The Best SEO Tools in 2023 

2. Rank Ranger

Best for daily, granular keyword rank tracking and reporting

If you’re an SEO, you know the power of being ahead of the curve when you have a drop in rankings. Rank Ranger’s Rank Tracking, the tool’s pièce de résistance, allows you to upload keywords and see how they perform on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Also, as well as Google, Rank Ranger covers three of the world’s largest search engines: Yandex, Baidu, and Naver.

• My favorite part of this tool is the Fluctuations report: see which of your keywords are stable (maintaining a similar rank position), unstable (fluctuating majorly in rank positions), improving or declining in rank, cannibalizing each other, or if there are opportunities/risks to jump on (measured by unusual rank behavior — falling out of or entering the top 10 results).

Here’s what that looks like: Each Fluctuation metric gives you a list of keywords. By clicking on them (the metrics), you’ll open up an easy-to-digest, deeper insights trend graph showing keyword rank, visibility, etc.

3. Majestic SEO

Best for deep backlink analysis  

Unlike tools designed to be all-in-ones, Majestic specializes in backlinks. Majestic crawls the web for links, building an in-depth view of your website’s backlink profile, including link authority insights. So you can track your performance, improve authority, and grow your ranking.

• Its Trust Flow metric measures how authoritative a given website is based on its backlink profile. The higher the Trust Flow, the higher the authority a website has.

• It provides an up-to-date list of websites similar to yours, including traffic flowing through relevant links to their sites. This helps you monitor and analyze competition and see who’s linking to them so you can harvest relevant sites to potentially get backlinks from.

• This is super helpful because if a site links to one of your competitors, it may add a link to you, but chances aren’t high. But if a site links to three competitors, it’s a lot more likely that same site will pop a backlink your way.

4. Screaming Frog

Best for website crawls to uncover technical issues and content gaps 

One of the best SEO audit tools around, Screaming Frog is the crème de la crème of website crawlers. Acting like Google’s crawlers/spiders, it powerfully hunts down any issues impacting the quality of your site — content or technical:

• it identifies broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, and canonicalization problems. Alongside this, see a precise analysis of your meta tags (page titles and descriptions).

• It’s also one of my favorite platforms for its ability to connect APIs (Google Search Console, Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights) so you can easily see site speed issues and sitemaps.

Bonus: Screaming Frog’s name originstory always brings a smile: inspired by a frog who stood its ground while being cornered by cats in the founder’s yard, this tool offers you a similar level of self-confidence (though with the data to back it up).

5. ASO tool: Data.ai

Best for comparing apps to identify trends and growth opportunities 

If your business has an app in any of the two major app stores (Apple’s App Store or Google Play), Data.ai is the gold standard for ASO (app store optimization).

• It makes the opaque transparent by delivering data on your own app’s performance and what other publishers are doing. It does this by harvesting market trends (based on accurate downloads and revenue across the world) and revealing competitor apps’ entire life cycles.
• It’s great for advanced competitive analysis, from audience attention and stickiness to engagement depth and growth stage. For instance, its Ratings Over Time option maps out an app’s rating evolution, so you can see users’ responses to new features and updates.

Honorable mention: Mobile Action

Best for app keyword tracking and keyword research 

While Data.ai meets most of your needs and is one of the best tools for ASO available, another worth considering is Mobile Action.

• Along with impressive keyword data, it has an SDK (Software Development Kit) analyzer to show you which SDK technologies your competitors are using.By seeing what tech your rivals are implementing, and uncovering their impression and click data to gauge what’s working for them, you can enhance your strategy to rank higher in app store search and get more organic downloads.

The Best Free SEO Tools

1. Similarweb Extension

Best for instant, easy-to-digest key metrics for any website, including site rank, traffic sources, and visits over time

As one of the best free SEO options, our Similarweb extension makes things brilliantly simple. Pop it into your browser and instantly see key metrics for any site you visit.

Here’s a basic example using innocent.co.uk:

• It delivers key traffic source details plus visits data in seconds (without you having to switch to a separate page). Use it for a clean overview of what’s going on on your site as well as others’, including data on which channels traffic is coming through and which countries most of your traffic is visiting from. This way, you know which markets to focus on maximizing or improving your SEO in.

2.  Google Search Console

Best for easy monitoring of organic traffic and site performance

A classic for a reason, GSC is one of the best free SEO optimization tools to monitor your overall website health.

• It offers an overview of crucial metrics (on both site performance and user experience) relative to Google search. I find myself returning to it to monitor and request indexing of updated pages. Specifically, the data for organic traffic and search term clicks is a central part of any SEO research.

•  It also provides a way for Google to let you know when its crawlers find errors, including indexing pages/videos, core web vitals, and mobile usability.

3. Google Keyword Planner

Best for deep keyword research 

Another of the top free SEO tools, GKP is technically a PPC solution, but you can absolutely use it to harvest keywords and more. In fact, it’s one of the best keyword research tools for beginner marketers around.

• In conjunction with other tools, I use it to further identify popular keywords and search volume metrics to tighten my Search strategy.

• It’s also a great option for local SEO because you can easily filter based on states or cities, instead of just countries, to ensure you reach the right market.

4. Google Trends

Best for analyzing search behavior and patterns in search queries 

Observing the rise and fall of keywords is an SEO staple. It’s also just fun for us data fanatics . Enter: Google Trends. This one’s especially useful when you want to monitor the lifecycle of keywords (and if you’re an SEO, you always want to do that).

• Monitor the lifecycle of keywords and determine patterns in search behavior for specific keywords or topics over time. Once you can gauge what’s gaining or losing momentum online, you can adjust your content strategy.

• Compare the popularity of different search terms to refresh your content ideation and — you know the drill — optimization.

5. Redirect Path

Best for flagging redirects path issues 

Redirect Path (or the HTTP Header & Redirect Checker for SEO,  if you fancy something that rolls off the tongue less?) is a lesser-known plugin in the world of giant SEO software options. Small but mighty.

• It flags redirects and errors, including client-side redirects (like Meta and Javascript redirects), exposing potential issues you may not have seen yet.

6. YoastSEO Plugin

Best for WordPress site optimization and back-end feature management

Our final free tool, Yoast, is a vital plugin if you use WordPress in your content. It’s not an all-in-one solution, but what it does do, it does brilliantly, making it one of the best SEO software tools around.

• A range of features (including — any guesses? — keyword help) ensures your content shines SEO-wise. This includes meta tag optimization, submitting sitemaps, social features, and rich snippets. You can also update pages if they’re not indexed and hide pages from SERP (search engine results pages).

• It also has a thriving online forum plus a Premium version offering additional features.