The world of SEO is competitive and ever-evolving, making it harder and harder to gain an edge over your competition. Because of this, it’s important to make sure you’re well equipped for the task. Below you will find a list of some of the best SEO tools for 2020, ranging from multi-purpose, do-it-all solutions, to suits designed to focus on things like keywords and link analysis.
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1. MOZ
Moz is one of the best known, all-round tools in SEO. The Pro version offers a comprehensive set of tools you can use to analyze your website performance and SEO score. It will also give suggestions for improvements on a page-to-page basis.
The suite consists of Keyword Explorer, Link Explorer, and Open Site Explorer, among other tools. The subscription for the Pro version starts at $99 per month, with a free 30-day trial included.
If you feel like you don’t need the entire suite and simply want a tool that will help you with a basic SEO overview, you can also download the MozBar toolbar for free. This toolbar is compatible with Chrome and Firefox and is able to show your page and domain authority.
Pros:
- A good all-in-one SEO solution, no need for extra tools.
- A 30-day free trial will help you make sure it suits your needs.
- Free MozBar, although with limited functionality.
Cons:
- Prices start at $99 a month, which may bee steep for some small businesses.
- The number of options available may be overwhelming for beginners.
2. Ahrefs
Another all-in-one tool, Ahrefs is one of the most used and recommended SEO solutions. The Ahrefs team boasts they crawl around 5 billion pages daily, making the second-largest web crawler after Google.
Aside from the usual suite of tools, Ahrefs also offers local SEO analysis, which will research your competitors’ keyword. This can help you choose low-competition keywords to help you stand out in your niche. You can also see which websites are linking back to your competitors and reach out to them.
Ahrefs has a number of paid plans, starting at $99 per month and reaching $999 per month.
Pros:
- Arguably the best all-in-one SEO suite.
- Easy to review analysis results, with suggestions for improvements.
- Unique features, like the keyword difficulty checker.
Cons:
- High price compared to other solutions.
- No free trial – you can start a 7-day trial for $7.
3. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is an analysis tool focusing primarily on technical SEO. It’s able to quickly and reliably scan your website for issues regarding links, site architecture, and XML. It will also allow integration with Google Analytic tools for more detailed reports.
The key feature is Screaming Frog SEO Spider, a crawler that will scan any URL you feed it and review all the technical elements of the page. You can use this feature for free to scan up to 500 URLs. There is also a pro version, offering greater functionality at around $190 a year.
Pros:
- Quick and easy to use.
- Specializes in technical SEO, which some of the all-around tools might neglect.
- More affordable compared to other options on the list.
Cons:
- Focus on technical SEO might prevent the user from looking at the bigger SEO picture.
- No technical support for the free version.
- More useful tools are hidden behind a paywall.
4. SEMRush
Another all-rounder, SEMRush offers a wide selection of tools, mostly focusing on online marketing. Aside from options to research keywords, audit your SEO score, and analyze links, you can also research social media and pay-per-click marketing and track the performance of your online marketing strategy.
Another useful tool is the Domain vs Domain feature, which allows you to compare the stats of two domains side by side. This can be particularly useful for researching your competition and looking at their online ad strategy.
The pricing starts at $99 a month for the Pro version and goes up to $399 a month for the Business version. There is also an Enterprise version on offer, which is tailored to your company’s needs and the price depends on the features chosen.
Pros:
- A total of over 40 tools to review and boost your online marketing strategy.
- Modular Enterprise plan.
- Unique features, like the Domain vs Domain tool.
Cons:
- Free trial only available for Pro and Guru plan.
- Limited number of projects available for the Pro plan.
- Adding users can get expensive ($200 a month per user).
5. Yoast SEO
Yoast is probably the most used SEO tool for WordPress out there. This is largely due to the fact that it’s easy to use and user-friendly, which appeals to those just starting out on their SEO journey.
The UI is intuitive in that it gives your content a ‘traffic light’ score of red, yellow or green. It will analyze your content for keyword density and use, check your images and alt text, and review links. Based on this, it can make recommendations on what you can do to improve your SEO score.
The basic version of Yoast is free to use and is one of the most downloaded plugins for WordPress. The premium version costs €79 per website and offers additional features such as suggestions for internal links or finding the most used phrases and comparing them to keywords.
Pros:
- Permanently free.
- User-friendly, with a solid set of features.
- Updated along with Google’s algorithm.
Cons:
- Lacks more advanced features some other tools on this list offer.
- The free version doesn’t offer tech support.
- Keyword analysis is fairly content-agnostic, only focusing on density.
6. Google Analytics
If you’re trying to get your website to the top of Google search results, there’s no higher authority than Google itself. Google Analytics will track your website data in real-time, showing you a wide range of data points organized in categories like behavior, acquisition, conversion, etc.
You can also organize the data by creating custom goals. The reports generated will show results for up to 20 goals, letting you know on which of your website areas to focus your SEO efforts.
You can also set up the dashboard to show the metrics that are the most important to you, letting you have all the relevant data at a quick glance.
Pros:
- A whole myriad of available data.
- Completely free (for the foreseeable future).
- Easy to use and customize to your goals.
Cons:
- Only offers an overview of data, while making no effort to organize it
- Requires a certain level of SEO knowledge to use effectively.
7. Google’s Keyword Planner
Another offering from Google, the Keyword Planner lets you review most searched keywords, sort them by relevance, and see average monthly searches for each one.
The Competition feature stands out, allowing you to see how likely a customer is to buy a product from you based on search terms. You can also download the keyword analysis result as a CSV file.
As with Google Analytics, Google Keywords Planner is also free to use.
Pros:
- Completely free (for the foreseeable future).
- Easy to use.
Cons:
- Lacks more advanced tools available with some other keyword research solutions.
8. Long Tail Pro
Long Tail Pro will make choosing the right keywords far easier. Simply entering a seed keyword you will get a whole slew of suggestions based on it, with difficulty ranking and recommendations. You can also research keywords and competitors based on SEO rank.
Long Tail Pro also allows you to rank keywords by competitiveness, and unique to this tool, profitability. Also unique is the fact that once you sign up, you are free to browse their instructional videos so you can find out how to make the most advantage out of this suite.
Pricing ranges from $208 to $824 a year, with a free 7-day trial.
Pros:
- Comprehensive keyword analysis.
- Real-time rank tracking for keywords.
- A strong suit of tools bolstered by a comprehensive knowledge library.
Cons:
- Only focused on keywords, and therefore not suited for someone
- Relatively small number of tracked keywords available for more affordable packs.
9. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest was under the radar for a while, mainly owing to a lack of features upon release. A few months ago, the suite was redesigned with a number of added features and is now endorsed by the likes of Neil Patel.
The primary use of Ubersuggest is to help find long-tail keywords quickly and efficiently. To do this, it will look at the content of your top competitors and reverse-engineer it to find the most impactful keywords used. This will both give you ideas on which keywords to use, but also provide content ideas for blog posts.
Another useful feature is the backlink analysis tool. You can use this to find high-authority domains in your space, with the intention to approach the domain owners about linking back to your website.
Ubersuggest is free to use.
Pros:
- A free tool that offers a lot of functionality of much more expensive solutions.
- Backlink data analysis as a useful multi-purpose tool.
- Keyword analysis offers plenty of examples and suggestions.
Cons:
- Only useful for a small number of purposes.
- Must be used through a third-party website.
Conclusion
Choosing the right tool for the job can sometimes be a daunting task, especially when there is a plethora of options available. Some of the examples we covered above will be able to help you boost your SEO score and bring your business to another level.
However, if you are struggling with your rankings and feel like you are stuck, or are experiencing a huge decline in traffic, you should check our Google penalty removal tools to troubleshoot your website and make sure you don’t have any active penalties on your site.
If this is still too overwhelming and you are looking to hire a professional SEO company to take care of everything for you, we have worked with the businessmedia.ee team founded by Karl Kangur on several projects with great success.
Make sure to view some of our other articles on the fastest loading WP Themes and simple guide to seo. Please make sure to comment below if you have any other questions.