By now, you’re probably familiar with the concept of search engine optimisation. If you’ve been marketing online and targeting keywords for months, you’re probably aware of how difficult it is to earn a high position on the search engine results pages. Fortunately, you can remove the guesswork from SEO by utilising the tools below.
1. Google Search Console
You can use the Google Search Console to determine how the search engines view your website. For example, Google Search Console highlights broken links and crawl errors, which you should amend quickly. But if you need additional help with managing Google’s crawl, check out this ultimate guide to crawl budget. You can also find out which terms people use to find your website, view any backlinks you’ve generated, and see how many visitors your website attracts. One of the best things about Google Search Console is that it’s intuitive, meaning you’ll soon figure out how to utilise it to your advantage even if your IT skills are limited.
Key Features:
- See how the search engines view your website
- Monitor the keywords that visitors are using to find you
- Fix errors quickly
- Keep track of your backlinks
- Get notifications when your site is affected by malware
2. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is a collection of useful tools that you can use to bolster your email marketing, domain research and project management efforts. With regards to SEO, BuzzStream lets you view other websites that are competing for the same keywords as you. You can also see how many visitors your competitors attract as well as find out where their backlinks come from. By keeping a close eye on your rivals’ strategies, you can gain insights into how to optimise yours so that you can generate new leads.
Key Features
- Research your online competitors based on your target keywords
- Collect data on authority and domain age for specific sites
- Find your competitors’ social media accounts to see what they publish
3. SEMrush
SEMrush is primarily a keyword research tool. You can use it to find keywords that relate to the terms you’re already targeting as well as locate information on product listings, related ads and more.
Like BuzzStream, SEMrush gives you an insight into the activities of your competitors. For example, you can view where their backlinks come from and how much traffic they receive. You can also determine the effectiveness of their paid advertising campaigns.
Key Features
- Find out which terms your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic they receive
- Gain an insight into your competitors’ backlink strategies and paid advertising campaigns
- View your competitors’ media ads and content
- Determine the value of each of your target keywords
4. Moz Pro
In many ways, Moz Pro is similar to SEMrush. You can use the suite of tools within Moz Pro to research the value of specific short and long-tail keywords, enabling you to avoid targeting keywords with very little potential and make improvements to your content based on what your competitors are doing.
Moz Pro provides a ‘difficulty’ score for each of the keywords you want to target. Using this information, you can aim for ‘easier’ keywords as part of your long-term SEO strategy. Perhaps the best thing about Moz Pro is that it’s available as a Chrome extension, meaning you can instantly get data on any domain you visit.
Key Features
- Find out how difficult specific terms are to rank for
- Research related keywords
- Gain an insight into the terms your competitors are targeting
- Compare multiple keywords using Moz Pro lists
- Receive error alerts and on-site optimisation suggestions
5. Serptimizer
Serptimizer offers an easy entry into the SEO world. Similar to the great SEO tools it offers many features and a free site audit. Up to 1000 pages can be analyzed and monitored for free.
As a special feature, it offers a link building tool with a link prospector and a simple tool for contact management.
The backlink tool offers the possibility to filter the results and thus certain backlink strategies can be filtered out. In this way, you can e.g. quickly find out all affiliate links of a competitor and use them for your own backlink strategy.
Key Features
- Free analysis of up to 1000 pages with monitoring and email alerts.
- Tool for backlink building with link prospector and relationship management.
- Detailed website performance checker
Partner with a Specialist
All the tools detailed above can help you maximise the success of your digital marketing efforts, but they all take a little getting used to, and using them all to enhance your SEO strategy can be time-consuming. If you want to remove the hassle from online marketing, you might want to consider partnering with an SEO company in Sydney. However, there’s nothing wrong with familiarising yourself with the tools above so that you can keep on top of the performance of your website and your competitors.
