Moz defines search engine optimization (SEO) as “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”
And while that might seem fairly straightforward, SEO best practices are constantly shifting and changing to adapt to the ever-morphing internet landscape.
Keeping ahead of the curve is important with SEO, but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re just starting out.
Search engine optimization is key to getting your site and your business found online.
One of the most important steps when starting your SEO journey is understanding SEO.
Beyond that, mobile SEO is becoming increasingly important as smartphone use spreads rapidly. Ever pull out your phone to try to find a restaurant or business quickly? The top hits in your search are usually the businesses that have successfully applied SEO practices.
Along with understanding SEO for business, it’s important to be aware of the SEO tools that you have at your disposal. From built-in SEO tools to Google Analytics to paid SEO services (such as Nerd of Fortune’s Intensive SEO Plan), tools can help get your business noticed and help you to better strategize your SEO process.
While many tools are geared towards a larger audience, don’t forget local SEO in your planning process, as it’s vital to businesses operating with a local audience. From restaurants to retail to real estate agencies, having an online footprint is important, but being easily found by a local audience is imperative.
With those ideas and concepts in mind, it’s crucial to acknowledge that SEO is a constantly changing, ongoing process for your business. The rules for SEO best practices can change quickly, so your SEO strategy needs to evolve with it.
Continually refining your SEO processes and planning ahead for the future will make the SEO journey smoother and save you needless headaches down the road.
Ready to jumpstart your SEO strategy? From the basics of SEO to mastering the tools of the SEO trade, our guides can help you each step of the way.
NOBODY DOES IT LIKE THE NERD
Here are a few SEO tools to help your website show up in search results
A total of 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, making a dominant presence on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) essential for driving traffic to your website. Unfortunately, it’s not a problem you can throw money at with regards to buying ads, as nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results. Your strategy isn’t really complete without an organic traffic generation component, which requires that you use the best SEO tools you can get your hands on.
Too often when people hear about search engine optimization (SEO), they have a knee-jerk reaction thinking that it’s too technical or complicated to implement. Though the nitty-gritty of finding success can get technical, the best SEO tools can help you fill in the blanks and provide support throughout the process.
By taking a hard look at your needs, and digging into the details on the best paid and free SEO tools on the market, you’ll be able to decide exactly what’s best for your business.
Depending on your budget, this can involve anything from a DIY free SEO tool approach to letting GoDaddy’s expert team make things happen for you.
5 best free SEO tools
Keyword research is the foundation of every SEO strategy. This research allows you to identify common and industry-specific terms and phrases that are driving traffic to SERPs.
These five free SEO tools can help:
- Keyword Tool.
- Ubersuggest.
- Answer The Public.
- Google Search Console.
- Yoast SEO.
Many of the best free SEO tools have some relation to keyword research, helping you identify the particular phrases and words people are searching for on Google, Bing and other major search engines.
1. Keyword Tool
N3rdBase’s FREE FOR LIFE Keyword Tool, is a free SEO tool that focuses on keyword research, prompts you to enter a short keyword phrase and designate a specific language from which to display results. It also allows you to choose what platform you want to research keywords for: including Google, Amazon, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
The suggested long-tail keywords supplied by the Keyword Tool are generated using Google Autocomplete, providing up to 750 suggestions per seed keyword, arranged alphabetically.
The company also offers a paid version of the tool, which provides additional information about terms, such as search volume, competition and cost per click.
2. Ubersuggest
WE LOVE NEIL!!!!
Previously an independent tool, Ubersuggest has been acquired by Neil Patel, who beefed up its features. The original version of Ubersuggest.io was similar to Keyword Tool but was slower and had fewer suggestions — making it a notably inferior product.
Today, however, Ubersuggest’s keyword research feature includes three sections: keyword overview, keyword ideas and SERP analysis.
The keyword overview shows you the search volume of a keyword over the past 12 months. This allows you to see if the keyword is gaining or decreasing in popularity over time.
The keyword ideas tool is tied back to Ubersuggest’s original functionality — providing keyword options based on Google Autocomplete and Google Ads data. This feature also allows you to see the breakdown of cost per click, SEO difficulty, and the paid difficulty for the keyword. Additionally, it provides the estimated visit count based on keyword ranking, as well as keyword filtering options.
SERP analysis gives you an overview of the top 100 sites that rank for the given search term. It’s a particularly handy feature if you have known competitors, as it will allow you to get a better idea of what keywords are working for those websites.
3. Answer The Public
Many people go into the keyword research process seeking keyword ideas from Google Keyword Planner, but this is a mistake for organic search efforts. Google Keyword Planner shares Google Ads data, which is related to but doesn’t correlate exactly to organic keyword rankings.
Answer the Public is a better place to start the process because it curates common questions asked by people on forums, blogs and social media platforms.
The primary advantage of this particular tool is that more than half of all search queries are for long-tail keywords (such as questions made up of multiple words), which narrow in on specific topics.
One of Answer the Public’s best tools is the “vs. keywords.” It’s helpful because it allows you to compare how many people actually do searches containing two similar or completely different keyword phrases.
4. Google Search Console
Since Google is the largest search engine in the world, it makes sense for them to provide some free SEO tools to help you measure your success.
Google Search Console, previously known as Webmaster Tools, is a free web service offered by Google. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize website visibility.
The service provides a plethora of tools, including one that confirms that Google can find and crawl your site, which is how it knows if the content is relevant to a user’s Google search.
It also helps you fix indexing problems, request re-indexing of new or updated content, show you which sites link to your website, as well as troubleshoot issues for AMP (accelerated mobile page), mobile usability and other search features.
Additionally, it allows you to look at Google Search traffic data for your site to determine, among other things:
- How often your site appears in a relevant Google Search
- How target search queries are actually ranking
- How often searchers click through for those queries
There’s no good reason not to use Google Search Console.
On top of everything else, it alerts you when Google encounters indexing, spam or other issues on your site.
5. Yoast SEO
What best SEO tool list would be complete without Yoast?
It gives users suggestions regarding how to optimize pages or posts based on a target keyword.
Yoast SEO also performs various webpage analysis tests to remind you of important SEO tasks you might have overlooked.
Additionally, it generates XML sitemaps so that search engines can easily consume information about the URLs on your site.
And, if you need an expert to handle your SEO needs:
NoF’s SEO Deep Audit & Optimization Plan
If you’re a business owner who already has too much on your plate without having a full helping of SEO, Nerd of Fortune’s Intensive SEO Plan is going to be the way to go.
This expert service gets you on the phone with the NERD himself, one of the world’s TOP SEO experts who will take the time to learn about what makes your business tick and your end goals with SEO. During the phone call, you will quickly find this is best plan for your budget and the best way to get google to WORK FOR YOU, starting with a site audit and market research.
Nerd of Fortune uses a mix of onsite and offsite optimization, and can even help you with content creation. SEO — because it relies on developing organic traffic — isn’t an overnight fix.
However, 80% of Nerd of Fortune’s SEO services’ clients see first-page results for their targeted keywords within six months. And our service includes a FREE AUDIT at the end of those 6 months – NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS!
And getting on that first page for search results makes all the difference in the world.
SEO is essential to brand visibility online. Without the right SEO, it’s more than likely that your website — your window to the online world — will end up somewhere on the back pages of any given search.
Though SEO is complicated, having the best SEO tools in your toolbox makes it possible for you to move your webpage and business to the front page for relevant search terms.
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