SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.
SEO works by optimizing a website's content, conducting keyword research, and earning inbound links to increase that content’s ranking and the website’s visibility. While you can generally see results take effect on the SERP once the webpage has been crawled and indexed by a search engine, SEO efforts can take months to fully materialize.
SEO is made up of multiple elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. Check out the SEO tools you can use for optimal ranking.
SEO tools can help you assess each site’s performance on the fly. Many entrepreneurs with multiple websites end up putting a lot of data in spreadsheets and analyzing it manually. But that soon becomes overwhelming and raises the risk of the reports being inaccurate. Fortunately, you can use SEO software to save hours of effort and generate accurate reports at a click.
Google Analytics is an invaluable resource that is virtually indispensable to any digital marketer serious about SEO. It provides a lot of handy data about websites such as the number of site visits, traffic sources, and location demographics. With the detailed information from Google Analytics, digital marketers can tweak their content strategy and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Google Analytics is one of the best free SEO tools that every digital marketer should be using.
HubSpot Website Grader: The goal of marketing is to generate traffic and qualified leads via the company’s website. That’s why, as marketers, we need to understand exactly what we can do to improve the SEO of that website. With HubSpot’s Website Grader, simply enter the URL of your website to automatically receive a report card with actionable insights about your SEO efforts. From there, you can sign up for the HubSpot Academy SEO course that teaches you how to improve your website's SEO, user experience (UX), and more.
Google Search Console: Google Search Console is a collection of services you can use to figure out how Google views your website. This service provides you with a wide array of free SEO reports, covering many different aspects of on-page and off-page SEO.
For example, Google Search Console enables you to check out any crawl errors that have occurred on your website so you can correct them right away. It can also point out when your site is affected by malware, what keyword phrases people are using to find your site, the backlinks you’ve received, and more.
Keyword Extraction: The HOTH Keyword Extraction Tool breaks down all of the keywords used on a website into one-word, two-word and three-word keyword lists. Curious what phrases a competitor is using on their site? Enter any URL and take a look at the results.
Schema markup Generator: Various SEO associated websites have designed free schema markup generators that simplify your work. Just enter the accurate information and add the corresponding code on your website. Following are the set Free Schema Markup Generators \s· Schema Markup Generator by Merkle \s· Google’s Structured Data Helper & Data Highlighter \s· Schema App’s JSON-LD Generator \s· MicrodataGenerator.com’s Schema.org Generator \s· JSON-LD Generator by Hall Analysis
As the name suggests, Google Trends helps you track the popularity of topics and trends in your industry over time. Use this tool to identify current trends and use that information to craft a timely and relevant content marketing strategy.
Search engines are known to penalize websites that contain duplicate / similar content. Your content could be similar to other websites on the Internet, or pages from within your own website could be similar to each other. This tool allows you to determine the percentage of similarity between two pages.
All in One SEO is THE best SEO plugin for WordPress. It lets you optimize your entire WordPress website as well as every new page and post before you publish it. Once you install the plugin on your site, it will scan your site to find SEO errors and areas of improvement. When the scan is complete, you’ll see a site score along with recommended measures you need to take to optimize your site.