Site owners will usually use SEO (search engine optimization) auditing and monitoring tools to gather more info about the online presence of their website, comparing how their sites rank compared to others in their niche.
In essence, these tools can help site owners pinpoint possible weaknesses and strengths a lot easier, enabling site owners to improve their online rankings without all the guesswork and enabling them to seize different opportunities to improve their rankings.
There’s more or less a myriad of different free and premium SEO Checker tools which can help you with your site’s rankings, with different features, learning curves, and also affordability.
In this article, we’ve looked at some of the best tools there are and compared them from several aspects.
The Best Tools of 2022
In short, using these tools will help site owners to somewhat improve their presence on the world wide web. However, they only help indicate weak points and strengths on a website and won’t substitute the knowledge and the experience of a seasoned SEO specialist.
That being said, here are the best of the best.
Ahrefs
This all-inclusive tool has a simple-to-understand user interface, abundant learning resources, regular updates, different packages, and pricing plans.
In short, Ahrefs is among the most prominent to-go tool for most SEO experts. Considering that it’s one of the most comprehensive platforms out there, it’s still easy to use for beginners.
There are quite a few strong points to this tool, and specialists will most often mention the following:
- The site explorer shows how certain pages on your site perform.
- The keyword explorer displays specific keyword volumes and click-through rates every month.
- A great rank tracker that follows your rankings and compares overall site performance against others in your niche.
- The content explorer lets you indicate well-performing sites and pages under different topics and keywords.
- The site audit features help you pinpoint different technical weaknesses (duplicate meta tags, broken redirects, and so on).
- Regular self-updates
- It has a free webmaster tool for monitoring basic site health and other SEO issues, plus you can see how to rank for your targeted keywords.
All in all, Ahrefs is among the most comprehensive tools you can use as a site owner to improve your rankings and track how your competitors perform.
Still, for the absolute beginner, navigating through all the features can be a bit “too much,” even though other tools of this size tend to have an even steeper learning curve.
Premium prices might be a bit too steep for smaller businesses, and it might make more sense for them to hire an agency that uses the tool the get the most out of it.
SEMrush
This platform boasts more than 40 different intel features that help with backlink analytics, brand monitoring, and advertising research.
SEMrush also has:
- A great keyword gap tool that lets you know what keywords your competitors are targeting
- Customizable reports
- Domain history tracking features
- Integration with Google Analytics
Generally, SEMrush is among the more expensive tools, and there are quite a few other free tools that offer features that only come with premium SEMrush packages. Also, the tool can be rather difficult to learn for absolute beginners, mostly due to the platform, which isn’t really intuitive.
That being said, if you want to see what keywords your competitors are targeting and what SEO tactics they use, SEMrush could be a great tool.
For the most part, SEMrush is a great tool that can help you improve your rankings by keeping a closer eye on your competitors and their sites.
You can also get a better understanding of your site’s presence thanks to the comprehensive reporting and dashboard features.
Still, SEMrush’s most standout feature is the competitor analysis tool. Apart from that, there are a lot of great free or less expensive tools that have an easier learning curve with similar features.
Google Search Console
If you are already using other Google products, opting for this handy tool makes perfect sense.
Google Search Console is a free tool that:
- Can be Linked to Google Analytics
- Enables you to see your website in SERP-view
- It helps you remove the URLs you don’t want to be indexed
As said before, those site owners who are already using Google Trends, Google Ads, and
Google Analytics, this tool can be a great free bonus to complete the package.
The platform will send you automated alerts when it finds errors on your site and will et you look at key stats, like clicks per keyword, SERP showups, and keyword rankings, among others.
Giving you the opportunity to link to Google Analytics, you have even more metrics to track your site’s performance along with site visitor behavior.
Google Search Console also monitors your site for faulty titles, meta descriptions, site links, URLs and gives more insight into Google’s index and organic search.
Generally speaking, GSC is a handy tool that’s easy to connect to and essential since Google is the leading search engine.
It has quite a few great features that can help you get the competitive edge you’re looking for, and the platform’s free.
However, the interface isn’t really friendly and generally geared towards those who already have experience with SEO. That being said, some newcomers to the platform have a hard time improving their online presence and performance with Google Search Console.
SEO Analyzer
SEO Analyzer is the ideal monitoring/auditing tool if you are looking for something that’s:
- User-friendly
- It has an intuitive UI
- Free
- Giving you accurate results just like professional premium tools like Ahrefs.
Simply put, the SEO Analyzer is one of the best free tools for those who need a quick introduction to SEO and to fix the simplest mistakes.
The platform provides:
- Accurate reports
- Highlighting mistakes (broken links, bad redirects, duplicate meta tags)
- Site speed analysis
- Backlink examination
Overall, this is a great free tool that will give you a basic picture of your website’s SEO scor. It will help you identify issues and will even help you fix smaller ones.
You don’t have to worry about inbox spam because the platform doesn’t ask for your address.
However, you will have to deal with a lot of pop-ups while using the tool.
On the other hand, it has no content marketing, social media, and PPC features. That being said, if you are looking for something more robust, you will probably need something else. Still, it’s one of the best tools if you want to get a better idea of what SEO is and what to ask from your SEO agency after hiring them.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is a great premium tool that can help you with:
- Gathering more insight regarding traffic changes and different content trends
- More insight on visitor behavior
- Content strategy improvements
- Identifying opportunities for link building
- Tracking up to 3 competitors.
For those who are looking for a comprehensive tool that comes with its own training, Moz Pro can be one of the best fits on the market.
Also, you can opt between the standard and pro packages. Getting the first one can be an ideal first exposure to basic SEO with some of the simpler features and examples.
Things like on-page SEO audits, weekly ranking tracking, site issues, and other basic features can be great for a newcomer who wants to be helpful to their SEO specialists down at the agency.
Generally, the Moz Pro is a great and insightful tool that can help with keyword planning and with fixing simple SEO-related issues. However, even the standard package can prove to be overwhelming for newcomers, thanks to the in-depth analytics and intricate UI.
SEO Takes Time and Patience
While these handy tools are all great in their own right, you still need to be aware of the fact that SEO isn’t a fly-by-night process. Learning the ins and outs of search engine optimization and every aspect of it takes a lot of time and dedication. Not to mention, as search engines roll out new changes and as algorithms evolve, practices that worked today become futile tomorrow.
As a business owner, chances are, you will want to focus more on doing actual business than focusing on broken links and bad redirects. This is why hiring a reliable SEO agency is the best pro tip most seasoned entrepreneurs will give you if you ask them about the best SEO tools.
A group of experienced professionals can help you with creating the right content and keyword strategy for your business, but the necessary work into optimizing your website, and more.
Together with a great PPC team, these experts can maximize your efforts while you can focus on improving other areas of your business.