Are SEO Tools Worth It?

Whether you’re a start-up or an established company with a well-oiled site SEO should be part of a digital marketing strategy for all types of businesses. 

Making sure that your valued customers can easily find you in the search engine results pages is vital to a well-performing website. If you’re finding that your website is attracting very little or no traffic then chances are your customers are struggling to find you in the sea of your competitors. 

Knowing which services and tools to use can be tricky, especially if it's going to eat into your precious budget and even profits. Any size business should be aware of where their hard-earned cash is going, so splashing out on paid tools may be the least of your worries.  

Some questions to ask yourself when looking into SEO tools are;

What problem am I trying to solve?

Is the cost worth it?

Do I need a subscription to the service?

What are the main features I’m looking for? Eg, analysis, crawling, error checker, competitor analysis.

So, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best SEO tools that will go a long way with helping you in your quest of SEO. 

Google Search Console

If your mind boggles at the mention of SEO Google Search Console is an excellent free service to use no matter the size of your website. At a glance, you can assess and monitor the performance of your site and ensure that it is Google-friendly. Search Console also allows you to identify issues that may be negatively impacting your site's performance, like Google being unable to index parts of your site.

As a tool, Search Console can allow users to see their site through Google's eyes and point you in the way of optimising your site for the better.

Google Keyword Planner

If you’re looking for more traffic from Google, then the best place to start is their keyword planner tool. 

Use the keyword tool to see what your customers are searching for and make sure your content is up to scratch to solve their queries. Enter keywords, phrases, questions or even a URL and the tool will offer suggestions. This feature also shows you an estimate of the number of people who are searching for this term, giving you a great idea of whether it is worth targeting at all.

Already got an idea? Google Keyword Planner will also give you a performance forecast for up to 30 days for an entered keyword.

SEMRush

Using SEMRush can really save you some precious time when trying to analyse your site. The tool allows you to gain fast insights into how a search engine will view your site, therefore, helping you optimise your site for SEO best practices.   

You can use SEMRush to identify issues such as pages which are redirecting, duplicate content including metadata and if there are any advances which could be made with your link-building strategy.   

SEMRush offer both a free and a version you can pay for, so you can select the right option for your business. 

Answer The Public

SEO is not only about optimising your website for search engines, but it’s also about improving user experience too. So when a customer does land on a page of your website, make sure that they’ll be pleased with what they see. Creating useful and interesting blog content around topics that your customers are searching for can be a great way of attracting the right audience. 

Answer The Public allows you to easily pick out the perfect topics to write about for your sites’ blog. No matter how niche your industry there are questions and comparisons.

Searching for a simple word such as ‘dog’ which relates to your industry can return hundreds of potential keywords, queries or questions which your customers are searching for. The possibilities to create both landing page and blog content is endless!

Google Trends

Google Trends allows you to access information about any search term which you enter. It can give you a really useful insight into the trends around your chosen industry which can help massively when planning content or pushing certain products.

This tool allows you to see the rise and fall in popularity of keywords depending on months and seasonality.

This SEO tool may also introduce you to search terms and queries which you may not have considered or even thought about. So as well as being an insightful tool, it is invaluable in terms of research and helping your business stay in touch with the industry and worldwide trends.

Specialist SEO teams will be experts in the tools mentioned, and will even have those premium subscriptions which may be putting you off. This can be a great way of investing money into one service, rather than ten different subscription plans for tools. 

However, ensuring that you have a base of knowledge of the tools mentioned will keep you clued up on how SEO can and may already be in practice for your business’s site. 

If you need any further help or advice regarding SEO and how it can work for your business, get in touch with our team here at Calm Digital.