Let us begin with a caveat. Search engine optimization is still evolving. What was relevant and worked five years ago do not have any impact today. In fact, what works today may not work forever.
Google and the likes of Bing or Yahoo are constantly changing the rules of the game. It is crucial for search engines to change with time and overcome the challenges put forth by black hat practitioners.
The objective of search engines is simple. They want the most relevant search results to be displayed. For that, they would keep changing the rules of the game as many times as needed. For us lesser mortals, we need to conform to those changes.
You will need a host of SEO tools to get your website ranked higher than it is today. Here are some SEO tools that you should be using as we head towards 2016. For convenience, we are listing the top ten tools and then we shall highlight which tools are best for what specific purpose.
We all know that the primary utilities of SEO tools are categorized as keyword research, link building, competitive analysis, reporting, and tracking, and finally we assess the quality of help and support.
The primary utilities of SEO tools are categorized as keyword research, link building, competitive analysis, reporting, tracking, and finally, we assess the quality of help and support.
First, let’s take a look at all the top tools in each of these categories:
What makes them a great tool? Read onto the next section!
As we approach 2016, it’s time to prepare yourself for the new challenges that algorithm updates will bring. Here are my top 10 SEO tools for 2016.
Moz – This is likely the most popular tool on the list. They have been around for a long time and continue to offer both basic and advanced tools to help with your SEO needs. Their huge selection of research tools will likely offer what you are looking for with your SEO needs.
Raven Tools – The best part of Raven Tools is the ability to have all of your reporting in one location. Whether you are managing 2 or 20 different projects, Raven Tools can simplify the reporting process.
Web CEO Online – This web-based platform is designed to meet the needs of large digital marketing agencies, as well as those who optimize their own websites. This is a good, standard SEO tool. The do a great job with offering keyword rankings for specific locations. Web CEO also offer an automatic submission to search engines. It’s a very comprehensive software but at the same time, it’s easy to use.
SEMrush – After years of SEO, SEMrush has risen to the top as one of my favourites. This tool is especially good for competitor analysis. It offers advanced keyword and competitor research. The makers of this software are the same company that made the popular tool SEOQuake. It allows you to see a bird’s eye view of how your site is performing in search engines and look at what your competitors are doing for both organic and AdWords.
Advanced Web Ranking – AWR offers a great way to organize the many tasks of search engine optimization. Its powerful analyzer has a nice, clean interface that can easily create custom reports for rankings. They also offer frequent updates and great customer service. This tool is more suited for in-house SEOs and smaller agencies.
UpCity – This is an especially good tool for those that are new to SEO. They offer a checklist of tasks to complete when you are just getting started to make sure you cover all your bases. This is worth checking out if you are looking to simplify your SEO experience.
Traffic Travis – TT offers a simple set of tools, a great layout, and clear instructions for how to best utilize them. Best of all, it’s free! They offer a pro version as well, but it is extremely affordable when compared to other big name SEO tools. However, one disadvantage of the free version is that it does not include the competitor analysis feature, which some industries consider very important.
Cognitive SEO – This is another powerful tool that shows your data in a very presentable and user-friendly way. Cognitive SEO does not do everything that Raven Tools does, but does a great job compared to many of its competitor tools. Cognitive SEO was very helpful when one of my friend’s company was recovering from an unnatural link penalty from Google. The tool was able to easily sort all their backlinks and automatically generate a disavow file. Within a couple months, they were out of Google’s bad books.
Market Samurai – An old favourite of mine! Market Samurai offers a great platform for keyword research and allows you to focus on a keyword niche better than a majority of SEO tools out there. If you can learn how to properly use this tool, then it can definitely benefit your website. It also helps you build a link profile. Word of caution: Do not create too many backlinks that can cause you to look like you are using black hat techniques.
SECockpit – Some users have said this tool provides the fairest traffic estimate tool around. It also has a strong focus on keyword research and optimization. This program is entirely cloud based and will not require you to install any software. It is also optimized for mobile, so you can track your account on the go!
For my top 5 SEO tools, I’ve included a chart to break down the pricing for each of them.
Tools are meant to make our lives easier and help us work more efficiently. The tools I’ve listed above are extremely helpful and can assist you in generating positive results for your business. The ratings are purely based on what experts and users have said. You may find one particular tool to be better than another and that could be against the order presented here. The best approach would be to try these tools using the free trials and then, you can choose to continue using the one you like most and what delivers the best results.
If you have a tool you like, share it with us in the comment section below!
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Ahrefs
While we’re on the topic of SEO, I wanted to mention Ahrefs. Ahrefs is a tool that allows you to do keyword research to ensure you’re targeting the best keywords with the highest traffic and lowest difficulty to rank for.
While this tool isn’t free or cheap, they do offer a free two-week trial. Alternatively, you can use their competitors like Moz or SEMrush (who also have free trials, hint hint). Whichever one you choose, if you’re serious about ranking on Google, I highly recommend a keyword research tool. Without them, you only have access to Google Keyword Planner, which doesn’t really help you find the right keywords.
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I use Semrush, Ahrefs for my SEO Works and they give you more Standard Information to Dig deeper into the SEO. And Do you think Ahrefs could be Part of this List ?
Regards
Saitheja @All Android Tips.com
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SEM Rush is probably my favorite tool for SEO. So many great features on it, and they’re always updating. So amazing!
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Hi Michael it’s really fantastic job . You just eased the work for any SEO professional. Some tools i am already used but will try on the rest which appeared new for me.
I hope you to continue the job ahead. Thanks
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Great post!
Thanks for sharing!
SemRush is my old battle companion. In years, I’ve learn that best results when you do keyword research is when you use multiple tools.
KW Planner might help with completing keyword lists by form (morphologically close to your query)
SERPStat tool is great finding semantically close keywords (close by meaning).
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Great point! Each tool seems to have their specialty. Google KW Planner is a little more commercial as well but a mix of these types of tools is very important.
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Exactly!
It’s what you do with these tools is what matters most. I’ve had a positive experience just using Google Trends but would normally use tools designed to research queries people type when searching for something specific.
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So true! How much easier would it be to have all-in-one platform that would’ve made our SEO lives easy.
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Hi Micheal,
Great list Indeed. very helpful.
When it comes to Moz, it is preferred because of its popularity (Their content is really awesome to learn about various aspects of SEO).
But when it comes to features, Moz definitely has a lot of tools but only the ‘Open Site Explorer’ makes a difference. I have personally used it.
Now, I am using a similar tool called “SERPed.net”. It is a lot better than Moz in terms of features and usability. The product has a package of 44+ tools to cover all the SEO related requirement of users ( though I am yet to use all the tools available).
Just that it is relatively new compared to the likes of Moz, WebCEO, Raven Tools and others. I personally found it cheaper as well. (The plan I am subscribed to comes at a cost of $79/month).
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Hi Vijay,
Moz has value beyond their tools as well. They have an active blog and Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday’s are fantastic.
Can’t say I have heard of the URL you mentioned but I’ll take a look!
Thanks for your feedback.
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Keep working ,terrific job!
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I have Heard there would an Google Update Next Month, If it is Yes, then what are the Parameters we should follow to. Please Explain me in detailed so that my website will not get effect.
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Keep an eye on our blog for big Google updates. We will post about any major updates from Google. Another great resource for this is Search Engine Land as they are often quick to report on updates.
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Economically which one is better?
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Economically, I would recommend you check out my latest article on the free SEO tools, found here: Free SEO Tools for 2016
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Thanks a lot.. here i found what am searching.. great article micheal..
Thank you again for such a useful article
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No problem. Glad it helped.
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Fantastic List of awesome tools. You nailed it once again. Never heard of a few of them before. Thanks for list.
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Thanks, Hanuman. Your feedback is appreciated.
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We still heavily depend from Google tools. I’m using few paid SEO tools on top of Google Planner for example.
Surely, tools were designed to make our SEO-lives easier, but it pointless using them when they don’t receive regular update. Two highly praised in this article tools hadn’t been updated since Dec, 2015!
I switched to Serpstat. For $49/mo it gives you fresh databases and URLs comparison (not domain vs. domain).
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Hi George,
Good points. It’s surprising how long some of these companies will go without updating. I guess the old motto, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes in to play for some of these tools.
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All are great tool but i personally recommendation for MOZ and SEMrush tools.
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Very popular choices!
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Pretty element of content. I simply stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to say that I acquire actually loved account your
blog posts. Anyway I’ll be subscribing on your feeds and even I fulfillment you get right of
entry to constantly rapidly.
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We are using SEMrush looks good so far, we have heard about a new SEO tool called Rank Reveal, are you guys aware of this ?
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Yes. It is great and we have it on the list.
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I’ve heard so much about tools like Google Analytics, and I used to edit for a wiki called AboutUs that claimed to have a lot of SEO tools, such as free homepage analysis and paid whole-website analysis. Anyone familiar with the tools on AboutUs? They do this nifty keyword analysis, or at least they did recently. I will have to start researching AboutUs again, since it has changed a little bit. Do any of you use that website?
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I had never heard of it. I’ll have to look into it and report back.
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Thank you for this posts. One thing i would like to ask you, as i am new in this field, do one need to work on SEO daily for a website ? or one need work for few months, and wait and monitor results for few months and work on SEO again for the website.
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Hi Sunil,
Daily SEO certainly wouldn’t hurt but that is often not possible. As long as you are continuing to build your authority and posting fresh content, you will continue to see gains. On-page SEO can all be done once at the beginning (until you have new content). Whereas off-page SEO is something you would spend 10-20 hours a month on. I think a slower gradual increase is ideal.
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Thanks for sharing this nice list. . Can you suggest some free tool?
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I can. I will be doing another blog on the top free SEO tools heading into 2016.
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Michael, thanks for including Web CEO in the list! Just wanted to add that Web CEO is also available for absolutely free (with no time limit and no credit card required).
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No problem! It deserved to be on the list!
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Any ideas for SEO Power Tools? Just got this software and looks great.
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Are you referring to SEO PowerSuite? I have not heard of Power Tools.
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Hi Michael, thanks for the nice compilation.
I know there are lots of SEO tools out there, but is there any particular reasons for not including SEO PowerSuite into the list? I’ll be extremely grateful if you share something about your experience with the tools (if any).
Thanks in advance – your feedback is what helps us make the software better.
P.S. Thanks for mentioning SEO PowerSuite, Camilo. Hope you’ll enjoy using the tools.
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Hi Katherine,
SEO PowerSuite did not make the list. I am not as familiar with it as some of the other tools on this list but would be happy to give it a shot if you feel it deserves to be on this list.
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Thanks a lot for your interest, Michael! If you don’t mind, I’ll shoot you a message on LinkedIn with a bit more details:)
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Thanks for this post! I love tools and SEO so it’s great when the two come together.
I agree that you should do another on free tools! Since I’m a cheapskate… 😛 .
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I can relate! You don’t get quite as much with free tools but they can certainly cover the basics. Look for my blog on the free tools soon!
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Very cool overview of the proposals and prices , and those places where the respective tools are best.
In your next post , I could do the same with free tools make , so what are recommended and where their strengths lie 🙂
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Good idea! I will be doing another blog post on free SEO tools.
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This list seems to be too short, only paid tools are listed. Google webmaster and Google adwords keyword planner are still on the top, but missing here in the list
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I disagree and feel that it would not be fair to compare paid services to a free one anyway. I will do another blog post on free SEO tools.
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i think the basis are not changed for seo. original good text.building good quality links,and other online and offline page seo.
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Yes! Very true but these tools can certainly help with even the most basic SEO tasks.
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This artcile went ahead and made my day.
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Dear Micheal,
Thanks for putting your effort and sharing this list especially categorizing the tools made it a lot more clear. As Oraclemay said now we can work more efficiently. 🙂
Cheers,
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My pleasure.
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Thanks for the information. I was aware of some of these tools, but not all and I did not know how they could help me work more efficiently. We are constantly in need of information that will take us to another level with our online presence.
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Yes, this information is changing all of the time so it can be very difficult to keep on top of! Some of the tools on this list may not even be active in another years time so I think the need to keep this updated is very important.