Having one of the best SEO tools at your disposal makes you the smartest kid on the block, because an effective SEO optimization strategy cannot be put into place without one.
SEO tools nowadays are whip-smart and it’s a fact that you simply cannot do without them. From analytics to reporting, to uncovering new opportunities, they seem to have-it-all. But, it is also true that choosing the right one can be a challenge for even the most seasoned experts out there. It’s even harder for startups, or teams just gearing up, because competition is crazy out there – and some even choose to look for an SEO expert for hire.
But we are going to show you how you can do it yourself, with these amazing tools. We tested numerous best SEO tools for you and narrowed them down to the best ones for 2023. Even if you’re on a budget, we have a few great free SEO tools too.
Let’s get started.
The 11 Best SEO Tools To Use in 2023 – Free & Paid
1. Ahrefs
Best SEO Backlink Analysis Tool
- Our Rating: 4.8 out of 5
- Starting Price: $99 per month
With a huge database of 16 trillion known links, covering 200 million root domains, Ahrefs stands above the rest. It is one of the most powerful and most recommended best SEO tools around. Ahrefs itself is not a standalone tool, but a suite of SEO tools. It’s an all-rounder when it comes to optimizing your website experience.
The tool allows website owners and publishers understand backlinks better and keep an eye on all the link building opportunities lying around the corner. The backlink index of the tool is updated with fresh data every 15 minutes, so that you can grab new link opportunities immediately. You can also use this SEO tool to find the most linked to content within your niche.
Undoubtedly, Ahrefs can be considered as one of the most useful SEO keyword tools, because of its robust functionality centered towards keyword analysis. The keyword explorer gives results for 171 countries and from 10 different search engines.
Although the tool itself is not free, the backlink checker feature is. The functionality shows the top 100 backlinks to any website, along with five most linked‐to pages, most common anchor texts, domain rating, and URL rating.
Key Features
- Site explorer for gaining insights on organic traffic, along with backlink checker
- New keyword ideas, keyword difficulty index, and related keywords’ lists
- Comprehensive content explorer to provide information on any article for any keyword
- Extensive backlink database, along with domain comparison
- Database of PPC (pay-per-click) text ads
- Notification alerts for new and lost backlinks
- On-page SEO audits to quickly diagnose issues affecting search performance
Pricing Plans
Following subscription plans are available with this SEO backlink analysis tool:
- Lite – at $99 per month for one user. 500 tracked keywords, 1 project, 2 domains per day, 100 URLs per day, and more
- Standard – at $179 per month for one user. 1500 tracked keywords, 10 projects, 100 domains per day, 500 URLs per day, and more
- Advanced – at $399 per month for 3 users. 5000 keywords, 25 projects, 250 domains, 2000 URLs, and many other features
- Agency – at $999 per month for 5 users. 10,000 keywords, 100 projects, 1000 domains, 5000 URLs, and all other advanced features
2. SEMrush
Bet SEO Monitoring Tool
- Our Rating: 4.8 out of 5
- Starting Price: $99.95 per month
One of the most popular marketing SEO tools in the SEO community is SEMrush. It is a perfect pick for someone looking to see how their website ranks in comparison with the competitors. It’s a robust all-in-one software which comes with a curated list of features. These include competitor analysis, keyword research, on-page and technical SEO fixes, and other useful marketing for digital marketing experts.
Once launched, you can analyze your rankings and what changes are needed, as well as new ranking opportunities. With SEMrush, you’re able to compare domains and keywords to better understand your website’s search data, and find profitable keywords in any niche.
The feature of organic traffic insights allows you to easily view how your articles are doing and what needs to be optimized. With one dashboard, run a diagnostic check on your website. Overview your website’s performance, along with nitty-gritty like traffic analytics, competitor research, and backlink analysis.
No need to randomly guess your competitor’s strength now, as with SEMrush, you can access competitors’ backlink data and use it to knock them off the organic listing. Guaranteed success right there.
Key Features
- Detailed analytics revolving around competitors’ content strategy
- Competitors’ keywords analyzer, along with keyword rankings report
- Display advertising tool for monitoring competitors’ ad strategies
- Powerful backlink analysis to improve link building
- Elaborate keyword research to find best keywords, along with phrase matches
- Cross comparison of domains to compare and contrast the data
- Visual charts to steal a quick glance at your competitors’ online performance
Pricing Plans
SEMRush is one of the best SEO tools which comes with following paid plans:
- Pro – at $99.95 per month, for startups and teams with limited budget
- Guru – at $199.95 per month, for small and medium sized businesses
- Business – at $399.95 per month, designed for companies with strong web presence
- Enterprise – a custom plan for large enterprises
3. Majestic
Best SEO Keyword Research Tool
- Our Rating: 4.7 out of 5
- Starting Price: $49.99 per month
Another one of the best SEO tools recommended by many, Majestic grabs number 3rd spot in this roundup.
Although Majestic doesn’t come with an array of features like SEMRush and Ahrefs, it comes with focus. Focus on backlinks. The tool claims to have the largest publicly available link intelligence database, with the index being updated several times a day. This ensures the users are provided with fresh data every time they need it.
The majestic million feature allows you to see the ranking of the top million websites. Along with the site explorer feature, which lets you evaluate a URL or a domain in detail and the total number of backlinks you own. Additionally, the backlink history abilities of the tool shows the number of links that have been found by their web crawler in past.
If you’re looking for a full suite of SEO tools, including extensive keyword analysis, monthly search volume, or a content explorer, you will need a little more than just Majestic.
Key Features
- A huge backlink index with new data every 15 minutes
- Majestic million showing the ranking of top million websites
- Domain comparison functionality
- Bulk backlink checker to evaluate backlinks for up to 400 URLs at the same time
- Site explorer with referring domains, anchor text, and backlink details
- Search explorer for generating URLs matching with the keyword
- SEO browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox
Pricing Plans
Majestic marketing SEO tool comes with following pricing plans:
- Lite – at $49.99 per month for one user. Designed for light users. Most of the core features are available
- Pro – at $99.99 per month for one user. Meant for professionals. All the Lite features, along with historic index, rank tracker, and more
- API – at $399.99 per month for 5 users. Ideal for developers and agencies. Everything in Pro plus full API and custom monthly data
4. Moz
Best SEO Software
- Our Rating: 4.7 out of 5
- Starting Price: $99 per month
Moz is another SEO software that comes with an integrated suite of SEO tools. These tools are designed to target the improvement of your website’s search engine ranking and your overall online presence. The large amount of information and the elaborate solution the tool comes with may come across as a little too over-whelming for some. But, if your requirements need you to get a comprehensive SEO reporting tool, Moz is the software for you!
With Moz, you can get insightful reports on how your website is performing, and what you need to do to improve it. The software offers keyword research tools, an SEO keyword generator, and backlink research analysis to give detailed data on all the inbound links and link quality.
You can also get a free SEO toolbar called MozBar to get quick insights about the website you’re visiting. MozBar sits peacefully at top, side, or bottom (your choice) of your browsing window at all times. Clicking on it will generate an instant report to help you quickly glance at metrics.
Key Features
- Detailed keyword research tool to analyze keywords by volume and by competition
- Keyword difficulty index, along with keyword volume and expected click-through score
- Missing title tags and broken redirects analysis to run site audit
- Competitor backlink analysis, along with link building opportunities
- Keyword ranking monitor to evaluate keyword performance and visibility on SERP
- On-page content optimization to improve page ranking
- Custom SEO recommendations fitting with a particular keyword
Pricing Plans
Moz SEO software has following paid plans:
- Standard – at $99 per month for 2 users
- Medium – at $179 per month for 10 users
- Large – at $249 per month for 25 users
- Premium – at $999 per month for 60 users
5. SpyFu
Best Marketing SEO Tool
- Our Rating: 4.6 out of 5
- Starting Price: $39 per month
If you want to make a killer SEO strategy without spending a fortune, SpyFu is the best SEO keyword tool for you. It can be considered as the Swiss army knife of SEO tools, as it provides one of the most detailed SEO analysis to the users.
With SpyFu, you can easily find out the number of times a keyword has been searched, along with the keyword’s difficulty to rank. In addition, you can search for a domain to explore all the inbound links for improving your niche’s ranking. This search can be further refined by putting a keyword filter on it.
When it comes to competitor analysis, this SEO keyword research tool facilitates analysis of your own website and your competitors’ to pull out all the relevant data. The amount of organic keywords they have, monthly clicks they get, and their paid and organic competitors. You can also get information about every keyword they’ve bought on Google AdWords.
Key Features
- Smart backlink analysis, along with domain comparisons
- Detailed competitor research tool to compare SEO strategies
- Keyword analysis, with difficulty index and top 50 ranking keywords of competitors
- Pay Per Click findings and ad spend history
- Automatic addition of most-requested keyword to projects
- SEO reports for evaluating your site’s organic traffic, and other KPIs
- AdWords advisor for keywords’ recommendations
- Weekly reports on your domain standings, plus easy data exports
Pricing Plans
SpyFu, one of the best SEO competitor analysis tools, is available on following plans:
- Basic – at $39 per month, 5000 weekly tracked keyword rankings, unlimited domain overviews, 10,000 top list results, and a few more features
- Professional – at $78 per month ($39 for 1st month), 15000 tracked keyword rankings, 50,000 top list results, custom branded reporting, and more
- Team – at $299 per month, 40k keyword rankings, 75k top list results, 5 user logins, and other features
6. Google Search Console
Best Free SEO Tool
- Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5
- Starting Price: Free
The list of best SEO tools wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Google Search Console. If you’re not inclined towards full-scale SEO services, Google Search Console should be your first call. The tool lets you evaluate your website performance at a glance. The handy options it comes with allow you to pinpoint potential problems, only to devise an effective SEO strategy later on.
An SEO checker tool, Google Console helps you to view and monitor Google’s indexing of your site to make sure it is Google friendly. Whenever your site encounters any unwanted issues, Google will send you email alerts to notify you, so you can make timely fixes to them.
The onboarding is pretty straight forward and easier than most SEO tools. If you already have a Google account, you’re good to go. All in all, Google Console is one of the free SEO tools that you should be checking out now. Don’t get your hopes too high though, as it doesn’t have to offer much when it comes to elaborate SEO monitoring tool.
Key Features
- Site’s search traffic analytics and overall performance reports
- Search analytics consisting of site’s impressions and clicks
- Indexing problem detector with option to request re-indexing
- Email alerts in case of spamming or any other issues
- URL inspection abilities to provide crawl, index, and other information related to site
- Dedicated status reports for testing and tracking AMP pages
- Inbound links details to show the links leading to your site
Pricing Plans
Google Search Console is one of the best free SEO tools available in the market.
7. Ubersuggest by Neil Patel
Free Online SEO Tool
- Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5
- Starting Price: Free
On #7 of best SEO tools, we have Ubersuggest. It is one of the free SEO tools developed by Neil Patel.
A dedicated SEO keyword tool, Ubersuggest helps you generate keyword ideas on the basis of keyword you provide. It also shows top ranking SERPs for them. From short to long-tail phrases, the tool makes sure you get all kinds of top keyword suggestions to make your content stand out from the rest.
The tool is a great option if your center of focus is to generate organic traffic for your site. It provides a quick solution to determine whether a keyword is worth targeting or not. All the while keeping the competition in view.
Other key areas that are tapped by the tool are keyword volume, top ranking content list, backlink analysis, and keyword ideas for particular domains.
Key Features
- Top ranking keyword recommendations based on domains
- SEO pages report to list down top ranking pages on the basis of content
- Backlink data for finding best link building opportunities
- Keyword volume data, along with paid difficulty and SEO difficulty score
- Cost Per Click (CPC) data reports
- Top ranking sites, as well as estimated visit counts
Pricing Plans
As of now, Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool.
8. SEOquake
Best SEO Backlink Checker
- Our Rating: 4.4 out of 5
- Starting Price: Free
Another powerful addition to the free SEO tools category is SEOquake. It is one of the most popular browser extensions among the SEO community. It’s a perfect tool for running quick on-page site audits to monitor how your site is performing against your competitors. The extension enables the users to view multiple search engine parameters, only to save and compare them with the results obtained for other projects.
SEOquake provides multiple performance measuring tools, without cluttering your browser. For instance; the SEO dashboard it comes with gives a light overview of all the important details, like domain and backlink details etc. Similarly, the SEObar generates a quick SEO summary of the webpage you’re visiting. SEObar is an interactive tool which can be turned off at any time you want.
The vast data library of the extension stores all kinds of data from SEMrush, Alexa, Google rank, and Yahoo index, and facilitates quick switching between them at any time you want.
It doesn’t end here. SEOquake also accommodates keyword analysis with options like keyword density and detailed report on all the top ranking keywords.
Key Features
- Real-time on-page SEO audit through one click
- Internal and external link details of webpages
- Multiple domains comparison, with exportable reports
- SEObar and SEO dashboard for gaining quick SEO insights about any webpage
- Comprehensive SERPs analysis with option to export results in CSV
- Structured keyword analysis for optimizing the content strategy
- Extensions available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari
Pricing Plans
SEOquake is a free SEO browser extension.
9. Siteliner
Free SEO Monitoring Tool
- Our Rating: 4.4 out of 5
- Starting Price: Siteliner is a free SEO tool
If you’re running low on budget, you’re in luck today. We tested another one of the free SEO tools available online. Siteline is an extremely easy to use SEO checker tool which quickly locates the duplicate content on your website and identifies issues which affect your site’s quality.
With Siteliner in place, you can instantly run a full scan of your website to locate major SEO problems. These can be blocked pages, broken links, and messed up redirects. You can also evaluate average page size and page loading speed, number of internal links, and number of words per page. This data is also available in comparison with your competitors to help you make quick fixes wherever required.
As duplicate content can negatively impact your Google rankings, it’s important to use a tool which specializes in this domain. Siteline reveals all the key improvements you need to make in your webpage, in order to beat the competition.
One of the key advantages of Siteline is its quick speed and the ability to quickly crawl webpages to generate results without any unnecessary lag.
Key Features
- Internal duplicate content detector within a domain
- Page power tool to determine the power of a page by evaluating the backlinks
- Broken links identifier to scan all the link patterns, as well as links not working
- Competitor analysis on metrics like page loading speed and average page size
- Detailed Siteliner reports for viewing key information about each page
Pricing Plans
- Free – allows you to run monthly analyses of sites up to 250 pages
- Premium – allows you to run analyses of sites up to 25000 pages. The Premium plan asks for credits purchasing priced at $0.01 each, where each credit allows to scan one page
10. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
SEO Reporting Tool
- Our Rating: 4.3 out of 5
- Starting Price: £149.00 per Year
Pretty evident by the name, SEO Spider is a crawler. It crawls websites and pulls all the important elements for analyzing the webpages. As an SEO checker tool, SEO Spider comes with a feature set which allows you to instantly perform site audits and diagnose issues on the fly. This nifty tool generates real-time reports to help you gather on-page SEO data without getting into any technical hassles.
The key features SEO Spider is equipped with allows you to identify broken links, bad redirects’ chains, duplicate content, and many other on-site data analytics. All of this information helps to make informed decisions when it comes to SEO optimization.
Unlike other best SEO tools, SEO Spider is not a cloud based solution. The tool runs on Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu. You’re out of luck if you use any other operating system.
Key Features
- Broken links and server errors detector
- Page titles and meta description tags to identify tags that fall outside of SEO best practices
- Internal tab to give you all the relevant information about pages on your website
- Crawl overview report to show the summary of the crawl
- Integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- Generate XML Sitemaps and Image XML Sitemaps
Pricing Plans
- Free – 500 URLs crawl limit, allows detection of broken links and errors, duplicate pages finder, and other core features
- Paid – at £149.00 per year, unlimited URLs crawl limit, along with all the advanced features of the tool
This marks the end of my review of best SEO tools. However, what you need to understand is that an SEO tool alone won’t do the work for you. After all, it’s not a magic wand. These tools are merely a guiding light for you which tells you what you need to do to excel.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the SEO optimized content that you create for your audience and grab their attention to get solid results.
11. Sitechecker
Best SEO Backlink Analysis Tool
- Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5
- Starting Price: $29 per month
Sitechecker is a comprehensive SEO site audit solution looking for opportunities to increase organic search traffic. The best tool for automatic monitoring of key metrics, early detection of errors, search for growth points. With this platform, the site is under control 24/7.
Within the framework of a single platform, tracking the quality of the site, its positions in search networks by keywords, and backlinks is available. Thanks to the user-friendly design, both professional SEO specialists and business owners with basic knowledge of optimization can work with the results. The service provides instructions and step-by-step checklists for correcting mistakes and achieving growth. Regular reports and notifications make it possible to keep your finger on the pulse and be sure that the site is fully operational.
Key features
The Sitecheker platform includes several tools:
- Cloud Website Crawler for Technical SEO Audit – Tracks all types of website errors at 150 pages per minute. Fine-tuning is available, as well as a monitoring function with automatic notification when problems are detected;
- Site monitoring in real time – full control over events: from sudden crashes to page content updates. Convenient solution for the owner: allows you to monitor the work of contractors (SEO specialists, copywriters, administrators);
- Rank Tracker – tracking positions by keywords. Position control for given queries, in any search network to choose from, on any device and in a given region. Convenient work with results and daily reports by e-mail;
- Backlinks Tracker – convenient monitoring of backlinks. The ability to combine the entire link profile of the site and track which links are the most effective, as well as find out the quality of the anchor profile;
- All-in-one Chrome SEO extension – instant check of key site positions in a convenient browser tool.
Pricing plans
Sitechecker is a great SEO tool that is available on the following pricing plans:
- Basic – from $29 per month for SEO beginners and online stores;
- Startup – from $49 per month for startups and those working on small projects;
- Growing – from $99 per month for growing companies and midsize sites.
Honorable Mentions – Small SEO Tools
We used Small SEO Tools on a whim and absolutely fell in love with it. They have a website that maintains not one, but several SEO and content related tools at a single platform. The best thing about Small SEO Tools, which is worth mentioning is the sense of variety over there.
The tools are split into many different resources which you can use to refine your marketing, content creation, outreach and other agendas.
Key Features:
- Plagiarism Checker – Just copy and paste your orginal content and run a free plagiarism check to mark any red flags.
- Article Rewriter – Care to take your orginal content for a spin? You can paste your article and have it re-written to a near perfect format.
- Dedicated grammar checking tools.
- MD5 hash generator for strong password protection.
- Lots of image editing tools for instant visual appeal to your apps and services.
- … and a bazillion more!
Pricing:
- Small SEO Tools is free to use.
Source: https://smallseotools.com/
Check out these other useful articles
- 14 Best Free Cloud Storage Services of 2023
- The 10 Best VPN Services of 2023 | Free VPN Software and Tools
- 10 Best Password Managers of 2023 – Android, iOS, Web, Mac, Windows
- 11 Best Social Media Management Tools Used by Marketers in 2023
- 14 Best Mozilla Firefox Add-ons, Apps & Extensions of 2023
- 14 Best Google Chrome Extensions and Add-ons of 2023
- 15 Best Gmail Add-ons, Extensions and Apps of 2023
- 10 Best Productivity Apps of 2023
- The 10 Best Business Management Software of 2023
- 10 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses & Startups in 2023
- The 11 Best Mind Mapping Software of 2023
- 11 Actionable SEO Tactics to Boost Organic Traffic in 2023
For website technical audit I would suggest my favorite tool Smart SEO Auditor. This one is very convenient, provides informative reports. And free version is available ))
Great list of the basic SEO software. Also for on-page seo i would recommend Plerdy seo alerts.
Hi Gesano, I haven’t heard about Plerdy SEO Alerts. Can you clarify a little ?
Hi Steve! I`ve started using Plerdy 2 months ago. It actually consists out of 3 individual tools but i`m using only the seo part for now. Basically there are a wide list of all of your web pages with a short seo-description, u can also watch both the statistic in generall and click on each page to see everything in details. Convenient online tool with a free version – which is limited of course, but for a my 20 pages website is quite enough. Here is a link https://www.plerdy.com/
Hi, This is a useful blog which is helpful for newbies like me. Thank You for listing out different tools in a detailed way.
thank you for your nice and useful article.
Nice information.
Great article you made to read the whole article.
Have you ever come across A2I?
Leadmirror is a new marketing tool powered by A2I
It would be great If you mention this tool in your article.
Thank you sharing amazing information about best seo tools to be used for website. I am using search console till now but i will try other tools which you mention here in this article . keep up the good work and keep on writing such useful article.
Thanks for sharing this information it helps me a lot.
Oops, the page heavier turns out I try to practice it I hope it works, thank you
Seo is considered to be one of the greatest techniques when it comes to helping agencies work better and more efficient in any of their online activities. Seo is such a solution which drives 3 essential factors for any agency, tapping leads, nurturing leads and lastly the most significant converting the leads into a sales state.
I just want to say I am newbie to blogging and site-building and seriously loved your web site. Most likely I’m going to bookmark your blog. You amazingly come with fabulous articles and reviews. Thanks a lot for sharing your web site.
Thanks for sharing Top 10 Best SEO Tools 2020. Apart from this, there are many more Tools that we will see in 2020. Some of the tools are SEO Spider, SEMrush SEO toolkit and Majestic SEO Tools, etc. All SEO Tools will help For SEO and detailed analysis of the website. We recently have done a post about the same and it is titled “Digital Marketing Trends That Will Drive Growth In 2020”.
I very delighted to find this internet site on bing, just what I was searching for as well saved to fav
Pretty! This has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing these details.
This website was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something which helped me.
Cheers!
Good post! We will be linking to this particularly great post on our site. Keep up the great writing
I enjoy what you guys tend to be up too. This kind of clever work and reporting!
Keep up the good works guys I’ve added you guys to blogroll.
Very well presented. Every quote was awesome and thanks for sharing the content. Keep sharing and keep motivating others.
I’m not positive where you’re getting your info, however good topic.
I needs to spend some time learning more or figuring out more.
Thanks for wonderful information I used to be on the lookout
for this info for my mission.
How extraordinary, far out.
Thank You, I liked your website.
Hi there to all, for the reason that I am genuinely keen of reading this website’s post to be updated on a regular basis. It carries pleasant stuff.
Very resourceful, thank you for sharing.
I appreciate you sharing this blog post. Thanks Again. Cool.
Thanks for the beautiful post