If you want to increase organic search traffic to your site…
You need to arm yourself with the best SEO tools for the job.
The world of SEO is fiercely competitive…
…and it’s nearly impossible to compete without the right tools.
So I am going to show you all of the SEO tools we use to annihilate the competition.
What Will I Learn?
While I use a wide range of SEO tools depending on the task at hand…
…these are the 11 SEO tools that I use most frequently (and so should you!).
The backlink blacklist database allows you to quickly check a list of backlinks to make sure they aren’t hurting you.
The database is made up of 60,000+ known guest post farms, public blog networks, links sold on marketplaces like Fiverr & cold outreach.
What makes this tool even better is the fact you can see precisely why a domain is on the blacklist along with an actual screenshot to back it up.
Oh and did I mention that it is 100% free to use?
Learn how to increase your search traffic in just 28 days with this free challenge.
Just download the included resources and follow the steps to start making improvements to your sites technical, content and links.
The 28 Day SEO Challenge is a complete SEO strategy that includes everything you need to increase the search traffic of any site.
Surfer SEO is one of the best SEO platforms out there at the minute.
Surfer SEO helps you find optimisation opportunities to boost your search rankings.
You can analyze any website or URL and once the analysis is done, you’ll get a list of actions to implement immediately.
But that’s not all! Our writing staff uses the Content Editor to produce perfectly optimised data-driven content every single time.
Bonus: Take a look at my Surfer SEO review to see how I won the number 1 position by deleting 26,083 words of content.
Rank Math is a free SEO plugin for WordPress that helps you to optimise your site in a few clicks. Personally, I think it’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress you can find out there.
It also includes a lot of features that you would otherwise only find in premium plugins.
We use RankMath to power all of our sites and to generate all of our structured data automatically including review and organization based schema.
It is 100% free for anyone to use and you can learn more in my RankMath review.
AccuRanker is the world’s leading rank tracker for a reason.
It has a ton of features:
… and outstanding customer support. Plus, it’s one of the best mobile rank tracking tools of the planet!
We find ourselves in the AccuRanker dashboard multiple times per day for a reason!
Bonus: AccuRanker has two free tools that you can use without a subscription.
The first one is Google Grump. It tracks changes in Google’s algorithm. It is important because a Google update can severely impact your SEO.
The second one is called SERP Checker. It shows you where and how you appear in google search – instantly.
To learn more about these free tools, read my free seo tools list.
URLProfiler is a powerful tool that you can use for:
And much more!
It integrates with a range of tools like Majestic, Moz, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Copyscape, SEMRush & uClassify.
It might not look all that powerful on the surface, but all of those little tick boxes mean it can be configured to accomplish a range of tasks.
It’s super handy for looking up huge volumes of data for thousands of URL’s in just 1 click.
Have a read of my full URL Profiler review to learn more.
The IPVanish VPN service isn’t strictly an SEO tool as it secures your connection & encrypts all of your browsing.
But it does make it easy to spoof your location from nearly anywhere in the world with a swift click of the mouse-
That means you can check search results from other countries reliably or accurately test geo-targeting while improving security at the same time.
It works on Windows, Macs, iOS, Android, Chromebooks, Windows Phone, Ubuntu & one account can be used on as many devices as you want! Take a look at my full IPVanish review to learn more.
SpamZilla allows you to buy powerful expired domains with excellent backlink profiles within a few clicks.
We build all of our new sites out on aged domains that already have established backlink profiles.
SpamZilla automatically:
So you will only get clean and trusty domains that save yourself time and money.
SpamZilla has a user-friendly interface so you can review data quickly and easily. It has more than 80 filters – including backlink, language, spam and authority based filters.
Learn more about expired domains or read my full SpamZilla Review.
It’s one of the easiest ways to get a head start with new sites!
Link building is important if you want to rank, but many people struggle to build high-quality links that get results because it isn’t easy and takes a lot of time to get right.
However, there are services like LinksThatRank that can help you.
It is easy to use. The only thing you have to do is enter the URL and target keyword you want to rank for and the LinksThatRank team will do the rest!
They are different from their competitors because they offer outstanding quality control that makes all the difference.
This is what you get:
Once it’s done you’ll get a complete report. Buying backlinks doesn’t get much easier than that.
Ahrefs is one of the best SEO platforms in the market, if not the best SEO platform.
Ahrefs started life as a simple backlink database many years ago, which absolutely dominated my best backlink checker case study.
But over the years it has grown to become a dominant force in keyword research, content research and provides tools for site audits and rank tracking.
Whether you want to get a better look at your own site or see what your pesky competitors are up to – there’s no better tool to do it with than Ahrefs and we use it multiple times per day.
Take a look at my Ahrefs review to learn about all of the cool things you can do with it.
Looking for an alternative? Check out my Serpstat review.
Pitchbox is the very best outreach tool that money can buy.
I am not joking, this tool is absolutely insane and is essential if you want to build links at scale.
It can help you to:
It is also recommended by a lot of big names of the industry and is our outreach tool of choice internally. There isn’t even a close second.
Read my full Pitchbox review to learn more.
NitroPack is the best optimisation plugin you can find on the market right now.
The plugin can help you:
Overall, NitroPack makes it easy to achieve perfect Google Pagespeed scores whilst also delivering excellent performance across all Core Web Vitals metrics.
It takes a few minutes to set up but instantly speeds up your site by delivering perfectly optimized device-specific experiences.
To show you how well the NitroPack plugin works, I conducted a bunch of tests. You can check out the results in my full NitroPack review.
The quick win SEO strategy builder is an exclusive tool that I released earlier this year.
We run it every 90 days on every site to make sure we are always making the most of current SEO opportunities.
The free tool also includes a video series that teaches you the why, the what and the how of the process step by step.
We teach this process to all of our new junior SEO’s because it’s easy to learn, simple to execute and delivers results quickly!
(If you want to learn more about SEO, I suggest you read one of these SEO books).
Before Ahrefs, there was Semrush – who were one of the pioneers of keyword research tools for SEO in my opinion.
They include a bunch of tools to help increase your search traffic including a comprehensive backlink, keyword and PPC ads database.
They also have a couple of unique features that you can’t find anywhere else.
Plus if you are on a budget, the Semrush team is giving my readers an exclusive 14 day free trial for you to get access to world class data without the expensive fee.
Take a look at my full Semrush review to learn more or check out my Ahrefs vs Semrush blog to see which tool performs the best overall.
Seobility is an affordable all-in-one SEO software for webmasters.
This software allows you to:
…and much more!
Overall, it’s a great tool to optimize your site without wasting much time and money.
Its interface is pretty simple and you can complete all your SEO tasks quickly and easily.
It offers 3 plans: a free (but limited) plan, a premium plan for professional websites and a special agency plan.
No wonder it’s one of the top-rated SEO software products out there!
Website speed is one of the most important factors to take into account.
Why?
WP Rocket is a Wordpress plugin that helps you speed up your website quickly & easily so you can focus on generating traffic and sales!
It offers you all the tools you need to increase website load time in one package and has some great features like:
Read my full WP Rocket review to learn more.
ShortPixel is an easy-to-use, lightweight image optimization plugin.
This plugin allows you to:
In other words, it improves website performance by reducing image size while conserving its quality.
And those savings were gained after the images had already been optimised with the free version of WPSmush.
You can also use it to create WebP images AND you can use the same ShortPixel account across as many websites as you want!
SEO Powersuite holds a special place in my heart because I’ve used it for a decade.
And even till this day, it’s still one of the most budget friendly tools on the market. You get an awful lot of value for your money!
Even with just the free download, you’re able to access these SEO applications:
Just about anyone can execute a solid SEO strategy with this suite of tools that won’t break the bank. Read my full SEO Powersuite review or my SEO Powersuite vs Semrush to learn more!
I’ve been using BuyProxies since 2012.
More specifically I’ve been using their cheaper semi-dedicated proxies, mostly for Google based operations.
They offer both private and shared proxies from a number of locations around the world and provide near-instant setup. Not only that but they are also my go-to proxies when I need SEO proxies and residential proxies.
If you plan on using the shared proxies (half the price!) for Google/SEO related tasks make sure you tell them that when you sign up.
The DripRevolution dashboard makes it easy to build social signals to any page you want.
And given I like dogs and algorithms, I need all the help I can get with all things social.
Signing up for the free plan gives you 100 free social signals, just add your URLs to a project and voila!
You can access your reports and manage your campaign through the dashboard easily.
If you contact DripRevolution support and give them my name, they’ll also give you an extra 50 social signals free of charge.
LinkWhisper is a Wordpress plugin that helps you overcome the various challenges of deploying an effective internal link building strategy.
It makes automatic and intelligent internal link suggestions that are easy to manage.
And it automatically detects content that could be associated with the article/post you’re currently writing, so you get a high-quality internal link.
Plus also finds old posts that need more internal links to help drive traffic and rankings to them in a couple of clicks.
Perfmatters is a Wordpress plugin that helps you to take control of your sites javascript and CSS.
You might not know it but most WordPress plugins add Javascript and CSS to every page on your site, even if you don’t use that plugin on that page.
For example, if you use a contact form plugin like Contact Form 7, it adds Javascript and CSS to every page on your site even though you only use the form on your contact page.
Perfmatters allows you to take control of that on a page by page basis really easily.
They make frequent updates and release new features to constantly improve the plugin and your site’s performance.
If your site is built on WordPress, I assure you that you need this plugin.
FindThatLead can help you find all of the people and email addresses that exist for a specific domain.
So if you want to reach out to someone at any company, just enter their domain to find all of the relevant contact details.
It also has a basic email outreach tool that automates and customizes your email campaigns.
We mostly use it for finding email addresses for outreach but you can also use it to reach decision-makers and find new talent.
Struggling to find an email address? Follow my email address lookup guide!
Last year I released the free FAQ schema generator tool.
If you don’t know why you should be adding this code, watch this video:
The tool is really easy to use.
All you have to do is fill out the first question & answer and then, click on “+Add another question” to add more. You can add as many as you want.
Once you have inserted all your questions/answers, you have to deploy the code.
Just follow the tutorial on this page to do that.
Screaming Frog is the king of real time technical SEO audits.
Whether your running annual maintenance or trying to diagnose a search problem, there isn’t a better tool for the job.
It spiders entire websites looking for SEO problems and can also be used to find duplicate content, structured data issues, visualize your sitemap and much much more.
You can also use it to pull down data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs and a bunch of other tools for a comprehensive SEO audit.
Batch Speed is a great tool for anyone who wants to get a snapshot of site speed across their entire site.
Just enter your home page, a site map or a list of URL’s and it will run Google Page Speed tests in bulk:
You can see everything from First Content Paint (FCP) time all the way through how much CSS or Javascript is loading.
This is especially important with Google’s recent Core Web Vitals announcement.
Click here to see how to improve Core Web Vitals.
Batch Speed allows you to test up to 500 URLs for free and you can export all the results to a CSV for further diagnosis.
Think your search traffic might have been affected by a Google Update?
Well, there is an easy way to find out!
The Panguin tool overlays known algorithm updates over your organic search traffic-
If you see a dramatic drop off after a major update…
…it gives you the thread you need to start pulling on to find what the problem is and how you can get back into Google’s good graces.
The Instant Indexing Plugin is developed by the Rank Math team to help get your new or updated content indexed almost instantly.
Unlike other indexing plugins, this is the FIRST Wordpress plugin to use the Google Indexing API directly.
The plugin will do the dirty work for you by automatically submitting indexing requests in the background for new and updated content.
Unfortunately though, you can only use it to index content on domains you own.
The new Keyword Surfer chrome extension brings search volumes to your search results!
And not just search volume data, but you will also be able to see-
Not only that but it’s available in most languages in over 70 countries which is absolutely insane for free.
WebPageTest is a great tool to test your website performance for free.
It’s the tool I rely on most when trying to get real world test data and it’s simple to use!
Once the test is finished it makes it easy to figure out what is slowing your site down so you can fix it.
It’s surprising what you find at times but you can run as many tests as you want for free!
No one knows more about your site from an SEO perspective than Google themselves, so why not take advantage of their free Google Search Console?
It gives you a complete overview of your site and will notify you of any errors-
Buried inside you can find a host of useful data including backlinks to your site, analytics of your performance if you have any manual penalties & a bunch more things.
They are always adding new features as well like the Core Web Vitals report so make sure your plugged in.
Google Analytics is a must have tool.
The data here is so comprehensive, and once you’re past the vanity metrics, there’s a tonne of actionable data for you to work with.
Every campaign, every link building effort and every change you make to a site is reflected in Google Analytics. Making marketing without it a hard task nowadays.
Don’t trust Google? Check out my list of Google Analytics alternatives!
Most people ignore Bing because they are focused on Google.
But if you haven’t seen the updates they have made to Bing Webmaster Tools in 2020 then you need to take another look.
Now they give you (for free)-
And much much more!
The Bing Team is typically quite open to working with the SEO community so I’m not surprised to see a toolset like this. Learn more about Bing SEO.
Want to track your Bing rankings? Check out my list of the best Bing rank tracker tools.
MarketGoo PRO helps you detecting your SEO issues and guiding you to resolve them – step by step.
No need for you to be a tech genius to optimize your website with this tool.
Indeed, all you have to do is looking at your site’s SEO report generated by MarketGoo to get an overview of your SEO performance and issues that need to be taken care of.
Once you got your report, you need to take action and follow your SEO plan. Usually, this includes a bunch of tasks for fixing your site’s specific issues.
With PRO, you get step-by-step instructions for each task.
But it’s not all.
You can also generate monthly reports on your SEO improvement to keep track of your progress and contact their support team whenever you need help.
So if you’re website is having performance issues, you should definitely get MarketGoo.
So there you have it!
This is a complete list of the best SEO tools we use every single day, along with a complete list of the other SEOtools we use to get the job done.
Note: To measure the success of my SEO campaigns, I use SEO visibility scores.
Are there any essential SEO tools that I missed?
I love playing with new tools to see if we can use them to improve current processes so please let me know in the comments!
And don’t forget, if you are on a budget there are tons of free SEO tools to choose from. Or, you can partner with a white label SEO agency so you won’t have to get any tool at all!
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This article is a treasure trove for anyone serious about SEO. The depth of research and clear explanations make it an invaluable resource.
Thank you, Edward
Very helpful information. Thanks for sharing with us.
Glad it was helpful!
It was really helpful Blog.This is such an great SEO tools list you have shared with us.
Glad it was helpful 🙂
That was a very informative article. Absolutely loved reading the post. Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome!
I also created an add-in for Excel for backlink analysis, if you need it.
your blog is very nice information
Thanks!
Personally, It was really helpful. Blogs like these help beginners in the field of digital marketing. Thank you for the most useful compilation.
No problem- Glad it was helpful!
Here are the additional tools I use:Hootsuite is a tool that schedules posts so one doesn’t have to set aside the entire day to manage their social media accounts. Hootsuite can provide analytics reports of engagement on content shared which offers valuable insight into how one’s audience reacts towards certain media.Meerkat is an app that allows Twitter users to stream live footage from their smartphones directly to their account.
Thanks for the recommendation, Ivan.I also use Hootsuite for my social media- it’s a very handy tool!
Huge list MatthewNow i need to visit your blog everytime to find SEO tools
Thanks, Mahmuduul!
Thanks for this compilation. A blogger needs to know about the tools to analyze his own performance. This is the best SEO company/a> providing the details of SEO tools. This is very much useful for beginners too.
Glad it was helpful!
thanks for sharing
No problem- Always happy to help!
Hi, Thank you for sharing really precious information with us. Keep it up!For Future Hope for best.
Thank you, Kashaf!
one of the best blog with many informative information
Thank you!
hello,This amazing and very useful article, it’s good to know list of seo tools for internet marketers. Thank you sharing.
Glad it was helpful!
wow impress ,…and it’s nearly impossible to compete without the right tools.
Thanks- Cheers 🙂
Thanks for this informative post.
No problem! Glad it was helpful!
Awesome collection of tools . it will be really helpful. thanks for sharing such a informative articles with us
No worries, James! Any tool(s) you’d like to add to the list?
Very well and unique information hope to have more from you
No worries. More posts are coming soon!
hii matt, being a digital marketing beginner this site helped me gaining knowledge ,Thank you.
Glad to hear this- Good luck!
Awesome!
Penguin Tool.Instant Indexing Plugin.Keyword Surfer Extension.WebPageTest.Google Search Console.Google Analytics.Bing Webmaster Tools.MarketGoo PRO.
Thank you for sharing your list with us!
Hey, I usually don’t comment on the blogs but I must say you have done a great job. Thanks for sharing this valuable information on the blog.
Thank you Vikash Sharma
Really nice and useful info. Plus, I think the style and design of your site is great.
Thank you so much! Glad you like it, I spent a lot of time on it 🙂
Thank you for reviewing these. I am getting tired of the old tools and I know that there should be some new names in the list because there are now so many new tools with better functionalities.
Glad you enjoyed the list! Some new tools will be added through the year 😉
Good list of tools to stay top and play smart in SEO.
Thanks!
It’s amazing man…
Thanks!
Thanks Matthew so much information and correct information nice thanks .
No problem!
Great article!
Thanks! Cheers!
These are the best tools for the best SEO to your website and increase traffic and making the website worth it.
Couldn’t agree more!
Thank you for sharing such useful information.
No problem!
thanks fore sharing, was very nice and interesting
No problem!
Thank you for such a informative blog. Keep it up
No worries! 🙂
i read your article its really help me and now i am using SEMrush for keyword research which i purchased from this site shorturl.at/uCO05 now I want best audit tool so help me
Hey Kiran! There you go https://searchlogistics.com/seo/on-page/seo-audit/ – Tools + Processes 😉
This is a precious article. In this article, all these SEO tools are good but specifically Rank Math, Spamzilla, Ahrefs, WP Rocket are really awesome. Thanks for sharing this informative article.
Yep, I couldn’t agree more! Love those tools!
thank you for sharing this article with us. it’s very useful.
No worries! Always happy to share some tips with my readers 🙂
Thanks Matthew, I’ve started using these tools for my website
That’s great, keep it up!
@Matthew Woodward Thanks for more information post.
Awesome and Great article. This is most of useful for us.
Thanks a lot Matthew, I,ve been looking some tools and scheduled meeting with developers. Really good.
Glad you found what you were looking for!
Excellent info as always from you, thank you! I can never understand why people arent utilizing Microsoft/Bing and Yahoo more. Bing has made it stupid simple to rank and get traffic, and I get way better CTR and conversions from Bing. Less traffic than Google but less competition and better conversions. Who wouldn’t want that?
I couldn’t agree more with you! Keep the good work up!
Wouaw, great list of Seo tools, thank you Mattew. I have SEO Power Suite for 1 year
Great! and what do you think about this tool?
Thanks Matthew you did a good job. Excellent and work hard
Thanks, Morgan!
Thank you for your review, I have used many of the tools from your list in the past, but some of them did not reach the required level in terms of functionality, and for some the price was objectively high, especially for a person who independently promotes his small business. Almost a year I use the tools of the SE Ranking platform. It is not as popular as many presented above, but the product is really very good, after months of use, I did not see a single factor in which it was inferior to SEMrush, given that the price is several times cheaper.
Hey Jack – Thanks for your recommendation!
AMazing Post I love your all Post
Thanks Samra!