14 Best SEO Tools That Experts Use (Free and Paid) – 2021

Search engine optimization (SEO) tools are marketing softwares designed to rank websites on search engine result pages (SERPs).

SEO tools provides an assessment through various features and identifies the best strategies for increasing the relevance of website searches.

Many tools provide competitor data and industry-wide analysis.

SEO tools are often used by-products, marketing teams, and SEO experts to identify areas for improvement in web features that can improve rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. 

The list of SEO tools in this article certainly has several exciting features such as SEO audits, rank tracking, keyword research, content optimization, or link building.

An SEO audit tool provide a complete report on a website’s SEO performance.

The SEO tools bundles on this list can identify content-based or technical issues impacting search rankings and provide suggestions on potential improvements.

Rank tracking tools are used to monitor website performance on SERPs for a keyword.

In contrast, keyword research tools allow businesses to recognize alternative search terms (terms) and search volume for those terms. 

In SEO tools, content optimization help businesses strengthen website content through artificial intelligence (AI), SEO automation, and semantic SEO.

Link-building tools are used to improve off-page SEO by monitoring backlinks and identifying new link-building opportunities.  

To qualify in the best SEO Tools list, an SEO tools must-have features with the following aspects:

• Produces one or more of the SEO-related functions: content optimization, SEO audits, keyword research, rank tracking, link building, or backlink monitoring
• Provides reports related to optimization metrics
• Focus on increasing unpaid and organic search engine listings

How? Are you ready?

Benefits of SEO Tools

Already know SEO is necessary, the benefits are many, then how to do SEO effectively.

There are many ways, but one of them to fast-track to master SEO is to use SEO Tools.

SEO Tools are tools specifically used to help bloggers do SEO more efficiently and generate better organic traffic to blogs.

From experience, here are the benefits of having SEO Tools, as follows:

1. Site Audit

What is the SEO problem on the blog site? Why is the traffic stagnant or even down.

The quickest way to spot problems on your blog is to do a site audit on SEO Tools.

All you have to do is enter the URL address in SEO Tools which will automatically audit the site. The system will check all pages and site structure in SEO Tools.

The results of the site audit include:

1. Issues or problems found on blogs.
2. The severity of each issue.
3. Provided details of the issue and how to solve it.

Site audits can be made to be carried out regularly at predetermined time intervals.

So automatically, SEO Tools will check the health level of your site’s SEO.

2. Keyword Research

Which keywords will be targeted in the content?

Searching on search engines uses keywords as triggers. The search engine will perform searches based on user-written keyword queries.

Search engines will see if the keywords you are looking for are in the content of your blog.

So, keywords are very important.

The problem is whether to write, for example, the keyword ‘Unsecured Credit’ in an article about unsecured loans?

That’s a practical problem that you always face when writing content.

Keyword selection is crucial in building SEO.

SEO Tools helps by providing following information related to keywords:

Keyword Search Volume

How significant is the number of searches for these keywords? The higher the search volume for a keyword, the more potential traffic you will get.

It is futile to write a topic of writing with keywords that do not exist for the search. 

Keyword Competition

Competition in SEO, for one thing, is determined by competition on keywords.

It is essential to know how tight the competition is in the keywords you are aiming for.

You have to consider and measure your SEO skills. For those of you who are still in the learning process, please optimize keywords with a low level of competition.

Keyword Ideas

This part is what I like the most. SEO Tools provides new keyword ideas that I may not know yet.

In SEO Tools, it provides derived keyword features taken from the keywords I input, and then other related keywords are provided.

Many keywords that I didn’t think about before, now the idea appears, after reading the derived keywords from SEO Tools.

Derived keywords can increase the potential for traffic we receive from the main keywords.

3. Number of Backlinks and Referring Domains

One of the factors that affect SEO is the number of domains or backlinks on a site. 

Ahrefs, a well-known SEO Tools provider, once conducted research and found that the number of referring domains on a website was positively related to the website’s ranking on search engines.

The more referring domains, the higher the ranking in the search engines and eventually, the more significant the traffic.

SEO Tools provides complete information about backlinks and referring domains:

Referring Domains

Domains and Backlinks that link to our site. Both the new link and the missing link. The data is updated every day.

In SEO Tools, I can monitor the development of the number of referring domains and backlinks regularly.

If they drop, I can know from which links and, if increased, know what links contributed to the addition.

Backlinks Quality

Quality backlinks that link to the site. It is very important to make sure that the links are from other sites of good quality.

SEO Tools have DA/PA or DR/PR indicators to measure the quality of a link and Domain.

By knowing the quality of a site, I can plan what sites to collaborate with. 

On the other hand, if I get a link from a spam site, I can disavow or request to remove the link from the site.

Competitor’s Backlinks Info

SEO Tools provide information about competitors, what links to use, and how much.

This information can be an inspiration to build backlinks, especially if the site you are building is new.

4. Competitor Analysis

The scramble for ranking #1 in search engines is heavily influenced by competition.

The rank position changes dynamically with the activities of each competitor.

In SEO, you must know who the competitors are, whether the competitor’s website is more robust, more authoritative, or not.

Because if a stronger website occupies the target keyword, you should change it to a lighter competition.

SEO Tools provide fairly complete competitor analysis.

For example, you will know competitors’ info about the amount of traffic, keywords targeted, the backlinks they have, and other information. Here’s epic guide on SEO Competitor Analysis by Neil Patel.

5. Content Analysis

Content is one of the most important keys to the success of SEO.

Google says that website owners must focus on the best content, where the content that many people are looking for will automatically rank highest on search engine pages.

SEO Tools provides content analysis:

• Popular topics based on various criteria, for example, country, number of searches, CPC
• Popular sites that contain your targeted content. Can find out how the content of the site is ranked
• New topics that are developing, which can be an inspiration for writing content.

The difference between content analysis and keywords is that content analysis focuses on sites that contain related content, while keywords are only on keywords.

6. Ranking Position

You must know the position of the site’s ranking on each keyword. The higher the ranking position, the more traffic will flow to the site.

SEO Tools provide information on all the keywords that are ranking on the site.

This information is beneficial because:

• The more keywords that are ranked, the greater the traffic comes. Conversely, if the keyword ranking trend drops, you can immediately check what the problem is.
• Opportunities in keywords that are already ranked but still in a lower position. Optimization of the page can be done to improve its position.

I often see that a decrease in traffic begins with a decrease in the number of keywords on the ranking site from experience.

Conversely, the increase in traffic is indicated by the more ranking web pages.

So the number of keywords ranked in search engines is important to know whether or not an SEO strategy is healthy. 

Can it be done by yourself, manually, without the help of tools? Yes, but not practical.

It takes time time-consuming to check keywords and rankings in search engines. And the manual method is not necessarily accurate.

If the site grows, the more content, it is almost impossible for you to check the keywords one by one at a time. Not efficient.

So learned about benefits of SEO tools, time to dive in best SEO Tools.

Best SEO Tools of 2021

Here are 15 of the Best SEO Tools you can use to help your site to skyrocket your ranking and organic traffic.

1. SEMrush – SEM & SEO Tools

SEMrush SEO tools is best for managing the visibility of your website online and a SaaS content marketing platform that enables businesses to optimize their online presence worldwide.

SEMrush is now a must-have SEO tool for digital marketing teams around the world.

SEO tools like SEMrush tends to be one of the favorite choices in the SEO community. Using SEMrush, you will easily track your site’s ranking, identify changes, and discover new ranking opportunities.

One of the most popular features of this SEO tool is Domain Vs. Domain analysis, which allows you to compare your website against competitors quickly.

If you are looking for analytics reports to help you better understand your website browsing data, traffic, or even your competitors, you will be able to compare keywords and domains.

SEMrush comes with On-Page SEO Checker tool that allows you to monitor your rankings easily and find several recommendations to improving your website’s performance.

2. Ahrefs – Best Premium SEO Tools

Ahrefs is one of the most recommended online SEO tool besides SEMrush. If you are serious about Link Building, you should give a try Ahrefs. Ahrefs have best link database in the industry.

Also, Ahrefs SEO tool is the second most active crawler after Google.

SEO experts like the Ahrefs Site Audit feature as it is the best SEO analysis tool out there.

Ahrefs highlights which parts of your website need to be improved to rank better in search engines and increase website traffic.

From a competitor analysis perspective, you will likely use Ahrefs to determine your competitors’ backlinks to use it as a starting point for your branding.

You can also use Ahrefs SEO tools to find the content that is most linked in your niche, check and fix broken links on your website.

3. Moz Pro – Best Paid SEO Software

Moz Pro is also one of the tool that you must try! SEO tools from Moz is one of the best SEO tools that experts use.

Moz’s SEO tools is always updated whenever Google’s regular algorithms change.

The software also has a chat option to discuss with other SEO practitioners and get insightful answers to any questions asked.

Whether you’re looking for keyword recommendations or site browsing, you can also get excellent insights into how your website performs and how to improve it.

Moz Pro also has a free MozBar extension, which you can download and install to view your website metrics while browsing any page. Very simple!

4. SERanking – Ultimate SEO Tools

SERanking is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers the SEO features as per marketers need to complete their projects and campaigns online.

SERanking is perfect for small business owners, professionals, and SEO agencies.

This SEO tool provides a complete set of tools for keyword position tracking and keyword research, website auditing, competitor analysis, keyword grouping and suggestions, backlink monitoring, automated reporting, and much more.

Apart from standard SEO features, this system offers a series of additional features such as White Label, Social Media Management, and Marketing Plan that aim to take your professional digital services to the next level.

You can access all of these features on one platform with a very user-friendly interface, of course.

5. Google Search Console – Free SEO Tools by Google

Google Search Console help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix existing problems with your site, and make your site stand out in Google Search results.

This Google SEO tool is offered free of charge to everyone with a website.

Apart from being free, the Google Search Console feature allows you to monitor and report your website’s presence on the Google SERP.

All you need to do is verify your website on Google Search Console by adding code to your website or via Google Analytics, and you can submit your sitemap for indexing.

While you don’t need a Search Console account to appear in Google search results, you can control what is indexed and how your website is represented with this account.

As an SEO checker tool, Google Search Console can help you understand how Google and its users view your website and enable you to optimize for better performance in Google search results.

This is especially useful for new websites as it allows site owners to submit web pages for search indexing.

For those of you who have a website and are interested in seriously improving your site’s performance.

I highly recommend that you immediately register your site for Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

6. Ubersuggest – SEO Tool by Neil Patel

Ubersuggest, developed by Neil Patel, is a free keyword search tool that helps you identify keywords and the search intent behind them (search intent) by displaying the top ranking SERPs from short-tail keywords to long phrases (long-tail keyword).

You can find the correct terms to use on your website with hundreds of recommendations from its free keyword search tool.

The metrics that Ubersuggest includes in its reports are keyword volume, competition, CPC, and seasonal trends.

Great for organic SEO and paid PPC, of course! Also, Ubersuggest SEO tools can help you determine whether keywords are worthy of targeting and how competitive they are.

7. Majestic SEO – SEO Backlink Checker & Link Building Tools

Majestic SEO is one of the best SEO marketing tools, according to experts. Majestic SEO software has handy features like The Majestic Million, which lets you see a site’s ranking from the top millions of websites out there.

Is your website well-positioned against the competition? 

The Site Explorer feature allows you quickly see an overview of your site and the number of backlinks you have.

Like some other SEO tools in general, Majestic SEO also has a feature that works to find the best keywords that you can target, backlink checker, compare site performance, and a feature to track rankings.

8. Screaming Frog SEO Spider – SEO Site Audit Tool

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is SEO software whose primary function is to ‘crawl’ websites.

Screaming Frog SEO tools will crawl website URLs and take the main elements on the site to be analyzed from an SEO perspective.

You will love this SEO tool because you can save a lot of time exploring your website very quickly to perform site audits by having this tool.

In fact, Screaming Frog’s speed gives you faster data and insights than most online SEO tools.

Screaming Frog also notifies you of duplicate content, error pages, wrong redirections, and recommendations for link-building. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider tool is considered to be the best feature by SEO experts.

9. KWFinder – Keyword Research Tool

SEO keyword tools like KWFinder help you to find long-tail keywords that usually have a lower level of competition.

Experts use this SEO tool to find the best keywords and run analysis reports on backlinks and SERPs.

Their Rank Tracker feature helps you easily rank your rank while tracking your progress based on one key metric.

Also, in addition, you will get tons of new keyword ideas to help you improve the performance of your website.

10. Answer The Public – Free SEO Tools

Free SEO tools like Answer The Public lets you easily search for topics to write about for your blog, “Discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas”.

I have used this tool before to create content around specific keywords for better rankings. Best for question answer post Ideas.

Question answer related Search increasing day-by-day, SEO is Turning into a Questions and Answers Game.

Say you are in the ‘fitness’ group. You can use this free SEO tool to create content around keywords like fitness, yoga, running, Crossfit, sports, and it covers the entire spectrum.

Great for finding featured keyword opportunities.

Let’s say you hire a freelancer to create content for you. All you need to do is use Answer The Public, download a list of recommendations containing topics and send it to the freelancer you hire.

This all takes only five minutes!

11. SpyFu – SEO Competitor Analysis Tool

Even though SpyFu has an excellent premium version, its free features are also really admirable!

You can easily see the number of times a keyword is searched per month and easily determine the keyword’s ranking difficulty.

Research your competitors to determine which keywords they are using.

In addition, you can browse competitor sites or your site to easily see how many organic keywords they have, how many clicks per month they are getting, who their paid and organic competitors are, the campaigns they run with Google Ads, and much more.

This is one of the most detailed SEO analysis tools on the market today.

11. SEOQuake – Powerful SEO Extension

SEOQuake is one of the best free SEO tool. SEOQuake’s Chrome extension acts as an SEO checker tool that performs site audits on pages, assesses your internal and external links.

And conducts website comparisons to determine how your site performs against your competitors.

Other features of this SEO analysis tool include keyword analysis like keyword density, an easy-to-read dashboard, and an export feature that allows you to download and send data to your team members easily.

12. Siteliner – Site Analysis Tool

Siteliner is an SEO checking tool that helps you find duplicate content and broken links on your website.

What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content is content that is identical to another website. If you have duplicate content, Google can act and ‘punish’ your website.

With Siteliner, you will be able to scan your entire website for duplicate content, broken links, average page size and speed, text to HTML ratio, number of internal links per page, and much more.

Siteliner also compares your website to the average of the websites checked with this SEO tool to help you better understand your website position.

13. Keywords Everywhere – SEO Keyword Research Tool

Keywords Everywhere is an excellent keyword research SEO Chrome extension like SEOQuake.

Keywords Everywhere work by collecting data from various SEO tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Trends, and others to help you find the best keywords in the top rankings.

So, instead of visiting several websites every day, you can simply use one tool that simplifies your keyword selection.

14. Serpstat – All-in-one SEO Tool

Serpstat is a growth-hacking platform for SEO, PPC, and content marketing. If you are looking for an affordable all-in-one integrated SEO tool to complete various SEO tasks, Serpstat will be the choice you should check out.

Many SEO specialists turn to this tool, as it has collected keyword and competitor analysis data for all Google regions worldwide.

Apart from that, Serpstat is known for its excellent features. The most popular is the “Missing Keyword” feature which functions as a keyword identification feature for competitors who have been in the top 10 rankings.

By knowing the top rankings of your competitors, of course, you can start your content too!

Wrap Up!

These are the 15 Best SEO Tools that you can use to keyword research, Boost website traffic, Link Building, Search Engine Marketing.

Some of these tools offer free packages and free trials for the premium version. You can try the free plan first, and if it suits you, you can continue to upgrade to the premium version.

When I started, I started with free SEO tools like Google Search Console, Ubersuggest, Answer The Public, then tried SEMrush Pro and Ahrefs.

It is steady with SEMruh because I am more compatible with the SEMrush interface than Ahrefs.

Both SEO softwares is quite similar but, of course, have their respective advantages. If I have time, I will try to compare the these two best SEO tools.

A few years ago, when I was very new to SEO and really a beginner, I would usually try free SEO tools like Answer The Public and Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest.

And that is very helpful.

However, if you have started to experience successful improvements, my advice is to try the premium (paid) SEO tools like SEMrush.

What are your SEO tools you like the most? If not in this list let me know in comment box.

I highly recommend you to use SEMrush from these all SEO Tools.