As a Digital Marketer, you are always looking for ways to improve your SEO. Google SEO Tools are the best way to go about this. Google is the world’s biggest search engine and it is the most popular tool in use by many Digital Marketers.

When you are looking for free SEO tools, one of the best Google SEO tools that you should be using is Google Analytics. This tool will provide you with a comprehensive look at who visits your site and what keywords they used to find it. With this information, you can easily determine which keywords you need to target and which ones are just not worth your time.

Best Google Seo Tools

Exceed search performance goals with these 5 Google tools that help publishers diagnose problems and improve rankings. Roger Montti   / September 3, 2021  /  6 min read

• 2.0KSHARES
• 28KREADS

Google offers a constantly updated suite of tools that are useful for SEO.

These tools help publishers understand why a page is underperforming and guide them with specific advice for improving webpage performance for the purpose of ranking better.

Here are Google’s top five SEO tools.

1. Lighthouse

Lighthouse is a web page performance improvement tool that is built into every browser that is based on Chrome. The tool is accessible within the Chrome Dev Tools panel.

Multiple Ways to Access the Google Lighthouse Tool

• On a Windows machine, press the F12 function button.
• On Windows or Mac right-click the page and choose “Inspect” then choose the “Lighthouse” tab.
• On Mac press: Command+Option+C
• On Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS press: Control+Shift+C
• In Chrome, click the 3-dot menu on the top right corner then, More Tools > Developer Tools

Screenshot from Google Search, August 2021

Screenshot from Chrome Dev Tools, August 2021

Lighthouse Offers 5 Feedback Categories

It currently provides five categories of SEO performance feedback:

1. Performance.
2. Progressive Web App.
3. Best Practices.
4. Accessibility.
5. SEO.

While accessibility isn’t strictly an SEO-related metric, it is related to good user experience for disabled site visitors.

Using the feedback from these five categories will help improve the search visibility of most webpages.

The SEO section of Lighthouse provides 10 points of feedback on factors that matter for Google.

Some Metrics Chrome Lighthouse Reports On

• Viewport Meta Tag.
• Title Element.
• Meta Description.
• HTTP Status Code.
• Descriptive Text on Links.
• Page Status for Successful Crawling & Indexing.
• Validates Hreflang.
• Validates rel=canonical.
• Checks mobile-friendliness.
• Validates font legibility for mobile devices.
• Checks mobile tap targets.
• Checks if document avoids browser plugins for viewing.
• Checks crawling and indexing.
• Checks the Robots.txt.
• Checks if the page sends a successful HTTP status code.

Why You Should Use Lighthouse SEO Tool

I won’t deny it, Lighthouse is a lightweight site review tool.

But it’s an important site review tool because it represents Google’s opinion of 10 metrics you should be looking at.

If Google feels that these metrics are important, then you should, too.

To make the most of this tool, be sure to check out A Technical SEO Guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics.

2. Test My Site

Google’s Test My Site auditing tool offers two metrics:

1. Estimated loading time on a 4G mobile network.
2. Recommendations for speeding up the website.

Screenshot of Test My Site, August 2021

This is a good tool for obtaining a quick snapshot of the speed health of a website.

It’s a good starting point for obtaining an overall picture of mobile optimization.

The tool also offers to email a full report containing suggestions for speeding up the tested webpage.

Why You Should Use Test My Site

You can obtain similar information by using Page Speed Insights.

But the Test My Site tool provides the information in an easy-to-understand manner that’s easy for non-developer stakeholders to gain an understanding of what may be wrong with the mobile site performance.

Yet it’s also good for developers to get a quick overview, as well.

If you want granular details about what needs fixing, then head over to Google’s Page Speed Insights.

3. Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights is the tool that provides lab Core Web Vitals performance scores.

Core Web Vitals are important metrics created by Google to represent what a user experience on a webpage is.

This information is important because fixing the highlighted problems will improve SEO, sales conversions, ad clicks, and (if successful in fixing performance bottlenecks) give a small ranking factor boost.

This online tool provides specifics on what is causing the slowdown and gives suggestions for how to fix the problems.

It tells which scripts and style sheets are slowing down the site, which images are too big, and offers numerous other tips for speeding up affected webpages.

Why You Should Use Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights not only offers useful solutions for hidden technical issues impacting page speed, but it is also a resource for learning what those issues are.

Each highlighted issue links to a Google Developers page that offers more in-depth background information and an explainer of how to fix the problems.

4. Safe Browsing Test

Google crawls billions of pages every day to check for malware. This tool reports if there is any malware on a site.

The tool also provides the date for the last time the site was checked for malware.

Some sites are tested more often than others.

Why You Should Use the Safe Browsing Test Tool

Many people do not consider website security an SEO problem.

But website security quickly becomes an SEO issue when Google starts dropping URLs from its index because the site is hacked.

That’s why website security should be considered a part of SEO. Failure to secure a site can severely affect search visibility.

5. Google Trends

Google Trends provides information about keyword popularity and also segments the information by time and geography.

The time segment can give you an idea of how seasons may affect keywords. It can also show you if a keyword is losing popularity.

If you see a downward trend in a keyword, this could indicate that a product or trend is causing searchers to lose interest in that search.

Why You Should Use Google Trends

Google Trends is also important for competitive research. It shows you how often people are searching Google with a competitor’s brand name.

The trend line by time will show you how steady this trend is – if it’s going up, down, or steady.

Obviously, a competitor trend line that is trending down is good. A trend line that is trending up is bad.

A trend line that is steady (the most common) means a competitor is doing well and you’ll have to identify their weaknesses and make those your strengths – among many considerations.

For more tips, check out 10 Ways to Use Google Trends for Better SEO.

Make Good Use of Google’s SEO Tools to Improve Rankings, Visibility, and User Experience

While SEO professionals tend to take much of what Google says about what helps rankings (or not) with a healthy dose of skepticism, it would be foolish not to take advantage of the tools it has on offer.

In these tools, you can see exactly what Google is looking for in a quality site, webpage, and user experience.

Use this to your advantage to optimize as closely to Google’s (and your audience’s) expectations as possible.

Best seo tools for wordpress

Often we’re asked about what are the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that we recommend.

That’s because search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites on the internet. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in search results and significantly grow your business.

In this article, we will share the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use. Some of these tools offer similar functionalities, so we will also highlight which ones are the best for specific use-cases.

Best WordPress SEO plugins and tools
Things You Must Know About WordPress SEO Plugins & Tools
When reading SEO tips or searching for “best free WordPress SEO plugins”, you will come across articles that feature several dozen tools.

This can be quite overwhelming for beginners and non-techy users.

The truth is that you don’t need dozens of top SEO tools to get higher search rankings.

While most blog posts (including ours) will share the top most popular SEO plugins, it is extremely important for you to understand the use-cases of each tool.

For example, you never want to use more than one WordPress SEO plugin on your website. We will mention All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, SEOPress, and Rank Math. You need to pick only one to avoid plugin conflict.

We’ll mention SEMRush, Ahrefs, and few other powerful tools, but you don’t need them all when you’re first starting out since they have a similar feature set. We will share what tools we use in our business, and which features are the best among each tool.

With that said, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.

1. All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO)
   All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO)
   All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. Used by over 3+ million users, it is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you improve search rankings without learning any complicated SEO jargon.

It comes with the easiest setup wizard that automatically helps you choose the best SEO settings for your business. AIOSEO shows you TruSEO on-page analysis with an actionable checklist to optimize your posts and pages.

The on-page SEO checklist includes a smart meta tag generator where you can use dynamic values (current year, month, day, custom fields, author info, and much more) in your SEO title and descriptions. This means you don’t need to update a post just to change SEO titles.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) dynamic meta title and description
AIOSEO also comes with Rich snippet schema markup, smart XML sitemaps (with advanced controls), SEO health check, and other useful features to grow your search engine visibility.

There is a built-in social media integration to add Open Graph metadata as well. This means you can choose which image or thumbnail you want to show when your pages are shared on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) social media profiles
AIOSEO also comes with built-in WooCommerce SEO tools for eCommerce sites. This include features like dynamic optimizations, individual product page optimizations, product image SEO, and other handy features to bring more organic traffic to your online store.

For more SEO savvy users, it includes full control of RSS feeds, Robots.txt editor, local SEO, Google News sitemaps, video SEO, advanced redirect manager, 404 tracking, IndexNow integration, and more.

For business owners, it comes with SEO user roles, so you can manage access to important SEO features without handing over control of your website.

Update: Recently AIOSEO added a Link Assistant which is a game-changer for internal linking. It helps identify link opportunities and help you bulk-add internal links with just a few clicks.

Overall, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the most beginner-friendly and comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It eliminates the need to install multiple plugins to do things on your website and works perfectly for all types of businesses, eCommerce, blogs, news, and other websites.

2. SEMRush
   SEMRush
   SEMRush is the best overall SEO tool on the market. Used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, and businesses of all sizes, it provides a comprehensive set of tools to grow your traffic.

You can use it to find organic keywords and search terms that you can easily rank for. It also allows you to do competitive research and see which keywords your competitors rank for, and how you can beat them.

SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant tool helps you improve your website content to beat the top 10 results for your focus keyword. It integrates with WordPress, and this will help you write more SEO friendly content.

To learn more, see our complete guide on how to do keyword research for your website.

We use SEMRush for our websites because of their competitive intelligence and SEO rank tracker features.

3. Google Search Console
   Google Search Console
   Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.

It alerts you when Google is unable to crawl and index pages on your website. You also get helpful tips on how to fix those crawl errors.

Most importantly, it shows which keywords your website is ranking for, anchor texts, average position, impressions, and more. You can use this data to find keywords where you can easily rank higher by simply optimizing your content. You can also use this keyword data to come up with new blog post ideas.

For more details, see our comprehensive Google Search Console guide for beginners.

Tip: You can use MonsterInsights to track your keyword rankings inside WordPress admin area using Google Seach Console data.

MonsterInsights, another tool we’ll mention later, helps you bring the Search Console reports right inside your WordPress dashboard for easy access.

4. Yoast SEO
   Yoast SEO
   Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your WordPress website for search engines.

It lets you easily add SEO titles and descriptions to all posts and pages on your website. You can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.

Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all your website content which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. It also helps you easily import your SEO data if you have been using another SEO plugin.

For more details, see our complete guide on how to install and setup Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress.

5. Google Keyword Planner
   Google Keyword Planner
   Google Keyword Planner tool helps you generate your own keyword ideas from Google itself.

No one on the planet has more insights into what people are searching for than the search giant Google. This free tool is offered to Google’s advertisers for free and anyone can use it. Its main purpose is to show advertisers the keywords they can bid on for their advertising campaigns.

It also helps advertisers choose the right keywords by showing them an estimate of search volume, number of results, and difficulty level.

As a content marketer or blogger, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume, high advertiser interest, and more importantly keywords where you can easily outrank all other sites.

Bonus: See these 103 Blog Post Ideas that your Readers will Love (Cheat Sheet).

6. Ahrefs
   Ahrefs
   Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers a lot of similar tools and features.

It allows you to do keyword research, competition analysis, backlink research, monitor keyword rankings, and more.

It also offers a detailed content analysis tool that helps you improve content while targeting specific keywords.

While there’s a huge feature overlap, what Ahrefs does really well is backlink analysis. We can use it to see which sites are linking to multiple competitors, but not us. This helps us get more backlinks and build more partnerships.

They also help us identify which content multiple of our competitors are ranking for that we aren’t, so we can create content on those subjects to get more exposure.

Last but not least, Ahrefs helps us better identify duplicate content and keyword cannibalization which helps us merge and upgrade the right content to boost our rankings.

For the reasons above, we pay for both SEMRush and Ahrefs because they’re both good for specific use-cases.

7. SEOPress
   SEOPress
   SEOPress is another simple yet powerful WordPress SEO plugin. It includes all the features you would expect from an SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.

It comes with a straightforward setup for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users. It is comparable to other top WordPress SEO plugins on the market in terms of features and options.

The paid version of the plugin is cheaper than some other premium WordPress SEO plugins on the market.

Note: SEOPress is a WordPress SEO plugin. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

8. Rank Math
   Rank Math
   Rank Math is a fast-growing user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your website for search engines and social media. It comes with a setup wizard and allows you to import data from other SEO plugins during the setup.

You can use it to easily add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog posts. The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, connect Google Search Console, and control access to plugin features based on user roles.

Note: Rank Math is an AIOSEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

9. Schema Pro
   Schema Pro
   Schema Pro allows you to add rich snippets to your website which makes it stand out in search results.

Rich Snippets allow you to make your website stand out in search results by showing star ratings below a review, prices below a product, image or video next to the description, and so on.

Top WordPress SEO plugins, like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) already add structured rich snippets data to your website. However, if you need more schema types or want to extend the functionality of your existing WordPress SEO plugin then Schema Pro is the way to go.

Schema Pro also allows you to use it alongside your existing WordPress SEO plugin by mapping the plugin data to Schema Pro fields.

10. KeywordTool.io
    Keyword Tool
    KeywordTool.io is one of the best free keyword research tools available right now. It allows you to simply generate keyword ideas by typing in a keyword. These keyword suggestions are gathered from Google’s autosuggest feature. It also shows you keyword suggestions from Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and more.

These keyword suggestions are a treasure of information. You can also get search volume, cost per click, and other data for each keyword by upgrading to their paid plan.

11. Redirection
    Redirection
    Redirection helps you set up SEO friendly redirects in WordPress. It is one of the most handy WordPress plugins that helps you easily fix 404 errors in WordPress by setting up redirects.

Broken links can affect your site’s SEO and create a bad experience for your users. If you have been running a blog for some time, then you should check your site from time to time for broken links and fix them.

There are multiple ways to easily find broken links in WordPress. Once you find a broken link, you may need to fix it by pointing users to the correct link or removing the incorrect link.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

12. SEOquake
    SEOquake
    SEOQuake is a useful SEO tool for website owners. It is available as a browser add-on for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers.

It provides SEO related information for any website. This data includes page health, age, last updated, Alexa rank, and many other parameters. It is one of the most downloaded browser addons by SEO professionals.

Apart from that, the SEOquake toolbar can show you all the same data search results when you type in a keyword. This information can be extremely useful if you are gauging competition for different keywords. You can even download search results in CSV format and prepare your own excel sheets of search data.

Alternative: Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

Bonus Plugins for WordPress Website Owners
These tools give you the additional advantage when optimizing your website for SEO. They do not advertise themselves as SEO tools but they are essential for every website and play a significant role in your website’s search performance.

13. WP Rocket
    WP-Rocket
    Site speed is a major factor in search rankings. That’s why you need to monitor your website speed & performance to make sure it’s not affecting your SEO.

The easiest way to boost your website speed is by enabling caching. WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market, which allows you to set up caching without diving into any technical stuff.

Alternative: WP Super Cache

14. MonsterInsights
    MonsterInsights
    Many beginners rely on their best guess to make their marketing decisions. You don’t need to do that when you can easily get the insights you need to improve your website’s SEO strategy.

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily install Google Analytics in WordPress and shows human-readable reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

It tells you where your users are coming from, your top content, what users do on your website, and more. It also allows you to track your eCommerce SEO by seeing which products are popular and where you are losing customers.

Bonus tip: See what other marketing data you must track on your website to grow your business.

Other Powerful Growth Tools:

Aside from the above plugins, we also recommend the following tools to increase your traffic and conversions from SEO visitors:

PushEngage – connect and engage with SEO visitors after they leave your website with web push notifications.
OptinMonster – convert abandoning visitors into email subscribers & customers.
Constant Contact – stay in touch with SEO visitors through email marketing.
WPForms – get more leads from your SEO traffic with #1 WordPress form builder.
SeedProd – create SEO friendly custom landing pages with drag & drop WordPress page builder (no coding needed).
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools for your website. You may also want to see our proven tips to easily increase your website traffic, and our comparison of best chatbot software to boost conversions.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Conclusion

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines