SEO Tools: The Complete List (153 Free and Paid Tools)

AuthoritySpy is designed to help you find the top influencers in your space. It discovers these movers and shakers by searching in places like AllTop, Twitter and Followerwonk.

official website:
http://authorityspy.com/

If you do outreach at scale or with a team, you NEED a tool like Buzzstream. Why? Buzzstream makes the messy job of email outreach and link building streamlined and organized. Make sure to check out their new prospecting and email-finding features.

official website:
http://buzzstream.com

If you do Broken Link Building (or The Moving Man Method), then you’ll love Check My Links. With a click of a button, this Chrome extension quickly checks any webpage for broken links.

official website:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/check-my-links/ojkcdipcgfaekbeaelaapakgnjflfglf?hl=en-GB

Instead of hunting for broken links page-by-page, The Broken Link Finder proactively searches the web for them. Just search for a keyword and the tool will scour the internet for broken links…and hand them to you on a silver platter.

Cool feature: You can sort your results by how many people link to the broken link.

official website:
http://www.brokenlinkbuilding.com/

A industrial-level link opportunity finder. Link Prospector scans the web for link building opportunities like resource pages, guest posts, blogs, news sites and more.

official website:
http://linkprospector.citationlabs.com/

An excellent tool that finds contact information (ie. emails) and helps you reach out to those people. I’ve found that the contact info it spits out is pretty darn accurate.

Cool Feature: Content Marketer provides email templates you can use for outreach. They have templates for guest post requests, LinkedIn outreach and more.

official website:
https://contentmarketer.io/

Domain Hunter Plus is similar to Check My Links. But this tool also checks to see if the broken link’s domain is available for registration. Cool feature in theory…but I rarely find any free domain names with this tool. That’s because authoritative domains tend to get scooped up pretty quickly. Still a helpful tool for broken link building or The Moving Man Method though.

official website:
http://netvantagemarketing.com/about/domain-hunter-plus

This tool checks a website for broken links. Helpful for broken link building.

official website:
http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/

GroupHigh is advanced blogger outreach software.

Despite the laundry list of features, it’s pretty darn easy to use. Just enter a few keywords to find blogs in your industry. Then filter by Domain Authority and last post date to whittle down the list to bloggers that are worth reaching out to. You can also reach out to them (and track your results) within the platform.

official website:
http://www.grouphigh.com/

Want to get backlinks from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal? You can hire a pricey PR firm…or you can use HARO. HARO is a “dating service” that connects journaists with sources. If you hook a journaist up with a nice quote or stat, they’ll reward you up with a mention or link. Takes a bit of grinding to get a single mention, but the links you get can be solid gold.

official website:
http://www.helpareporter.com/

A decent blogger outreach tool. Just enter a keyword and Inky Bee shows you bloggers in that industry. Inky Bee allows you to sort by Domain Authority/Page Authority. That way you focus on the big shots in your industry.

official website:
http://www.inkybee.com/

Here’s how this tool works. First, enter a keyword. Then, choose a type of link you want (for example, guest posts). Finally, hit “submit”.

The Link Prospecting Query Builder will spit out search strings you can use to find link opportunities.

official website:
http://www.targetlocal.co.uk/tools/link-prospecting-query-builder/

LinkBird is a keyword research/rank tracking/backlink analysis/link building hybrid tool. Fires off email alerts when it finds a new backlink pointing to your site.

official website:
https://www.linkbird.com/en/

Check My Links on steroids. Like many tools, LinkMiner check for broken links on a page. But this free Chrome extension also shows you how many links the broken link has pointing to it. Uber helpful for broken link building.

Cool Feature: LinkMiner shows you how many outbound links a page has…on a Google SERP. That way you can zero-in on pages with lots of outbound links (and therefore, broken link building opportunities).

official website:
http://pointblankseo.com/linkminer

Linkody lets you know you when you get (or lose) a backlink. It also provides info on your new backlinks (like Mozrank and anchor text). Cool Feature: Linkody emails you when a competitor gets a new backlink. That way you can swoop in and try to get the same one for yourself.

official website:
https://www.linkody.com/

Linkstant you an email alert every time you get a new link. Why is this helpful?

Well you can turn that one link into multiple links (and a relationship) with a quick “hey, thanks for linking to me” email. It also helps you identify reputation management issues quickly so you can nip them in the bud before they blow up.

official website:
http://www.linkstant.com/

If you want to get mentions (and backlinks) from sites like The New York Times and Forbes, you need to start rubbing elbows with journalists. And Muck Rack is an impressive PR tool that helps you quickly find journalists that cover your site’s industry.

Cool Feature: The “Journalist Directory” is a hand-curated list of journalists at over 500 media outlets. Includes their latest tweets, columns and up-to-date contact information.

official website:
http://muckrack.com/

Ninja Outreach is an impressive new blogger outreach tool. Search for influential peeps and reach out to them…all from within the tool. Includes outreach templates.

official website:
http://ninjaoutreach.com/

If you eat, sleep and breathe link building, then Ontolo is a tool I recommend checking out. It’s designed to do one thing: show you lots of link opportunities. Just enter a few keywords, tell Ontolo what types of links you want to get (for example:”links from blogs”), and Ontolo will hand you a list of results as an Excel spreadsheet.

official website:
http://ontolo.com/

A pretty nifty content promotion tool. Enter a few keywords and Outreachr will scour the web for websites that cover those topics. Comes packed with tons of sorting features (like Domain Authority and Citation Flow) so that you can focus on reaching out to ballers.

official website:
http://www.outreachr.com

PitchBox is an all-in-one link prospecting and outreach tool.

Unlike many outreach platforms that are clunky and confusing, PitchBox is a breeze to use. Just enter a few keywords and the tool scans the web for people to promote to (and automatically grabs their contact info). Then reach out to them and track your results.

official website:
http://pitchbox.com/

If you do a lot of link building you’ll NEED to use a tool that opens a big ol’ list of URLs at once. And the Quick URL Opener is one of the best (if not THE best) out there.

official website:
http://quickurlopener.com/

Remove’em is a pro-level link removal tool. This comes in hand if you got hit by Google Penguin or a Manual “Unnatural Links” penalty.

Cool Feature: “R-Score” evaluates all of your backlinks to let you know which ones are harmful. This makes sorting through thousands of links 10x easier.

official website:
https://www.removeem.com/

Rmoov is one of the best link removal tools on the market. It comes packed with helpful features (like finding a site owner’s contact info and auto-generated link removal templates).

official website:
https://www.rmoov.com/index.php

ScrapeBox is the self-proclaimed “Swiss army knife of SEO”. Even though this tool was built for black hat SEO, you can use ScrapeBox for white hat link building tasks (like link prospecting, finding contact information and even keyword research).

official website:
http://www.scrapebox.com/

My favorite infographic embed code generator. I really like how you can specify the dimensions of the embed code box.

official website:
http://www.siegemedia.com/embed-code-generator

An alternative to the Yoast SEO plugin.

The All In One SEO Pack has a few unique features that make it different than yoast, like auto-generated description tags, canonical tag support and a “bad bot” blocker.

official website:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

As you might expect from Bing, Bing Webmaster Tools is good…but not nearly as good as Google Search Console.

But if Bing is important to you, this tool tells you everything you need to know about your site’s visibility in Bing. Cool Feature: Bing has a surprisingly good keyword research tool (see image below). And it can hand you keywords that the GKP will NEVER reveal.

official website:
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Bright Local is an excellent tool that does insanely comprehensive local SEO site audits.

Cool Feature: Find duplicate or incorrect citations that are floating around online. Helpful if you recently changed address or just want to make sure your NAP citations are consistent around the web.

official website:
https://www.brightlocal.com/

A nifty tool that reveals how a search engines spider sees your site. If you check out the screenshot below you’ll notice that search engine spiders get a very different view of our websites than us humans do.

official website:
http://www.browseo.net/

Dareboost is a robust website performance testing tool. Not only does the tool size up your site’s loading speed, but it tells you EXACTLY how you can fix issues that are slowing things down.

official website:
https://www.dareboost.com/en/home

Deep Crawl lives up to its name. It scans every page on your site and gives you a comprehensive report that lists out you how many H1 tags you have on each page, noindexed pages, broken internal links, broken external links etc. Heck, it even tells you if your Twitter Card descriptions are too long.

official website:
https://www.deepcrawl.com/

If you’re serious about SEO, you need to use Google Analytics. Enough said.

Cool Feature: Go to “Acquisition” –>”Search Engine Optimization”–> Landing Pages. This will bring up the pages on your site that get the most impressions and clicks from Google. Look at the CTR field to see your pages that get the best click-through-rate. Finally, apply elements from those title and description tags to pages that get a bad CTR. And watch your organic traffic move on up

official website:
http://www.google.com/analytics/

When you link your Google Analytics to this free spam killer tool, it will add filters to your account that remove over 100 know spammy referrer websites from your list of referring domains. That way your GA data will be squeaky clean.

official website:
https://www.adwordsrobot.com/en/tools/ga-referrer-spam-killer

Google recently started to downrank sites that aren’t mobile friendly.

But how do you know if a page on your site is up to snuff? Just enter the URL into the Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool…and you’ll get a simple “yes/no” answer from Big G.

official website:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

You know Google uses your site’s loading speed as a ranking factor.

Well Google PageSpeed insights tells you whether or not Google sees your site as lightning-fast or snail-slow. It also hands you actionable suggestions that you can use to speed things up.

official website:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Google Search Console is a suite of helpful tools straight from Google. You can see if you have duplicate meta data, how many pages you have indexed, security issues and more.

Cool feature: Go to “Search Traffic”—>”Search Analytics” to get a list of keywords that you currently rank for. Sort by “Position” so that your #1 rankings are at the top. Then scroll down until you find where you rank #10-#25 in Google’s search results. These are pages that you can sometimes push to page 1 with some extra SEO love (for example, pointing a few internal links to that page).

official website:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

A WordPress plugin that creates an SEO-friendly sitemap of your site automatically. However, if you already use the Yoast SEO Plugin, you don’t need this as Yoast does the same exact thing.

official website:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Google Page Speed Insights checks your site’s code. GTmetrix actually loads your site.

When I want to judge my site’s real loading speed, I always defer to GTmetrix. It also gives you recommendations for getting your site up to speed (literally).

official website:
https://gtmetrix.com/

LinkPatrol is an interesting WordPress plugin that shows you all of your site’s external links.

Cool Feature: If you need to remove or nofollow a bunch of links on your site, LinkPatrol makes it easy. Just choose a domain you want to remove or nofollow, and LinkPatrol will take care of them.

official website:
https://linkpatrolwp.com/

Lipperhey analyzes your site for technical SEO issues and provides a basic SEO content analysis.

official website:
https://www.lipperhey.com/en/

A helpful (free) tool that makes sure you have a valid sitemap. The XML Sitemap Validator also double checks that the links in your sitemap work.

official website:
http://ipullrank.com/tools/map-broker/

The Microdata Generator makes creating local SEO schema markup a breeze. This is perfect if you’re a local business (or have local SEO clients).

Just enter your basic biz info (like address, phone number, opening hours etc.) and you’re set.

official website:
http://microdatagenerator.org/

A nifty Chrome extension that gives you fistfuls of helpful info with the push of a button. You can see a site’s Alexa ranking, indexed pages, page speed, whois, on page SEO…the list goes on and on.

official website:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-seo-statsformerly-pa/hbdkkfheckcdppiaiabobmennhijkknn

Wondering if your site got dinged by Panda, Penguin or another Google penalty? The outstanding Panguin Tool will help you get to the bottom of it. Just link up Panguin with your Google Analytics and the tool will show if your organic traffic dip happened at the same time as a major Google update.

official website:
http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

A fast and free on-page SEO analysis tool. Provides recommendations to patch up any issues your page has.

official website:
https://www.pluginseo.com/

A pro-level tools suite designed for digital marketing agencies. Raven Tools probably has the best site auditor tool I’ve ever used. And unlike most site audit tools, Raven shows you EXACTLY what you need to do to fix any SEO issues that your site has.

Cool Feature: “Thin content” reveals content that might put you at risk for a Google Panda penalty.

official website:
http://raventools.com/

Is referral “ghost spam” messing up your Google Analytics data? Well this free tool quickly filters out spam bots by creating a segment in GA that ignores traffic from spammy websites.

official website:
https://loganix.net/rst-lander/

This WordPress plugin lets you easily set links on your site as “nofollow”.

official website:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/rel-nofollow-checkbox/

Screaming Frog is the first technical SEO tool that I ever used. And it still holds up today. Great for quickly identifying technical issues that’s holding your site back from the first page. Free version works well. But to get really down-and-dirty, you definitely want to splurge for the full paid version.

official website:
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

This free Chrome extension gives you important SEO info from within your browser.

Just click a button and the SEO & Website Analysis by WooRank analyzes your page’s basic SEO metrics (like title tags that are too long). But the tool also hooks you up with other helpful info (like whether your site is mobile optimized and how fast it loads).

Yes, you can use this extension for your own site. But in experience this tool is even better for competitor analysis because it shows you the site’s Facebook and Twitter pages, what technology they’re using on their site, and traffic estimates…all from within your browser.

official website:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-website-analysis/hlngmmdolgbdnnimbmblfhhndibdipaf?hl=en

Have a bunch of images on your site that are missing alt text and titles? Well you COULD add that info one-by-one…or you could use this helpful plugin. SEO Friendly Images WordPress grabs the file name of your image and turns it into the image’s alt text and title.

For example, let’s say you have an image called “redsox.jpeg”. SEO Friendly Images will automatically turn that file name into “red sox” for image’s alt text and title.

official website:
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-friendly-images/

SEO Monitor is a one-stop dashboard for your SEO performance.

Cool Feature: SEO Monitor takes Google Analytic’s data, mashes it together with your rankings, and helps solve the “(not provided)” issue. This is SUPER helpful for discovering keywords that convert well for you. That way you can put more SEO muscle behind those keywords.

official website:
http://seomonitor.com/

A very easy-to-use SEO audit tool. Also includes backlink analysis data, uptime reports and site speed recommendations. The white label reports for digital marketing agencies look really sharp.

official website:
http://seositecheckup.com/

Simple tool for seeing your site from the eyes of a search engine spider.

official website:
http://seo-browser.com/

SERPmetrics answers the question: “Has everybody’s rankings changed…or is it just me?”. Just head over to this tool to see how volatile Google has been over the last 30 days.

official website:
http://serpmetrics.com/flux/

Site Analyzer a high-quality site audit tool. Yes, $10 for a 100 page scan is a little steep. But the tool hooks you up with a lot of helpful information, especially when it comes to optimizing your content for better on-page SEO.

official website:
https://www.site-analyzer.com/

A VERY in-depth site audit tool. If there’s a potential SEO issue with your site (like a broken link or a title tag that’s too long), Site Condor will identify it. Even I was a bit overwhelmed with the issues it found at first. Fortunately, the tool comes packed with a “View Recommendations” button that tells you how to fix any problems that it finds.

Cool Feature: “Site Graph” visualizes your site’s link structure. This is perfect for seeing how  authority (aka PageRank) flows through your site.

official website:
https://www.sitecondor.com/

A clean and easy-to-use site audit tool. You just need to a URL and Varvy spits out a bunch of helpful info in seconds. Specifically, you’ll see your site’s technical SEO issues, social shares, recent Twitter and Facebook mentions, external links and more.

official website:
https://varvy.com/tools/

This free SEO tool gives you a lot of in-depth info into your site’s technical SEO health. Similar to Screaming Frog but with a few extra features (like graphs and the ability to filter results).

official website:
https://www.eebew.com/spider/

Wondering whether or not you got slapped by a Google Penalty? Well Website Penalty Indicator can give you some much-needed insight. The tool lines up your organic traffic with dates of Google penalties…like “Mobilegeddon” and the Phantom update.

official website:
http://feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/

If you do local SEO for clients, you need to have Whitespark in your arsenal. You can easily find hundreds of NAP citations with a few clicks…and reverse engineer your competitor’s citations with ease.

Cool Feature: Offline Tracking turns “how did you hear about us?” into online data you can use to double down on what works. Integrates with Google Analytics.

official website:
http://www.whitespark.ca/

Top-notch website analysis tool that tells you everything you need to know about your website’s SEO health.

official website:
https://www.woorank.com/

Yoast is the #1 SEO WordPress plugin for one simple reason: it works. It’s also the SEO plugin that we use here at Backlinko.

Cool Feature: “Bulk Editor” lets you edit dozens of pages with a click. Uber helpful if you ever have duplicate content issues on your site.

official website:
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

A free SEO auditor that provides a high-level SEO overview of your site.

official website:
https://zadroweb.com/seo-auditor/

If you’re looking for a way to discover new keywords, try mashing a bunch of words together and see what happens.

(I’m not kidding)

Creating keyword permutations is a classic Adwords tactic that few people in SEO use. And the Dan Zambonini permutation tool is one of the best keyword combo tools that I’ve tried.

official website:
http://seo.danzambonini.com/#

Answer The Public combines Google Autosuggest scraping with a question scraper.

So if you want to know what questions your target audience types into Google, just pop the keyword into Answer The Public and you’ll get a hefty list.

official website:
http://answerthepublic.com/

FAQfox is a question scraper tool. I like how you can choose the websites that FAQfox scrapes. So if there’s a particular site that your target audience hands out on (for example, Reddit) you can ask the tool to only search that site.

official website:
http://faqfox.com/

FreshKey is one of the better keyword research tools I tried for this list (and I tried a TON of them). The tool generates sackfuls of keyword ideas by scraping Amazon, Bing, Ebay, Google Market and more. While most tools require a monthly subscription, FreshKey is a very reasonable one-time fee of 49 bucks.

official website:
http://freshkey.com/

An underrated keyword research tool that comes straight from Google.

Google Correlate is really simple:

It shows you keywords that tend to get searched for together. For example, let’s say you pop “gluten free” into the tool. Google Correlate tells you that people searching for “gluten free” also search for “cheese gluten free” and “flour gluten free”. Very cool.

official website:
http://www.google.com/trends/correlate

The Google Keyword Planner is the only keyword tool that gives you data straight from the horse’s mouth.

Cool feature: The GKP tells you how likely someone searching for that keyword will buy something from you. How? Look at the “competition” and “estimated bid” columns. If the “competition” and “estimated bid” are high, you probably have a keyword that converts well. I put more weight on this than straight-up search volume. After all, who wants a bunch of tire kickers coming to their site?

official website:
https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

I ALWAYS check Google Trends before pulling the trigger on a keyword. Why?

Because I want to know whether or not my keyword is getting more (or less) popular. If you skip this step you risk optimizing your page around a dying keyword.

Cool Feature: Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out “Queries”. These are related keywords that you can pop into the GKP to see if they’re a good fit.

official website:
https://www.google.com/trends/

A solid, reasonably priced keyword research tool with an excellent question scraper.

Cool Feature: “Divergent” shows you what time of the year certain keywords tend to spike. For example, if you want to see which gift card keywords tend to perk up around Christmas, GrepWords will show it to you. Ditto with Halloween and keywords related to “costumes”.

official website:
http://grepwords.com/

HitTail does two things very well:

1. It shows you which keywords tend to bring in the most traffic for you (this helps get around the “not provided” problem.

2. Shows you keyword suggestions. I was impressed by their keyword suggestions because they showed me keywords that I didn’t see other tools.

official website:
https://www.hittail.com/

If you do SEO work for local clients (like plumbers and electricians), this tool can help you find local keywords that potential customers search for. For example, if you tell the tool that your client is a plumber in Boston, it will hand you 40-ish keywords that customers might use in Google.

official website:
http://www.imforsmb.com/tools/bulk-keyword-generator/

Jaaxy is an easy-to-use keyword research tool that specializes in spitting out lots of closely-related keywords. Nice tool.

official website:
http://www.jaaxy.com/

Yes, Keyword Combiner is designed for Adwords. But it’s a great tool to find keywords that you can use for SEO as well. Just pop in a bunch of different keywords and the tool will mash them all together. Then upload them to the GKP to check their search volume. Helpful.

official website:
http://web.forret.com/tools/adwords.asp

A unique keyword research tool that shows you keyword suggestions as a word cloud. Bigger keywords=more search volume. It also color codes keywords based on Adwords competition (which is a good sign of a keyword’s profitability).

official website:
http://www.keywordeye.com/

Keyword Revealer is a standard keyword research tool with a  a cool “Keyword Tree” feature. The keyword treee shows you keyword ideas as a tree. And when you click on a “branch” in the tree, a new set of branches appears. Helpful.

official website:
http://www.keywordrevealer.com/

This tool probably gives you more keyword ideas than any other tool on the market. Why? Because it finds keywords from a bunch of different places, like Ebay, Amazon and even Yahoo. In fact, the last seed keyword I put into it (“paleo diet”) generated 15,000 keywords!

The one downside to this tool is that it doesn’t show you how many people search for the keywords that it spits out. So you need to manually upload the keyword list into the GKP to get search volume info.

official website:
http://keywordsnatcher.com/

A keyword tool that scrapes autocomplete suggestions from sites like Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing and Etsy.

official website:
http://www.keywordtooldominator.com

A decent keyword research tool. While Keyword Spy is a bit dated (the copy still says “track your rankings in MSN”), it still works OK. The tool works just like SEMRush: enter a domain name into the tool and it will show you a list of keywords that the site ranks for. However, SEMRush is far and away the superior tool.

official website:
http://www.keywordspy.com/

An excellent keyword research tool that scrapes Google Autocomplete results.

Although Google said they would be “restricting” access to Autocomplete, KeywordTool.io seems to have found a way around it. I just tested the tool and it brought back a bunch of excellent keyword suggestions just like it always does.

official website:
http://keywordtool.io/

An insanely easy to use alternative to the Google Keyword Planner. Just pop a keyword into it and you get search volume, estimated bid and first page competition data within seconds.

official website:
https://kwfinder.com/

A very easy-to-use keyword research tool. Enter a keyword and get suggestions. Simple and effective.

Cool feature: Only want to see keywords that have a search volume between 1500-2100? How about keywords with an estimated bid of at least $2.50? Long Tail Pro’s filtering feature makes it easy to see ONLY keywords that you actually want.

official website:
http://www.longtailpro.com/

Power Suggest Pro is a desktop-based keyword research tool. Enter a keyword and it spits out ideas from a number of different search engines (like Google and Wikipedia). Cool Feature: “Ideas!” give you a list of common terms people use in search engines (like “best X” and “how to fix Y”). Helpful for coming up with new keyword ideas.

official website:
http://www.powersuggestpro.com/

SECockpit is probably most advanced keyword research tool on the market. Yes, you enter a seed keyword and get suggestions like any other tool. But SECockpit can do so much more than list out a list of related keywords.

It can spit out low competition keywords. It can show you keywords that get a minimum CPC in Adwords. It can even show you keywords that have YouTube, Ebay or Amazon results on the first page.

Cool Feature: SECockpit scrapes the “Searches similar to…” from the bottom of Google’s search results. This can often unearth keywords that you’d otherwise miss.

official website:
http://secockpit.com/

Let’s face it:

Most people enter seed keywords into the Google Keyword Planner that they pluck out of thin air. But with this free SEO tool you can find out what people actually type into search boxes.

How? Just create a scenario and ask people what they would search for in that situation.

For example, I created a scenario “How would you search for a hotel in Paris?”. You can see the results in the screenshot below. You can even export the list as a CSV file.

official website:
http://www.seedkeywords.com

SEMRush is one of the few SEO tools that I couldn’t live without. Unlike most keyword research tools, SEMRush works by showing  you your competitor’s top keywords. So rather than grinding away in the Google Keyword Planner, just pop a competitor URL into SEMRush and you’ll see every single keyword that they rank for. #solidgold

Cool Feature: “Pages” reveal the pages on your competitor’s site that generate the most organic search engine traffic. This feature is insanely helpful for executing step #1 of The Skyscraper Technique.

official website:
http://www.semrush.com/

SEO Book has a set of helpful SEO tools that focus on technical SEO and keyword research.

I especially like their “Keyword Suggestion” gadget. Super easy to use and gives you all the info you need quickly (like monthly search volume, suggested bid etc.).

official website:
http://tools.seobook.com/

A decent keyword research tool. Also, I noticed that the keywords serpIQ spit out weren’t the same old keywords that I saw in most other keyword research tools.

Cool Feature: “Competition Analyzer” measures how competitive a keyword will be to rank for (scored between 1-100).

official website:
https://serpiq.com/

SerpStat is an excellent keyword brainstorming tool. Although it doesn’t give you search volume for keywords, it does hand you a huge list of unique keywords that you can upload into the Google Keyword Planner.

Cool Feature: “Questions” gives you questions that people tend to ask around your topic. Very cool.

official website:
http://serpstat.com/

SimilarWeb gives you a bird’s eye view of your competitor’s traffic figures, organic keywords, engagement metrics and more.

Cool Feature: “Similar Sites” show you websites that are closely-related to you or a competitor. Helpful for finding new outreach opportunities.

official website:
http://www.similarweb.com/

Soolve is a free tool that pulls autocomplete suggestions from a handful of different sources like Google, YouTube, Amazon, and Wikipedia.

official website:
http://www.soovle.com/

I hadn’t used SpyFu in over 3 years. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that the classic PPC tool has been upgraded with a ton of new SEO-focused features. In fact they’re keyword competition feature was one of the best that I came across.

Cool Feature: “Keyword Kombat” uncover keywords that a few of your competitor’s rank for. If those sites have similar authority to you, then it stands to reason that you can leapfrog all of them with some amazing content and link building.

And yes, that name reminds me of Mortal Kombat too

official website:
http://www.spyfu.com/

A suprisingly helpful free keyword brainstorming tool. I’m not 100% sure how it works, but it spit out quite a few unique keywords when I tested it.

Make sure to check “Level 3” so that you get access to the largest list of keywords.

official website:
http://tools.seochat.com/tools/related-keywords-tool/

TermExplorer provides you with thousands of keyword ideas and thorough organic competition info. Solid tool.

official website:
http://termexplorer.com/Public/

This was the first tool that scraped Google Autocomplete data. And it still gets the job done.

official website:
http://ubersuggest.org/

Even though Wordstream’s free keyword tools are made for Adwords, their set of free tools are helpful for uncovering keywords for your SEO campaigns.

Cool Feature: “Keyword Niche Finder” mashes a bunch of keywords together. When I tested this feature I noticed a handful of keywords that weren’t in any of the other keyword research tools I tried.

official website:
http://www.wordstream.com/free-keyword-tools

WordTracker has its own internal index of keywords. Why is this important? Well it means you can come across long tail keywords that the GKP simply won’t show you. WordTracker also provides organic first page competition data.

Cool Feature: “Search for this Keyword” uncovers long tail variations of a given keyword. Repeat until you’ve found the long tail keyword you want.

official website:
http://www.wordtracker.com/

Wordtracker scout is a very cool (free) Chrome extension that finds keywords within a piece of content.You simply need to head over to an article, click the “W” button and the tool will scan the page for keyword ideas.

official website:
http://www.wordtracker.com/scout

A rank tracking and keyword research tool hybrid. AWR takes some of the features of tools like SEMRush and Authority Labs and puts them under one roof. It also rocks a a solid site audit tool.

official website:
http://www.advancedwebranking.com/

If you sell products on Amazon, AMZ Tracker is a must-have tool. Tracks your rankings on Amazon.com AND international Amazon websites (like Amazon.de).

Cool Feature: “On Page Analyzer” evaluates your Amazon product page for important Amazon SEO metrics like positive reviews and high-res images.

official website:
https://www.amztracker.com/

A reliable and easy-to-use rank tracking tool. The cheapest plan tracks 250 keywords, which is more than enough for most businesses. And for those of you that do Local SEO, Authority Labs tracks Google+ Local results too.

official website:
http://authoritylabs.com/

GeoRanker is an advanced local SEO (Google Maps) rank tracking tool. As you know, if you track local keywords (like “Boston tacos”), you can’t use most rank tracking tools. You need to see what people in Boston see. Well GeoRanker does exactly that. Choose your keywords and locations and get a report back that shows you your Google organic and Google local results.

official website:
https://www.georanker.com/

Microsite Masters is a very solid rank tracking tool.

Cool Feature: “Scoreboard” shows you the keywords that had the most movement (positive and negative). Great for zeroing in on pages that might need attention.

official website:
http://www.micrositemasters.com/

Pro Rank Tracker is a quality rank tracking tool with a great user interface. If you’re tracking hundreds (or thousands) of keywords, you can group keywords into categories to keep things organized.

official website:
http://proranktracker.com/

Rank Ranger is a reliable rank tracker that comes bundles with a handful of extra features like on-page audits, keyword research, and competitor analysis. Nice tool.

official website:
https://www.rankranger.com/

Rival IQ pits your social media and SEO presence against your competitors. It your chief competitor getting more Twitter mentions than you? Are they ranking for a new keyword? This excellent tool will let you know. Had a lot of fun playing around with this one.

official website:
https://www.rivaliq.com/

Want to see the search results for Google.co.uk, Google.de or any of the other 150+ international Googles? Look no further than Search Latte. Just enter your keyword, pick an international version of Google, and you’ll see that country’s search results. No proxies or VPNs needed.

official website:
http://searchlatte.com/

SEO Rank Monitor tracks your keywords against your competitors. Also does YouTube Rank checking.

official website:
http://www.seorankmonitor.com/

SERanking is a quality rank tracking tool that comes bundled with some bonus features like keyword suggestions and site auditing.

official website:
http://seranking.com/

SERPFox is a no-fuss rank tracking tool that just works. A great value.

official website:
http://serpfox.com/

SERPS.com is an enterprise-level rank tracking product with a built-in keyword research tool.

Cool Feature: “Tests” let you test how on page-SEO changes affect your rankings. For example, you can change your title tag, wait a week, and SERPs.com will tell you if that change had an impact.

official website:
https://serps.com/tools/keywords

Sistrix is an enterprise-level SEO platform that shows you your site’s rankings, social signals, backlinks, anchor text distribution and more. Unlike many SEO tools with a million features, Sistrix is so easy my mom could use it.

Cool Feature: “Keyword Opportunities” show you a list of keywords that your competitors rank for…but you don’t.

official website:
http://www.sistrix.com/

WebCEO is a world-class SEO platform that gives you access to a bunch of quality tools to boost your SEO, from keyword research to technical SEO to rank tracking and even mobile optimization.

Cool Feature: “DIY SEO Guide” gives SEO beginners explicit steps to improve their site’s SEO.

official website:
http://www.webceo.com/

If you’re on a tight budget, Wincher is the one rank tracking tool that you should add to your arsenal. The free version is pretty nice with weekly updates and 7 tracked keywords. But when you upgrade to the $8/month paid plan you get many of the same features as the big boys (like email alerts) for pennies on the dollar.

official website:
https://www.wincher.com/

Wordtail is a nice rank tracking tool that has the features you’d expect from dedicated rank tracking software (like grouping keywords, in-depth reports and competitor tracking).

official website:
http://wordtail.com/

BuzzSumo went from “new kid on the block” to “must-have tool” in the blink of an eye.

And it’s no wonder. BuzzSumo makes finding winning content (for example, if you want to execute The Skyscraper Technique) a walk in the park.

Cool Feature: “View Sharers” shows you who shared a piece of content on Twitter, which is outreach solid gold bullion. “BuzzSumo Alerts” tells you whenever a keyword or phrase (like a competitor’s brand name) gets mentioned around the web.

official website:
http://buzzsumo.com/

This tool answers the question we’ve all had when evaluating a keyword: “Can I rank?”. CanIRank.com provides a nice breakdown of how your page compares to the first page competition (inducing domain authority, page authority and on-page SEO metrics).

official website:
https://www.canirank.com/

As you know, adding LSI keywords to your content can boost your rankings. The question is: how do you know which LSI keywords to add? Well this free tool does the job for you. And unlike most “keyword suggestion” tools that give you variations of the keyword you put into it, Keys4Up actually understands that meaning behind the word. For example, look at the screenshot to see the related words the tool found around the keyword “paleo diet”.

official website:
http://www.keys4up.com/

LSI Graph is a handy LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keyword generator. Enter a keyword and get a list of terms that you can sprinkle into your content.

official website:
http://lsigraph.com/

MarketMuse is advanced content analysis tool (similar to Scribe by Copyblogger). Market Muse scans your content and compares it to similar content on the web. If it finds that other people mention a keyword that you don’t, it tells you about this “content gap”.

For example, let’s you have a piece of content about low carb dessert recipes. If MarketMuse finds that your competitors use terms like “Stevia” and “Agave Nector” — but you don’t — it will suggest that you include these terms in your content. In my experience including LSI keywords like these can make a significant difference in your rankings.

official website:
https://www.marketmuse.com/products

nTopic is a “content relevancy” tool. In other words, it scans your content and gives you suggestions to make your post more SEO-friendly. Comes with a WordPress plugin that’s helpful for quickly analyzing and updating your content to boost its on-page SEO.

official website:
http://www.ntopic.org/

A top-notch technical and on-page SEO tool built with German engineering.

Cool feature: My favorite feature of onpage.org is their TD*IDF analysis. TD*IDF identifies keywords that pages ranking for your target keyword tend to use. These terms are excellent LSI keywords that you can sprinkle into your content to bump up your on-page SEO.

official website:
https://en.onpage.org/

The QuickSprout tool is an extremely helpful website analysis tool.

Just connect your Google Analytics with the tool and it’ll analyze your site’s SEO visibility, social shares, web page loading speed, and more. Also provides actionable recommendations and downloadable reports.

official website:
https://www.quicksprout.com/

Scribe bridges the gap between old school on-page SEO and new school content marketing. The tool scores your content based on how friendly it is for people AND Google. I also dig the fact that you can do keyword research from within the WordPress editor.

official website:
http://scribecontent.com/

Ever write a post and wonder: “Is this post SEO friendly enough?”. Then you should give Squirrly a shot. It’s a WordPress plugin that automatically analyzes your content for SEO and human readability.

Cool Feature: Squirrly comes packed with a nice keyword research tool that works within the WordPress editor. In addition to the usual metrics (like search volume), it also shows you if that keyword is a hot topic of conversion online. The tool also shows you the stability of that keyword’s search volume over time.

official website:
http://howto.squirrly.co/wordpress-seo-plugin-by-squirrly/

If you want a quick-and-dirty look at your content’s on-page SEO, give SEOptimer a try.

This free tool quickly analyzes your page and lets you know if there are any issues (like missing image alt text and broken links) that might be holding you back from page 1.

official website:
http://www.seoptimer.com/

A worthwhile site audit tool that also does keyword research and on page SEO/content analysis.

official website:
https://www.soloseo.com/

Text Tools is an advanced LSI keyword tool. It scans the top 10 results for a given keyword and shows you which terms they tend to use. If you sprinkle these same terms into your content, it can boost your content’s relevancy in the eyes of Google. You can also compare your content to the top 10 to uncover LSI keywords that your content might be missing.

official website:
http://www.text-tools.net/

TrendSpottr shows you content that’s trending on Twitter. So if you want to do some newsjacking or get your hands a hot topic, this tool can help you do it.

official website:
https://trendspottr.com/welcome

Upcity is one part SEO tool and one part online marketing course.

This means that instead of getting a list of fancy charts and error messages, the tool tells you how to get on the right track. This is perfect for small business owners that do DIY SEO.

Cool Feature: “Curriculum” walks you through the basic steps you need to have an SEO-friendly website in 2015. Tailored to local businesses and people new to digital marketing. You get checklists and video game-style points for completing the important tasks (like creating a Facebook page or setting up an editorial calendar).

official website:
http://upcity.com/

The best link analysis tool on the market…by a mile.

Ahrefs has a massive index (over a trilion links) that’s updated at least once a day. It’s also super duper simply to use. Because of its excellent user interface and index, Ahrefs is one of the few SEO tools that I use every day.

official website:
https://ahrefs.com/

An SEO tools suite that focuses on link analysis. Also has a helpful “Unnatural Link Detection” feature that identifies risky backlinks that might have caused a penalty (or can cause a penalty down the road). Solid tool.

official website:
http://cognitiveseo.com/

Kerboo is an SEO tools suite for search engine marketing pros. Includes backlink analysis, link prospecting, on-site SEO audits and rank tracking. Cool Feature: “LinkRisk” analyzes your link profile and identifies spammy/dangerous backlinks.

official website:
https://kerboo.com/apps/

A solid link analysis tool with some link building features built into it (like link prospecting and outreach).

But LRT’s cool feature is its “Link Detox” tool. This tool automatically scans your backlinks and shows you which links put you at risk of a Google penalty (or links that already caused a penalty). In other words, it makes identifying spammy links super easy. When I ran a test of Link Detox it was almost 100% accurate at differentiating between good and bad links.

official website:
http://www.linkresearchtools.com/

With a huge, updated index Majestic is one of the top link analysis tools on the market. The tool also has a few helpful propriety metrics like “TrustFlow” and “CitationFLow” that tell you whether or not that site you want to get a link from is authoritative or spammy.

Cool Feature: “Clique Hunter” shows you sites that tend to link to your competitors (but not you). Just pop in a few sites and Majestic shows you the various “cliques” that they belong to. This is a great way to new discover link building opportunities.

official website:
https://majestic.com/

A comprehensive SEO platform that gives you info on newly acquired backlinks, keyword rankings and site speed. It even sends you alerts whenever one of your competitors gets a new link. I especially love the dashboard because its clean and gives you ONLY the essential info you need.

official website:
https://monitorbacklinks.com/

Nifty toolbar for Chrome and Firefox that shows you the Page Authority and Domain Authority of the page you’re on.

But the toolbar also shows you the DA/PA of Google search results (this feature only works for Moz Pro subscribers). This is an awesome way to size up the first page competition.

official website:
https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

A solid link analysis and reverse engineering tool.

Yes, Open Link Profiler’s index isn’t as massive as the big tools (like Ahrefs and Majestic). But its paid version has some cool features (like on-page analysis and site audits) that can make the monthly payment worthwhile. Also, the free version is the best free backlink analysis tool I’ve ever used. So if you’re balling on a budget and want to see your competitor’s backlinks for free, give OpenLinkProfiler a shot.

Cool Feature: “Hub Finder” is very similar to Majestic’s “Clique Hunter”. Enter a few competitors into the tool and see who links to them (but not you).

official website:
http://openlinkprofiler.org/

Open Site Explorer is a top 3 link analysis tool that comes bundled with Moz Pro. The metrics that OSE provides — like Domain Authority and Page Authority — are what SEO pros use every day.

official website:
https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/

A suite of quality desktop-based SEO tools that include a rank checker, backlink analysis tool, site auditor, and keyword research tool.

official website:
http://www.seopowersuite.com/

The best “SEO tool for excel” that I’ve used so far. Easily check a site’s backlinks (via ahrefs or Majestic API), social shares, HTTP status, word count, external links and more. All from within Excel.

official website:
http://seotoolsforexcel.com/

How’d you like to see the PA and DA for a big ol’ list of URLs? Pop the list into the Bulk Metrics Checker, hit “go fetch” and you’ll get a handy list.

official website:
http://www.seoweather.com/free-seo-tools/

If you want to pull data from Moz and Majestic into an Excel spreadsheet, the SEOGadget for Excel tool makes it easy.

official website:
https://builtvisible.com/seogadget-for-excel/

A nice little toolbar for Firefox and Chrome that shows you important SEO metrics (like domain age, number of backlinks, and traffic estimates) all from within your Chrome or Firefox browser.

SEOquake can display the same data on Google search results. This can help you determine whether or not a keyword is insanely competitive…or ripe for you to grab a spot on the first page.

official website:
http://www.seoquake.com/

ShareMetric gives you a lightning-fast screenshot of an page’s social shares, links and Google keyword rankings. Especially helpful if you want to see what keyword a page ranks for in seconds. You’ll need an SEMRush or Moz API to get backlink and keyword info. Nice tool.

official website:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sharemetric/lhnijlahkclijpefbcimahdcgcjbmnnp?hl=en

If you want to check info on a huge list of URLs (like Domain Authority, number of backlinks, whois information, social shares and readability), URL Profiler is the best tool on the market to get the job done.

official website:
http://urlprofiler.com/

WebMeUp is a quality link analysis tool with a HUGE index of “897,704,758,673” backlinks. I’d love to see the tool use some sort of authority metric (like Ahref’s Domain Rank). Otherwise it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in your link profile.

official website:
http://webmeup.com/