Consider your goals and how you plan to achieve them. For example, if you want to improve your rankings in search by making changes to site elements like meta descriptions, copy, and title tags, you’ll need to make sure the SEO tool is compatible with your website’s content management system, like WordPress or Wix.
Many of the best SEO software offer tools to help you improve your website over the long term with ongoing optimization, website audits, and reports. However, not all are made for this purpose. Some are ready to help you choose better keywords and create SEO-friendly content around said keywords.
essential features
Not every SEO tool is exactly the same, so it’s hard to say what the essential features are. You can’t easily compare the KW research tool KWFinder with the SEO feature-rich platform Ahrefs. The essentials, whether you’re getting them as a suite or a la carte, are as follows:
- KW Research: You need to know what users are searching for before you can create tailored content or ads for those queries. Most SEO programs let you search for KWs and phrases and should give you an estimated difficulty for search volume and ranking for those KWs.
- Site Auditing: There are a few ways you can audit the SEO of a website. In many cases, this means showing you the health of a site and what changes need to be made to optimize it for search engines. By using site crawlers, some SEO software can quickly help you analyze broken links, missing meta titles and descriptions, page load speed, and your website structure.
- Local SEO: Local SEO is important for brick-and-mortar Business Which depend on ranking high in local search results. Some of the best SEO software and services make it easy to submit your name, address, and phone number (NAP) to online directories
- Analytics: To make sure you’re doing everything you can to help your website rank higher in search engines, you’ll need reports to show you what’s working and what’s not. You should be able to easily follow the data to see how users interact with your landing pages, what pages they exit to, whether they bounce, the visitor’s origin, and who is linking to which pages.
- Link Analysis: Backlinks are important for your website’s Domain Authority (DA), so it’s important that you understand what people are linking to and whether they are quality links. You need to be able to analyze your own links and those of your competitors
- content analysis: It is important to perform a content audit to ensure that you do not have duplicate content or that you are not using the same kilowatts for multiple pieces of content. These practices can weaken your SEO and prevent you from ranking high in the SERPs. Some tools can detect areas on your website that may be problematic for your rankings.
All-in-One Platform vs. Individual Tools
As mentioned above, not all SEO programs are comprehensive; Some are specialized tools with only one or two features. All-in-one platforms cover everything from KW research and competitive analysis to website audits and backlink management. Examples of these workhorses include Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Pro. They also tend to be more expensive than single-use devices.
Individual tools usually do one thing really well and may include some bonus features, but you’re still likely to need more than just one tool. For example, Screaming Frog is great for on-site SEO auditing, but you can’t do keyword research.
KWFinder is an excellent tool for KW research but it lacks advanced features like KW gap analysis and complete site auditing. These devices are usually more affordable than all-in-one solutions.
Pricing and Fees
The price of the best SEO software varies greatly because the tools usually vary greatly. Comparing AnswersPublic to Ahrefs isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison – you need to be comparing apples-to-apples, so to speak.
For example, Ahrefs starts at $83 per month (billed annually), while SEMrush starts at $99.95 per month (billed annually). Individual tools like Screaming Frog cost $259 per year, while AnswerPublic starts at £11 per month, or £119 for a lifetime plan.
Data source, update frequency and integrity
It should come as no surprise that Google is the most used search engine and where most of the data sources for these SEO apps. However, there are other data sources that are also important to a comprehensive SEO plan.
The biggest players in the SEO industry have their own crawlers to collect data on indexed sites and pages. Google is king, but YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, Pinterest and other destination websites also have valuable data.
Content is constantly changing online, so it’s important to have access to fresh data. The best SEO software refreshes data frequently. For example, Ahrefs updates its data every 15 minutes. In the case of SEMrush, the keyword database gets updated every month.
While many SEO software companies prefer to use their own crawlers to supply their databases, some choose to partner with powerhouses like Google and Majestic. Data integrity is vital to a good SEO plan, so it’s important to choose the best SEO apps that are trusted in the industry so you can be sure the data you’re using is accurate and up to date.