5 SEO tools that do the heavy lifting for you

SEO makes a big impact on how and if people find your website, but it’s not the easiest thing to figure out on your own. While there are plenty of agencies out there that promise to skyrocket your search engine rankings, they’re not the only solution for taking charge of your website’s SEO.

There are plenty of free and inexpensive tools out there that are a low-cost way to get great search engine rankings without having to recruit an agency to do it for you. Check out some of our top choices for SEO tools that are cost-efficient, easy to use, and get great results.

SEO Tutor

Call us biased, but we think that our SEO Tutor is one of the best tools there. SEO Tutor guides you through the process of improving your search engine rankings while customizing a plan solely for your website based on your industry, location, and subject matter. Its easy analysis tools give you valuable information about how your site is ranking across multiple search engines and which keywords are your strongest. Better yet? You can try it for free for the first two weeks!

Yoast SEO

If you have a WordPress site, this plugin is an easy way to integrate SEO efforts into your every post. Once the plugin is installed, Yoast SEO appears below the text field of your blog post drafts. Enter a focus keyword for that particular post, and the plugin will determine how well it is optimized and offer suggestions for improving its strength.

Google Trends

Knowing which keywords to optimize is half the battle. Google Trends allow you to browse the top search trends at a given time and see how popular certain keywords are. You can also compare multiple search terms to one another to determine which is searched for most commonly.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Site optimization plays a bigger role than you think in search engine optimization. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, you could be getting penalized for it and thus lose out on a ton of traffic. Pingdom’s Website Speed Test determines your website’s load time and figures out where the slowdown may be happening.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has a bit of a learning curve, but once you have a basic understanding of its tools and features, it can be extraordinarily useful. Use Google Analytics to determine the number of views, bounce rate, and the value of individual pages on your website, and figure out where your web traffic is coming from.