Improving search visibility requires having the best SEO tools to drive traffic, attract more leads, and become a trusted authority in the industry. Brands use SEO (also known as search engine optimization) to reach their target customer and optimize website content.
SEO strategy entails keyword research, industry analysis, competitive benchmarking, and on-page SEO. The better the SEO, the higher the page will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). A multifaceted SEO approach requires an array of tools that can help you understand your weak spots, strengthen your web content, and get the edge over your competitors. Read further and learn five of the best SEO tools in 2024.
#1 Google Search Console
Screenshot from Google Search Console website
Overview
Google Search Console provides important SEO data like clicks, impressions, and average ranking position, arguably the most important metrics when it comes to SEO. This free service helps users understand and improve how Google sees their site so they can optimize their content and metadata and bring more relevant traffic.
Search Console can also show which sites link to a website, which helps in establishing authority. These backlinks demonstrate trust to Google and affect the ranking position of a website.
Features
URL Inspection Tool
Search Console can generate Index coverage reports that detail the indexing status of all URLS Google knows on the website. On the flip side and equally important, it can also provide reasons why a URL could not be indexed, like a server error, redirect error, the link is blocked by robots.txt, etc. Google values healthy sites, so addressing these issues means that Google can properly index and rank a website.
Search Console Insights
Search Console Insights helps businesses understand how visitors discover their content and what resonates with them. What are the best-performing articles/pages? Which search queries drive traffic? These answers inform the content that businesses must create to keep their audience engaged, and drive organic traffic to the website.
Reasons to consider:
In-depth and accurate insights
Easy to use
Free
Reasons to avoid:
Limited customer support
Can be too technical for beginners
#2 AltText.ai
Screenshot from AltText.ai website
Overview
Writing alt text is an often overlooked aspect of SEO strategy, but it's a task that can easily be checked off the to-do list with a product like AltText.ai.
AltText.ai leverages the latest AI computer vision technologies to automatically generate alt text for images to improve SEO and accessibility. It can generate an SEO-friendly description in seconds, and even bulk update existing images across several web pages.
AltText.ai offers an array of integrations that work for various platforms like WordPress and Shopify. It can also add keywords and e-commerce product data into the alt description, driving more organic traffic.
The web interface is generic yet user-friendly, ensuring seamless navigation and quick adoption. The setup is simple so users can spend less time on their alt text SEO workflow and instead focus on higher level tasks.
Features
Hands-Off SEO
AltText.ai analyzes images using AI, with little to no human oversight. The resulting alt text is filled with keywords that people might search for. Descriptive alt text helps search engines understand image content so that the web page can rank for search queries containing matching keywords.
AltText.ai offers numerous integrations that fit the workflows of small bloggers to large web publications. They have apps/plugins/extensions for WordPress, Shopify, Chrome, Contentful, Hygraph, DatoCMS, and Firefox as well as pre-built connectors for Zapier, Pabbly, Albato, and SureTriggers.
Bulk Update
AltText.ai can either generate alt text with every new image, or bulk update existing images. Users can generate alt text for images without alt text, or replace existing alt text with more detailed descriptions.
SEO Plugins on WordPress
AltText.ai works with all of WordPress's major SEO plugins, including Yoast, AllInOne, RankMath, Squirrly, and SEOPress. No need to re-add keywords or phrases into AltText.ai - they will automatically be pulled and integrated into the generated alt text.
Ecommerce Vision System
Every time a business adds or updates a product on Shopify or WooCommerce, AltText.ai can intelligently incorporate the product name and brand into the image alt text through its Ecommerce Vision technology. Product data are critical SEO components and they can be added to the image alt text behind the scenes, without any extra effort.
Reasons to consider:
The free trial offers 25 credits
Ease of use/simple setup
Can generate alt tags in 130+ languages
One subscription works for all integrations and for an unlimited number of websites
Reasons to avoid:
Limited credits per plan
#3 Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screenshot from Screaming Frog website
Overview
Though most known for developing search strategies for brands and businesses, Screaming Frog also offers SEO Spider, an industry-leading tool that helps users improve on-site SEO. This tool can crawl small and large websites efficiently to gather key onsite data and audit SEO issues.
The company offers a free and paid version. The software runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux OS and provides results in real-time which users can analyze for informed decision-making.
SEO Spider offers a clean and intuitive interface, so users can be up and running in no time. It excels in providing SEO suggestions and pointing out errors, and also offers expanded configuration settings to customize scrawl depth, limit the scrawl, ignore certain URLs, and more.
Despite its high cost, SEO Spider proves worth the investment, especially for SEO audits.
Features
Find Broken Links
SEO Spider can find broken links and errors and redirect them efficiently. Website errors cause a poor user experience and signal that a website is not properly maintained and is potentially untrustworthy. Finding and fixing these errors allows search engine crawlers to index the web pages fully.
Crawl Comparison
SEO Spider can help businesses monitor the progress of SEO issues and identify opportunities through a crawl comparison. Crawl comparison provides granular data about the changes between crawls like page titles, crawl depth, or word count. It can also display an overview of how the architecture of the site has evolved. This lets users dig into the data, see the changes, and the reasons behind them.
Reasons to consider:
Best for conducting an SEO audit
Runs on multiple OS
Fast at crawling
Reasons to avoid
Free version limited 500 URLs
Does not offer keyword research and competitor analysis
Fixed pricing
#4 Google PageSpeed Insights
Screenshot from PageSpeed Insights website
Overview
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) evaluates the speed of websites across mobile and desktop platforms. This free service gives users a score between 0 and 100. Higher scores mean the website is optimized for speed and efficiency. PSI also provides lab and field data, which are useful for debugging issues and capturing real-world user experience.
Google PSI categorizes the quality of user experiences into buckets: good, needs improvement, and poor. Not only does this help developers understand the range of experiences, but it also lists opportunities with the estimated time savings when implemented.
Features
Core Web Vitals Assessment
Google PSI measures the loading performance, visual stability, and interactivity of a website according to the Core Web Vitals assessment. These metrics help developers understand if the site is successful in providing a smooth experience for the visitor.
Diagnose Performance Issues
Google PSI gives a score after analyzing several page factors: performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. These factors affect the user experience and the website's ranking because search engines like Google reward sites with a fast-loading page speed.
Opportunities
Google PSI recommends site improvements, which are displayed as opportunities below the section "Diagnose performance issues." These suggestions vary, such as eliminating render-blocking resources or reducing unused JavaScript. When implemented, these opportunities lessen the load time and increase the site's efficiency.
Reasons to consider:
Free and easy to use
Instant results
Reasons to avoid:
Limited to analyzing page speed
No detailed explanation behind the scores
#5 SEMrush
Screenshot from SEMrush website
Overview
Semrush offers numerous tools to support SEO, from keyword research and rank tracking, to link building and competitor analysis. This software provides a bird's eye view into a site's performance, including problems like traffic drop, declined keywords, and broken pages. Despite its high pricing, professional users, especially marketers and publishers, can leverage Semrush's toolkit to improve online visibility and identify trends within any industry's niche.
Features
Competitor Analysis
Semrush helps users identify their site's strengths and weaknesses, especially in relation to their competitors. Semrush can generate reports comparing up to five competitors.
Keyword Strategy Builder
Semrush streamlines the keyword research process by providing the most relevant keywords and topics based on seed keywords provided by the user. The builder displays statistics for keywords and phrases, and organizes them by pillar pages and subpages. This tool eliminates the tedious process of looking for the best keywords to optimize content and gain more organic traffic.
Reasons to consider:
Most comprehensive out of the five
Ease of use
Offers a free version with limitations
Reasons to avoid:
Pricey
Premium features are exclusive to paid plans
Conclusion
Though the digital landscape is always changing, SEO should always be top-of-mind for marketers, ecommerce stores, web publishers, and more. Sophisticated tools are essential in understanding, implementing, and monitoring SEO efforts. Choose the top 5 best SEO tools in 2024 to boost digital marketing efforts.
