Want to dominate your competitors? Then you need the right SEO tools.
I’ve used too many SEO tools in the past and have since come to the conclusion that experienced SEO professionals only use a handful of dependable solutions with data that can be trusted.
These tools will help you audit your domain, do market research and gather competitive intelligence, find areas of search arbitrage by choosing the right keywords, get backlinks, track your personal Google rankings, and so much more.
Do you want the quick answer? The best SEO tools are SEMrush or Surfer SEO.
What are the best SEO tools?
There are dozens of SEO tools on the market, but which ones are really worth your time and money? The following SEO tools are my top choices for this year.
1. Semrush
Best Advanced SEO tools
Semrush is an all-in-one tool suite that can help you with everything from improving your online visibility to discovering marketing insights. Their tools and reports are tailored to help marketers who work in SEO, PPC, SMM, and more. Plus, their Keyword Research and Competitive Research features can give you the edge you need to succeed in today’s competitive market.
SEMrush is one of the most essential SEO tools, and it’s by far the easiest to use. It has a learning curve, but once you get past it, you’ll have everything you need to dominate your competition.
It has a variety of features, including competitor analysis, keyword research, and backlink monitoring, that can help you improve your website’s search engine ranking and visibility. Additionally, SEMrush offers a wide range of tools to help you optimize your website for better performance and user experience.
However, Semrush only provides data for one search engine, which may not be as comprehensive as other tools. Additionally, all Semrush plans come with only one user account, and additional seats are expensive.
Some key features are only available as part of ‘projects’, which can limit the number of projects you can run concurrently. Additionally, some competitive analysis features cost an additional $200 per month extra.
In conclusion, Semrush is an excellent solution that gives you the essential data you need to upgrade your search engine ranking.
Top Features
- Semrush provides detailed insights into domains and websites to help you better understand your competition.
- Keyword research is made simple and effective with Semrush’s extensive database and tools.
- Rank tracking lets you follow your progress and see how you rank against your competitors.
- Backlink analysis helps you strategically build links that will improve your website’s ranking potential
Pricing
Semrush has three standard monthly subscriptions: Pro for $119.95, Guru for $229.95, and Business for $449.95.
For me, the ‘Guru’ plan is a great value with many features and a generous project limit of 15 sites. With the Guru plan, you get access to content strategy tools that will help you create the sort of content designed to draw organic traffic.You can try out the Guru plan for free here.
2. Surfer SEO
Best Overall SEO Tool
If you’re serious about ranking higher in Google search results, you need Surfer SEO. This powerful, cloud-based tool provides data-driven analysis of your pages and site, so you can see exactly what needs to be improved to rank higher. With Surfer SEO, there’s no guesswork involved – just actionable insights that’ll help your pages climb the search results fast.
Google’s recent algorithm updates, have made it difficult to rank well without high-quality content. However, with Surfer SEO’s artificial intelligence technology, you can easily create content that meets Google’s stringent guidelines.
The content score will let you know exactly how well your content is doing, so you can make the necessary changes to improve your rankings. The Audit tool will help you optimize your existing content, and the SERP Analyzer will show you what your competition is doing to rank well.
With the Content Planner, you’ll get a list of keyword clusters to target so you can build topical authority. And lastly, the Chrome extension is a great free keyword research tool.
Although Surfer SEO has many pros, there are also some cons to consider. One of these is its high price tag. Additionally, while the Surfer SEO tool is great for content editing, but the keyword research tools are difficult to navigate. They have some additional features in beta.
Top Features
- Comprehensive and easy-to-use SEO tools with a strong focus on content.
- LSI keyword research feature is unique and valuable.
- Integrates with many other popular SEO tools.
- Constantly updated with new features and improvements.
Pricing
SurferSEO offers these pricing plans:
Free: $0
Basic: $49 per month
Pro: $99 per month
Business: $199 per month
The plan depends on the number of articles you have to write per month.
If you are freelance copywriter, we recommend the Basic plan, which includes 1 domain and the option to purchase more as add-ons. You’ll also have 10 Content Editor and 20 Audit queries a month.
Additionally, Surfer SEO tool offers a 7-day trial for $1 in order to test out the features. After the trial ends, your subscription will not get automatically renewed. You can start using Surfer SEO by paying just $1!
3. GrowthBar
Best for Keyword Research
When it comes to SEO tools, GrowthBar is one of the best on the market. They offer users millions of keyword results, data on your competition’s backlinks, and Google Ads data—all in one click. But that’s not all: GrowthBar is also built using Open AI, the most sophisticated language model ever made. That means the results and recommendations you get are as good as it gets.
But what really sets GrowthBar apart is its simple user interface. It’s sleek, intuitive, and easy to use—even for those who are new to SEO. That’s why it’s become a favorite choice for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and freelancers.
Overall, I’ve had a great experience using GrowthBar and think it’s a valuable tool for anyone looking to improve their SEO. The data that it provides is essential for quickly analyzing websites and determining what changes need to be made in order to boost rankings.
While I think GrowthBar could add more data metrics, the current features are still very versatile. If you want an easy way to get all the essential SEO data without having to leave the search results page, then GrowthBar is definitely worth trying out!
Top Features
- Generate high quality content in seconds
- See your competitor’s top organic keywords and backlinks
- Get millions of keyword suggestions and their competitiveness score
- Competitive Metrics lets you spy on your competition
- Quick and easy to use, even for beginners
Pricing
GrowthBar is a great tool because it has a low price point for its Standard plan. You can get this plan for only $29 per month when you pay for the whole year upfront.
This means that you can get a lot of SEO data at a lower price than competing tools like Ahrefs or Semrush, which cost at least $99 per month to use.
However, there are some limits to the Standard plan. You can only generate 15 AI content outlines per month, track 25 phrases across 1 website, and generate 50 AI paragraphs with it. To increase these limits, you’ll need to upgrade to either the Pro or Agency plan.
4. Ahrefs
Best for Backlink Research
Ahrefs is one of the best seo tools for website analysis, keyword research, and SEO health checks. It’s an essential tool for any webmaster or online marketer looking to improve their website’s visibility and performance in search engines. Ahrefs provides detailed data and insights on a website’s link profile, keyword rankings, and SEO health.
This data is invaluable for conducting keyword research and identifying content that has performed well on social media and/or in terms of links. Whether you’re just starting out with SEO or you’re a seasoned pro, Ahrefs is the perfect tool for improving your website’s performance in search engines.
Backlink audits, competitive analysis, URL rankings, keyword research, and more are all common uses for this tool. Ahrefs also has organic search statistics to evaluate the traffic on your rivals’ websites, much like SEMrush does.
But users aren’t happy with Ahrefs recently. They significantly changed their pricing model by introducing charges for any data used over the limit of the chosen plan, meaning that you could end up with an expensive bill if you’re not careful about your usage.
Last month, they charged me a $70 overage fee, and without any reminder. New plans just allow 500 monthly reports – regardless of whether you go for the $99/month plan or $999/month plan.
Comparing this to Semrush’s basic plan, which includes only three thousand daily reports, you can see how little value you receive for the money.
Overall, Ahrefs is a fantastic toolkit, but if your budget is limited or you like to control costs, there are SEO tools out there that offer far better value for money.
Top Features
- Get a more comprehensive website analysis than any other paid SEO tools
- Easily understand reports related to SEO performance, localization, incoming links, etc.
- Schedule checks, save reports, and log in from anywhere without installing the SEO tools
- Crawls even the mobile version of sites
- Monitor website health, views backlinks, finds keywords you rank for, etc.
Pricing
Ahrefs offers four main pricing plans, all of which provide access to its data and competitor intelligence. Unfortunately, there is no free trial available, and also note about additional costs.
Lite — $99 per month
Standard — $199 per month
Advanced — $399 per month
Enterprise — starts at $999 per month
5. Yoast SEO
Best SEO Plugin for WordPress
Yoast SEO is one of the best free seo tools that makes it easy to optimize your website for better search engine visibility, by letting you enter the keywords or key phrases you want your site to rank for. Yoast also has the ability to improve your website’s online presence in every way, by running a quality content check to ensure you’re using the right keywords in the right places.
Plus, with Yoast Premium you get even more features to help you rank higher and drive more traffic to your site. With Yoast Premium you can set synonyms for your focus keywords, and add related key phrases to help improve your ranking. You also get more control over page titles, descriptions, and URLs.
When you use this tool, you can see the results that it is yielding for you. It can help you in many ways to optimize your website for the search engines.
Yoast SEO also helps you to proofread your content and fix any errors in it. Additionally, Yoast SEO also helps you to prevent your RSS feed from content scrapers. Lastly, Yoast SEO suggests you about the SEO copy which is based on the number of keywords in your text.
However, it does have a few cons. First, Yoast can be pedantic and force you to follow its rules, even when they may not be necessary.
Second, the plugin can waste your time by searching for stop words that may not even count on the final search scores. Finally, Yoast might not understand the intent of your content and be misleading.
Despite these cons, Yoast SEO is still a great plugin and is highly recommended for WordPress websites.
Top Features
- Increase your website traffic by optimizing your content for Google search.
- Get a preview of what your page will look like to Google and other search engines.
- Improve the readability of your content for humans and bots alike.
- Control the appearance of your breadcrumbs in SERPS.
- Avoid duplicate content penalties from Google and other search engines
Pricing
It has a free and a paid version; the paid version offers more features and costs $99 USD / year (ex. VAT). I recommend just using the free version of Yoast; there’s no reason to upgrade.
6. Google Search Console
Best Free Tool
Google Search Console is a free service that helps you monitor your site’s performance in Google Search results. With Search Console, you can see how Google sees your site and get insights into how your site is performing in search results. You can also use Search Console to troubleshoot issues with your site’s ranking or appearance in search results.
You may use Search Console to easily monitor and, in certain circumstances, address server faults, site load problems, and security concerns like hacking and malware. You may also use it to make sure that any site maintenance or modifications you perform go successfully.
The Google Search Console is a helpful tool for webmasters, but it has some flaws. One of these flaws is that you can’t submit an HTML sitemap. This makes it difficult to keep track of your website’s internal links and structure. Additionally, the errors that Google Search Console identifies can be confusing and technical for beginners.
Top Features
- Get an in-depth look at your website’s performance
- See how well your site is performing on Google search
- Pinpoint potential causes of traffic loss
- Clean up any security or coding issues
Pricing
Google Search Console is Free
7. SE Ranking
Best for Rank Tracking
SEO is vital for any business that wants to succeed online, and SE Ranking is the perfect toolkit to help you effectively manage your SEO campaigns. The software is designed to be user-friendly, so anyone can use it, regardless of their expertise or previous experience.
The keyword rank tracker lets you see how well your keywords are performing in various search engines, while the backlink checking and monitoring features keep you on top of your link building efforts.
On page audits and a keyword suggestion tool help you optimize your site for the best results, and the marketing plan tool lets you develop and track a comprehensive marketing strategy.
SE Ranking lacks the more advanced features needed for social media analytics, which is unfortunate given how important social media engagement is as a ranking factor. Additionally, the Essential plan has limited ranking updates (typically three every day), which could be a problem for users who are closely monitoring their rankings.
Overall, SE Ranking is a great tool for small businesses who want to improve their website’s search engine ranking. It offers a variety of features and tools that are easy to use and can help businesses see where they need improvement.
Top Features
- Keep track of your website’s ranking for any keyword in any country
- Get a comprehensive website audit to help you identify and fix any on-page SEO issues
- Track your competitor’s backlinks and gain an edge in the SEO/PPC race
- Generate more leads with our powerful lead generator tool
- Create beautiful, customisable SEO and PPC reports that will wow your clients
- Use API to integrate SE Ranking data into your own software or dashboards
Pricing
SE Ranking offers three pricing plans: ESSENTIAL, PRO, and BUSINESS. The ESSENTIAL plan is the most basic and starts at $18.72/month. It includes 250 keywords, 10 websites, audits for 30,000 pages, monitoring for 4,000 backlinks, and more.
The PRO plan starts at $42.72/month and includes 1,000 keywords, unlimited websites, audits for 150,000 pages, and more. The BUSINESS plan starts at $90.72/month and includes 2,500 keywords, unlimited websites and pages monitored, and more.
8. Moz pro
All in one SEO Tool
Moz Pro is the perfect platform for anyone looking to boost their SEO performance. With its exhaustive set of features and tools, Moz Pro gives you first-rate analysis and insight into things like keywords, related SERPs and backlinks.
The 4 products offered by Moz are: Moz Pro, Moz Local, Mozscape API, and Moz STAT. These tools are designed to work from a single web-based platform and help users find errors, broken links, or SEO issues on their websites.
The toolset is comprehensive and includes accurate metrics for search volume and keyword research. Moz Pro also offers helpful recommendations for crawlability issues and ways to improve your SEO performance. While the Moz Pro tools are not free, they are well worth the investment for serious SEO practitioners.
Moz Pro can be expensive for small businesses and offers limited customization options. However, it has a wealth of data and is suitable for experienced SEO users.
Top Features
- Helps identify profitable keywords for your business
- Tracks your website’s ranking progress for those keywords
- Identifies areas of improvement for your website’s SEO score
- Monitors your competitor’s link-building abilities
Pricing
Moz Pro offers different pricing plans, all of which include access to MozBar Premium, 24/7 online support, and personalized 1-on-1 walkthroughs.
Plans start from $99/mo to $599/mo with a 20% discount across the board when paying yearly upfront.
How We Choose the Best SEO Tools
To make the best decision, start by focusing on what features are important to you and what you will be using the seo tools for. Then, compare prices and find the option that fits your needs best.
Benefits of SEO Tools
SEO tools are important for any business looking to improve their website and online presence. The benefits of using SEO tools include targeting quality traffic, saving time and money on manual audits, Staying ahead of the competition, and finding keywords.
While there are many different SEO tools available, the ones listed in this article are some of the best and most popular options currently available.
Which tool is best for keyword research?
There are many seo tools in the market but not all of them are good. I have tried three seo tools and i think that GrowthBar, Semrush, and Moz Keyword Explorer are the best. They all have different features so it is important to find the tool that fits your business needs.
GrowthBar is a great seo tool for small businesses because it is affordable and it has all the features that you need to get started with seo.
If you need a more robust set of tools, you’re going to be looking at SEMrush, or Moz Keyword Explorer.
Which is best SEO Audit tool?
SEO audit tools are essential for any business wanting to improve their website ranking and visibility. While there are many different options on the market, I find that Ahrefs is the best option for technical SEO and Surfer or GrowthBar are great for content SEO tools. Whichever tool you decide to use, make sure you take advantage of its features to get the most out of your website optimization efforts.
What is the best backlink software?
SEMRush is the best backlink software because it offers a lot of helpful information for businesses wanting to grow their website. Not only does it have an overview of internal and external backlinks, but it also provides data on search engine rankings, traffic, and more.
SEO Tools FAQs
Which are the best free SEO tools?
There are many free SEO tools available online, but the best ones are those that are recommended by experienced professionals. The following list includes some of the most popular and effective tools for beginners.
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Analytics
- Google Trends
- Google Search Console
Is SEO difficult?
SEO can be difficult to learn and master, but the benefits of using SEO tools make it well worth the effort. With the right tools and knowledge, you can improve your website ranking and visibility, which can lead to more traffic, leads, and sales.
How long does SEO take to show results?
The time it takes to see results from SEO depends on a number of factors, including the competition for your keywords, the age of your website, and the quality of your content. Generally speaking, however, you can expect to see results within between 3-6 months if you are consistently using SEO tools and strategies.
Conclusion
SEMRush and Surfer SEO are presently the two best seo tools on the market.
GrowthBar is a best for small business.
If you have a WordPress site, I suggest installing the Yoast SEO plugin. For use cases that require more specific tools, Ahrefs provides very detailed crawling and audits.
