Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is widely used to improve business marketing operations. Visibility has always been at the core of thriving businesses. With the rapid expansion of e-commerce, brand visibility and online presence go hand in hand.

SEO is a viable and affordable way to drive organic traffic to your website. Even though it is easy to begin, SEO is hard to master. You will need additional SEO tools to inspect your online traffic, keyword ranks, backlink quality, etc.

Luckily, there are hundreds of professional SEO tools at your disposal. This article will help you choose the correct SEO tools to improve your SEO strategy. They will help you climb to the first pages of Google and secure a stable position for positive, long-lasting organic traffic. 

1. Ahrefs: An Ultimate SEO Tool

Just like Google dominates the search engine market share, so does Ahrefs relating to SEO. There’s hardly an SEO professional not using Ahrefs at some point. Ahrefs excels at information availability with a “Web Crawler that powers the 12 trillion link database for Ahrefs online marketing toolset.” You will not find a better place for exhaustive site audits, historical data, data comparison, and other valuable Ahref features. For growing businesses, competitor analysis will illuminate their backlink strategy to improve yours.

Simultaneously, established brands use it to keep an eye on website performance, fix broken links, monitor website authority, and more. Ahrefs remains one of the most popular tools in the SEO field. Mastering it will significantly improve your SEO practices. 

2. Semrush: Competitive Data Analysis 

An all-in-one marketing tool Semrush is among the favorites in the SEO community. You will find reviews praising its design, information accessibility, user-friendliness, and more. You can use it for content structuring, keyword analysis, website performance improvement, and other significant SEO tasks.

What’s more, Semrush provides an outstanding Keyword gap feature. It’s a second-to-none tool to compare your websites against competitors. It allows a side-by-side comparison of up to five competitors, including their subdomains for premium subscribers. This makes Semrush one of the best tools for competitor analysis and overall SEO improvement. 

3. Proxies: Enhanced Data Accessibility 

Proxies are an essential online networking tool for regulating online communication. However, SEO specialists use proxies to enhance several SEO operations. Firstly, proxies grant access to localized Google search engine results page (SERP) results and keywords.

When you browse Google, it marks your IP address’s geographical location and returns localized results. SEO tasks often require results from various foreign markets. You can connect to a proxy server to get its alternative regional IP address. For example, you will get U.S. regional SERP and keyword results if you connect to the U.S. proxy while based in Europe.

Even though some SEO tools provide different geographical location analyses, proxies add additional value. SEO tools don’t have an inherent function to bypass geo-blocks. Sometimes it might distort their global keyword analysis. Moreover, via a proxy server, you can access geographically restricted information to enrich your SEO analysis with additional data.

Additional SEO-related proxy use cases involve real-time HTML tracking, automated keyword collection, and publicly available data gathering. Instead of gathering vast amounts of data manually, you can combine proxies with search engine crawlers for efficient and geographically unrestricted analysis. Proxies are an invaluable tool for advanced SEO practices. 

4. Answer the Public: Content Idea Generator

Any successful SEO strategy relies on possible content ideas. However, how do you know if your content is relevant to broader audiences? Answer the Public is an excellent tool to get possible content ideas and generate leads. Moreover, it’s straightforward to use from the very beginning. You can select a keyword and get a list of related questions, prepositions, comparisons, etc.

Answer the Public allows you to download this information in a .csv file to integrate with additional software. If you run out of ideas for your business blog, use this tool to inspect consumer queries and drive more relevant traffic. Furthermore, its free version is sufficiently equipped for primary SEO tasks. 

5. KWFinder

KWFinder is a professional software to generate new keyword ideas. It will also provide exhaustive information on keyword difficulty, volume, paid vs. organic, and other key metrics. It’s excellent for selecting long-tail keywords for a durable website structure. KWFinder stands out in its simplicity and additional features. Even if it is your first experience with SEO, KWFinder will make it effortless to start optimizing your website for better visibility.

Moreover, businesses value pop-up alerts when online users search for your selected keywords. It will give you a better real-time idea of SEO campaign performance. KWFinder is part of Mangools SEO toolkit, alongside backlink analytics, rank tracking, SERP, and SEO metrics analysis.

6. Google Analytics for SEO

Google Analytics is a powerful marketing tool that brings a lot to the table. Coming directly from Google, it offers more information than could be found elsewhere. Its available demographic statistics include age, location, interests, and more. It’s an essential tool to construct your consumers’ psychological profile for better product placement.

Simultaneously, you will see your landing page performance statistics, such as impressions, clicks, bounce rate, etc. You can install a unique tracking code for each website you want to monitor. Google Analytics offers numerous marketing tools. You can track visitor conversion rates, manage PPC spending, and inspect traffic referral sites. Mastering Google Analytics will significantly improve your SEO and overall digital marketing. 

7. MozCast

The worst SEO pro nightmare is waking up to keywords that are not ranking anymore. This happens more often than one could expect. In fact, it’s an integral part of SEO. Because Google owns the most popular search engine, its results depend on Google’s decisions.

What’s more, Google is continuously changing and improving its search algorithm. What was ranking one day may be thrown into the desolate second page the other. Google does this to improve search result relevance, fight backlink spamming, and other reasons beyond mortal understanding.

MozCast is a real-time Google algorithm weather station. According to their site,

“Every 24 hours, we track a hand-picked set of 10,000 keywords (across 20 industry categories and 5 major US cities) and analyze page one of Google organic results, comparing it to the previous day. The MozCast temperature reflects the degree of change in the day-over-day rankings, with an uneventful day being about 70°F. Put simply, the hotter the temperature, the more change we saw in Google rankings in the previous 24 hours.”

Instead of panicking regarding low keyword ranking, you should check MozCast. SEO is in big part adapting to new Google regulations. MozCast will give an idea of a happening change within Google algorithm. Use it to keep up-to-date regarding the latest changes and improve your SEO strategy accordingly. 

8. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is free keyword-tracking software. It’s an excellent choice with a limited budget and provides sufficient features to compete with paid services. Ubersuggest will assist in identifying short to long-tail keywords, reveal user search intent, keyword rank, and more.

You will need to upgrade to premium to unlock its full features. However, the free version is sufficient for most keyword-related operations. And the premium version is moderately priced. Ubersuggest is praised for its simplicity, accurate keyword data, and relevant content update suggestions. It’s an excellent tool for junior specialists that want to learn the discipline without spending hundreds of dollars. 

9. Google Trends for SEO

Google Trends is another valuable tool. It’s a free Google asset that provides meaningful insights into Internet user queries. It is extraordinarily simple to use, yet provides exclusive knowledge when used professionally. Google offers decades of online data to illustrate researched trends. You can see the popularity of specific queries over time, sort them by geographical location, compare them with other queries, and more.

As always, Google provides an endless repository of valuable data to work with. SEO specialists use Google trends to accurately predict possible keyword volumes and content opportunities.

10. SpyFu

SpyFu is a professional paid search analytics tool. It wasn’t developed for SEO beginners, but its intuitive design has a gentle learning curve. SpyFu offers a lot to businesses providing keyword monetary value and detailed search advertising metrics.

Moreover, instead of ranking keywords based on Domain Authority, SpyFu populates the results with the exact monetary keyword’s worth. It’s a unique way of providing keyword results that come in handy for numerous marketing operations. This choice is perfect for improving email marketing campaigns, affiliate marketing operations, and retail site analysis. 

Final Words on SEO

SEO may sound straightforward, but there’s a lot to learn. Firstly, SEO is nearly impossible without a myriad of tools. What are netizens searching for online? What exact phrases do they use? Are they expected to keep searching or lose interest? All of this can be found on Google’s first page. However, specific tools can narrow the information to the smallest detail.

Moreover, technologically advanced Internet users combine SEO tools with proxies for more detailed insights. As you will know, SEO is closely related to the development of Internet technologies. Whether it’s an ever-changing Google algorithm or a trick to avoid geo-blocks, your SEO strategy will significantly improve if you master using the tools above.