Last updated on December 17th, 2022 at 02:04 pm
How Google assesses a website for SERPs (search engine results pages) is never entirely clear. But over the past ten years, specialists and industry professionals have partially solved the equation. There is sufficient information available—many thanks to those who specialize in SEO—to assist you in ranking your pages all on your own. And just when you think you have it figured out, Google may update its algorithms, forcing you to reevaluate your search engine optimization strategy. Luckily, the best search engine optimization (SEO) tools can help. They are designed to track changes in algorithms, analyze keywords and content for better optimization, identify opportunities for backlinking, and more.
Search engine optimization is difficult to fully master, and it is not possible. However, SEO tools are a great resource for helping you maintain your high Google rankings. Searching for the best search engine optimization (SEO) tool? We’ve got you covered with this list of the best search engine optimization (SEO) tools to check out in 2023. Let’s take a look!
In this comparison, the best search engine optimization (SEO) tools on the market are compared.
Choosing the best one from the numerous tools and software at your disposal can be challenging. In actuality, the decision is entirely up to you and is entirely based on your preferences and needs. Include your budget in the list of requirements. To make it simpler to see everything at a glance, we’ve put together a quick SEO tools comparison table.
| Tool | Most affordable plan | Best Features | Free trial available |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | Lite Monthly: $99/mo. Yearly: $83/mo | Best all around SEO and keyword tracking, critical issue alerts for your SEO strategy, helps you learn more about your competitors’ backlink strategies | Yes |
| SEMRush | Pro Monthly: $119.95/mo Yearly: $99.95/mo | Detailed keyword analysis, competitor strategy information, keyword magic too, SEO strategy recommendations | Yes |
| Moz Pro | Standard Monthly: $99/mo Yearly: $79/mo | Audit your own website, receive actionable SEO insights, track site ranking over 100s or 1000s of keywords, 1-on-1 walkthrough, 24-hour support | Yes |
| KWFinder | Basic Monthly: $49/mo Yearly: $29.90/mo | Find long-tail keywords and get insights about them, local keyword research, competitor keyword insights | Yes |
| Ubersuggest | Individual Monthly Monthly: $29/mo Lifetime purchase: $290 | Robust keyword research tools, site audit, traffic analyzer | Yes/Free tier |
| Woorank | Pro Monthly: $79.99/mo Yearly: $53.25/mo | Marketing checklist, mobile and social media data analysis, SEO analysis | Yes |
| Majestic | Lite Monthly: $49.99/mo Yearly: $41.67/mo | Bulk backlink checker, site explorer, find the best keywords with its keyword tool | No |
| SpyFu | Basic Monthly: $39/mo Yearly: $33/mo | Competitor keyword analysis, Pay-Per-Click/SEO/keyword research tools | Yes |
| BuzzStream | Starter $24/mo | Lead finder, find contact information, find out whether an influencer is already attached to a campaign | Yes |
| ScreamingFrog | £149 per year (~$185 per year) | Super fast SEO website audits, informs you of SEO errors and duplicate content, find out areas of improvement | Yes/Free tier |
| AnswerThePublic | Up to 3 users Monthly: $99/mo Yearly: $79/mo | Hide results and branches you don’t want, monitor keyword trends, see keyword searches in real time | Yes/Free tier |
| GrowthBar | Standard Monthly: $48/mo Yearly: $29/mo | Facebook ads feature, AI writing, AI blog post ideas, AI outlines | Yes |
Ahrefs is widely regarded as the best SEO tool, and this opinion is shared by many experts. However, at $99 per month (or $83 per month if paid annually), it is not the least expensive option on this list. Consider Ubersuggest or Majestic if you want a powerful tool that won’t break the bank.
Other useful tools include BuzzStream for locating influencers and their contact information, as well as GrowthBar for those looking to plan or enhance their content strategies.
How Do SEO Tools Work?
Initially, SEO was created to increase web accessibility. It adhered to HTML4 standards and made a website’s content and goal easier to understand.
Meaning? Each page had to have a unique title that matched its content, as well as headings that pointed out other important information. These titles, headings, and other on-page signals make it easier for people to use a page and tell search engines what it’s about.
It was very popular. Why? Because they started to realize that SEO could help them rank higher on the SERPs, leading to more free and natural traffic.
These on-page cues are still taken into consideration by Google today. On the other hand, it analyzes more information than before (off-page, which means not on-page SEO).
The goal of the development of software for search engine optimization was to assist users in managing their SEO efforts, both on-page and off-page. In addition to this, they assist in the development, upkeep, and monitoring of your strategies. There are a ton of free SEO tools available; however, there are fees associated with the majority of the more powerful apps and software.
What Are the Benefits of Using SEO Tools?
Keeping track of and reporting on your SEO efforts on your own can certainly be accomplished. Having said that, there are times when all of the time and effort spent are not justified. The use of search engine optimization tools simplifies your life by relieving you of the burden of time-consuming tasks such as data analysis and keyword research, both of which can take several hours or even several days.
Site audits are another service offered by SEO tools, and they examine your current SEO strategy and point out both its strengths and its weaknesses. SEO audits are extremely popular among businesses as a tool for analyzing metrics and benchmarking themselves against the performance of their rivals.
In addition to these benefits, search engine optimization enables you to evaluate and manage the SEO strategies and performance reports of multiple websites in real time. Reports generated by SEO tools are, as a matter of course, significantly less likely to contain errors caused by human error than reports generated manually.
Utilizing SEO tools can help you save time and effort while also assisting you in better managing your search engine optimization strategies.
How exactly do search engine optimization (SEO) tools contribute to the expansion of businesses?
In today’s world, digital marketing is an essential component of the growth strategy and overall success of a company. A strong online presence not only improves a company’s image but also drives a large amount of organic traffic that is more likely to convert.
But just making a website isn’t enough.
Each website has to compete for a piece of the traffic pie these days, and SEO is one of the best ways to do that. SEO and SEO tools can help in the following ways:
- Brings traffic to your website, increasing your visibility and online presence
- Builds your brand’s authority and credibility
- Boosts lead generation and sales
- Provides long-lasting results that you can continue to build upon long term
Remember that SEO doesn’t work as well if your website is hard to use. Your landing page should always give people a good experience if you want them to come back.
Want to find the best search engine optimization (SEO) tools? Let’s dive into our list.
Best search engine optimization (SEO) Tools
1. Ahrefs: SEO Tool
If you’ve looked into SEO tools, you’ve probably seen Ahrefs on many lists of the top 10 search engine optimization tools (or however many tools the articles list). As of now, Ahrefs is one of the best. It is a huge website crawler that is only second to Google in size.
Thanks to its well-designed site auditing feature, many experts use and recommend Ahrefs. The site audits show you where your website and SEO strategy need work, so you can fix them and move up in the rankings.
Ahrefs can also help you figure out a backlinking strategy by showing you the backlinks that your competitors have. Its Site Explorer feature also shows you how many people search for your competitors and which pages get the most traffic.
Ahrefs can help you plan, maintain, and track your SEO strategies, which is one of its best features. For example, this tool lets you see what people have been Googling, so you can easily estimate how much search traffic a topic might bring you. It also tells you how hard it is to rank for each keyword, so you can decide if you want to try to rank for that keyword or look for one that might be easier.
Pricing:
- Lite: $99 per month paid monthly/$83 per month paid yearly
- Standard: $199 per month paid monthly/$166 per month paid yearly
- Advanced: $399 per month paid monthly/$333 per month paid yearly
- Enterprise starts at $999
What We Liked:
- Free trial available
- Extensively well-documented with tutorials and user support
- Plenty of advanced tools for the more knowledgeable
- One of the best and largest tools available today
2. SEMRush
SEMRush is a great tool for marketing on the Internet. It has a wide range of tools to help you get detailed reports of your keyword analyses and summaries of domains in your area of responsibility. SEMRush will show you how to optimize your content so that you can get more traffic from search engines.
SEMRush is like Ahrefs in that it lets you compare your metrics to those of your competitors. You can compare how you rank on SERPs as a first step. You also get traffic analytics, which help you figure out where most of the web traffic for your competitors comes from. Checking “traffic sources comparison” gives you a quick look at the digital marketing channels of several of your competitors at once. You can also see how your backlinks compare to those of other sites.
Over the years, SEMRush has added more tools to your arsenal, such as tools for agencies, a white-glove split-testing service (SplitSignal) for PR agencies, a tool to increase traffic, and a marketplace for finding writers for your content.
Pricing:
- Pro: $119.50 per month paid monthly/$99.95 per month paid yearly
- Guru: $229.95 per month paid monthly/$191.62 per month paid yearly
- Business: $449.95 per month paid monthly/$374.95 per month paid yearly
What We Liked
- Lets you form your own strategies by analyzing your competitors’ metrics
- Robust, informative, and easy-to-use dashboard
- Various tools
- Free trial available
3. Moz Pro
Moz Pro is a strong candidate for the best SEO platform because it has a wide range of tools to improve SERP rankings, traffic, and online visibility. Moz Pro’s reputation comes from some of its most important tools, like the Moz Pro spider, which lets you check your website. The audit checks for possible issues, highlights them, then presents recommendations. These recommendations can help you correct the issues, which can help you rank higher.
You can find targetable keywords and keyword combinations using the keyword research tool in Moz Pro. You can gain knowledge and metrics from backlink analysis tools like estimated domain authority and link anchor texts.
Pricing:
Each Moz Pro plan comes with 24-hour support and a one-on-one walkthrough.
- Standard: $99 per month paid monthly/$79 per month paid yearly
- Medium: $179 per month paid monthly/$143 per month paid yearly
- Large: $299 per month paid monthly/$239 per month paid yearly
- Premium: $599 per month paid monthly/$479 per month paid yearly
What We Liked:
- Supportive community
- Robust tools
- Provides actionable insights to help you adjust your strategies
- Free trial available
SEO Experts Worth Checking Out
Sometimes, following SEO experts can help you learn more about the subject. It can also help you learn about new Google and SEO developments as they happen. If you’re looking for a few experts to follow, consider the ones below:
1. Neil Patel
Not only is Neil Patel a NY Times Best-Selling Author, but he also co-founded many massively successful businesses like Hello Bar and Crazy Egg, to name a few. Right now, you may know him most from the fact that he owns Ubersuggest, one of the best SEO tools listed above. However, Patel is a man of many distinctions, including but not limited to:
- Recognized by The WSJ (Wall Street Journal) as one of the web’s top influencers
- Top ten online marketers according to Forbes
- Former President Obama called him one of the best 100 entrepreneurs under 30 years old.
Neil Patel is now a contributing columnist for several publications and writes for QuickSprout (his blog).
Learn more about Neil Patel here.
2. Joost De Valk
If you have ever heard of the WordPress (and now Shopify) plugin Yoast SEO, you’ve probably already heard of Joost De Valk. De Valk founded Yoast and continues to advise the product’s team on various aspects of the business, though he has now taken a step back from running it actively.
Joost, a prolific internet entrepreneur, web developer, and digital marketer, continues to post about SEO-related subjects.
Conclusion
This list of the best SEO tools can help take your website(s) to another level. However, no matter how helpful these tools can be, they don’t diminish the effort necessary to ensure your content and website are of excellent quality. Pairing a good content and SEO strategy might just be the best way to bring more traffic to your websites, so make sure your pages and their contents can make a good impression on visitors!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Which SEO Tool is Best?
The best SEO tool software depends on your needs. If you need to do keyword research, try UberSuggest or KWFinder. On the other hand, SEMRush is one of the best tools for digital marketing. If you want to create content, GrowthBar might be worth looking into. And finally, Ahrefs is among the best all-around.
2. Are SEO Tools Worth It?
Some people say that free plans are enough, while others recommend paid tools without fail. The right SEO tools for your needs, free or paid, are worth it if they support your SEO and content strategies.
3. What is Better than Ahrefs?
Ubersuggest is competitive with Ahrefs, thanks to its solid features. Ubersuggest used to be completely free but now has paid plans, though Neil Patel recently buffed up the free plan to give it more functionality. Even though Ubersuggest has paid plans, they’re quite affordable in comparison. The affordability is especially great if you’re newer to SEO and are still looking to learn and grow. Although Ubersuggest is not as feature-rich as Ahrefs, its price point and value are ideal for many marketers.
4. Is SEO worth it for small businesses?
Search engine optimization is one of the most critical aspects of marketing in the digital age. Small businesses can benefit significantly from using SEO to boost their online presence and help improve their brand’s authority, credibility, and trustworthiness. Appearing near the top of search result pages brings plenty of traffic and potential conversions for online or brick-and-mortar businesses. An investment in SEO software tools can help small businesses grow.
