The practice of search engine optimization (SEO) goes back more than 2 decades. Even in those early days, tools emerged that sought to make it easier for website owners to get their pages ranking higher up search engine results pages (SERPs). Liam Ridings a SEO expert advises that the world of SEO has come a long way from those early years. The tools available today are not only much greater in number but also far more sophisticated.
2020 is well underway but it’s never too late to take a step back and think about the tools that seem best positioned to help you realize your SEO objectives. Here’s a look at the 3 seo tools that should be high up your priority list. Some are new while others have been around for a while. Some are popular and others are lesser-known. What brings them together though is their ability to breathe life into your SEO strategy. There are certainly other fairly decent SEO solutions apart from these 3 so for a long list of tools, visit this full SEO management tool article.
1. Ahrefs
No surprises here that this is the first tool covered. For years, Ahrefs has been the go-to solution for SEOs and given them an edge over their rivals in the contest for SEO clients. It’s staying power is a demonstration that it delivers tangible results when wielded correctly.
Ahrefs started off as a backlink checker but has evolved into a comprehensive suite catering for almost every major search optimization need. It maintains one of the largest indexes on the Internet with over 12 trillion backlinks and more than 6 billion pages crawled every day.
Run an in-depth analysis of the competition, identify the keywords most used by your audience, and find the type of content best suited for your audience. Get insights into your competitor’s backlink profile, PPC campaigns, and organic traffic. Use the Rank Tracker to monitor your website’s position in organic search and the progress made over time.
For all its strengths Ahrefs is not without drawbacks. One of the main ones is that the user interface could probably be more intuitive.
2. Linkio
Given Linkio’s capabilities, it’s surprising that this tool isn’t more widely known. It’s an off-page SEO solution that is packed with a wide range of features. These include backlink monitoring, link analysis, anchor text recommendations, and rank tracking.
It all starts with you adding your preferred keywords to the rank tracker. Linkio extracts the backlinks from your page, analyzes them, and develops a baseline. Next, it picks the top 10 results on Google SERPs for your keyword and breaks down their backlink data. With this information, you will be presented with an overview of how well your backlinks stack up against the competition and what types of anchors you need to outcompete them.
3. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO has become synonymous with search optimization on WordPress. Little wonder that it’s the most popular plugin on the platform. Yoast SEO aggregates many of the parameters used to determine whether a web page is search engine-aware and reader-friendly. These include keyword density, meta description, internal/external linking, images, sentence length, and active language.
It’s remarkably easy to use for persons with no WordPress background. Any problems with a page’s SEO are itemized. SEO elements that the page satisfies are color-coded green whereas problems are tagged in red or orange depending on severity. You can see the exact section of the page where the problems are and easily resolve them one by one. It’s difficult to go wrong with Yoast SEO when looking to optimize WordPress pages. Still, you may want to install one or more SEO WordPress plugins in case you want to be sure the Yoast analysis of your page hasn’t missed out on anything important.
SEO success greatly depends on the strategy. Yet, the strategy is only as good as your ability to execute it to the letter. These 3 tools will be a formidable weapon for SEOs through 2020 as they execute their SEO strategy.