The 8 Best SEO Tools for Increasing Blog Traffic

The road to SEO success is long and winding. There are a plethora of tools available to assist you, but going through them to find the finest SEO tools is a trip in and of itself. How many do you require, and which are the most time-consuming?

A simple Google search for “best SEO tools” will provide numerous articles, each with far too many options…

People who really use the technologies have relatively little personal experience with them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of reading tens of thousands of articles that explain me WHAT something is or does, but their “expertise” ends there.

They don’t explain why they like it, what their experience with it has been, or why they think it’s superior than the other options available.

Let me just add that, even with our more advanced SEO expertise and experience, sifting through those pages of SEO tools and descriptions was mind-numbing.

While we have our preferred SEO tools on this list, I wanted to make sure I included any additional tools that I thought you could find useful and relevant.

So, on that note, I’m going to share with you:

Our best SEO tools – all of which we currently use or have used in the past,
why we love them,
and what you can get from them.

But first, let’s review why you need SEO tools in the first place, what they do, and how they might help you make more money blogging. When you’re sorting through the list of tools below, this should help you see things more clearly.

Table of Contents

1 What Do SEO Tools Do and Why Do I Need Them?
2 Free vs. Paid SEO Tools
3 The 8 Best SEO Tools for Bloggers:
4 Conclusion

What Do SEO Tools Do and Why Do I Need Them?

For bloggers or any web-based business that relies on driving visitors to their website, SEO tools are possibly the most valuable tools.

If you’ve had a website for even a few months, you’ve undoubtedly employed SEO tools without even recognizing it.

Any tool, application, or software that helps you rank higher in search engine results is an SEO tool, including

Keyword research and recommendations
Performance analytics
Website crawling
Search engine snippet previews
Article analysis
Comparative website recommendations
And more

In essence, SEO tools assist you in optimizing your content, resolving website difficulties, analyzing your performance, and even comparing your site to competitors’ sites to show you what works for other blogs, among other things.

Is it necessary to utilize SEO tools?

You don’t have to utilize SEO tools to write, technically…

However, you’ll be driving blindly.

There is a significant difference between providing material that you believe your audience wants and creating content that your audience is actively seeking.

And, speaking from personal experience, if you create a blog or website without taking SEO seriously from the start, you’ll just end up with extra work later on, as well as a delay in making more money.

We made a blunder with our website, and there are some issues you won’t be able to fix. It doesn’t mean you have to start with a certified, fail-safe SEO plan, but it does mean you shouldn’t neglect it entirely in favor of “worrying about it afterward.”

Free vs. Paid SEO Tools

There are numerous free SEO tools available, many of which are really valuable.

And, while I’m sure you’re anticipating the usual “you get what you pay for” spiel (you know how I am), there are some really amazing free SEO tools out there.

We utilize a number of free SEO tools on a regular basis and find that they are quite useful.

However, free tools will not cover all of your needs. If you want to progress at a respectable rate, you’ll need to improve some of your SEO tools at some point.

Some features that free platforms don’t offer (or can’t perform well) will be required.

The SEO tools that we pay for, on the other hand, are well worth the money because of the results we get from them.

However, we understand that many of you are undoubtedly on a restricted budget and must pick and choose which paid tools you use. You might not be able to afford a premium SEO tool right now, especially if you’re already paying for email services like ConvertKit, which should take priority if you can’t afford both.

So, if your budget doesn’t allow for SEO tool expenditure right now, stick to free products for the time being and add premium SEO tools as soon as you can.

The 8 Best SEO Tools for Bloggers:

1. Rank Math

Rank Math is an excellent free WordPress SEO plugin that assigns a score to your articles to show you how well you’ve optimized your content for search engines.

Simply enter your article’s keyword, and RankMath will provide tweaks and suggestions to help you enhance your article’s SEO.

Even if you don’t utilize any of the other SEO tools on our list, do yourself a favor and at the very least use RankMath. Even if you don’t want to delve into more advanced SEO methods, it’s crucial to know the basics.

YoastSEO, which we used for years before moving to RankMath, is the greatest competitor to RankMath. When it comes to knowing some of the SEO basics for your articles, I still prefer YoastSEO’s assistance articles, but RankMath, in my opinion, is a superior plugin with more functionality.

There is a paid edition of RankMath, but the free version provides everything you need.

Cost: Free
Type: WordPress Plugin
Purpose: Basic score-based SEO screening and analysis for posts and pages
Important Features:
- Score-based and color-coded ranking of your post’s or page’s SEO score
- SEO checklists for:
  - Basic SEO (like keywords and article length)
  - Additional SEO (like keyword density and DoFollow links)
  - Title Readability (including sentiment and power words)
  - Content Readability (including paragraph length and images)

Download RankMath and make sure you can get your posts to score above 90% for SEO optimization.

2. Ahrefs

We love Ahrefs, and we utilize it on a weekly basis at the very least.

Now, I don’t like jumping from a free tool to a much more expensive tool so rapidly, but if I’m going in order based on the greatest tools that we personally use, Ahrefs has to be next.

This full SEO program is obviously on the pricey side, but we absolutely get our money back many times over with it.

Ahrefs is marketed as an all-in-one SEO tool, and it does a lot (all features are mentioned below), but the keyword research and site audit functions are where the bread and butter is for us.

We’ll go through some of those capabilities in greater depth later, but first, keep in mind that this isn’t a tool you’ll need right away if you’re just getting started with your website.

There are probably more critical expenditures to make in the beginning, but Ahrefs will be required whenever you decide to become serious about SEO.

Because the information it provides is highly valuable and it’s also pretty much an industry standard, Ahrefs is frequently the tool that’s demonstrated when you seek up SEO lessons or take an online course.

Cost: Paid, starting at $99/month
Type: Online software (with a new WordPress plugin)
Purpose: Comprehensive SEO tool
Important Features:
- Site audit tool (analyzes your website & makes recommendations for improvement)
- Competitor site analysis (analyzes competitor sites & shares what’s working for them)
- Keyword research (including how competitive a keyword is)
- Search engine ranking
- Review & compare competitor websites
- Website crawling
- Site audit tool

3. Google SEO Tools

Google provides some of the most effective SEO tools available, and the greatest part is that they are all free.

Google wants to assist you in producing high-quality content because it is this that keeps users on pages longer and allows them to earn more money through paid advertisements.

As a result, Google gives content creators with some fantastic, useful, and free tools to help them build their audiences.

Cost: They’re all free!
Type: Online software
Purpose: Multiple SEO tools
Important Features:
- Performance monitoring
- Website analytics
- Trend tracking
- Page speed tests
- Mobile performance tests

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is comparable to Google Search Console, but it concentrates on traffic-related analytics, such as your top pages, top-ranking keywords, and any other relevant traffic statistics you want to study.

Because the statistics tools unique to the social media sites aren’t always totally accurate or dependable, we utilize Google Analytics to track our social media traffic.

(*ahem* looking at you, Pinterest Analytics!).

Google Page Speed Insights

For Google SEO, page speed is really crucial. Your bounce rate will be too high if your website is too slow, and people will abandon it. Your pages will be overlooked and relegated to the bottom of Google’s search results. RIP.

The Google Page Speed Insights tool will show you how your website performs in all parameters for visitors.

It will provide you with information about your website’s speed as well as any other developmental issues. It also displays all of this data for your website’s desktop and mobile editions.

4. SurferSEO

Surfer SEO is a fantastic tool. A good boxer possesses more than just a right hook. They usually have one or two punches that they excel in. They have a powerful jab and a vicious hook that complement one other.

This is similar to how we view Surfer SEO and Ahrefs.

Ahrefs provides you with all of the foundational materials you’ll need to get started, plan things out, and execute your strategy. Surfer SEO, on the other hand, helps you to double-check your work.

NO ONE understands the EXACT formula or algorithm Google employs to determine whether or not a piece of content should be ranked.

Surfer SEO, on the other hand, dissects everything it COULD be.

It shows how many times a term is mentioned in an article, how many backlinks it has, how lengthy the title is, how quickly the page loads, and so much more.

It can be nearly TOO powerful at times.

However, it enables you to understand where your content may be falling short, allowing you to alter and make improvements as needed. It also significantly boosts the likelihood of your content reaching the top dog for a term.

Cost: Paid, starting at $49/month
Type: Online software
Purpose: Analyze & compare articles
Important Features:
- Analyze your content
- Compare your content with data/info from top-ranking posts

5. CanIRank

We’ll keep it short and sweet this time! CanIRank is a super-detailed keyword research tool that tells you whether or not you can rank for a specific keyword. It even gives tips on how to rank for certain keywords.

It’s a terrific alternative for beginners who don’t want to invest in a professional SEO tool but still want to make sure they’re targeting keywords with a probability of ranking.

We used to utilize a different free keyword research tool called Keywords Everywhere, however, they recently altered their program and we don’t like what they’ve done with it.

The free version of CanIRank is somewhat limited (you only get 5 keywords), but it is free, and it delivers extremely useful information!

You don’t have to switch if you already have a favorite free keyword research tool–but you might want to give CanIRank a shot for the extra data.

Cost: Limited free option, with paid upgrade starting at $49/month
Type: Online software
Purpose: Keyword research, including difficulty or ability to rank

6. Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is an intriguing SEO tool since it focuses on new and emerging topics as well as rising interest in them.

It’s a relatively new tool that’s quickly gaining traction as a viable alternative to Google Trends.

You can capture an opportunity BEFORE it strikes large and rides the trend up as it becomes more popular by selecting themes that are gaining in interest (“explode”) but haven’t necessarily gotten oversaturated yet.

This allows you to enter when the competition is minimal, yet with the possibility of significant growth and popularity over time.

We are only now beginning to use this tool because it is so new and we only recently discovered it.

But, with that stated, we LOVE Exploding Topics and believe it has a lot of potential as an SEO tool for new bloggers, especially when it comes to identifying or narrowing down a specialty.

When it comes to producing material on social media, it’s extremely vital to be able to catch a wave before it crests, and Exploding Topics gives you the foresight you need to do so.

Cost: Free, with paid upgrade option
Type: Online software
Purpose: Discover trends early, before they peak
Important Features:
- Search by niche
- Filter by length of time since topic began to trend
- Topics designated as
  - Exploding,
  - Regular, or
  - Already Peaked

7. Moz

Moz is reasonably priced and offers similar functionality to Ahrefs, including as site audits, rank tracking, and backlink analysis.

The Moz Bar (or Moz Pro Bar if you have their premium upgrade) is a Google Chrome extension that shows you the top SEO metrics for any website or search result as you explore the web.

This type of information is quite useful, especially when researching competition websites in your niche.

8. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is one of Ahrefs’ largest competitors, and they’ve come a long way since its inception in the SEO world.

Although it isn’t quite as thorough and in-depth as Ahrefs, it does provide a restricted free version and some of the subscription plans are more inexpensive. If you’re simply getting your feet wet before committing to a more pricey and robust software like Ahrefs, it might be a better option.

Conclusion

We can guide you in the direction of the greatest SEO tools, but no tool can help you if you don’t understand why you’re using them, when to use them, or how to apply the information they give.

The most effective SEO tool of all is information, at the risk of sounding like your dull high school teacher.

If you truly want to increase your rankings, the first step is to educate yourself about SEO.