out to conquer the world, and the next you realize that the world that you thought you could tame already has its predators. Truth be told, if you are just setting out now, you are probably rather late to the party.
That does not mean, however, that you are tool late. In fact, you can challenge established blogs and websites. However, you do need to have a large reserve of patience at the beginning.
Functions
We have already noted that tracking Search Engine ranks involves the monitoring of your web pages’ placement on Search Engines. Most of the tracking tools that are out there , however, are not limited to this function. You will discover that a lot also come with “Site Audits,” “Keyword Research,” and “Keyword Suggestions,” among other SEO functions.
Pro Rank Tracker
One of the best online SEO tools is, without doubt, Pro Rank Tracker. We have been using Pro Rank Tracker to keep sight of our own performance over the past few months and we have to say that we have, so far, been impressed by the amount of data that we have been receiving.
Monitoring for 300 keywords costs $19 per month. This is really worth it, considering the wealth of information that you are going to get a the end of the day.
As an example, most of the articles that we have been writing, of late, have been drafted with the help of the ProRankTracker Software. Its Keyword Suggestions tool allows us to write a lot of articles, using the alternative keywords. This ensures that we have all the angles covered as far as our target keywords targeting is concerned.
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Website Auditing
So,you have created that website that you have been working on for so long; but how well, really, is it optimized for Search Engines? This is where site audits come into play. Site Auditing tools are, without a doubt, a must have for all bloggers. These enable you to evaluate your website’s health, and come up with suggestions on the things that need to be done in order to improve your standing.
The thing that you need to know in this regard is that having a poorly optimized site will affect your Search Engine rankings. If your site is slow, as an example, this is a sure way of getting yourself a not so favorable ranking. The same applies to having a site that is not optimized for mobile devices.
Today, the majority of search queries that are made out there are made using mobile devices. Search Engines, such as Google, give priority on queries that are made in this way to mobile friendly websites. All this makes it important for you to get the best SEO tools that will enable you to carry out website audits.
SEMrush
The thing that we like about SEMrush is that it is an all round SEO tool. What we mean by this is that it is one of the few programs that enable you to carry out the following range of crucial SEO activities;
- SEO Ideas
- Organic Traffic Insights
- Content Tool
- White Label Reporting
- Brand Monitoring
- Backlinks Audit
- Keyword Research
- Domain Vs Domain (Competitor Analysis)
- Keyword Difficulty
- Organic Research
- Position Tracking
- Social Media Tool
- Site Auditing
The above are all crucial SEO functions. It is, therefore, safe to say that once you have acquired SEMrush, you wont ever need another SEO tool. It is, simply put, one of the best SEO tools that can be found out there.
SEMrush’s Site Audit
One of the features that make SEMrush one of the best SEO tools that you can lay your hands on is the Site Audit Tool. The thing that we like the most about this tool is that it goes over and beyond what you may be able to get from such sites as Pingdom, to give you a comprehensive overview of how well your site has been optimized for Search Engine visibility.
Using this tool, we have been able to sort out a large number of issues on this site, including the duplication of content, the identification of potentially toxic links and much more. The SEMrush site audit tool gives you insight into a wide range of issues, including the following;
- Crawlability
- Broken Pages
- Redirects
- Blocked links
- Content duplication
- Many more issues.
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Checking for Broken Links
Checking for broken links is another of the SEO functions that you should carry out as a blogger. What most people do not realize is that broken links can actually harm your site’s SEO performance. This happens mainly by reducing its crawlability. If Search Engine bots cannot properly navigate between the links that point to and from your site, it is less likely to be properly indexed. So, which is the best online SEO tool for sniffing out broken links.
Broken Link Checker
Okay, the broken link checker probably has part of the functionality that you will find in SEMrush. In fact, checking for broken links is included in most of the SEO tools that you will be able to find out there.
The good thing, however, is the fact that this tool comes free of charge. The Broken Link Checker is, without a doubt, a simple tool that does its job very well. That is what makes it one of the best SEO tools that can be found out there.We use the broken link checker on this website and in the time that we have had it installed, it has managed to identify a number of broken links.
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Google PageSpeed Insights.
PageSpeed Insights from Google is, without a doubt, one of those programs that can leave you scratching your head for quite some time. At least it did that to us.
Not that there is anything wrong with the tool. In fact, it is, perhaps, the best SEO that you can use to boost your site’s performance. It does, however, affect you if you are a bit obsessive about SE Optimization. You may find yourself spending hours on the site while trying to fix one item or the other.
However, if you keep at it, the rewards can be immense. We have to admit that we have a particular bias towards the use of SEO tools from Google, for the simple reason that the company has a firm hand on the worldwide search market. Perform well on Google, and you are likely to be home and dry.
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Yoast Plugin
The Yoast Plugin is, without a doubt, one of the best SEO tools that you will ever come across. If you do not already have the free version of this plugin activated on your site, then you need to do so immediate. This is an SEO tool that we, at Network Bees, use on a daily basis. The Yoast Plugin enables us to write Search Engine Optimized content, by informing us if there are things that need to be done to improve our articles. These issues include;
- Missing Internal Links
- Missing Backlinks
- Repeating Focus Keywords
- Having the incorrect keyword density
- Forgetting to Write a Meta Description
- Having images on our site that do not have alt attributes that have the focus keyword.
Conclusion
The tools that we have listed above are, without a doubt, some of the best SEO tools that can be found out there. However, there are, we have to admit, many more tools out there that cover a wide range of SEO functions. If you have any tool that you think should have been included in our list of the best online SEO tools that can be found out there, feel free to leave a comment below and we will carry out research on it. Otherwise happy blogging.
