Don’t beat yourself up if you own a small business but don’t feel like an SEO expert! Nobody expects you to be a Jack or Jill of all marketing trades! That’s precisely why user-friendly SEO tools exist: to help you improve search ranking for your website and get more organic traffic. If you’re not ready to hire an SEO agency, dabble in DIY SEO with the following top SEO tools.

Our Favorite SEO Tools to Improve Search Ranking and Organic Traffic to Your Website

1. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Most web traffic (almost 53%) comes from mobile devices. In order to improve your business website’s search ranking, your website needs to be mobile-friendly and mobile responsive.

To make sure technicalities and functionality issues don’t negatively impact your search traffic, type your business URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. The results will tell you if your website plays well with mobile devices. If it doesn’t, you might need to install plug-ins or do something more drastic like redesign your website.

Google's Mobile-Friendly Test screenshot

2. Google PageSpeed Insights

SEO has as much to do with meta data and keywords as it does with functionality. For instance, search engines won’t send traffic to sites that load slowly, aren’t mobile responsive, or have other technical issues—like 404 errors and broken links.

Make sure your site runs optimally by using an online tool like Page Speed Insights to test it. Enter your URL, and this tool will rank your site’s speed from 1 to 100. You want a speed of 50 or more.

If the speed test shows issues, you can often find a plugin to help, including plugins for image compression (usually, a major player in slow load speed). An SEO audit can help you investigate your issues further so you can make a plan of action to improve your organic SEO.

PageSpeed Insights test your page load speed

3. Google Analytics, Ads, and Search Console

Google Analytics helps you monitor your site’s overall performance. Through Google Analytics, you can learn where your traffic comes from, demographic and usage information about visitors, your most popular posts, which social media sites refer traffic to your site, and more.

Likewise, you can use Google Ads to find keywords to optimize your website copy and blog posts. You have to set up an account, but this tool is free. 

You should also integrate Search Console with your website. It sends monthly updates about your website traffic, original page views, most popular content, and more. It will also alert you if your site falls out of compliance with Google’s SEO best practices.

4. FATRANK

FATRANK is a free keyword extension. You can install it on Google Chrome. Then, when you visit any website, you can click the extension to learn where a keyword ranks on that site. It’s a great research tool. Just know that it only tells you rankings in the top 100 positions. Otherwise, it will tell you the keyword isn’t associated with that page.

5. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo allows you to analyze which online content performs best for any topic. So you know if blog posts are the best solution or if you should use a lead magnet, like a white paper or even a video. Once you understand what content works best for any individual topic, you can use that approach but make it even better. 

6. Mozbar

Domain authority is an essential SEO concept to understand. Domain authority is graded from 1 to 100. It ranks how trustworthy, valuable, and authoritative search engines deem your website to be. The higher your score, the better.

Mozbar is a free browser extension that calculates any website’s domain authority. So, you can check out the domain authority of a competitor’s site or your own. You also can learn which pages rank best. Then, you can work on improving your DA over time by link building, creating content, and linking to other websites with high DA value.

MozBar screenshot

7. Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Google wants to see that others in your expertise also view your site as an authority. To improve your site’s SEO you need worthwhile internal and inbound links. But how on earth do you track links to your site? That’s where Ahrefs Backlink Checker comes in.

You just paste your URL on the search bar and click the “Check Backlinks” button. The tool will return a list of your current backlinks, the referring domains, and domain authority. The higher the domain authority, the better the links will be for your SEO value. 

Arefs Link Checker screenshot for backlinks

8. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the ultimate user-friendly SEO optimizer. You just install it on your WordPress site, and follow the rating system. A green light means your SEO and readability pass. Yellow and red mean these categories need work. It feels so good to get the green light! But either way, Yoast will tell you know what you need to change or improve to improve your post or page copy.

Yoast SEO screenshot

Appearing on the first page of search results is key to making more sales. You can use these DIY SEO tools today to improve your ranking. You can also hire our woman-owned agency for more advanced SEO work. Get in touch to hear more!