Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential consideration for any website owner or designer operating today. A website’s SEO score determines how prominently it is displayed in the list of results when users search for relevant terms in a search engine. Without good visibility in search results, it is very difficult for websites to compete in what is already a very competitive marketplace.
Much of the work involved in raising a website’s SEO score happens during the design stages; a well thought out and carefully designed website which implements good SEO practices will have the best possible start in life. Conversely, a website which is designed and built without giving any consideration to SEO practices will almost certainly lay undiscovered, only accessible to those who know exactly where to go in order to access it. With more than a billion websites operating today, newcomers need every advantage they can get when it comes to pulling in visitors. SEO is essential in order to make this happen.
As well as good design practices, there are also a number of tools which website owners can use in order to both improve their SEO score, and to assess the effectiveness of any strategies which are currently in place. Here we take a look at five of the best tools around today for website owners who are looking to maximize their SEO score and make the most of the traffic they bring to their site.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO tools out there, and with good reason. Ahrefs offers a number of useful features. Their site explorer is widely regarded as being amongst the very best backlink analysis tools available. Also included within Ahrefs is the content explorer tool; this tool will search the web for the most popular content related to any topic or keyword that the user specifies.
Another key feature of Ahrefs is the Keyword Explorer 2.0 tool, which gives the search volume for a given keyword, as well as offering some ideas for related keywords.
Ahrefs uses a freemium pricing model, whereby the software is free to download and use, but users have the option of spending money to gain access to more advanced features and services. Their pricing plans begin at $99 per month, but there are also annual options available which cost more up front but save money in the long term.
Seobility
Seobility is one of the leading tools for conducting an SEO audit, which will give website owners a clear picture of how effective their current SEO strategies are. Conducting such an audit allows for a more focused and clearly defined strategy to be implemented, consequently considerable savings in terms of both time and money can be made.
There are four main components to Seobility’s auditing capabilities. First of all, there is the SEO Check. This will test your website and give you some tips and advice on how to improve your SEO optimization.
The Keyword Checking feature is a useful tool for establishing how well optimized your page is for specific target keywords.
SEO compare is a feature which compares different pages for a keyword term in order to establish which is better optimized.
Finally, the ranking check feature checks a webpages ranking for a particular keyword.
The free version of Seobility can only be used for a single domain. For those who control multiple domains, however, their premium plans begin at $40 a month. They also offer a 30-day free trial.
Long Tail Pro
Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool and is by far one of the most comprehensive available. Unlike some of the other tools on this list, Long Tail Pro is a paid piece of software and doesn’t offer a free version or trial period. That said, it is worth every penny for those who take their keyword research seriously.
Long Tail Pro was, until recently, a downloadable application, but has since been converted into a cloud based service which can be accessed and run through an ordinary web browser. This migration to the cloud has made Long Tail Pro faster, easier, and more convenient to use.
Pitchbox
Strictly speaking, Pitchbox might not be considered an SEO tool, however it is incredibly useful for link building, which is an essential component of any SEO strategy, and so as an augmentation to the other tools on this list it is worthy of inclusion.
Users can give Pitchbox a specific set of keywords; these are usually the search terms that website owners want their site to appear in the results list for. Pitchbox will return a list of the best sites to target and reach out to for linkbacks and connections.
Using Pitchbox can save website owners a great deal of time as often establishing which sites to target for connections and linkbacks is usually a time consuming process, which, prior to the arrival of Pitchbox, required the use of multiple different tools.
There is a 15-day free trial on offer, after which plans start at $195 per month.
SEOquake
SEOquake is a free piece of software which comes in the form of a browser extension, it works in a similar way to MozBar, another popular research tool, except that it offers a more detailed analysis of the current web page. Among the metrics that SEOquake measures are the number of links from the current page to other domains (these are known as external links), the Google index for a page, and its SEM Rush and Alexa rankings.
These metrics all provide very useful information regarding your competitors and will allow you to identify the best new linking opportunities for your own site.
Optimizing your website’s SEO is essential in order to effectively compete in the modern internet landscape. Without SEO, websites are doomed to languish in obscurity, with no visitors to appreciate them. Meanwhile the websites whose owners take SEO seriously are inundated with unique hits every day, being the most prominent sites in search results.
Web owners ignore SEO at their own peril, the tools on this list are just some of those available that can be the difference between success and failure for websites and their owners.
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