Congratulations! You’ve hit the SEO jackpot and just stumbled upon a treasure trove of SEO tools, resources, tips, and tricks!
Um, well… to be fair, I used these very same SEO tools and techniques for this website to help get you here… so, you didn’t actually stumble onto my page, per se. That’s right… I helped lead you here using SEO. 😎
Intrigued? Want to know how you can do the same for your business or website? Then read on!
What are SEO tools?
Generally speaking, an SEO tool is anything that can help you with search engine optimization, such as a website, service, resource, tip, trick, technique, framework, code, software program, plugin, browser extension, and more.
If you’re new to SEO, don’t worry! We will go over the basics first.
Along the way, I’ll introduce you to a slew of SEO tools, techniques, tips, and tricks that professionals use.
And afterward, I’ll give you a list of professional all-in-one SEO software toolkits that you can get started with right away.
Finally, I’ll share my personal recommendations for some of the SEO toolkits that I used for this website… if you so desire to follow in my footsteps. 👣
Who should use SEO tools?
If you want to succeed with search engine optimization, you’re going to need a robust SEO toolkit packed with highly-integrated professional SEO tools to help you through the SEO challenges you’ll face along the way.
Not sure yet if you need to use SEO tools? Well, let’s see how you answer these basic SEO questions…
SEO Questions
If you answered yes to any of those questions (or if you absolutely loved my overuse of emojis), then this SEO tools article is for you!
By the end of this article, you should have everything you need to get started with SEO and to take advantage of these powerful SEO tools and toolkits.
Let’s begin with the basics…
What is SEO?
The term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When you see it written as SEOs, that is simply the plural form that stands for Search Engine Optimizations.
Here’s how a textbook might describe SEO:
SEO is the application of techniques and processes on search engine inputs in order to manipulate search engine outputs.
And here’s how a regular person might describe SEO:
SEO is what you do to make your website pages appear on the first page of Google search results, so that you get more people to visit your website.
When people do SEO, it means they are trying to optimize the output of search engines. More specifically, they are trying to optimize their own content so that it shows up favorably when others use search engines.
What is a search engine? 🔎
A search engine is a service that preprocesses large amounts of data in a dataset and indexes it so that others can find items in that dataset very quickly.
Take Google for example:
Therefore, if you own a website, and that website is crawled and indexed by Google, then know this:
The structure of your website, where your website links to, who links to your website, and the exact words you use on your webpages can all greatly affect the results that Google returns when a user searches for something.
This is exactly where SEO comes in. SEO techniques are very specific methods for structuring your site, interlinking websites, and using keywords and content in your web pages so that people can find your content with a search engine.
Which search engine is the most popular?
Google is by far the biggest and most popular search engine in the world.
Some stats show that Google accounts for more than 92% of all searches worldwide!
Here is a list of some popular search engines and their rough market share worldwide across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices:
| Search Engine | Market Share |
|---|---|
| ~90% | |
| Bing | ~3% |
| Yahoo! | ~3% |
| Yandex | < 1% |
| Baidu | < 1% |
| DuckDuckGo | < 1% |
| Naver | < 1% |
But that doesn’t mean that you should ignore all of the other search engines out there.
These statistics are just rough estimates and they can vary quite a lot over time by continent, region, language, device, and industry. So, make sure to research the most up-to-date search engine stats for your country and target audience when deciding which search engines to focus on.
For much of the world, Google and Bing seem to account for around 95% or more of all searches!
PRO TIP: If you are just starting out, keep it simple and focus only on Google. You can always start analyzing more search engines later on.
SEO is everywhere!
Most people think about SEO in terms of website content, such as web pages, blog posts, social media posts, comments, tags, and things of that sort. And that is definitely a giant part of SEO, and it’s the primary focus of this article.
However, keep in mind that the term SEO can be used for any situation where a search engine outputs results based on a set of data that can be manipulated by its creators.
Here are a couple of other examples where SEO can be used:
Is SEO legal? ⚖
Yes, SEO is legal. And not only that, it is a must if you are serious about trying to rank high in search results.
SEO is used to some degree by practically every major enterprise company, midsize business, small business, and startup in the world. 😲
As search engines develop and mature over time, they often change how search results are generated, and they often create new rules and modify existing rules about what type of data manipulation is allowed.
Search engines change how their results are determined and make these rules and guidelines so that bad actors don’t abuse the system. 🤕
No, I’m not talking about your least-favorite Hollywood movie stars! ✨ I’m talking about black-hat hackers.
In case you’re curious, the term white-hat SEO refers to techniques that follow the search engine rules and guidelines, whereas black-hat SEO refers to employing methods that abuse the system or try to circumvent search engines’ rules and controls.
Watch out! Following black-hat SEO practices can get you or your website banned by search engines!
So, if you plan to work on search engine optimization for your business, wear a white hat! 😉 Make sure that you follow those search engine rules and guidelines. I can summarize most of them for you with this:
“Don’t do bad stuff.”
— Yours Truly, BizEnv.com
SEO Fundamentals
If you’re going to be successful at SEO you need to know the fundamentals.
🙋♀️ What are the fundamentals of SEO? Great question… I’m glad you asked. 😉
SEO is all about market research, content creation, auditing, tracking, analyzing, marketing, advertising, and traffic generation.
What do all of these things have in common? They all heavily rely on the concept of keywords and SERPs.
Keywords and SERPs are the building blocks of SEO.
If you don’t understand how keywords and SERPs work, I highly doubt you’ll be able to succeed with your SEO goals! 😢
But don’t get discouraged… it’s easy to grasp and learn the basics of keywords and SERPs.
What are SEO keywords?
As it turns out, keywords are simply key words that have some significance in a given context. 🤯
When we’re talking about SEO, you can think about keywords from both a user’s perspective and a website owner’s perspective.
👩 From a user’s perspective, keywords are the words and phrases a person uses to search for something via a search engine. In other words, keywords are the search terms you use to find stuff.
PRO TIP: Those words and phrases you use in a search engine are called search queries. A search query is just a technical term that you’ll see all over the place when working with SEO that refers to the exact text a user types into a search engine.
👩💼 From a website owner’s perspective, keywords are the exact words and phrases that should be included in the website content so that users can find the webpage.
PRO TIP: You might like to think of a keyword as a key 🗝 you can give users to help them unlock 🔓 your website content. (See what I did there?) 😉
Therefore, as a website owner, you want to ensure that your webpages and content contain those exact words and phrases that users are regularly searching for.
PRO TIP EXAMPLE: If you know that your customers will overwhelmingly search for the term “business”, then make sure your target web page uses “business” in the title and all throughout your page content.
- Don’t just use “workplace”. Not “job”, Not “biz”, not “SMB”, not “firm”, not “company”, not “enterprise”, or any other synonym. Use the word “business” in that exact form!
- 🤷♂️ Why? Because search engines like Google will compare and rank your website’s content against all other webpages on the Internet and will try to return relevant results that closely match the search terms entered.
- Think about it… if 1 million other webpages use “business” throughout their pages, but you use “company” instead, do you really think you’re going to show up at the top of the search results when someone searches for “business”? Not a chance!
- This is just one example where SEO tools like the ones listed in this article will save the day. They will help you figure out which keywords users are actually using in searches and how you can use them on your site for the biggest impact.
Keywords are more than just a single word!
A keyword can be more than literally one word. A keyword can be multiple words or even a whole phrase or question.
Here are some examples of keywords:
toolsSEO toolsseo tools for businesseswhat are the best SEO tools for my business?PRO TIP: Generally speaking, the case of the text doesn’t matter. For example, “seo”, “Seo” and “SEO” will all be treated the same. Many search engines normalize keywords so that they are all first changed to lowercase behind the scenes, with unusual punctuation and formatting also removed.
So basically anything that can be typed into a search box can be considered a keyword.
Yep… that’s right… there are an infinite number of keywords to choose from!
🙋♂️ That begs the question: which keywords should you focus on?
That’s where the concept of keyword search volume comes in.
What is keyword search volume?
Keyword search volume is the number of times users search for a keyword in a specific timeframe (usually by month) on a particular platform in a given region.
For example, users might have searched for the keyword “tools” on Google 1,000,000 times worldwide last month, but perhaps only 7,000 times in the US for the keyword “seo tools” during that same time period.
That means that this web page you’re reading now would have had 1,000,000 opportunities last month to appear at the top of Google’s search results for the term “tools”!
PRO TIP: Though it may be obvious, it’s critical to realize that keyword search volume changes over time!
Changes to keyword search volume can be due to seasonal trends, a worldwide news event, new trendy products, or even a viral tweet by say Elon Musk! 😱
Therefore, if you want to stay on top of all of the latest and greatest keywords, you’ll need to be able to analyze how keyword search volumes change over time.
Now that you understand what keyword search volume is, we can talk about head terms and long-tail keywords.
What are head terms?
Head terms, or head keywords, are the popular keywords that everyone is using. They are the keywords with huge search volumes.
PRO TIP: Confusingly, head terms are often also called short-tail keywords, which totally messes with the whole animal metaphor, where the head is naturally in the front. 🐶 Just be prepared to use them interchangeably.
You can think of head terms as keywords with a search volume of say 100k or more monthly searches.
Thus, head terms are usually only 1-3 words long. As a rule of thumb, the shorter and more generic the keyword is, the higher the search volume will be.
As to be expected, since those head terms offer so much traffic, they are in high demand and have serious competition.
For example, with a monthly worldwide search volume of over 3,800,000 searches, who wouldn’t want to be on the first page of Google’s search results for the keyword “blog”?!!
Even with their astronomical search volumes, did you know that head keywords might only account for less than 20% of all searches? 🤪 So crazy!
❓ So what accounts for that other 80% of searches? They come from long-tail keywords.
What are long-tail keywords?
There might be thousands of head terms, but there are billions and billions of long-tail keywords!
Why? Because long-tail keywords are keywords that have a relatively low search volume, say less than 100k searches per month.
They are usually ultra-niche keywords or ones that have more than 3 words.
PRO TIP: Using the animal metaphor with a head, body, and tail. The head consists of head keywords with large search volumes, the body consists of body keywords with mid-sized search volumes, and the tail consists of long-tail keywords with small search volumes.
Some people lump together the body and tail, and they refer to all non-head terms as long-tail keywords. Hmm… now that I think about it, that would look just like a snake, wouldn’t it? 🐍
For example, the keyword “seo tools for small businesses” might only get 200 searches in a given month worldwide.
But that doesn’t mean long-tail keywords are irrelevant! On the contrary, you can get a ton of targeted, high-quality traffic from long-tail keywords.
Why are long-tail keywords often better than short-tail keywords?
Although head terms can drive an insane amount of traffic, it’s often the case that the users who land on your web page through a head term are not the type of users that you actually want.
Those users might glance at your content and quickly realize that your web page has nothing to do with what they were really trying to search for.
PRO TIP EXAMPLE: If a user searches for “tools” in Google, and that user clicks on a link in the search results to get to this article, there is a high likelihood that the user was actually looking for something completely different than “SEO tools.”
The user might have been looking for garden tools, construction tools, programming tools, or even something super specific like a tool to help restring an electric guitar! 🎸
On the other hand, when users type in longer search queries, although the search volume goes down dramatically, the quality of those keywords skyrockets! 🚀
Why? Because you can target those specific long-tail keywords that perfectly align the audience with your content.
Not only that, but since the search volume is low for long-tail keywords, the competition for those keywords is usually extremely low.
If you’re looking for organic traffic, that means you will likely be able to easily get to the top of search results. And if you are an advertiser, that means it will likely be very cheap to advertise using those keywords.
PRO TIP: Assuming 80% of user searches in your market are high-quality, long-tail keywords, it stands to reason that you should put the lion’s share of your effort towards cultivating traffic using those long-tail keywords!
We’ve already talked a lot about search engine results. So I think it’s now time to go into more detail about them since they are indeed the other major search engine optimization building block. That’s right… I’m talking about SERPs.
What is a SERP?
The term SERP stands for a single search engine results page. And, thus, SERPs is the more collective term that stands for search engine results pages.
Just think of a SERP as the technical way of saying…
The page Google shows you after you search for something.
Of course, SERP applies to any search engine… but you get the point.
What’s so special about the first SERP?
Most search engines limit the number of results they show on their SERP, usually to about 10 items. They then provide paging tools to allow the user to page through results if they so choose.
PRO TIP: Let me let you in on a little secret… 🤫 users DO NOT choose to page through results!
In fact, some studies show that over 90% of users don’t get past the first SERP!
Furthermore, click-through rate (CTR) statistics for SERPs show that user engagement plummets as you make your way down the results list, with some studies showing only around 3% of users clicking the last result in the 10th position on the page.
The first item returned on the SERP might have around a 30-40% CTR (i.e. 3 or 4 out of 10 users click the first result), but the 3rd item in the list might only have a 20-30% CTR. The 5th item in the list tends to have only around a 10% CTR!
PRO TIP: In case you missed it, let me draw your attention to the fact that the 1st place position gets on average roughly 10 times the traffic that the 10th position gets! 😲
Thus, for all intents and purposes, showing up on the first page of search engine results is absolutely vital.
Showing up in the top 5 is a great next step. And showing up in the top 3 is a worthy goal.
But the ultimate goal should be to show up in the 1st position!
What is SERP ranking?
A keyword SERP ranking is just a more formal way of describing the position in the search results where your web page shows up at for a given keyword.
When talking about a collection or group of keywords, a SERP rank refers to the average position where your page appears in the search results.
What affects your SERP ranking?
If ranking high on SERPs is so essential, the next obvious question is “what things affect my SERP ranking?”
Each search engine has its own secret formula 🤫 for determining the exact rank of each page for a given keyword, and some search engines factor in hundreds of parameters in order to determine the rank!
But let’s keep it simple and just focus on two very common parameters that are often used.
Keyword Placement and Frequency
As we’ve already covered earlier, the exact keywords you use, where you use them in your content, and how often you use those keywords can have a major effect on your SERP ranking.
PRO TIP: If you’re targeting a keyword, make sure to…
- Put the keyword in your page title.
- Use the keyword in the first paragraph of your page.
- Use the keyword in headings and sub-headings.
- Use the keyword throughout your page.
- Use the keyword in the HTML meta tag description.
Domain Authority
So let’s say that 1 million pages all target the same set of related keywords and have followed the keyword placement and frequency tips above. How do search engines determine which pages to show in SERPs in this case?
The answer is something called Domain Authority.
Domain Authority has to do with a page’s power over a given set of keywords, called a domain.
The “domain” in domain authority should not be confused with a domain name of a URL where a website lives!
So, what if I told you for our example that 999,999 of those pages had no other sites linking back to them, but 1 page of the million had thousands of other websites and pages linking back to it?
Well, it’s obvious that — all other things being equal — a search engine would place that single page at the very top of the SERPs because so many other sites consider that page important enough to link to it.
That is Domain Authority in action.
Domain Authority is basically an internal rating that a search engine calculates for a page for a given set of keywords. The rating is based on how the rest of the Internet values that page.
The way a search engine determines that domain authority valuation is primarily based on what are called backlinks, which are simply links from other websites that point back to the page being evaluated.
The higher the Domain Authority rating for a page, the more likely that page will appear at the top of SERPs. Thus, it stands to reason that the more backlinks a page has, the higher its Domain Authority will be.
🙋♂️ Are all backlinks treated equally? Great question! The answer is no, backlinks are not treated equally.
You can think about backlinks to your page like votes for your page.
The more votes your page receives, the higher the Domain Authority will be for your page.
However, a single backlink might be able to give your page multiple votes! The number of votes a backlink can give your page is proportional to its own Domain Authority.
For example, a single link to your page from the CNN news website is likely as powerful as thousands of backlinks from hobbyist blogs.
The domain authority rating can also be influenced by the anchor text that is used in the backlinks. Anchor text is the text between the <a> and </a> HTML anchor tags that create a link.
Finally, a page doesn’t have infinite votes it can give out. A page’s votes are divided among its external links! All of these Domain Authority concepts are sometimes referred to as trust flow or link juice.
PRO TIP: When you’re looking for SEO tools that have to do with domain authority, keywords, links, and backlinks, you’ll often come across two important terms that you’ll want to be familiar with:
- On-Page SEO: this has to do with what your webpage tells a search engine about itself, directly impacting its own SERP rankings. On-Page SEO includes things like which keywords the page uses, which sites it links to, and even the headings and structure of the page content.
- Off-Page SEO: this has to do with what other websites tell the search engine about your page. These signals from other websites can impact the SERP rankings of your page. Off-Page SEO includes things like backlinks, inbound traffic, and SERP click-through rates.
As you can see, you actually have a lot of influence over your own SERP rankings by optimizing your web pages!
But there is even more valuable info you can glean from SERPs.
What type of information can you get from SERPs?
You can use a SERP analyzer, also known as a SERP checker or SERP rank checker, to research and analyze how your website pages perform for a set of keywords and how they compare to the SERP rankings of your competitors.
SERP analyzers will also be able to help you find your competitors!
PRO TIP: SERP analyzer tools can also show you which other companies are competing for the same keywords and possibly even reveal the exact SEO techniques they used to help obtain their positions.
These SERP tools can also key you in on the types of features that a search engine provides in the results for a given keyword. I’m talking about SERP features.
What are SERP features?
SERPs can consist not only of regular organic search results, but also ads, summaries, images, videos, “people also ask” sections, and all sorts of other SERP features.
That’s right… your content is competing with all of those other items for the user’s attention! 😱
SERP features is a term that stands for search engine results page features. It includes all of those other nifty features and tools that search engines provide to their users to help them quickly find what they are looking for.
Some common SERP features include things like:
PRO TIP: Depending on your type of content and goals, you might be able to use particular SEO tools and techniques to improve your chances of appearing in some of those SERP features in addition to appearing in the organic search results.
As a supplement to using free search engine optimization techniques to help drive free organic traffic, you can also choose to pay to get on SERPs through paid advertisements.
PRO TIP: It’s super important to realize that you don’t have to do paid advertisements in order to generate free, substantial organic traffic.
Now that you understand how keywords and SERPs work, you’ll now have a much easier time figuring out which SEO tools are right for you.
Let’s go ahead and break down the types of SEO tools available to you and show you how you might be able to use them.
What types of SEO tools are available?
Although SEO tools come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, they can be broken down into a few basic categories.
SEO tools can be used for:
Market Research
It might already be obvious to you, but it’s worth stating that it’s a really good idea 💡 to research your competition, identify your target audience and how they behave, and estimate the potential income you might be able to make from your market for your product or service.
That’s where market research comes in.
Market research, also known as marketing research, is the process of exploring your market space as it relates to your business, product, or service.
Market research involves analyzing your competitors, investigating market trends, identifying your potential customers, and understanding your target audience’s behaviors.
SEO tools can help you with market research by…
Within the realm of market research, search engine optimization tools can be divided into three main sub-categories: Competitor Analysis, Keyword Planning, and Marketing Planning.
Competitor Analysis
As the name implies, competitor analysis has everything to do with gaining a better understanding of who your competitors are and how they are currently doing business.
Some SEO software toolkits have sprinkled competitor analysis tools throughout their suite of SEO tools, while other SEO toolsets have specifically-branded tools for competitor analysis.
PRO TIP: Sometimes SEO tools don’t have the clearest and most obvious names, and you might not realize that the SEO tool you’re looking at has features for competitor analysis. To help you find competitor analysis SEO tools, be on the lookout for these types of terms:
- Competitor analysis
- Competitive research
- Market research
- Site explorer
- SERP checker and SERP analysis
- Compare domains
- Traffic analysis
Keyword Planning
Once you’ve done some research to get a list of your competitors, you can use other super-helpful SEO tools to collect a list of all the keywords that your competitors use, as well as other keywords that are specific to your products or services.
This process is called keyword planning.
Before you start creating lots of content for your site, you’ll want to know which keywords and topics your content should focus on.
Keyword planning not only helps you figure out what content you should make, it can also help you figure out how to structure your website page hierarchy through a process called keyword grouping, sometimes called keyword clustering or keyword segmentation.
PRO TIP: Keyword grouping uses sophisticated SEO techniques to determine which keywords belong together, thus providing you with topic ideas and a way to maximize your keyword influence throughout your website.
For example, some SEO keyword grouping tools allow you to automatically group together keywords and bucket them based on their SERP similarities.
- Such tools automate the process of analyzing the listings in SERPs across all of your keywords.
- They determine the frequency and placement of those keywords in the SERPs, including any listings from your competitors.
- Finally, they partition those keywords into clusters of related terms based on those statistics! 🤯
- Want to try out these tools for yourself? No problem. 😎 A great example of an all-in-one SEO toolkit that includes this exact type of keyword grouping feature is SE Ranking.
Marketing Planning
You can also use search engine optimization tools to help create your marketing plan, including coming up with marketing strategies, identifying trending keywords, analyzing your social media presence, and estimating and forecasting advertisement costs.
Some SEO tools even give you a step-by-step guide or a marketing checklist tool ✅ to help lead you through the whole marketing process and make sure you don’t miss any important steps.
Uh oh… it looks like your eyes are starting to glaze over already, but we’ve only just covered the market research section! I think this calls for a joke to snap you out of it.
JOKE ALERT: 😁
How do SEO experts celebrate improving their search rankings?
With SERP-rise parties, of course!
Hopefully, that did the trick! Let’s keep going.
Content Creation
The next major category of SEO tools is about creating content.
These SEO tools let you easily analyze the current state of your website pages. After auditing your entire website or an individual page, they will reveal any opportunities for improvements.
SEO tools can also help you figure out what topics to write about based on how keywords are performing for your competitors.
And some companies even offer machine-learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to do everything from writing the perfect headlines to jumpstarting your creative process, to writing a complete blog post for you that you can then review and edit. Amazing! 😲
The feedback that you get from such SEO content tools can not only help shape your content, but they can also give you tips and suggestions about how to optimize your entire website design, hierarchy, and layout.
It’s pretty crazy what types of tools are available at your fingertips for content creation these days!
PRO TIP EXAMPLE: Take SE Ranking’s “Content Editor” tool for example. Just type in a few keywords and choose your market and target region. In just a few seconds, the SE Ranking tool will spit out the following:
- Organic Competitors: a list of 10 related articles already written by your competitors, including the titles, descriptions, links, the number of words in each article, the number of domains that link to the article, and other stats like the Domain Trust and Page Trust values.
- Content Parameters: the recommended number of words and/or characters to use on your page, and the recommended number of headings, paragraphs, and images… all based on your competition’s current success!
- Terms To Use: a recommended list of terms and keywords you should use in your article, including how many times each term should appear and the overall text density.
- Content Structure: an overview of the structure and headings from the 10 related articles, as well as features to quickly pick and choose which of those headings you would like to add to your own content structure as a starting basis.
- Notes: a section where you can write notes to yourself or to your copywriter about the article you want to create.
- Content Editor: a full-blown online page editor where you can create your document with immediate feedback and tracking about all of those things already listed above and more, such as:
- How many more times you should use a word in your article.
- What type of HTML header tag you should use for a heading based on your desired structure.
- The number of headings, paragraphs, and images you’ve included so far.
- A quality score that rates readability, grammar, punctuation, and relevancy.
- The ability to have AI instantly rewrite portions of your text using automated natural language processing. You can review what the AI created and then choose to replace your own text with a rewritten version that you like better.
And to think… your competitors already have access to SE Ranking and similar types of tools! Incredible. 🤯
Tracking and Auditing
A major feature of many SEO tools is the ability to track keywords, rankings, and site optimization over time.
You can even track particulars about your website pages through the use of SEO website auditing tools.
SEO audit tools can automatically analyze a single page on your site or even every single page on your website!
PRO TIP: Make sure to use these tools to analyze how your website and pages perform on both desktop and mobile devices.
These auditors can reveal some really helpful information, such as:
All of this information, along with all of your related keyword data, can then be tracked automatically every day.
PRO TIP: Tracking is usually done for a specific search engine, device type, language, and country. Be on the lookout for tools that offer even more granularity by allowing you to specify regions or even cities, if that is helpful for your type of business.
Then, all of this information is automatically processed and shown in charts and graphs so you can get a really good idea of how the data changes over time.
Some SEO tools can even automatically analyze all of that data to highlight which keywords are doing better for you and which are doing worse, as well as show how changes to your content can affect your keyword performance.
Beyond tracking everything above, these tools can also track:
Traffic Analytics
If all of this weren’t enough, some of these SEO toolkits allow you to integrate your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts! 😲
That means that those toolsets can take all of the information they already have about your site and keywords and then automatically combine it with the actual traffic and search data that Google provides for your website.
This allows them to show you even more accurate results and make it so that you don’t have to switch to those other Google services in order to see a complete picture of your traffic as it relates to your site’s SEO.
Marketing and Generating Traffic
Another major category of SEO tools has to do with marketing and generating traffic.
You might see the term “SEM,” which simply stands for search engine marketing.
SEM has to do with pretty much everything we’ve been talking about, but as it relates to marketing your websites, products, or services. SEM usually has a strong emphasis on paid advertising to obtain traffic.
But as you know, there are lots of ways to generate free, organic traffic.
You know those backlinks we talked about before? Remember how important they can be to your SERP rankings?
Well, it turns out that there are ways for you to actually build up the number and quality of backlinks to your site!
How do you increase your backlinks?
This can be done using tools called Backlink Builders… surprise, surprise! 😉
These backlink-building tools provide features that allow you not only to view backlinks for your site and for your competitor’s sites but also to:
PRO TIP: These tools can also show you websites that have broken links about articles that relate to your keywords so that you can reach out to the website owners. Help them by telling them about their broken link, and then politely offer your own source page as an alternative page they can link to!
Organic and Paid Traffic
We’ve already covered the difference between organic and paid traffic. A major part of SEO is trying to figure out how to optimize both of them, whereas SEM focuses mostly on paid traffic.
Most of the major SEO toolkits break down their data into organic and paid traffic, and they provide detailed information about both types of traffic.
For organic traffic, they show how your keywords are performing and how your content and backlinks are affecting that traffic.
For paid traffic, they can give you estimated advertising costs per keyword based on search volumes and CTRs, as well as track the performance of your ads.
This allows you to both forecast and optimize your marketing advertising costs! 💰
Social Media
Another aspect of marketing and generating traffic with SEO revolves around social media.
If you’d believe it, many of the available SEO software toolkits are so sophisticated that they even integrate your social media data.
Some tools can even help you both create and schedule optimized social media content that ties into the rest of your website’s traffic campaigns.
For example, these tools can suggest types of Instagram text you should post, or which keywords to use in your Facebook posts.
So powerful! ⚡
White Label Services and Resellers
The last major category of SEO tools has to do with white label services.
Come on, stay with me… we’re almost through! Don’t make me have to share another joke with you, like how cab drivers are really good at marketing because they can drive in traffic! 😁
White Label SEO is basically a private-label version of the same SEO toolkits you would normally use, but built with extra features that are geared for resellers and agencies.
These resellers and agencies can use some SEO toolkits and legally brand them to make them look like their own company’s product.
They can either allow their own customers direct access to those tools or act as a go-between and provide their customers with branded reports the company generates using those SEO toolkits.
PRO TIP: If you are a reseller or agency and want to outsource white-label SEO services, be on the lookout to see if the SEO toolkit provides these additional features:
- White label reporting
- Guest links
- API and integrations
- Lead generation
SEO Platform Plugins
Wow… we’ve already covered so much! 🤪 But just a quick side note before we get to the list of SEO software toolkits…
Most of these SEO tools, techniques, and tips and tricks that we’ve covered so far can be used for websites built on almost any platform.
Using a general multi-platform toolkit that integrates all these features together is a powerful way to approach SEO since they can be used no matter what framework or platform your website is built upon. ⚡
However, you should be aware that there are also platform-specific services available to you, usually in the form of plugins.
If your business is embedded deep within a specific platform, it might be helpful to also use platform-specific plugins in addition to the general-purpose all-in-one toolkits.
PRO TIP: Suppose you run a WordPress website. You might consider using an SEO plugin specifically meant for WordPress, such as Rank Math, AIOSEO, or SEOPress, perhaps in addition to one of the toolkits below.
Just be aware that such plugins often lack many of the more-advanced SEO features that the software toolkits below offer.
List of SEO Software Toolkits
And now, for what you’ve probably been waiting for… 😍
Here is a list of some popular all-in-one SEO toolkits, including ones I personally recommend you should start with.
I used many of these same SEO tools and features that these toolkits offer to help make it easier for people like you to find this page! It clearly worked 😉 because you’re here now reading this article. And you can do the same thing for your website or business.
PRO TIP: Many of these SEO toolkits offer either a free trial period or a free account with limited functionality so that you can try them out before you commit to anything.
I love those free trial features 😍 because it makes it super easy to sign up and start trying out their tools without having to worry so much about the financial aspect just yet.
Premium professional SEO software toolkits are absolutely worth it, IMHO!
Just imagine the amount of time it would take you to manually track and update all of those results yourself! 😱
“Your time is too valuable to waste it on grunt work!”
— Yours Truly, BizEnv.com
All-In-One Professional SEO Toolkits
Without further ado, here are my SEO toolkit awards and top recommendations. I’ve personally tried out each toolkit that I’m recommending below!
Following my recommendations, I’ve also listed some other popular all-in-one professional SEO toolkits.
SEO Toolkit Awards
🏆 Best Overall: Semrush and Ahrefs
🏆 Best for Beginners and on a Budget: Mangools
🏆 Best for New Websites: SE Ranking
🏆 Best Windows/Mac Installed Software: SEO PowerSuite
🏆 Best WordPress Plugin: Rank Math
#1: Semrush
My current #1 SEO toolkit recommendation is Semrush.
🙋♀️ Why choose Semrush?
I recommend that you sign up for Semrush’s free trial so you can see for yourself why they are my top pick. 😎
#2: Ahrefs
I also highly recommend Ahrefs. Depending on your needs, I might even recommend Ahrefs over Semrush.
🙋♂️ Why choose Ahrefs?
I recommend that you sign up for their free Ahrefs account and explore what they have to offer! 😎
#3: SE Ranking
My third SEO toolkit recommendation is SE Ranking.
🙋♀️ Why choose SE Ranking?
I recommend that you create a free SE Ranking account to see why I put them so high in my recommendations. 😎
#4: Serpstat
Coming in at a very close fourth place is Serpstat.
🙋♂️ Why choose Serpstat?
I recommend that you create a free Serpstat account and start your free 7-day trial. 😎
#5: SEO PowerSuite
My next recommendation is SEO PowerSuite, but it was a hard one for me to rank…
- I might have chosen them as one of my top 3 recommendations, if it weren’t for the fact that SEO PowerSuite is split into several desktop-installed software applications for Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems.
- Depending on your business needs and corporate environment, this might be a heaven-sent! But for those like me who have been trying to move to 100% online browser-based tools and software, this feels like a major step backward.
- For example, you’re probably going to be out of luck trying to use SEO PowerSuite on your phone while on a trip, on a Chromebook, or from someone else’s computer (without having to install the suite)!
- On the flip side, many larger businesses and enterprises might require the use of approved installed software, so that they can better manage their employees and security. If that is you, you’re probably going to love SEO PowerSuite!
🙋♀️ Why choose SEO PowerSuite?
If you’re looking for SEO software you can download, I definitely recommend that you enter your email to download SEO PowerSuite and start your free 7-day trial. 😎
#6: Mangools
My next recommendation is for Mangools.
🙋♂️ Why choose Mangools?
Mangools is a solid SEO software toolkit that is well worth trying out. Get started by creating a free Mangools account to explore their tools for yourself. 😎
More Recommendations
You might also want to consider these other popular all-in-one professional SEO toolkits that I’ve tried.
🛠 WebCEO
- WebCEO Features: Rank Tracking, Site Audit, Keyword Research, SEO Content Assistant, Backlink Checker, Internal Links, Toxic Link Checker, Content Submission, Competitor Backlink Spy, Traffic Analysis, Social Analytics, Quick Domain Analysis, Competitor Metrics, SEO Checklist, Multilingual Interface, Email Alerts, Third-Party integrations and connectors
- Raven Tools Features: Competitor Research, Site Auditor, Keyword Research, Backlink Analysis, SERP Rank Tracking, Link Spy, Marketing Reports, PPC Reports, Social Reports, Email Reports, Call Tracking Reports, Google Data Studio integration
- Long Tail Pro Features: Keyword Research, SERP Analysis, Rank Tracker, Backlink Analysis, Site Audit
- Netpeak Software Features: Windows-installed application, Website optimization, SERP scraping, On-Page SEO parameters, Bulk tool, Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, Traffic estimation, Contact data search, Data segmentation, Site scraping, Google Search Console, Sitemap generator, Multi-domain crawling, White Label, SEO Audit, Spell Check, Google Sheets, Google Drive
Other All-In-One SEO Toolkits
In addition to all my personal recommendations above, don’t miss these other all-in-one professional SEO toolkits.
🛠 SpyFu
- SpyFu Features: Competitor analysis, Rank tracking, SERP analysis, Keyword research, Backlinks builder, Compare domains, PPC (Google Ads Advisor, Ad history, Google Ads templates), Keyword grouping, Traffic analysis, SEO & PPC reports, Backlinks outreach, White label reports, Scheduled reports
🛠 Moz
- Moz Features: Keyword research, Technical SEO audits, Link research, Weekly rank tracking, daily rank tracking, Automated custom reports, granular data, segmentation, Local SERPs, Mobile SERPs, API, Competitor intelligence
- AuthorityLabs Features: Rank Tracker, Mobile Rank Tracking, Competitor Monitoring, Local SEO, Google Data Studio integration
🛠 Majestic
- Majestic Features: Site Explorer, Topics, Backlink History, Keyword Generator, Flow Metric History, Clique Hunter, Keyword Checker, Search Explorer, Bulk Backlinks, Neighborhood Checker, Submit URLs, Custom Reports, Link Graph, Experimental tools, Related Sites, API
- Ubersuggest Features: Rank Tracking, SEO Analysis, SEO Audit Report, SEO Checker, Site Speed, Backlink Checker, AI Writer, Keyword Visualization, SEO Opportunities, Keywords Generator, Chrome Extension
- Wordtracker Features: Inspect Tool, Keyword Tool, Niche Explorer, Competition Metrics, Related terms, Search trends, SERP preview, Scout browser extension, API
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider Features: Windows/Mac/Linux installed desktop app, Page Analyzer, Find broken links, Discover duplicate content, Extract data with XPath, Audit Redirects, Review Robots, Generate sitemaps, Google Analytics integration, Google Search Console integration, PageSpeed Insights integration, Visualizations, Scheduled Audits, Craw JavaScript websites, Crawl comparisons
SEO Toolkit WordPress Plugins
And given how WordPress dominates the web hosting world, this list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning at least a few popular feature-rich WordPress plugins for SEO.
PRO TIP: Some of the all-in-one toolkits already mentioned above also offer WordPress plugins for their services! However, the plugins listed below prioritize WordPress SEO features.
🛠 Rank Math (this is the SEO WordPress plugin I use on this website!)
🛠 SEOPress
🛠 AIOSEO
Final Thoughts
I hope you found this SEO information helpful, and I hope you discovered at least a few SEO tools, tips, and tricks that you can immediately apply to your business.
Whether you choose Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Serpstat, SEO PowerSuite, Mangools, or any of the other impressive all-in-one SEO software toolkits, I think you will be glad you decided to give them a try.
I wish you all the best on your SEO journey!
“Go forth and optimize!”
— Yours Truly, BizEnv.com
😉
