Seo Tools Comparison Chart

SEO tools are so important to the success of your website. They help you monitor your site’s performance, diagnose problems and find solutions, and make changes to improve your ranking in search results.

But it’s hard to know which one is right for you! That’s why we’ve put together this handy comparison chart of popular SEO tools. We’ll highlight their pros and cons, so you can find the one that works best for your site.

Seo Tools Comparison Chart

Over the past 12 years, we’ve analyzed nearly every SEO tool on the market, evaluating them for feature richness, ease of use, quality of reporting, customer support, and frequency of updates.

In the following report, we’ve tried to accurately represent the sum total of the compliments, complaints, and real-world usage habits of the 150+ marketing organizations we’ve consulted with. We evaluate each available SEO tool by:

• Comparing the completeness of their feature set, and whether they include keyword research, rank tracking, competitor analysis, backlink tracking, visitor behavior analysis, and automated reporting.
• Ranking each SEO tool based on pricing, feature richness, ease of use, reporting automation, customer support, and update and maintenance frequency
• Providing a brief explanation of our thoughts on each platform

Top SEO Tools: Feature Comparison

The following table compares each SEO tool’s performance for the six expected features of an SEO tool:

1. Keyword research: Identifying and suggesting relevant keywords.
2. Rankings: Tracking the position of webpages on Google’s search results (SERPs).
3. Competitor analysis: Researching and evaluating competitor websites and competition for each keyword.
4. Backlink tracking: Identifying and analyzing external backlinks.
5. Visitor behavior analysis: Performing quantitative and qualitative research on the behavior of website users, including tracking user behavior throughout a website journey to identify experience breakdowns.
6. Automated reporting: The ability to track relevant SEO KPIs in a single report.

SEO Tool Feature Comparison

The Top SEO Tools, Ranked

The following table includes ratings for SEO tool (from 1 to 5) on core requirements, with 5 being outstanding, and 1 being nonexistent. Our rating on the overall value of the tool is based on its score across each category when compared to its price.

The Top SEO Tools, Ranked

*Entry tier, per user

Summary of Each SEO Tool

Below, we discuss each tool in more detail, giving our opinions on their features, accuracy, and overall value.

Google Analytics & Search Console

Google Analytics and Google Search Console are two separate tools, but we’ve given them their own category as they work best in tandem. They share two advantages over other tools. The first is their cost, or rather, their lack of a cost. The second is that as Google’s own offerings, you can be assured that they provide the most up to date information possible, and it is the only tool that can provide you with an accurate clickthrough rate.

These two tools differ in their utility, with Search Console focusing almost entirely on SERPs and related metrics, while Google Analytics is directed toward visitor behavior after a user has clicked through onto your site. Together, they paint a detailed picture of your website’s performance and help you understand more about your users. Where both Search Console and Google Analytics suffer, however, is the lack of keyword research function and their UX, which are less intuitive for new users than other platforms. The backlink analysis features of Search Console are also less robust than those of its competitors.

• Price: Free
• Top Feature: Tracking CTRs
• Best for: Everyone, when used in conjunction with another tool for detailed analysis.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs‘s original function was analyzing a website’s backlinks but in the years since its creation, it has expanded its features to include a broader scope of applications for monitoring overall SEO health. Its robust backlink checking solution is still a highlight, but its ability to analyze competitor search traffic is equally powerful. Its UX is also straightforward, but the complex featureset results in a steeper learning curve than other paid tools.

Another notable downside of ahrefs is its cost. The $99 monthly fee for the entry tier allows you to access the basic features, but features such as historical backlink and ranking data, interactive position history charts, and more advanced competitor analysis all require paying for the $199 tier.

• Price: $99/month per user for Lite
• Top Feature: Site Explorer
• Best for: Experienced marketers who can make use of the advanced features.

Moz Pro

Moz Pro is an SEO toolkit that includes keyword research, backlink analysis, site audits, and on-page optimization. It combines the measurement-focused capabilities of Moz’s older tools (such as Moz Analytics) with additional features aimed toward providing directly actionable insights, such as website auditing. Its UX is straightforward, and we rank it highly for Ease of Use.

Where Moz falls short is in the quality of its data and analysis. It tends to be less accurate than ahrefs, and provides fewer functions than SEMRush. It’s best for users newer to SEO and small businesses who want a general spread of functions.

• Price: $99/month per user for Standard
• Top Feature: Domain Authority
• Best for: Junior marketers and small businesses who need an full featured, easy-to-learn tool

SEMRush

SEMRush is often described as the swiss army knife of SEO tools, with a wide array of functions. Its backlink data is less complete than that of ahrefs, but it makes up for this with its other features. In particular, its “Domain Vs. Domain” feature is extremely useful, allowing businesses to compare their websites to competitors quickly. This tool also assists companies in comparing keywords and domains by producing analytics reports detailing website traffic, search data, and competitor performance. The On-Page SEO Checker also allows users to track rankings and provides suggestions for improving website performance.

• Price: $99/month per user
• Top Feature: Domain vs. Domain
• Best for: Companies who want to compare their SERPs with 2-3 specific competitors.

Mangools

With the exception of automated reporting, the Mangools suite of SEO tools offers the same basic functionality as ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush. Where it shines is KWFinder, which provides the most helpful keyword suggestions of any tool on this list. The Rank Tracker application also simplifies company rating and progress measuring, and companies can develop a robust list of new keyword suggestions to assist them in improving website rankings.

• Price: $49/month per user
• Top Feature: KWFinder
• Best for: Marketers primarily interested in finding new keywords

Serpstat

Serpstat provides a basic SEO toolset that includes competitor analysis, keyword research, backlink analysis, site auditing, and rank tracking. While its overall performance doesn’t rival its competitors, it’s more cost-friendly than other tools offering a similar level of feature richness. This makes it an attractive option for small businesses, but more experienced marketers should invest in a more powerful platform.

• Price: $69/month per user for Lite
• Top Feature: Batch Analysis
• Best for: Budget conscious companies who need a full featured toolset.

SpyFu

SpyFu‘s low subscription prices and free add-on features appear to make this SEO tool attractive for younger companies. Its featureset isn’t as rich as other tools on this list, however, making its primary draw the ability to track your competitors’ PPC spend. In other words, it’s best used as a PPC tool that happens to have some SEO functionality, as opposed to the entirely SEO-focused tools elsewhere on this list.

• Price: $39/month per user
• Top Feature: Competitive Intel
• Best for: PPC focused marketers who need a basic SEO tool.

cheap seo tools

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics can show you everything you need to know when it comes to your website’s data.

For example, Google Analytics can track every action you make on your website and show you how these actions affect traffic and conversions.

I highly recommend Google Analytics when it comes to tracking downloads, clicks, email signups, conversions, and keywords.

google page speed

2. Google PageSpeed

Did you know that page speed is a direct ranking factor? The faster your webpage loads, the better your ranks can be.

Google PageSpeed is a fantastic tool to measure your website speed on both mobile and desktop. It also suggests improvements based on Google Webmaster Guidelines.

google keyword planner

3. Google Keyword Planner

With the Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that you can use when you sign up for a Google Ads account, you can discover highly searched terms or easy-to-rank keywords.

Google can also give you suggested keywords based on your keywords. These suggested keywords also come with key metrics as well!

google search console

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) allows you to measure your website’s traffic, performance, and fix any issues when it comes to Google Search results.

For example, Google Search Console can use the Crawl Errors tool to find broken URLs that will show up negatively on Google.

It can also give you a complete breakdown of your backlink profile as well.

You can also see how your website is performing under Search Analytics. Here, you can track the total number of impressions in your SERPs, your average ranking position, and the click-through rate.

You can also find out which page is ranking for which keywords as well.

While Google Search Console is not exactly an SEO tool, the data from Google Search Console, can help you make better-informed decisions.

SEO PowerSuite

5. SEO PowerSuite

The SEO PowerSuite is an all-in-one SEO software that covers every step in an SEO campaign. While the SEO PowerSuite has a paid version, the free version remains one of the most effective SEO site suites available.

With the SEO Powersuite (Free Version), you can:

Track keyword searches, improve your rankings, & steal traffic from your competitors
Perform SEO audits & optimize your site
Discover over 100k competitor backlinks & construct your link building strategy
Manage your links, build new partnerships, & find guest blogging opportunities

screamingfrog

6. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a fantastic website crawler that analyses and audits on-site SEO for you (or your competitor’s) site URL.

Here, you can find broken links, errors, and redirects, analyze page titles and metadata, review meta robots and directives, discover duplicate pages, and generate XML sitemaps.

While the Screaming Frog has both paid and free versions, the free version is available for up to 500 URLs.

gtmetrix

7. GTmetrix

If you’re keen to boost your page’s speed, you should try GTmetrix. GTmetrix is a Page Speed tool that gives you more in-depth and thorough information about your site’s speed than Google Page Speed Insights.

GTmetrix gives you an overall site speed score, with a breakdown of what’s good and bad about your site.

GTmetrix also ranks your site speed problems in order of priority. The ranking system can help you can focus on the most important page speed factors first.

Furthermore, GTmetrix also explains problems in detail by outlining why, what, and how you can fix the problem.

While GTmetrix has both paid and free versions, the free version lets you monitor up to 3 URLs and save up to 20 URLs.

Ubersuggest

8. Ubersuggest

Knowing which keywords are the best for your site is hard. But Ubersuggest is a handy little tool. Ubersuggest is a free keyword tool that can give you suggestions based on keyword ideas.

For example, if you want to rank for an article in the travel niche on Berlin Walking tours, you can hop on Ubersuggest, select the country and database you want to rank in and type in a keyword.

Ubersuggest will give you a list of alternate keywords people search for around the keyword you entered. Here, you can view search by toggling volume, cost per click, and competition for each result.

It’s a great way to build up a list of keywords for your website.

Check My Links

9. Check My Links

Did you know that broken links can hurt your SEO? Instead of manually checking your links, you can use Check My Links to crawl your entire site to find broken links.

This way, you can quickly identify and repair these broken links and improve your SEO almost immediately.

For example, Check My Links will highlight valid links in green.

It’ll list warning links in yellow, and broken links you need to fix, in red.

openlinkprofiler

10. Open Link Profiler

One of the best ways to boost your SEO is to build links. With Open Link Profiler’s browser, you gain incredible data about your backlink profile. All you need to do is go to their website and enter your URL.

You’ll then gain access to your Backlink Profile.

You can also access a list that breaks down all the links to your website. You can access their quality and see where the link is from.

You can export up to 1000 links from OpenLinkProfiler for free.

ahrefs

11. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most expensive tools in the market. Ahref’s Lite plan begins at $99 per month, while the most popular standard plan is $179 per month.

Thankfully, Ahrefs offers a $7 for 7 days trial for both the Lite and Standard Option.

12. SEMRush

SEMRush is another popular, premium, and well-known SEO tool. SEMRush’s Pro plan is $99.95 per month, while the most popular Guru option is $199.95 per month.

With SEMRush, you can sign up for a 7-day free trial for both the Pro and Guru plans.

I personally use SEMRush to find out what my competitors are doing so I can replicate their successes with my site.

Although premium SEO tools are expensive, most tools offer a free trial or a discounted sign-up rate. While they offer a limited time-frame (e.g 7 days, 2 weeks, or 1 month), you can plan what you need from these tools in advance so you can use the trial period effectively.

You don’t always have to use expensive SEO tools to rank well.

This group of free SEO tools is a great place to start.

They can help you audit your site, improve site speed, analyze data, improve ranks, fix broken links, and assist with other digital marketing efforts. Plus, they’re pretty easy to learn and use.

What are you waiting for?

Get started today!

ebook cta

Editor’s Note: The article is part of the blog series Grow Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.

Conclusion

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