Our SEO Tool kit: Essential SEO Tools For Your Business

Managing large-scale SEO campaigns for 15+ customers simultaneously is a daunting task. And being able to do it successfully, is even more difficult.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Not if you have the right SEO toolkit.

Here’s a deep dive into the SEO stack we use daily, to drive hundreds of thousands of visitors, leads and dollars to businesses (including our own) each month.

Our SEO Tool Kit: The SEO Tools To Run An SEO Operation

Identifying, managing and fixing technical issues on a website should be part of any SEO workflow. These SEO tools will make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Here are best SEO tools to help you do that:

1. Ahrefs - Keyword Research, Link Building and Competitor Analysis

I’m sure you all saw this coming.

Ahrefs has been our go-to SEO tool for the last 2 years.

Having used SEMRush for years prior, we switched to Ahrefs because of their ability to uncover all the keywords our customers’ competitors were ranking for.

Their “Top Pages” report, significantly reduces the amount of time it takes us to create a content strategy plan for clients, as we can identify their competitor’s most successful pages, and see their most prized keywords.

With Ahrefs it feels like you’ve got a secret login to your closest competitor’s Google Search Console account.

Also, it’s really fun to plug in my favourite websites into their Site Explorer, just to get an idea of the kind of queries/keywords people use to find them.

There’s truly no need to reinvent the wheel with Ahrefs’ competitive analysis data.

SEMRush, probably does all of this by now too. However, Ahref’s dashboard seems to present this data in a more user-intuitive way.

Alternatives: SEMRush, SE Ranking.

2. Linxact - Hidden PBN backlink checking and competitive SEO analysis

Even though Ahrefs is amazing, it's not sufficient in short-term and highly competitive niches. High competition attracts more aggressive Black Hat SEO methods such as Private Blog Networks (PBNs) being applied by SEO experts.

Ahrefs isn't able to find hidden PBN backlinks because hiding PBNs have mechanisms to hide specific outbound links from backlink checkers.

Besides being easy to implement, Black Hat SEO experts implement this to protect their PBNs from competitors and to weaken their ability to evaluate their real strengths.

Linxact provides you exactly missing piece of backlink data that has been intentionally hidden from you, like you're used to with common backlink checkers such as Ahrefs.

{{linxact="/components"}}

3. AccuRanker - Keyword Rank Tracking

We use AccuRanker to track our client’s keyword rankings on a daily basis.

Whilst there are plenty of tools; such as Ahrefs and SE Ranking which also track keyword positions, they’re limited in terms of how often they check your rankings.

(Unless you fork out more money.)

Which often leads to inaccurate results and awkward conversations when our customers check their rankings manually from their browser and tell us “your report states we’re ranking 7th for ‘laminate flooring’, but I’ve just checked and we’re actually 12th!?”

With AccuRanker, it’s much faster. Your keyword rankings are updated automatically every 24 hours. Or instantly, from the push of a button within the dashboard.

Better yet, you can track keywords by location right down to the ZIP code, making it perfect for local businesses, whose rankings vary wildly based on the location of the searcher.

Finally, we really love how it seamlessly syncs with Databox, making it easy to create custom SEO dashboards to wow our clients.

Alternatives: SE Ranking.

4. WebTextTool - On-Page SEO & Content Analysis

WebTextTool is one of our favourite SEO tools for climbing the rankings in search week-over-week.

Think of it, as your personal on-page SEO assistant. Much like Yoast is the de-facto SEO tool for Wordpress sites.

With WebTextTool you can create SEO-ready content from your first draft, as it provides on-page suggestions while you write. There’s no need to refresh or select “preview” anymore as your changes are graded “live”.

WebTextTool is much more than a live on-page SEO checker. It also comes chock-full with competitor analysis features allowing you to analyse the on-page efforts of those beating you in Google SERP.

Or quite frankly, any accessible, published webpage online.

If Ahrefs helps you identify and uncover your competitor’s keyword and content strategy, then WebTextTool, tells you how to beat them in search.

Alternatives: Clearscope.

5. Google Search Console - Index Coverage Troubleshooter

Out of all the SEO tools Google provides for businesses, their Search Console is our favourite and most used for a multitude of reasons.

Firstly, it’s free.

But most importantly, it helps you identify all the blockers preventing your web properties from ranking well on search.

In addition to being able to catch all indexing and sitemap coverage issues, it’s a handy tool for monitoring the exact search queries users type into Google to find your website.

In the "Search Queries" report, you can knuckle down into the queries people use to reach a specific page, and see analytics for that.

We use this report religiously during our routine SEO content audits. As it helps us to identify pages that need an SEO facelift. Usually, these are pages with high impressions and low CTR.

Or naturally, pages with low impressions and low position (telling us, we might want to reconsider our keyword choice)

My only gripe is with its new UI, whilst prettier than the last iteration, is quite blocky and not very user-friendly.

Alternatives: None, to my knowledge.

6. Clickflow - A/B Testing Meta Titles and Descriptions

Anyone who knows me, or has attended my SEO training sessions will know about my #1 piece of advice for writing great meta-descriptions:

“Try to write your meta-descriptions as if you’re writing an ad in a local or national newspaper”.

Luckily, Clickflow takes the guesswork out of writing good meta-descriptions by showing you the direct impact your copywriting has on your business’ bottom line.

Now you know, whether your copywriting truly sings, or stinks.

Made by the lovely people at SingleGrain, Clickflow allows you to A/B test your SEO titles and meta-descriptions across pages or whole sections of your site.

Clickflow prides itself on being able to generate more organic traffic to your website without building backlinks or writing new content.

But most importantly, it presents opportunities (pages) worth spending time to run tests for, by identifying the pages with high impressions and low CTR.

Highly recommended for websites already generating a decent amount of organic search traffic.

Summary

So there you have it, five powerhouse SEO tools we use to generate significant SEO growth for our customers.

Overkill? Maybe so, but as SEO gets “harder” as years go by, you need to be equipped with the firepower to sit at the top with the big boys.

If only there was an all-in-one SEO toolkit which could do all the above from one dashboard…

SEO Tool Kit: Final Thoughts

With the right SEO Tool kit, SEO doesn't have to be difficult and time consuming. However, you won't get good results unless you put in some effort.

It really is that simple.

Not sure which tools to include in your SEO toolkit? Let’s figure that out, right now with our interactive bot!

Whilst you’re at it, why not hire a certified SEO provider to help you get the most out of them.