When it comes to the SEO website development tools, we believe that the user experience should be as simple and straightforward as possible. Our tools go beyond simply reporting analytics and errors- we also offer easier ways for you to see your site’s progress in terms of SEO ranking position and keyword rankings.
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How Often Seo Tools For Website Development
Choosing the right SEO tools for your strategy can be overwhelming. With so much variety in features and price ranges, where do you begin? Google’s SEO tools are a great place to start.
Since the search engine currently accounts for 70% of all searches, their SEO tools harness the most accurate and comprehensive source of data.
The best part of using these tools is that they’re absolutely free and generally unlimited. Here are 13 SEO tools built by Google you should consider adding to your wheelhouse.
1. Google Lighthouse
Google Lighthouse is designed to improve your website’s UX and performance. Auditing four different components, Google Lighthouse examines accessibility, Progressive Web Apps, performance, and SEO.
The results of these audits will give you a clear picture of the overall performance of your desktop site, web app, or mobile site.
Site speed is different for every user. Some people might have access to superfast 5g while others might only have unreliable 3g available. Google Lighthouse tells you exactly how each of these users will experience your site.
It will indicate if any of your web pages feel sluggish. As we all know slow or unresponsive web pages result in fewer conversions. This tool is perfect for getting your site up to speed.
Alternatives: Dareboost, WebsiteSpeedchecker.com
2. Google Search Console
With Google Search Console, you can identify broken links, crawling issues, see how many pages are indexed, and find out if your site has been penalised.
This is a great tool for seeing how Google views the technical elements of your site from a ranking perspective. Google Search Console will find all those blockers that are stopping your web properties from ranking well on search engines.
On top of identifying technical issues, you can also use the platform to identify the exact search queries users enter into Google to find your web pages.
Within the ‘Search Queries’ report, explore the analytics for each query, to see which pages need an SEO boost. These pages are generally those with high impressions and low CTR.
Alternatively, the platform can tell you if you might want to reconsider your keyword strategy if your site has lots of pages with low impressions and low position.
3. Google Analytics
Once you’ve got a solid SEO strategy in place, you’ll want to know if it’s helping to bring you more organic traffic. This is where analytical tools come into play.
If you care about making page 1 on Google search results, it’s best to stick to Google Analytics which uses all of its own data.
Other analytical tools usually just piggyback off Google’s data anyway, so you may as well use Google Analytics which is both free and accurate – a win-win situation.
Google Analytics tracks every minute piece of data related to your site’s visitors and traffic. Uncover keyword insights to find which search terms people use to land on your page so you know which elements of your keyword strategy are working.
Carrying out a successful and thorough SEO strategy is challenging if not impossible without performing regular analysis of your site. To stay ahead of the curve and competition, use Google Analytics to help you formulate a successful SEO strategy.
Alternatives: Matomo, FoxMetrics
4. Google Data Studio
Find Google Analytics and its vast data overwhelming? Google Data Studio is a free data visualisation tool which presents the data in visual, easy to read reports, and dashboards to help you interpret all the relevant information correctly.
View graphics like colour-coded maps showing the top countries by sessions or graphs to show you how site sessions are trending.
It integrates with other SEO tools from Google, such as Google Search Console to ensure your reports are as detailed as possible.
5. Google Keyword Planner
When it comes to putting together a strong keyword strategy, you’ll need a clear idea of some essential stats to guide your strategy.
While Google Adwords Keyword Planner was originally designed for PPC, it’s still an excellent Google SEO tool for harnessing keyword data for increasing your organic traffic.
Enter a seed keyword and find out the monthly search volume, competition and up to 300 suggested keywords. Using these metrics, you’ll quickly find out which keywords are better to include and which you can leave out.
It’s also easy to export and save data so you can easily refer back to the keywords when you’re planning your content strategy.
While this Google SEO tool provides plenty of essential keyword metrics, don’t confuse it with being the best or most varied keyword generator. You’ll be better off with more specific keyword research tools.
6. Google My Business
Google My Business is a pretty essential SEO tool if you run a local business with area-specific services or products.
This Google SEO tool allows you to claim your business on Google Maps so potential customers can easily find and locate your business.
Once you’ve claimed your business and it’s appearing on Google Maps, you can add photos and offers to your profile to draw in your target audience.
Google My Business basically gives you control over how you want your business to appear in its listing after appearing in a search.
The set up also allows you to add multiple ways for potential customers to contact you by messaging or calling your business directly.
Relevant statistics give you an accurate indication of how your customers connect with the business. View the total number of searches for your business, the number of calls and how many views your business received.
7. Google Alerts
Want to know any time someone mentions you or your business online? Or do you want to spy on your competitors’ mentions?
Google Alerts is a pretty simple tool to use. Anytime there’s a mention of the exact phrase you want alerts for, Google sends you an alert via email.
While it’s nice to know when you or your business receive a mention, it’s actually essential information when it comes to identifying link building opportunities, or potential brand collaborations. You can use your competitors’ mentions to help guide your strategy.
Alternatives: Mention, Ahrefs Alerts
8. Tag Manager
Waiting around for website updates and long development timelines is undoubtedly frustrating.
Google Tag Manager is a tool that allows you to easily update measurement codes and related code fragments known as tags on your website or app meaning you don’t need to rely on a web developer to do it for you which will ultimately save you time and your marketing budget.
As a more advanced technical Google SEO tool, it can take some time to get your head around some of the concepts. However, once code is installed on your site, you can then edit lots of the common marketing tags without further code updates.
9. Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Having a mobile optimised site is essential for ensuring you reach more customers quickly. A clear, easy to use and mobile-friendly site will ensure your site looks up to date and relevant. If your site is easy to navigate on a smartphone, it will increase customer satisfaction resulting in higher traffic and more conversions.
This tool tests how easily a user can access and navigate your site’s pages from a mobile device. One essential step is to ensure all web pages look good in a vertical format. There should also be larger CTA buttons so that users can take the action they want to without clicking elsewhere by accident.
These aesthetic and navigation issues are all features the platform will analyse to ensure your users are having the best possible mobile experience.
It will also dive deep into technical issues like text that’s too small or plugins that don’t work to ensure your whole site is compatible with a mobile browser.
10. Google Trends
Google Trends is a useful tool for comparing popular search terms over a given time.
View whether a trend is increasing or declining in popularity. This data is especially useful for showing seasonal variations in search popularity.
If you’re in eCommerce or shipping this can be helpful for understanding the seasonal popularity of items. For example, if you sell sunglasses, you’ll be able to see during which months there’s a spike in popularity and when in others there’s a dip.
You can also use this data to inform when you might want to revamp old content that needs a refresh or when you want to increase your output of original content around seasonal trends.
Having access to this data is key for planning when you might want to run PPC, invest more in your SEO strategy or spend time planning your content strategy.
best seo tools for beginners
You can never see too many lists of free tools if you’re just starting out in SEO. Tools are crucial to practicing SEO and grasping a better understanding of how the industry works, but many of them are very expensive. As a beginner, it is not necessary to start by buying a tool that costs a lot of money. Once you know what you’re looking for and know what you’re doing, then you can move on to something advanced. For now, the free SEO tools out there will absolutely get the job done. In fact, many are surprised at just how many quality tools SEO professionals give out for free. Below are some of the top choices for beginners:
- Google Analytics. A great tool to get you started. Even the most advanced professional who make SEO a full-time job are using Google Analytics. It might be confusing at first, but it will help any beginner get a sense of what is measured (website traffic, conversions, audience, etc.) and therefore what is important.
- AdWords Keyword Tool. Completing keyword research is an incredibly important aspect of SEO (you have to know what and where to optimize, after all). This tool will show you the competition, global monthly searches, and local monthly searches for every keyword you try. Even the most advanced SEO professionals turn to this tool for their research.
- Open Site Explorer. This tool will help you find link opportunities through competitor backlink research. The tool comes from SEOmoz and helps you determine if you can earn the same links that your competitors have earned (not to mention do a little bit of snooping).
- SEO by Yoast. This is my favorite SEO plugin to install on a website. It helps walk you through the different steps of SEO to make sure that you’re optimizing each and every webpage. This works best when you’re focusing on optimizing the content on your website.
- PageRank Status. You can download a free browser extension to help you see the PageRank of every webpage you visit. This will help beginners get a sense of where the website ranks on Google (it doesn’t always mean that one website is better quality than another, but it does mean it is more established). This is a great way to find authoritative link building opportunities. You can see SEO stats, site info, page info and page speed all by just clicking on the plugin.
- Google Webmaster Tools. Every SEO professional has a Google Webmaster Tools account, so the sooner beginners get on board, the better. The tool allows you to monitor the indexing of your website, keyword clicks, sitemaps, and lists of links (external as well as internal) to you site.
- Bing Webmaster Tools. You can’t forget that Bing is still the number three search engine out there, so optimizing for it is important even if you’re a beginner. Bing has a few different features than Google Webmaster Tools, but for the most part it serves the same purpose—giving you insight as to the number of clicks, links, indexing, etc.
Conclusion
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