So what’s SEO?
Have you ever wondered why some websites appear on the 1st page of Google?
And how do the other ones appear on the 5th page or maybe on the 125th page?
If you are in the Marketing field, you’ve probably heard of “Search Engine Optimisation” or SEO for short many times by now.
SEO has become a very important digital marketing tool to create demand validation or lead generation. It makes your website more visible by using certain tools, and that means more traffic to your website and more opportunities to sell your service or product to prospective customers.
This awareness of your brand can be achieved through keyword optimisation, building links and having a HTML tag, however today we’re focusing on just keyword optimisation tools or SEO systems.
Serpstat
Features:
- Keywords research
- Search analytics
- Competitor analysis
- On-page audit
- Backlink analysis
- Rank tracking
- Paid advertising analysis
- Content marketing ideation
- Track position changes of domains
- Domain vs. Domain comparison
Anyone who’s looking to make money from their website can use SerpStat. Serpstat is a growth-hacking platform to solve SEO tasks, analyze competitors, and optimise your reach. It has collected keywords and competitor analysis data from international Google regions. The most popular feature of Serpstat is the Missing Keywords feature, which compares your competitors and the keywords they are using that are placing them in the top 10, this allows for your website to be optimised to reach more customers.
| Pros | Cons |
| SerpStat provides convenience through the excellent chrome extension feature providing instant access to their all-in-one features. | Pricing plans can be stingy with very minimal access to their features on the free plan but for more features the monthly plans range from $69-$499. |
| For global companies especially, the rankings of domains are very helpful for competitor analysis. | With smaller volume keywords their data can be off or non-existent when we compare the data to competitors. |
| The UI is really clean and laid out in a logical way. Beginner SEO enthusiasts will be able to easily find their way around the interface. | To import a cluster of keywords to Google Ads, the help of excel is needed. Serpstat is inefficient in reducing time for PPC marketers. |
| The website auditing tool is very quick and comprehensive through their report allowing an analysis of the SEO health of a domain. | Daily keyword research limits can be frustrating. |
Get Serpstat here: SerpStat
SEMrush
Features:
- Website Auditing
- Audience Insights
- Keyword research
- Social media monitoring
- Content planning
- Competition analysis
- Organic research report
- Sellerly (tool for amazon sellers to boost conversions for amazon products)
- Link Building (view competitors backlinks and their sources)
SEMrush is a very popular SEO tool for marketers, offering a variety of marketing tools from keyword research, PPC research tool, backlink analysis, position tracking, complete website auditing, content planning, and social media monitoring tool. SEMrush is always updating its features to provide their main goal of customer satisfaction. SEMrush provides a detailed analysis of why a website has a poor performance, improving your marketing campaigns and optimising your website to be more visible.
| Pros | Cons |
| Competitive organic research as they provide detailed analysis of competitors keywords you might be missing. Furthermore, very reliable high-volume keywords backed by historical data. | The UI isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing. However it is still easy to navigate through. |
| The topic research feature allows sourcing of future blogging ideas, through the most common questions asked relating to that topic. | Too much fear-mongering with alerts and alarming emails being sent evaluating problems as “High risks” to your website. |
| Effective organic rankings analysis because it tracks broken links. | Pricing based on how many keywords are being tracked, which is very costly especially for small businesses. |
| Reports are quick and easy to access, and even more easy for customers to read and understand. | Difficult to find accurate data on lesser-trafficked keywords. |
Get SEMrush here: SEMrush
AnswerThePublic
Features:
- Keyword research
- Affiliate program
- Compare data over time and access to new suggestions.
- Masterclass course
- Consulting services.
AnswerThePublic gives a modern touch to old SEO tools, with a clean and consistent interface, it focuses on anything and everything relating to keyword research showing it in a categorised keyword cloud. This provides easy navigation for marketers that are only seeking a tool for keyword research. Along with offering a Masterclass course on how to use AnswerThePublic and how to influence your audience, they offer an affiliate program as an incentive for clients to receive $30 monthly for every Pro-subscriber they refer to. Moreover, what’s unique is their consulting services for beginners that need a helping hand or those that want to learn about search listening.
| Pros | Cons |
| Free to use although there are restrictions on daily keyword search in the free plan. | The free version allows a maximum of 3 searches a day, this is less compared to others. |
| Easy to use with a centered focus on keyword research and an aesthetically pleasing and colour-consistent interface | Researching keywords in different languages or countries requires the Pro package. |
| No need to sign up or register | Lack of Keyword stats available |
| Download results into a CSV file and download the keyword visualisation as a .jpeg file | Limited features available compared to other SEO tools. |
Get AnswerThePublic here: AnswerThePublic
Google Analytics
Features:
- Campaign Tracking
- Calculated custom metrics
- Content analysis
- Site search
- Event Tracking (track user interactions on your website)
- Real-time reporting
- Google analytics API (transferral of data)
- Google analytics integration (with Adsense, Adwords, search console & YouTube)
- Set up business goals
- Set up traffic funnels
- Set up filters (prevents review of traffic from spam bots, usage within company & specific locations)
Google Analytics is perhaps one of the bigger giants in the SEO field, having been in the game for a longer time relative to other tools, they have gained their popularity for their variety in features to help content creators. Google Analytics measures the performance of your website using their data insights, they offer flexibility and customisable features allowing clients to have greater control over how they wish to use their tool. Google commands an 80% share in the search engine market, so I think it’s fair to say they would know a lot more about the google domain than any other tool, proving their reliability.
| Pros | Cons |
| Integrated with Google Ads platform, YouTube and others, this gives the added time efficiency to clients. | With a lot to offer it can be overwhelming how to navigate through the website, especially for a novice employee. |
| Track total purchases customers make on the website and the location of where your customers are from. | There is a small lag when trying to run larger reports. |
| Tracking different social Media ROI in a single dashboard. | Data overload, so you can end up spending many hours searching through before you find what you wanted. |
| Observes how marketing campaigns are performing according to goals set up by clients. | There is a lack of in-depth technical support from Google. |
Get Google Analytics here: Google
Ahrefs
Features:
- Keyword research for 10 engines
- See ‘clicks’ data
- See backlink growth
- Track subfolders traffic for your website and competitors.
- Analyse SERP history
- Analyse content gaps between you and competitors on subfolder level.
- Monitor outbound links
- Email alerts for keyword ranking improvements
- Analyse internal backlinks of other websites
Ahrefs is an SEO tool trusted by the likes of Facebook, Netflix, Uber, and Linkedin. Ahrefs allows customers to optimise their website, analyse competitors, study website-user behaviour, learn from industry’s top-performing creators and track their ranking performance. Ahrefs database provides 10.3 billion keywords, 170 million domains, 16 trillion links and shows data for different 10 search engines (including Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon) in 171 countries.
| Pros | Cons |
| A huge database of backlinks, updating you with new links or competitors links. | They only include the first 20 keyword rank positions in their basic monthly plan. |
| Best tool to find google features, to see what features your website and your competitors website triggers in Google | Ahrefs is not easy to understand, as the dashboard is very crowded. You have to know what you’re doing to get real value. |
| The link Intersect tool finds new niches for Marketing Projects or blog ideas. | Inconvenient for those seeking on-the-go mobile access, as it’s not mobile-friendly, |
| The keywords movement report is very useful to understand what elements of the website need improvement. | Expensive for small businesses or a one-man team, as the prices double, with very limited features in the free or basic plan. |
Get Ahrefs here: Ahrefs
Moz
Features:
- Campaign management
- Content management
- Campaign tracking
- Keyword research
- Link management
- Competitor analysis
- Rank tracking
- Multiple site management
Moz offers one of the most powerful SEO tool. With their features ranging from keyword research assessment, website audits, built-in links evaluation to competitors analysis. Moz offers its basic core features into every subscription plan. With the Moz Pro that starts at $99/month, it offers the option of a 30-day free trial, which many SEO tools do not offer, hence making Moz small-medium business-friendly.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use as Moz offers walk-throughs for beginners to navigate through their website and offers more automated processes. | You can only track 3 competitors per campaign in the basic plan. |
| Keyword rank tracking is very reliable, as they also track competitors keywords as well. | Link building isn’t the best with Moz, but that’s why they’ve linked up with another company to provide link building services. |
| The on-page grader is excellent for those to publish their blogs for a SEO check, showing the problems and solutions. | Moz’s crawl tool lags in terms of depth and crawl frequency. |
| Moz’s customer service is brilliant, with real people offering help, if you don’t understand how to use a certain feature they will do it for you free of cost. | The UI needs improvement, it doesn’t have a sleek design which makes it rather boring and repetitive to the eyes, especially those that use Moz frequently. |
Get Moz here: Moz
Learn more about how to optimise your content with the YouTube MasterClass. Check it out here: Online Creator Institute