23 Best SEO Tools to Improve Your Rankings (2021)

SEO is one of the most important digital marketing skills, yet some say it takes the longest to master.

If you want to start a blog and make money with your online business, you need website traffic. And to get organic traffic, you need to rank on Google for specific keywords.

So whether you need to perform keyword research, audit your website, do competitive research, or just want to see how well you rank on Google, you should use one of the best SEO tools.

There’s also a ton of great SEO knowledge you can find online – long-form SEO guides, expert roundups on how to drive traffic, helpful YouTube videos, etc.

However, the best option is to leverage SEO tools and master your own SEO to increase your rankings for a low monthly cost.

In this post, I ranked and reviewed the best SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz so that you can raise your SEO game this year.

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links that I receive a small commission for at no cost to you. However, these are merely the tools I fully recommend when it comes to SEO. You can read my full affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy in the footer.

What Are the Best SEO Tools?

Here are my picks for the best SEO tools to increase your web traffic.

1. GrowthBar.

GrowthBar is one of the easiest to use SEO tools on the market. They enable users to see millions of keyword results, your competition’s backlinks, Google Ads data, and even Facebook Ads.

GrowthBar is a Google Chrome extension that enables you to cover all your SEO needs right from the Google search engine results page (SERP). So it’s lightning-fast and 100% intuitive. If you can Google search, you can use GrowthBar!

Because of the simple user interface and robust data sets, it’s becoming a favorite choice for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and freelancers. But GrowthBar counts bigger companies like Minted, Okta, Bill.com, and Teepublic among its customers as well.

KEY FEATURES:

• Organic Research — See millions of keyword suggestions along with their competitiveness score.
• Competitiveness Metrics — See your competitors’ top organic keywords, top backlinks, and export any of the metrics into an Excel-friendly CSV.
• Difficulty Score — Understand how easy or difficult it is to rank for a certain keyword using GrowthBar’s proprietary “ranking difficulty score.”
• Word Count — A feature unique to GrowthBar enables you to easily see how many words your competitors’ organic listings have so that you can tailor your content to win in the SERP.

PRICING:

You can test out GrowthBar for 5 days for free, before upgrading to a paid subscription.

USED FOR:

• Lightning-fast insights for improved rankings that live directly in the SERP
• Competitive research: understand your competition’s top organic keyword, Google Ads keywords, backlinks, and Facebook Ads
• Get word counts and keyword suggestions to build your content strategy

CONS:

• As of now, you must use it within the Google SERP
• Lacks technical SEO metrics
• Lacks historical tracking data

Get started with a 5-day free trial of GrowthBar.

2. SEMrush.

SEMrush is a leading competitor analysis tool that helps users evaluate their competitors as well as their own content. It provides robust metrics and allows users to get top-performing pages, content, and keywords.

SEMrush has been successfully helping many website owners and ecommerce entrepreneurs to understand the SEO strategies of their competitors. This makes it one of the most popular SEO tools among small and medium-sized enterprises.

The SEO tool offers the best help for SEO, PPC, ad campaigns, backlinks, keyword research, SERP, and much more.

KEY FEATURES:

• Organic Research – This feature allows the users to see the top keywords used by their competitors, and comp the changes of domains.
• Advertising Research – It helps you run better ad campaigns by analyzing the ad budgets of the competitors. You can also localize your ad campaigns.
• Product Listing Ads – SEMrush allows the users to see competitors’ Product Listing Ads and product feeds.
• Traffic Analytics – SEMrush accurately tells about the online performance and traffic of a website. It also helps you understand the behavior and media consumption of potential customers.

PRICING:

SEMrush offers three paid plans. The Pro plan is $99.95, the Guru plan is $199.95, and the Business plan is $399.95. There is also a quote-based Enterprise plan that you can customize according to the specific needs of the entrepreneurs.

USED FOR:

• Creating guest blogging strategies
• Analyzing the strategies of the competitors
• Tracking past and current website ranking
• Performing technical SEO audits and gauge user experience
• Finding good advertising opportunities for CPC
• Doing robust keyword research to make your content rank higher

CONS:

• Newbies might find it a bit complicated
• You have to pay a hefty tag for more advanced features
• Instances of inaccurate data regarding advertisements and backlinks

Get started with SEMrush today.

3. Ahrefs.

Ahrefs is one of my favorite SEO tools on the market. Not only is it the second-fastest web crawler (only behind Google) but it has the best user interface out of all tools on this list.

It’s primarily used for backlink audits, competitive analysis, URL rankings, keyword research, and more. Like SEMrush, Ahrefs also offers organic search reports to analyze the traffic of your competitors’ sites.

Users then use that extracted data for link building, keyword research, SEO strategies, rank tracking, and content marketing.

I use Ahrefs every day to check on new backlinks, my keyword’s search positions, and check out competitor insights.

I especially love their keyword explorer tool, which allows you to see keyword difficulty and related keywords that “also rank” for target phrases.

All these impressive features make Ahrefs a highly competitive SEO tool used by numerous SEO professionals and entrepreneurs worldwide.

KEY FEATURES:

• Amazing Keyword Tools – Ahrefs generates millions of keywords on a single research query.
• Ranking History – You can see the ranking history of any keyword used on any page of your website.
• Content Explorer – You can do a content search within the Ahrefs database that contains more than 1 billion web pages.
• Monitor Outbound Links – Ahrefs shows outgoing links report in the site explorer. This helps you keep proper track of where your guest posts are linking.

PRICING:

You can test out the product by opting for the 7-day trial for $7. After that, you can upgrade to the subscription plans start from $99 and range up to $999.

USED FOR:

• Getting website improvement tips for increased visibility and ranking
• To get a clear backlinks analysis report
• To know the URL rating
• To get historical backlink data analysis
• To build a content strategy

CONS:

• Lack of automated client-facing reports if you’re running an agency

4. Advanced Web Ranking.

Advanced Web Ranking is a great SEO tool for teams looking to track a large volume of keywords. Its ability to track keywords on a hyper-specific level (including SERP features) and white-label reporting make it ideal for agencies and in-house teams.

This tool can also track 3,000 search engines and more than 170 countries, with support for not just Google, but also Baidu, Yandex, Amazon, YouTube, etc. Advanced Web Ranking also performs a deep competitor analysis that includes metrics like market share, estimated visits, and new competitor discovery.

KEY FEATURES:

• It’s a long-standing tool and has existed since 2002.
• Provides hyper-specific local SEO results on both desktop and mobile (country, city-level, or GPS coordinates).
• 3.000 search engines and more than 170 countries (also offers support for SEs such as Baidu, Yandex or Amazon & Youtube)
• You can white-label reporting, export them via PDF, or CSV, create permalinks, integrate with Data Studio, etc.
• It can accommodate large volumes of keywords (which is great for agencies and large in-house teams).
• The tool supports unlimited users with different rights (admin, team member) at no additional cost.

PRICING:

Advanced Web Ranking has four paid plans and all come with a 30-day free trial. Plans increase in price by providing more “units”, which allow you access to a higher volume of keywords to track.

• Starter: $49 per month.
• Pro: $99 per month.
• Agency: $199 per month.
• Enterprise: $499 per month.

USED FOR:

• Performing keyword research.
• Tracking large volumes of keywords.
• Finding specific keyword rankings at the local level.
• Competitor insights and understanding SERP features.

CONS:

• Updates might take a long time if you’re tracking a huge volume of keywords since the rankings are collected in real-time.
• There is no link building module.

5. Sitechecker.

Sitechecker.pro is a great website checker that provides a deep SEO analysis so that you can make SEO improvements. You simply input your website URL and click analyze. Once Sitechecker scans your website, you get insights into traffic, backlinks, rankings, and more.

KEY FEATURES:

• Website Change Monitoring – Their ongoing website scans audit your website and provides information on changes that have been made and how they impact your SEO scores.
• On-Page SEO Audits – Sitechecker scans your webpages and provides insights into issues to fix.
• Website Traffic Check – You can view competitor site traffic without any limits.
• Daily Backlink Tracking – Get notified whenever any new links point to your site (or any disappear) so you can take action.
• Rankings Check – View your keyword rankings (including local and mobile rankings).

PRICING:

Sitechecker has three main pricing plans starting at $29 per month. Their $29/month Startup Plan provides you the ability to use their website checker on 5 websites, 5,000 URLs, 500 keywords, and 5,000 backlinks. Pricing plans scale up with the number of websites, URLs, keywords, and backlinks you want to track.

USED FOR:

• People that need a website checker for site audits.
• Competitor tracking.
• Keyword position tracking and monitoring.
• New and lost backlink tracking.

6. Authority Labs.

Authority Labs is another highly useful SEO tool that comes with a super-easy user-friendly interface. With Authority Labs, you can easily set up multiple sites and optimize your SEO campaigns. It also helps you acquire location-specific rank tracking to laser target your audience.

Users can also track the SEO campaigns and strategies used by their competitors in the market.

KEY FEATURES:

• Global Tracking – You can easily do both local and global tracking for different countries and cities.
• Keyword Targeting – Effective keyword targeting with keyword research tools.
• Free Trial – Authority Labs also offers 30 days free trial.
• Daily Reporting – Receive in-depth reports with daily rank checking that help you analyze where you are standing.

PRICING:

Authority Labs offers four different pricing plans. The Plus plans costs $49, and the Pro plan is $99. Other more advanced plans include Pro Plus at $225 and the Enterprise plan at $450. Apart from this, you also get a 30-day free trial; no credit card required.

USED FOR:

• Tracking competitor domains
• Tracking product ranking on various sites
• Comparing mobile ranking to desktop results
• Offers in-depth analytical reports automated reports into the reporting process

CONS:

• Sorts keywords in alphabetic order, and there is no option to change this filter setting

7. Serpstat.

When it comes to SEO and digital marketing solutions, Serpstat is a one-stop-shop. From optimizing your SEO to running your ad and content marketing campaigns, it helps you with just about everything.

The Serpstat tool does keyword research, competitor research, PPC analysis, and so forth. The dashboard is smooth and easy to use to avoid complexity. Plus, it also helps website owners to keep complete track of the backlinks of their competitors.

KEY FEATURES:

• Website Analysis – Serpstat runs an analysis by monitoring the domain and URL of the website. The analysis includes in-depth SEO and PPC research.
• Keyword Research – Keyword research includes cluster research, search suggestions, search volume, content marketing, and SERP analysis.
• Backlink Analysis – Collects full backlinks data spanning over the last two years and at the same time keeps track of your competitors’ backlink strategies.
• Site Audit – Cleans up your website, HTML, page speed, and never lets you miss any potential error.

PRICING:

Serpstat offers four different pricing plans that include monthly and yearly subscriptions. The Lite plan costs $69 per month, the Standard plan is $149, the Advanced plan is $299, and the Enterprise is $499. You also get a 30-day free trial.

USED FOR:

• Searching keyword variations and collecting international data
• Checking the relevance of different webpages
• Tracking universal search results
• Finding ad strategies and budget of your competitors

CONS:

• Site auditing is quite slow for heavy websites
• Shows inaccurate keywords sometimes

8. Long Tail Pro.

Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool that helps you explore less competitive keywords. These keywords can help you acquire high-converting online traffic, whatever your niche.

It offers excellent keyword suggestions in bulk, along with the keyword competitiveness score. This SEO tool is perfect for beginners and startups.

KEY FEATURES:

• Create Multiple Projects – keep your all campaigns for different sites perfectly organized
• Import and Export – Quick export of the best keywords into Excel and import into the Long-Tail Pro dashboard

Here’s how the Long Tail Pro works:

PRICING:

Long Tail Pro offers three different pricing plans along with 10 days of the money-back guarantee. The Agency plan costs $98 per month, the Pro plan is $45, and the Starter plan is $25.

USED FOR:

• Finding competitive keywords
• Generating long-tail keywords

CONS:

• Limited manual keywords
• Limited seed keywords
• Does not help in analyzing backlinks

9. SEObility.

SEObility is a powerful all-in-one SEO software that helps you monitor your website, which comes in handy in SEO optimization. With its daily updates and link building tools, SEObility helps entrepreneurs improve their search engine rankings with ease.

On top of that, it crawls all the linked pages of a website efficiently and finds issues, such as duplicate content and broken links.

KEY FEATURES:

• Rank Tracking – Helps you track daily keyword rankings based on different demographics and search engines.
• Keyword Monitoring and On-page Analysis – Does on-page crawling and keyword monitoring giving proper improvement suggestions to the users.
• Local Search Results – Users can also evaluate and monitor the local search results that will help them rank higher for a specified targeted group.
• Competitors Comparison – Quickly explores and compares the content of your competitors’ website so that you can optimize your process.
• PDF Export and E-Mail Reporting – Generate regular reports to show a change in the rankings of the websites.

PRICING:

The Basic plan, designed for beginners is available at free of cost. The Premier plan designed for professional websites is available at 30 days of a free trial. After the trial, the plan costs $50 every month. The final Agency plan is $200 and is perfect for large websites and agencies.

USED FOR:

• Website crawling and site auditing
• Checking daily updated Google rank tracker
• Link building and backlink checking
• Whitelabel reporting and regular monitoring
• Runs a Metadata and on-page check
• Blacklist and safe browsing check
• Monitors your page response time
• Exports in-depth reports in CSV and PDF format

10. SEOquake.

SEOquake is one of the most powerful SEO tools and browser plugin that offers numerous SEO metrics. It is especially useful when it comes to content marketing as it quickly gives detailed information on any website.

It provides essential metrics, such as:

• Number of external links
• Alexa rank
• Google rank
• Domain age
• SEMrush rank

KEY FEATURES:

• SEO Bar – You just need to browse the web pages with SEO Bar and it will provide you with quick information.
• SERP Overlay – It helps you view complete analysis of the SERP, and results can be exported in CSV format.
• Keyword Analysis – Provides detailed and structured reports on keywords with proper keyword analysis.
• Print and Export – Data can be saved into CSV file format from any file.

PRICING:

Entirely free of cost.

USED FOR:

• Conducting an on-page SEO audit
• Examining internal and external links
• Comparing URLs and domains in real-time
• Exporting data into CSV file format

CONS:

• High-level parameters are quite confusing for the new users

11. SEOptimer.

SEOptimer is an easy-to-use and straightforward SEO audit tool that helps you improve your page ranking. It excellently performs on-page optimization and off-page link building.

KEY FEATURES:

• White Label SEO Audit – Gives websites their own branded reports by running a check multiple factors.
• Embeddable Audit – Helps you generate more leads and sales for the websites.
• SEO Crawler – Helps in detecting technical SEO problems by scanning every page of the website.
• SEO Audit API – Used for trend analysis, tracking problems, and bulk reporting.