So, you’ve got SEO down pat. You’re writing some killer content—it’s informative, helpful, and great-looking. Your internal links are on point, while your external links are bringing in traffic by the horde. Meta descriptions? Not a problem. Longtail keywords? You’re the undisputed master. Image alt text? Please.
But wait… Just because you’ve implemented all the best practices doesn’t mean that that’s all there is to SEO. If you want the results you’re craving, then you need the right tools to audit and monitor your website’s performance. Keep reading to learn more about 13 of the top SEO technologies.
Website Analysis Gurus
These first seven pieces of software are all-around winners; versatile technologies that can help you with tracking a variety of analytics, from overall visitors and time on page to a bunch of more complicated stats.
1. Google’s Webmaster Tools
What We Like Best: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Cost: Zip…zilch…nada…zero dollars and zero cents.
Let’s face it: Although there are plenty of other search engines out there, Google is King. In fact, it’s pretty much the entire royal family. That’s why it’s smart to learn about how you can improve your search performance from the people who created the very search engine. Plus, this is an easy-to-use program that’s great for those just starting out.
2. Woorank
What We Like Best: Eight Sections per Report
Cost: Start off with a 14-day free trial
Here, your reports will be divided into eight simple sections: Marketing Checklist, SEO, Mobile, Usability, Technologies, Social, Local, and Visitors. That way, you can get the information that you need at a glance.
Do you need to report your findings to your coworkers or customers? No problem. You can download all of the information mentioned above as a branded PDF, making documents and presentations very simple.
3. HubSpot’s Website Grader
What We Like Best: Made for Mobile
Cost: The best things in life are free
During our research for this article, we entered our own website’s URL and received a detailed, glossy report within 10 seconds. It featured an overall grade, as well as sub grades for performance, mobile, SEO, and security. At the end, it even included tailored suggestions for how to improve in each department. Anybody would be truly impressed with how convenient and thorough this process is.
4. Moz’s Pro Tools
What We Like Best: Boost Your “Crawlability”
Cost: 30-day trial, plans from $99 per month
Moz’s Crawl Test Tool utilizes their own web crawler (which they call RogerBot) to analyze as many as 3,000 links on any given URL. This is especially helpful if you have a larger, sprawling website, as you can clean up some of those long-forgotten, hard-to-get-to pages that are affecting your site’s performance.
All in all, their software promises to help you achieve higher rankings, quality traffic, and tangible results.
5. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider
What We Like Best: Save Time and Money
Cost: Free LITE version, or $160 per year
The type of crawling and evaluation that this service provides would otherwise take hours or days, were you to undertake it manually. You can even analyze the results in real time, which is exactly what you need if you’re planning on addressing any issues that it uncovers, including broken links, audit redirects, duplicate content, metadata mishaps, etc. Check out their website to read some customer testimonials.
6. Found’s SEO Audit Tool
What We Like Best: Downloadable PDF Results
Cost: One of the best free services out there
This automated SEO audit (which also, like some of the other ones mentioned, allows you to download your results as a PDF) breaks down into three categories: Technical Issues, Content Issues, and External Link Analysis. It also pins separate, numerical values on the number of overall issues, warnings, and successes that your site presents. And, as we mentioned, you won’t have to shell out as much as a cent.
7. Varvy’s SEO Overview Tool
What We Like Best: Reports in Less Than a Minute
Cost: The best news is that it’s a freebie
Depending on how serious the issue is, they’ll assign it either a green check, a red “x,” or a yellow exclamation point. This makes it easy for you to see what’s going well, what needs some work, and what requires your attention immediately. Their entire platform for evaluating your site is seeing whether or not it follows Google guidelines… So, you know that they’ve got their eye on the prize!
Keyword Research Wizards
The next two tools hone in on keywords, helping you to see which keywords are working and which aren’t, as well as helping you to discover some better ones that are similar to the ones you’ve already got.
8. Ahrefs
What We Like Best: “Parent Topic” Keyword Tool
Cost: $99 per month (for their Lite Plan)
Let’s say that you already have a keyword that’s had some success. You can enter it into the Parent Topic Keyword Tool in order to discover a more general keyword with a higher search volume, but with a similar target audience and ranking potential. In other words, you can easily move from a good keyword to a great one.
In addition to keyword profiles, you’ll get link and ranking profiles to help you address your entire website.
9. SEMrush
What We Like Best: Dashboard Interface
Cost: $0.00
Their Keyword Analytics tool will tell you everything that you need to know about a particular keyword: its monthly search volume, your page’s rank for that keyword, and much more. They also give you the resources that you need to research new keywords. In addition to their keyword expertise, they offer a ton of miscellaneous services, including SEO Writing Assistant, SEO Content Template, Gap Analysis, etc.
Link Builders and Pruners
Link-building is another one of the fundamentals of SEO. However, link pruning is just as important. These three sites can help you to make sure that you have the perfect amount of the right links for your goals.
10. Check My Links
What We Like Best: Broken Links Begone!
Cost: It won’t cost you a single penny
If you’re about to send a budding young site out into the Wild West of the web, then it might be best to make sure that all your links are working first. But, if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of links across dozens or hundreds of pages, then it might not be best to check all of those links manually. By highlighting working links in green and broken links in red, they’ll do the trick easily and effectively.
11. BuzzStream
What We Like Best: Build Links
Cost: 14-day free trial, then $24 per month
Building a bunch of links from scratch can be a bit of a hassle; emailing a bunch of bloggers and waiting to see who responds. That’s why this platform is such a game-changer. It’ll assist you as you contact the correct people, craft the perfect message, and keep track of who’s working with you and who isn’t. It’ll even assign a domain authority rating for their websites, letting you gauge the relative value of each link.
12. Remove’em
What We Like Best: Clean Up Those Links
Cost: Either $249 per domain or $99 per month
Having too many of the wrong links can be way worse than having too few of the right links. This program will scan through and come up with a list of entities that you’ll need to contact if you want to sever those harmful links once and for all. It also allows you to export the list that it creates, in case you need to manually disassociate from those links via your target search engine’s in-house tool. Either way, you win.
Crush the Competition
This last tool is all about helping you to learn about how your webpages are faring against the competition.
13. UpCity’s SEO Report Card
What We Like Best: You vs. The Competition
Cost: How do you spell “nothing” in binary?
Although you do have to supply some contact information, the rewards are totally worth it. In addition to their competition-based Rank Analysis, you’ll enjoy accounts of Link Building, On-Site Keyword Analysis, Website Accessibility, Trust Metrics, Current Indexing, and others. In some ways, it’s just like the report card that you got throughout your school years—except this one will help your business make some money.
Ready to take your SEO game to the next level? Contact the Stream team!
This was just a quick snapshot of a few of the 13 best SEO tools for auditing and monitoring your website’s performance. For a more in-depth look at each of them, check out Tom Demers’s original HubSpot post.
Or, if you’d like to learn more about how Stream Companies does SEO (here’s a quick hint… We do it splendidly), download our completely free eBook: Search Engine Optimization the Stream Way. Thanks!