When a professional chef starts his day in the kitchen, he makes sure that all his knives are cleaned and sharpened. He will do this every morning, and in order to do it, he needs a good quality whetstone and/or honing steel. When an SEO engineer starts his day, he too, relies on his tools in order to efficiently get his job done.
Just as a Chef has to pick and choose from hundreds of different type of knives that range in quality, so to does the SEO engineer. There are numerous search engine optimization tools out there, hundreds even. So, how do you go about choosing and using the correct one? Well, that’s why you’re reading this article!
Here, I’ll write and inform you about my personal top 5 must have SEO tools. These are tools that I use every single day with some of the tools I am checking at least every hour. And as the title already says; this particular article will only feature paid services and/or tools. That way, we can give you the best reviews and opinions.
Perhaps we will see a future article on my top free SEO tools. So, with all that said; let’s get into it!
KWFinder
As all SEO engineers know, both new and veterans alike; just about everything revolves around keywords! Now, there are dozens if not hundreds of decent to good keyword finder sites and programs/tools out there. So, why and how did we come to choose KWFinder as our main keyword finding tool? Well the short answer is; the user interface is extremely well done and the whole tool overall is very intuitive. I know, I know. It’s a pretty broad answer, so let me talk more about some of its features and get a little deeper into the specifics of the features that I personally like.
User Interface
I have already mentioned the user interface in a above paragraph, but man oh man is the user interface (UI) truly awesome. I mean….just look at it:
You see? Clean, sleek and fabulously intuitive. As we all know, the better the user interface the better we can navigate and utilize the tool. It makes it easy for us to see all of the important statistics and information that we need to know for our SEO work. A clean and easy to understand user interface truly makes a difference.
Google Suggest and Bulk Keywords Import
Sometimes we spend a long time trying to plan and come up with keywords for the sites that we work on. Depending on the competition and numerous other statistics, it can be a struggle to find a good set of keywords that has the kind of metrics we are all looking for. Well, KWFinder understands that this sometimes can be a struggle for people and so, they have their Google Keyword Suggest feature.
It does just as it sounds; it suggest keywords to you for the project you are working on. I’ve pulled how it works straight from their site so you can see how their suggestion algorithm works:
Ahrefs
If you are here reading search engine optimization related articles on this SEO consultation website…well, then you’ve probably already heard of Ahrefs. I mean even if you have only “dabbled” into the world of search engine optimization, you would still know Ahrefs. Because of Ahrefs popularity, I don’t need to give them too much of an introduction but basically; Ahrefs is a software company that produces tools for and related to SEO work and search engines in general.
And they kind of do and build just about everything related to SEO, including but not limited to keyword finders and planners, content explorers and site audits. But the main reason why they make my list of personal SEO tools, is for their Site Explorer tool. Here’s a snapshot of their site explorer tool for their very own website:
As you can see; the site explorer is a must have tool. It lets you (as the name suggests) explore the backend metrics of a website. And it really does show you just about everything you need to know! You can initiate organic traffic research, which lets you take a look behind the curtains and see what keywords your competitors are ranking for, as well as see which of their pages are bringing in the most traffic.
My most utilized tool within their site explorer is the backlink checker. With the backlink checker, we are able to check which websites are linking to your competitors sites and/or pages as well as see the overall quality of their backlink profiles. This is great as it lets me see what competitors are up to and allows me to stay up to date on what others are doing or trying to do. The Ahref Site Explorer tool also allows us to see whether our competitors are doing any kind of paid search advertising. Really great for keeping track of everything.
And it does a hell of a lot more. Best thing about it, you don’t even need the tool constantly open all the time as you can just simply export whatever statistics or metrics you need. Want to show a client or a coworker a specific metric? Export it! Ahrefs is definitely a tool I use every single day.
SerpRobot
SerpRobot, what a cool name. In case you didn’t know, SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. And from what name of the tool, you can kind of guess what it does. It’s a bot that tracks and helps you analyze search engine results pages! Here’s the slogan straight from SerpRobot’s homepage: Laser Fast SERP Tracking. Quick and Accurate!
And let me tell you, it’s very true. Their robots do indeed have laser fast tracking and they really are quick and accurate. They had recently updated their user interface to something a little more modern and sleek. Here’s what SerpRobot currently looks like (some links and keywords have been censored for privacy):
As you can see, it keeps a live track on all your project domains as well as keeps track of each of the keywords associated with the URL and/or project. Want to know more about how a particular project is doing and where each keyword is ranking? Simply click on the project itself and it will show you all the keywords associated with that site.
Your team of SERP robots show you if the keywords are ranking, what position they are currently at as well as an overall performance chart of how well (or badly) they have been doing. It even shows you the other potential competitors who are also trying to rank with that same keyword and their current and previous positions. It’s a great tool to have as it allows you to quickly screenshot a overall performance chart to show your clients if they want to know how their keyword and/or site is doing.
SERPRobot is definitely a tool worth having in your SEO arsenal.
EmailOctopus
From robots to octopus! If you are a one stop shop like we are or you just simply like doing all of the SEO work yourself; then a email tool such as EmailOctopus is something you are going to want to have in your toolkit.
Why? Well, being a one stop SEO service means that you’re doing everything yourself. That includes trying to source relevant sites for you to put guest posts and links on. That task by itself can be quite time consuming, as you’re typically scouring hundreds of sites. And then after that, you have to find emails and contact information for all the sites you just scoured and THEN…you have to email everybody.
Some days I can send out 50+ emails just to enquire whether or not a certain site accepts guests posts. Can you imagine writing every single of those emails one at a time and doing it daily? Yeah, no. That’s why we have EmailOctopus. What is EmailOctopus? It is essentially a email marketing tool and it works fantastic for your SEO outreach campaigns. Check out their header on their main page:
And it really is made easy. Again, the user interface is sleek, easy and intuitive. You can create and save a whole arsenal of email templates for your projects. Once you have your mail list, simply bulk import all of the emails, write your message (or just pick from one of the premade templates or your own already set up templates) and click send! Just like that and you’ve sent a whole bunch of emails.
Once it’s sent, you can keep track of the email campaign from the EmailOctopus campaign dashboard:
It tells you what percentage of the email list has opened the email, who’s clicked on it and how many has bounced. It really is a great online tool for digital marketers. So whether it’s for SEO or something else, the EmailOctopus has your back!
My Conclusion
That concludes my person top 4 SEO tools that we pay for. There are many tools out there, both premium and free that work really well with assisting your online marketing and SEO ventures. In case you missed one of my earlier articles, check out some of the Top SEO Tools to use in 2021. Nevertheless, be sure to take your time to look through them to see if the tool suits you and does what you need it to do!
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