Five Great Tools For SEO

You have a great website; it looks attractive, it has all the right information on it, it’s user-friendly, but it still isn’t bringing in the visitors you had hoped it would. Why could this be? It might be something to do with your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. There are a number of ways to boost your website further up the search engine rankings using SEO. If you can utilize the right tools and do SEO successfully, then you will find more and more visitors come to your site, which will increase your reach and your chances of selling.

There are certain types of tools that are useful when it comes to SEO, and the following information should help you to decide which one (or ones) are going to be best for you and your business.

Keyword Analysis Tools

Keywords are the backbone of any successful SEO campaign. Keywords are the search terms that people use on Google and other search engines to find whatever it is they are looking for. If you have some of the most popular keywords for your product or industry within your website, you are more likely to come up in that search. The more keywords you have and the better placed they are, the higher your site will come in the rankings.

Tools that help you discover what the most popular keywords are and how to use them to your best advantage are essential for ensuring that you rank well and that your content is viewed by the people who are going to find it most useful.

It will depend on your budget as to which tools you are able to use. There are tools available such as Ubersuggest, which pulls together a variety of different keyword services from across the internet to suggest phrases and keywords that you may be able to use. Term Explorer claims to have the biggest data set for keyword research and gives you lists of words whilst also comparing them to your competitors. These are free, and some, including SEMrush, which not only gives you keywords but also their potential value so that you can create a PPC campaign, will be paid for.

Rankings Tools

It’s a good idea to know where your site ranks in Google so that you can keep track of which of your marketing campaigns works the best. That way you can replicate that success and stop spending money where it is not doing any good. By understanding where you rank and the difference that each individual campaign makes to those rankings, you will have a much clearer idea of your success or otherwise, when it comes to advertising and marketing.

You could input the various search terms that you want to have data on and then wade through potentially many pages of results in order to find what you are looking for. Alternatively, there are tools that can do this for you and save you a lot of time and effort. One such tool is Google Search Console. It’s free, and since it’s by Google you know, it’s going to give you the information that is most pertinent. By using this tool you will be able to see the list of search engine terms that your site is currently ranking for, and where it ranks, offering you plenty of insight into how your campaigns are working.

SEMrush will do a similar job, and if you are already using this tool for your keyword research, then it’s a simple step onwards to discover how you are ranking. You can use this site to track keywords from your specific geographical location too, so you can get a head start on your competitors.

Authority Labs will perform a daily keyword check for you and collage the information into a weekly report. Having this information will mean you can plan ahead for the next week when it comes to your blogs and social media posts and the keywords that should be used within them to achieve the best results.

Content Effectiveness Tools

Content is hugely important if you want your website to do well in search engine rankings. It’s not just about using keywords; the rest of the content needs to be engaging and informative too. It can be difficult to constantly come up with new and exciting ideas on a weekly, if not daily basis. However, understanding your audience and the keywords that will help you to rank better, will enable you to create a strategic content plan in advance.

If you can create content that is informative for your site visitors, that can be easily shared on social media, and that ranks well in Google then you will have found a great winning formula. Outdated Content Finder is a tool that can help you do this. Simply input the search term you want to rank for (or even just a vague topic if you’re not sure of the keywords to use) and the dates you want to look back on, and you will discover older content that you can use for inspiration. Or why not get in touch with the original poster and see if they would like to guest post on your blog?

Yoast WordPress Plugin is another extremely useful content tool. When you are writing a blog or a webpage, you will see either red, amber, or green light up to let you know how well you are doing in terms of keyword-relevant content. Input your keyword, and you will receive a list of things you’re doing well and things that you can improve on. Work on the improvements and your new blog post will rank much better.

If you want to pay for good results, you might like to try Buzzsumo. It’s easy to use with an intuitive interface, and you will quickly be able to see what content works and what needs to be improved or removed altogether. As well as this, you will have a list of what other people wrote about using similar search terms to yours and how well their pages ranked – this will give you a good idea on whether to continue with your content plan or to try something that might rank you better.

Link Building Tools

Link building is an easy and useful way to improve Google rankings, but only when done right. Linking to sites that don’t have anything to do with your content, for example, can actually ‘downgrade’ you in terms of search engine rankings. Linking to authority sites using the same keywords and with relevant information that makes sense for your blog post, however, can help immensely. So how can you stop falling into the trap of linking for the sake of linking and not helping your SEO even though that’s exactly what you had planned to do? Thankfully, there are tools that can give you the answers should you need them.

LinkMiner Plugin is a good place to start. This will give you a list of sites that are relevant to the topic you are writing about, and you can choose which to link to. Another tool that can be useful is Moz SEO Toolbar. This will let you know how well received a site is – you only really want to link to those that are visited often and that have good SEO results themselves if you want to use them to boost your own.

When it comes to links in your own site, they are just as important as those pointing away from it. If your internal links don’t work or point to the wrong places, this can damage your SEO rankings although everything else is accurate. This is where a sitemap will be useful – search engine crawlers can easily check your site to ensure it is all accurate and you will immediately see where links need to be amended or fixed.

Link Removal Tools

Sometimes it happens; a site will link to yours, but it will be of low quality or perhaps even a spam or scam site. This will negatively affect your search engine rankings. You don’t want to be penalized for this, but removing the links is time-consuming. What can be done?

Firstly, you can use a free ‘disavow tool’ from Google. This will highlight the sites that you don’t want to be linked to and let Google know about it. It’s simple but effective and can save you a lot of time. It took Google an age to come up with this tool, but it is now widely used.

If you can use some or all of these tools to create the ultimate website with the right content and links working correctly, pointing to more informative sites, your Google rankings should increase massively, giving you a much better chance of coming up in searches and getting more visitors to your site. When that happens, you can place yourself as an authority in your sector, and soon people will come to you without needing to search for your company name.

About Author