10 of the best SEO tools for boosting your organic traffic in 2019
30 April 2019
30 April 2019
Let’s face it, whether your online business is an ecommerce behemoth or a small blog about your family pet, the likelihood is that most of your traffic will come via a search engine.
In 2019 around 93% of online experiences began with a search engine. That’s not a typo – 93% of the time we use the internet we do it through Google, Bing, Yahoo or another smaller search engine, yet there are still some who argue that optimising your website for search engines (SEO) is a pointless exercise which doesn’t yield results.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a marketing discipline which is centred around increasing visibility in organic search results, with the aim of increasing traffic and conversions for websites. There are a number of factors that Google and other search engines take into consideration when they rank web pages. These include how your website is technically structured to allow search engines to properly crawl its pages, as well as the on-page content which they then use to decide if your pages are relevant to each specific search query.
With Google’s search algorithm in a constant state of update, what’s important today may be obsolete tomorrow and that’s why it’s crucial to regularly monitor and review your site’s organic performance.
But how do you do this? Is there a magic switch you can flick which instantly shoots you to the top position on search engine results pages (SERPs)?
The easy answer is no – reviewing and carrying out SEO work can often be a tedious and thankless task – but one which will bring long-term success if done correctly.
That said, there are a number of SEO tools which should form part of every SEO professional’s armoury. We’ve compiled the following top 10 SEO tools which provide the most useful insights and indicators as to how your organic search performance is going.
What do you do when Google controls the most commonly used search engine around? Well, you listen to what Google tells you about your search performance.
That’s where Google Search Console comes in, and with a new shiny dashboard being fully rolled out in April 2019 it provides more information than ever on technical fixes and organic performance.
A regular health check on Search Console goes a long way to pinpointing where your search performance is going right and where it’s going wrong.
It says a lot about Google Analytics that some marketing experts have been harping on about its flaws for years – but no analytics platform has come close to offering what Google does on a consistent basis.
You need to track the organic traffic arriving on your site and how it engages with the various pages to gauge the quality of that traffic, and Google Analytics provides all the tools to do exactly that.
SEMRush is a bit of an allrounder when it comes to search engine marketing. It comes with a wide range of features such as a keyword research tool and SEO audit tools, as well as containing a range of competitor info.
While it’s not a free tool if you’re serious about digital marketing this is one you will find it hard to live without.
In terms of technical SEO, Screaming Frog SEO Spider will ensure you are well equipped to spot crawl errors and infrastructure problems which may be holding your site back from its full potential.
While a little bit clunky in its usability it’s as thorough as they come when it comes to data analysis, so it’s one for the SEO professionals who like to dive head first into the numbers.
A simple-to-use platform which provides high-level data on the key metrics you and your company would want to focus on to measure SEO performance.
Sistrix also has a great keyword gap feature, which allows you to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for where you are not.
Siteliner is a really useful online technical SEO tool which provides you with a tidy overview of some aspects of your site which affect performance.
It is particularly useful for detecting duplicate content, which is a major negative ranking signal for Google and other search engines if not dealt with correctly.
Wordpress user? If you haven’t head of Yoast SEO before you should probably go ahead and Google it and get a bit more info as it provides you with a wealth of actionable recommendations for SEO improvements.
It’s particularly good if you are writing content as it has a traffic light system for things like quality, readability and content structure so you can have a better idea of how to frame content for SEO.
Here at Loud Mouth Media, whether it be for our SEO, Paid Search or Display campaigns we have been through all the keyword research tools of the day. While we believe it is a lot to do with personal preference, Answer The Public is a little more unique in how it operates.
It pulls together a list of common questions asked by searchers alongside your normal keyword lists, which provides great ideas for blog post titles, as well as giving you an idea of the type of intent that searchers have.
This tool is a powerful piece of SEO kit for your browser, automatically analysing every page you land on without having to unearth the data for yourself.
Among the data SEOQuake pulls up includes organic research figures, keyword density, and information on how each search engine views the page.
Gaining and maintaining links is a big part of SEO in 2019. A link from a trusted and authoritative site is like a plus point to search engines that your site is also trusted and authoritative in that particular field.
Majestic is one of the top dogs when it comes to link analysis, and includes handy metrics like TrustFlow which give an approximate reading on how trustworthy Google views your pages.
Want to find out more about how improving your SEO can boost your business? Get in touch with Loud Mouth Media now to find out how we can help your organic rankings.