Ranking high in Google is both a science and an art. The first and most important part of your SEO strategy will be to take the first steps towards effectively researching and ranking for your chosen keywords — these are known as “seo tools for google”.
Google can be a fickle mistress. If you put the wrong thing in the right place, she will take it out. I’ve seen this to various extents when it comes to social bookmarking, PPC, link building & SEO, but this time it seems to me that Google has decided to deny one of its own tools – Google Webmaster Tools.
Google PageSpeed Insights (Free)
Page loading speed is one of the most important elements of a website. Better site speed leads to increased user satisfaction and higher rankings.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that checks the speed of your site and provides suggestions to improve it.
How to Use This Tool
Enter your site or blog’s URL, click the “analyze” button, and the tool will automatically check the speed and overall user experience of your site and provide a score – for both desktop and mobile UX.
Here’s how the scores rank:
- A score of 90+ means that your site is FASTER than most other sites.
- A score between 50-90 is considered AVERAGE.
- A score below 50 means that your site is SLOW.
You need to opt for a score above 90 to offer your users a better site experience and to increase your chances of ranking higher in the search results.
Top Features:
- The tool checks the speed of your website on both desktop and mobile.
- You can quickly classify your website as fast, average or slow.
- It also provides suggestions to improve your page’s performance metrics.
Why It’s Useful
In July of 2018, Google announced a major update to its mobile ranking factors: page speed became a top ranking factor for mobile searches. So Google PageSpeed Insights is useful because it helps you optimize your site for page speed which is important to avoid any penalties.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker (Freemium)
Ahrefs offers a free backlink checker that allows you to check the top 100 links pointing to any website.
How to Use This Tool
Enter the URL that you want to analyze and the tool will not only show you your domain rating score (DR):
But it will also generate the top 100 links (one link per domain) pointing to the site:
Top Features:
- It offers one of the most powerful link checkers that accurately checks the top backlinks.
- The tool is extremely fast and generates results within seconds.
- You can check the total number of backlinks and the total number of referring domains pointing to any site.
- The tool also displays the anchor text and domain rating.
Why It’s Useful
Ahrefs’ link checker lets you conduct a quick analysis of the top backlinks pointing to any domain so that you can easily plan your link-building strategy accordingly.
Premium Version
If you want to discover each and every link pointing to any domain, increase your number of campaigns, increase the number of keywords you can track, etc., then you need to subscribe to the Premium version for $99 a month.
Keyword Tool (Freemium)
Keyword research is undoubtedly one of the most important tasks that every SEO needs to perform, but researching keywords is a time-consuming process without access to the best tools.
Keyword Tool is dubbed as the free alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner and it offers lots of relevant keyword suggestions for every type of research.
How to Use This Tool
Enter your main “money” keyword in the search box, click on the desired search engine or platform, and then select the targeted country from the drop-down list:
The tool will return the best keywords to target based on your main keyword.
Top Features:
- It provides upto 750+ search terms for every keyword research.
- The best part is that the tool includes long-tail keywords in the results. You can also choose which country to search for keywords, on which platform (Google, YouTube, Amazon, etc.), and in what language.
- In addition, you can filter out negative keywords and sort by keyword suggestions or common questions that use your keyword.
Why It’s Useful
This tool is great when you’re looking for those very specific phrases that your audience is using to try and find you. It’s similar to doing an incognito Google search, but with more added value.
Premium Version
You can generate up to 2X more keywords if you opt for the Premium version. Search volume, CPC and AdWords competition are hidden unless you upgrade to a pro account from $69 per month.
Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Did you know that approximately 60% of searches now come from mobile devices?
Ten years ago, it would’ve been hard to believe that this day would come. However, it’s here. And, it’s here to stay.
As somebody interested in SEO, it’s important to understand the impact that this can have on your search engine results. Google has made it clear that your website should be mobile friendly, so this isn’t something you should take lightly.
Fortunately, the search engine giant is doing its part to make your life a bit easier. With the help of the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool, it only takes a couple seconds to determine if your website is mobile friendly or not.
After you enter your URL and click “Analyze,” you want to see something that looks like this:
As you can see, there’s no gray area with this free tool. Your website is either mobile-friendly or it isn’t. This impacts your search results.
If your website fails this test, don’t waste another day before making the necessary changes. A mobile-friendly version of your site could do wonders for your search engine rankings, as well as the amount of organic traffic that you generate.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Check the speed and usability of your site on multiple devices
Limitations: None
Enter a URL and this tool will test the loading time and performance for that URL on desktop and mobile. It then grades your site’s performance on a score from 0 – 100. It tells you exactly how fast it takes to load the site according to different metrics, and also suggests areas for improvements.
Conclusion
Google is the go-to search engine for most of us. It just does an amazing job at finding the right content to display based on your search query. With that being said, it can sometimes do a poor job at highlighting just what you are looking for. Given the sheer amount of content displayed on Google, I found myself searching my own site multiple times every day to find the content I was actually looking for… until I started using these SEO tools. Do yourself a favor and start using them today.