10 Best SEO Tools to Use in 2023

SEO tools are incredibly important to the success of your content marketing, the growth of your website, and to help you achieve your SEO KPIs. The good news is there are many SEO tools available for you to use – many of which are free.

In this article, we will discuss the 10 best SEO tools available and how you can use each one of them.

What is an SEO tool?

SEO tools are online tools that help you to enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. SEO tools help to provide you with data so that you can get your website and its content to rank high in search results.  

SEO tools can help you with many different tasks, such as keyword research, analytics, link building, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

Why use SEO tools?

Proper use of SEO tools will help increase your search engine positioning. When you don’t use SEO tools you are essentially just guessing what keywords to target and what content topics to write about. This makes getting your content to rank high much harder and it will be less effective.

When you use SEO tools correctly, they will help you understand what your potential customers are searching for and the type of content they want. This will help you save lots of time and maximize every dollar you spend on content marketing. 

10 best SEO tools online

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a set of SEO tools you can use for maximizing backlinks and doing SEO analysis. Ahrefs have the largest database of live links, an enormous index, and the quickest index updates out of the main SEO tools available. The company consistently works to improve its algorithms to provide marketers with the most up-to-date data available.

Ahrefs offers a package of SEO tools, including:

• Site Explorer – this helps you analyze a website’s backlinks, and a website’s top pages and keywords. It will then give you ways to improve them.
• Content Explorer – allows you to see which content is being shared the most.
• Keyword Explorer – this tool is used for generating keyword ideas, competitiveness, and traffic estimations.
• Rank Tracker – this helps you understand the difference between desktop and mobile rankings based on specific locations.
• Site Audit – is an audit tool that helps you understand various technical issues about your site and how you can fix them.

Ahrefs is a great SEO tool. It is our preferred tool at Writing Studio as it helps us to provide our clients with the best SEO copywriting services possible.

2. Semrush

Semrush is an ‘all-in-one’ SEO suite of tools to help you with every aspect of SEO and to give you actionable marketing insights. Their collection of tools help marketers with SEO, PPC, SMM, keyword research, content marketing, campaign management, and much more.

To use Semrush you go to their website and create an account. Once you create your account you will have access to their main tools which are divided up into five primary categories: competitive research, keyword research, link building, rank tracking, and on-page SEO. Using these tools will take a bit of time to learn but once you know what you’re doing they are very powerful and will help you improve your SEO efforts.

Semrush is a great overall SEO tool that is used by top marketers all over the world. It is a cost-effective tool for teams to use and provides a lot of functionality for the price. However, if you are an individual writer or marketer there are probably better options for you to consider.

3. Moz

Moz is an SEO company that was founded in 2004 and provides marketers with various SEO tools. Moz offers a pro version of their product that gives you a set of powerful tools to manage your SEO campaigns. It is a particularly good tool to use alongside Google Analytics.

To use Moz Pro you go to their website and sign up for a free trial. Once you create your account you will have access to SEO tools to help you to do a site audit, track the performance of your website and content, do keyword research, and analyze your backlinks.

Moz will then give you useful advice and information that you can use to boost your site rankings and the performance of your content. Overall, it is a good choice if you are looking for an in-depth SEO tool and it is also reasonably priced.

4. Screaming Frog

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an advanced SEO site audit tool that can be used to crawl small and large websites. When you use the Screaming Frog SEO Spider you can crawl all of your website pages in one action as opposed to having to manually crawl each individual page which is very time-consuming.

When you run an audit, you will be given detailed reports of things like broken links, analysis of your page titles and metadata, and a visualization of your website’s architecture. You can then use this information to improve your SEO. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a particularly good tool to use in conjunction with the free Google tools on this list.

5. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a free SEO tool. To use GKP you need to log in using your Google Account (you’ll have to create a Google account if you don’t already). Once logged in you can then set up an ad campaign and this allows you to do keyword research to discover new keywords to target and the search volume for each of the keywords.

GKP is a simple tool to use but it is designed primarily for researching keywords for running PPC campaigns and not for SEO. However, you only need to set up a campaign, you don’t have to pay for it to use the keyword research tools.

Overall GKP is a simple to use tool that doesn’t require much if any training to use and carry out keyword research for your SEO campaigns. However, if you require more functionality and want to do more in-depth keyword research there are better options for you on this list.

6. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that lets you monitor and get detailed reports on the performance of your website – specifically how well it is performing in search results.

To use the service, you need to insert a small snippet of code into your website or you can submit your website’s sitemap through Google Analytics. Once you’ve set your website up with it you’ll be able to get detailed information about your website so that you can start to optimize your website and content to perform better in search results.

The main benefit of using Google Search Console is that it is free and it is especially good for a new website to more quickly get its pages showing up in Google searches.

7. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool from Google that lets you find out the popularity (search volume) of various search phrases and keywords. Using the service is very easy. You simply go to the Google Trends website and enter in a search term (or numerous different ones) and you’ll be shown a graph of the interest in that search term over time.

The reason why this is a great SEO tool is that you can find out exactly what your potential customers are searching for and what terms are becoming more popular. You can write content that people who are searching for those terms are likely to want to read – resulting in more organic traffic to your website. The other main benefit of using Google Trends is that it is completely free!

8. Google Search

Probably the easiest SEO tool to use to research keywords and competing content is to simply do a Google search using various phrases and then see what ranks the highest.

You can then analyze the top results to get a good understanding of how good your content will have to be to compete with it. One good idea is to review 3 or 4 of the top results and then take the best parts of each content piece so you can create the best overall content to compete effectively. 

The main benefit of this approach to SEO is that it is completely free and doesn’t require learning how to use any new software. However, the downside is that it can be very time-consuming and you don’t get the benefits of using more “scientific” SEO tools that are on this list.

9. KWFinder

KWFinder is an SEO keyword tool that helps you find what is known as long-tail keywords. These keywords have less competition which means if you target them, you can rank high in search results and get lots of new organic traffic to your website.

To use this service you sign up on their website and then you can use tools like their ‘Rank Tracker’ tool to easily determine your current rankings and then track the improvements based on key metrics. You can also get lots of keywords that suggest that you can pass on to your content writers so they can write more targeted content.

Overall KWFinder is a great cost-effective tool – they even offer a free 10-day trial.

10. Answer the Public

Answer the Public is one of the most easy-to-use tools to find out what your potential readers/ customers are searching for online. To use their service, you go to their website and enter a search phrase. They will then give you an easy-to-understand visual list of all related searches to your query. For example, if you type in ‘pet food’ you can get a complete list of related search phrases divided into question types that search engine users have asked, for example: what pet food is popular? Why order pet food online? and where do I buy pet food? etc. They will also tell you the search volume of each phrase and keyword which is very useful when determining the best keywords to target.

The main benefits for SEO marketers are that you get deep insights into what your potential audience is searching for, it shows specific phrases to use if you want to get into Google’s featured snippets, and it’s a very easy-to-use keyword research tool.

The bottom line

There are many great SEO tools available for you to utilize to create the best SEO content strategy possible. The main consideration is how much you are prepared to pay. For example, if you have the budget for it you should consider using a more advanced tool like Aherfs or Semrush in combination with Google Search Console.

However, if you don’t have the budget, using the free suite of Google tools is probably the best option for you. Another option is to outsource SEO to a specialist or SEO company who know how to best use SEO tools to help your website grow.