SEO is one of the most important factors in promoting your business online. The problem is that it can be really hard to find the best small business SEO tools for small businesses.
SEO is an important part of any marketing strategy and if you do it well, you will rank higher and attract more customers to your site. Here are some tools that can help you with your SEO efforts.
There are many free and paid tools available, but which one is right for you? This article will give you an overview of some of the small business SEO tools out there, as well as some tips on how to use them effectively so that you can promote your business on your own!
Section 1: The Importance of SEO
SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Ranking higher in searches for a term in your industry increases your brand’s visibility online. Read More.
This, in turn, gives you more opportunities to convert qualified prospects into customers. Done right, and most importantly small business SEO tools can help your brand stand out as a trusted business and further improve users’ experience with your brand and website.
What is the importance of SEO?
Visibility and rankings
When users search online for a service or product. They are more likely to choose one of the top five suggestions that the search engine shows them. SEO helps you rank higher in search results and gain more visibility online, making potential customers more likely to click and convert on your website.
Web Traffic
To put it simply. If potential customers cannot find your website, sales opportunities are missed. SEO increases your organic search engine traffic and therefore the number of visitors who see your site each day. This is directly related to an increase in sales. After all, the more relevant people see your website, the more likely you are to sell to them. Read More.
Trustworthy
The better your SEO score is, the higher you will appear in search engines like Google and Bing. While ranking higher on Google is attractive to all brands because of the increased visibility, a second benefit is the trust you gain from potential customers.
Users tend to trust a search engine’s recommendations. A higher position for the keywords a user searches for will establish your product or service as trustworthy in the minds of users.
User Experience
A well-optimized website communicates what product or service is offered, how to get it, and answers any questions about it. By designing the website to meet the user’s needs, search engines like Google and Bing can easily retrieve the information they need to pass on to the user. If a user is having trouble finding their way around your website, there’s a good chance that search engines are too. Read More.
Growth
There’s no doubt about it, SEO is key to growing your brand. As we mentioned earlier, the higher you rank in a search engine for a set of high-volume keywords. The more organic (i.e., non-paid) web traffic your website will receive. It’s as simple as that.
A well-optimized website is more likely to attract more customers and make more sales. Also, people are more likely to share your brand on other social platforms like Facebook or Instagram if they came across your website through a search engine.
Section 2: The Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses
To be successful with search engine optimization (SEO), you need to use the right small business SEO tools.
It’s simply impossible to do keyword research, analyze competitors, track rankings, track traffic, and conversion trends, identify technical issues. And do effective content marketing without the right tools. Read More.
But with so many tools on the market, how do you know which one to choose?
Here is a rundown of the 10 best small business SEO tools for small businesses.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful and completely free website analytics tool among many small business SEO tools. Once it’s properly installed on your website, you can run reports on which marketing tactics attract the most visitors. Which marketing tactics result in the most leads and sales, how visitors use your website, what content they prefer, and more.
2. Google Search Console
Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is Google’s free SEO tool among many small business SEO tools. Once you set up your account, you’ll be notified when Google finds errors on your site. And you can view important statistics like keyword rankings, the number of clicks per keyword, the number of times your site appeared in search results per keyword. And your click-through rate. Your site appeared in search results. Read More.
You can also link Search Console with Analytics to unlock even more reporting tools in your Analytics account. For example, once you have linked these two tools, you can check keyword rankings, click-through rates, impressions, and landing pages that rank in Google in Analytics.
3. AgencyAnalytics
It is our preferred platform for reporting. AgencyAnalytics provides automated reports, client viewable/shareable dashboards. And a clear interface for teams to review performance for various services.
We use AgencyAnalytics to run reports and review metrics for Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Facebook, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, Yelp, LinkedIn, and many others. Whether it’s sending reports on time every month or analyzing metrics to review our clients’ performance.
It is one of our most used tools and we cannot recommend it enough.
4. Rank Ranger
Rank Ranger is a robust, versatile SEO analytics tool in between many small business SEO tools. But before you get lost in the data, you should focus on what Rank Ranger does best. Tracking your keyword rankings. You can track your site’s organic rankings in the major search engines, as well as your local rankings in the “map” results over time.
This allows you to see trends up or down in your rankings and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Rank Ranger also provides automated SEO reports, competitor analysis tools, and many other helpful features to analyze the performance of your SEO campaigns.
5. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is another SEO tool with a lot of bells and whistles. What sets it apart from others is the free SEO Spider tool. Which allows you to quickly perform a technical SEO audit of your website. After downloading the tool, all you have to do is enter your website’s domain name and click Start to get started. Read More.
The best part is that this tool is free (for crawling up to 500 URLs per website). After downloading the tool, all you need to do is enter your website’s domain name and click Start.
In just a few minutes, you’ll get a detailed overview of all your web pages. From meta tags to error status codes, you’ll be able to spot problems without having to take the time to manually check every single page on your site.
6. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is our favorite tool for analyzing backlinks, SEO content opportunities, and SEO keyword research.
The main tool we love at Ahrefs is the Site Explorer tool. Ahrefs is probably best known for the backlink analysis features within the Site Explorer tool. This tool is very helpful in identifying the different types of sites that are already linking to your website.
You can also look at trends in the growth of your backlinks over time. In addition, you can use the Site Explorer tool to analyze backlinks to competitors and find new opportunities for link building.
In our experience, the Site Explorer Tool is also incredibly valuable for analyzing which SEO content on your site is performing the best. You can use this tool to find out which pages and keywords are already ranking well in Google and driving traffic to your site.
For example, you can see which pages generate the most SEO traffic and for which specific keywords the pages rank in Google. Read More.
You can also use the Site Explorer tool to find out which pages and keywords are performing best for your competitors. And then apply those findings to your SEO strategy.
For example, if you see that some competitors have certain types of SEO landing pages. That you do not and that they generate traffic for certain keywords that you do not focus on. You should incorporate those types of content ideas into your SEO plan.
In addition to Site Explorer, we also love the Keyword Explorer tool from Ahrefs. It provides a quick and easy way to generate dozens of new keyword ideas for SEO content creation.
7. Moz
It is one of the most popular SEO software suites and we use their tools regularly. Moz is probably best known for its ‘Domain Authority‘ (DA) metric.
DA predicts how likely a site is to rank in Google, with a range from 0 to 100, with higher values corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. The most important factor at DA is the quality and quantity of links.
It is a suite that includes many tools, including Link Explorer, a backlink analysis tool. Unfortunately, no tool is 100% accurate when it comes to finding all your backlinks or your competitors’ backlinks. That’s why we recommend using multiple tools (AHREFs, Moz, and others) to get the full picture.
MozBar
It is a simple tool, but it saves a tremendous amount of time when checking websites. It’s a Google Chrome extension that lets you quickly and easily view a website’s Domain Authority, Page Authority, backlink information, and spam score. Read More.
With the click of a button, you can also view Moz page analysis as well as followed and un-followed links on a page.
Moz Local
One of the most important factors in your local “map” ranking is citations. A citation is simply a mention of your name, address, and phone number (NAP) on another online website. The most common mentions are business directories like Yelp, Bing Local, and even Facebook business pages.
Moz Local is one of the best tools to quickly check your citations. You’ll see if your information is consistent across all directories. If you are missing any important directories, and if you have duplicate listings that could hurt your rankings.
8. SpyFu
SpyFu is a great tool that allows you to see how your competitors are performing when it comes to SEO (and Google Ads, too). With this tool, you can find out:
- Search engine rankings for the keywords your competitors are ranking for.
- Search engine traffic comes from which pages?
- They have what types of inbound links.
- Search engine traffic estimates and SEO traffic trends.
- Additionally, SpyFu is our favorite tool for finding out about Google Ads competitors.
With SpyFu, you can view your competitors’ Google Ads data, such as:
- What are their best-performing keywords?
- For certain keywords, how long do their ads run?
- Their ad clicks and impressions.
- These were the ads that performed best.
- Look at your competitors’ ad copy.
- Your competitors’ monthly campaign spend.
So, if you manage both SEO and Google Ads campaigns, we recommend using SpyFu to analyze your competitors.
9. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most comprehensive all-in-one SEO software packages.
This platform offers pretty much everything, including:
- Research on competitors
- Researching keyword phrases
- Analysis of backlinks
- Checks on-page SEO automatically
And much more.
Our favorite feature at SEMrush is the toxic backlink audit function. In our opinion, SEMrush’s backlink audit tool is the best option for quickly analyzing potentially toxic backlinks to disavow via Search Console. Read More.
10. WhiteSpark
Citations (directory listings with your business name and contact information) are important for ranking well in Google’s local “map” results. But how do you find citations?
That’s where WhiteSpark comes in…
The Citation Finder is one of our favorite tools from WhiteSpark. Through a simple interface, Citation Finder allows you to add a company along with some priority keywords.
Once you add the company information, the tool will launch. And after a few minutes, Citation Finder will present you with a list of citation opportunities that competitors have. Read More.
At this point, you can also add more competitors. Once the list of competitors is set, you can check the citations the company you added already has. You can check the opportunities in a single list.
And finally, you can check the opportunities compared to the full list of competitors. We are particularly excited about the ability to export these results as a CSV file.
Also, WhiteSpark offers the option to pay for a quote set up to save you time.
Subsection 2.1: Pais Tools
SEO tools are the online marketer’s best friend.
If you do not have at least a few in-depth, data-processing, keyword-tracking, researching superstars in your SEO kit. Then, you are going to have a hard time standing out in the content crowd.
That’s because research, planning, and strategy are at the bottom of the content success ladder.
You cannot reach new heights without first climbing and conquering those basics.
With that being said, here are 5 great, reliable, and worthwhile paid small business SEO tools. That I recommend.
1. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The only way to make sure your website is SEO-ready on all pages is to check it regularly. And to put it bluntly, you cannot do that without a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider, especially if your website is very large. Read More.
Screaming Frog is a web crawler that checks your web pages for common errors. Like broken links, duplicate content, redirect chains and loops, and even meta descriptions and titles that are too short, too long, or missing altogether.
Cost: Download a free version with limited features or buy the full-featured licensed version for about $181/year, per license.
2 Ahrefs
Ahrefs is popular with content marketers, content creators, and SEO professionals alike – and for good reason.
The company has one of the most comprehensive data collections and stores on the market. So its tools are as up-to-date and accurate as can be. Plus, they are user-friendly and make analyzing all that SEO data easy. Read More.
When you purchase a subscription, you get access to the full suite of SEO helpers, including:
- Site Explorer: view backlink profile and organic search traffic data for each site.
- Keyword Explorer: Research keywords and data such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and clicks.
- Rank Tracker: Track your Google rankings and compare them to your competitors.
- Website Audit: Get a complete overview of the SEO state of your website.
Cost: Ahrefs’ Lite plan (including access for one user) costs $99/month. You can also try Ahrefs for free for 7 days, which costs $7.
3. SEMrush.
If you need a wealth of SEO data at your fingertips or an all-in-one tool, SEMrush is the solution for you.
Unlock (not included) with Keyword Hero.
See all your organic keywords in GA and their specific performance metrics. Free trial. Cancelable at any time. Professional support. 4-minute setup.
Here is an overview:
- Monitor the ranking of your keywords, organic traffic, and backlinks.
- Analyze how you can improve your performance based on your competitors’ data.
- You can save searches to lists and receive notifications and updates via email.
- Conduct a site audit for SEO purposes.
- Get insights and data at your fingertips at LOT.
Cost: A Pro plan with SEMrush costs $99.95/month. You can use it for free if you sign up via email, but results will be limited.
4. Moz Pro.
It is a suite of SEO tools that deserve to be included in this list.
It’s another all-in-one solution that can potentially save smaller brand budgets a few cents (keywords, links, website audits, ranking tracking, and on-page optimization are all covered). Read More.
And the combination of user-friendly tools and a large support community means this is a good starter package for SEO beginners.
Cost: The standard plan with Moz Pro costs $99/month, or $79/month if you pay annually.
5. Mangools KWFinder.
KWFinder does exactly what it says it does and does it well.
This is a tool I recommend over and over again for its ease of use, simple design, and great UX – not to mention accurate keyword data.
If you just want to do keyword research, choose this SEO tool among many small business SEO tools.
Cost: The Mangools Basic plan costs $29.90/month. It has its limitations, but unless you are in a research frenzy, it should be sufficient for a beginner or advanced user.
Subsection 2.2: Free Tools
When creating content online, it’s important to have a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in addition to your content strategy. This will ensure that your posts are as optimized as possible. SEO tools can help you improve the discoverability of your website.
SEO can seem daunting to newbies, but some free SEO tools are just as powerful as their paid counterparts.
Here is a rundown of 5 of the best free small business SEO tools and software.
The best free tools for on-page optimization
Rank Math Plugin
Rank Math is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website content. It allows you to add meta titles and descriptions and structure your data more easily. Simply download and install this plugin on your WordPress website to start using it.
Benefits
Rank Math gives your content an SEO rating for each page. If you specify which keyword you are targeting, this plugin will suggest ways to improve your ranking for that keyword. You can also identify and fix dead links on your website and redirect URLs to new pages.
Yoast SEO Plugin
With the Yoast SEO plugin, you can easily optimize your WordPress website and identify gaps in your content. If your website is running WordPress, install and activate the Yoast plugin to get started.
Benefits
With the Yoast plugin, you can improve and transform your content in three ways: SEO, readability, and social. With Yoast, you can set meta descriptions, titles, canonical URLs, index/non-index page markup, and other backend settings on your site. This plugin assigns a readability score to each post by measuring sentence and paragraph length and other criteria. And Yoast also has excellent features to help you improve the shareability of your posts on social media.
Google Trends
As the name suggests, Google Trends helps you track the popularity of topics and trends in your industry over time. Use this tool to identify current trends and use this information to develop a timely and relevant content marketing strategy.
Benefits
Google Trends gives you a clear picture of how certain trends are changing over time and how people’s search behavior is changing in that area. To use Google Trends, start by entering a keyword. You’ll see how interest in that topic has evolved over time.
Which regions are showing the most interest, and what other keywords people are searching for related to that query. This tool works best when you combine it with other keywords to get a comparison of trends over time.
Ahref’s Keyword Generator
Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator is a lite version of Ahrefs’ full tool and shows you the top 100 ideas for related keywords when you search for a keyword or phrase. To use this free tool, enter up to 100 keywords or phrases in the search bar.
You’ll get a list of the top 100 keywords related to your search, search volume since the last time the data was updated for that keyword, and keyword difficulty for the first 10 keywords in the list.
Benefits
This tool gives you a taste of what Ahrefs’ full tool can do, and is ideal for anyone looking to explore some industry keywords. In addition to keywords, you can also see the top 50 questions for that keyword.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that helps users generate new keywords and content ideas. This tool gives you a comprehensive overview of the keyword you are searching for. It’s a great tool if you are looking for new ways to populate your social media or content calendar because the tool also shows you related long-tail keywords and suggests content ideas based on the keyword.
Benefits
When you do a keyword search, you’ll see the monthly search volume for the keyword, how competitive it is, and the average cost per click. The tool also gives you the average number of backlinks a website should have to rank for that keyword.
Section 3: Conclusion
The importance of small business SEO tools is very important in today’s world of digital marketing. This is because it helps them to be present on Google and other search engines, increases traffic to their website, increases conversion rates, and brings in more sales.
There are three SEO strategies you can start using now. These include keyword research (choose keywords that relate to the people visitors will primarily be searching for). Backlinks from external websites that point back to your website (internal links). And writing SEO-friendly content for each page of your website.
If you use WordPress, you should also use SEO plugins like Yoast or All In One SEO Pack, which offer tips on how to improve keyword tags in your content.
