Insanely Large List of SEO Tools & Other Resources Very Much Useful
I’m just about to reach the 5 year mark working in the online marketing industry, and one thing that I’ve always found remarkable is how open and sharing people in this line of work tend to be. Whether it’s strategies, tactics, updates, techniques or tools – folks in this space do a lot of sharing, and often the depth and breadth is outstanding.
Nowadays, as an SEO Strategist on Team Portent, the bulk of my day-to-day professional work involves a lot of, well, SEO-related diagnosis and recommendations. And just like you wouldn’t send a carpenter or a plumber out to do a job without a proper set of tools, we online marketers need tools that help us to be more productive than we would be otherwise. During my day-to-day work, I use a combination of Portent’s stellar internal tool-set and a host of other tools as well.
Some time ago I started keeping a list of tools on an Excel spreadsheet because it’s just too hard to keep everything in my head (I named the file my “forget-me-not” list of tools). I read a lot of industry blogs every day and if someone mentions some tool and it seems like something I can use now or in the future, I log it on my spreadsheet for future investigation or use.
Categories (click to jump to that specific list of tools)
Competition Research
Sure, you don’t want to “take your eye off the ball” with respect to your site and overall digital marketing strategy – but you don’t want to be caught sleeping either while your competitors pass you by (excuse the mixed metaphors). You can learn a lot from what your competitors are doing well or even doing poorly when it comes to online marketing. I recommend you do periodic research on your competition and keep your finger on the pulse of your industry at large.
ADWords Keyword Planner
Use Competitor URLs in Keyword Planner tool, review suggested keyword groups and keywords.
Ahrefs
Batch Analysis: very fast overview of backlinks & social metrics for any list of URLs you enter.
Fresh Web Explorer
Where are your competitors being mentioned? Are there feeds that highlight their content frequently? FWE is a good tool to build up your outreach list.
Market Samurai
Top 10 SERP comparison module outputs a color-coded grid of various key ranking metrics.
Mozbar
Browser toolbar – provides wealth of metrics & data on web pages and SERP listings.
MozCheck
Bulk URL checker to grab Moz stats on multiple URLs via SERPs scrape/download.
Open Link Profiler
“The freshest backlinks, for free”.
Open Site Explorer
Get most linked-to URLs for popular content research – many, many more uses.
Reverse Internet
Serious competitive intelligence including finding all GA accounts!
SEMrush
Use the domain vs. domain tool to see what keywords competitors rank for with associated metrics. View Competitor keywords, ad copy, organic or paid.
SEOmoz
“On-page report card” – grade a page for a Keyword.
SERPIQ
Analyze competition and discover keywords.
Similar Sites
Easily find similar websites.
Similar Web
Via Avinash at Mozcon – use to get a *&%$load of data on your site and other’s sites.
Site Alerts
Instant insights on any website: can also get email subscription to alerts.
Web Me Up
Backlink profile checker, not free.
Woorank
Get a quick overview of site metrics.
Content Strategy
Content Gems
Quickly find and share the most valuable content in one easy-to-use platform (paid tool).
Content Strategy Generator Tool (updated)
This very cool tool from Richard Baxter and the Builtvisible team helps you plan your content strategy intelligently, using keyword research and estimating your audience size. Their description of the tool is “Easily consolidate trending news from across the web, and find inspiration for your research topics quickly and easily”.
Contently
Content “story” creation service via Mike King.
Copyscape
Copyscape serves both as a plagiarism checker and a duplicate-content checker. Great to use if your content has been distributed across the web.
Enigma
Navigate the world of public data.
FAQ Fox
Find questions your target demographic is talking about online.
Fresh Web Explorer
FWE allows you to check on or keep track of a set of terms over time, and helps you get a sense for what type of content gets a lot of mentions, shares, and links. Many more uses, features keep getting added.
Google Public Data
Drawing on vast public databases, Google public data offers a great starting point for content research, infographics, and more.
Headline Analyzer
Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.
Similar Page Checker
Use this tool to check for duplicate content issues. The Similar Page Checker will give you a score of how closely the HTML of two pages resemble each other.
Speechpad
Transcription service.
Trend Hunter
Paid tool.
Triberr
A community of bloggers and influencers come together to read and share great content.
Wiki Mind Map
Create mind map out of Wikipedia topics & articles.
Content & Headline Idea Generator
Enter a subject (or topic or keywords) and get all kinds of titles and ideas.
Conversion Rate Optimization
ClickTale
Heatmaps.
Formisimo
Form Analytics.
Inspectlet
Heatmaps, screencapture.
iPerceptions
Get visitor feedback.
Kampyle
Get visitor feedback.
Kiss Metrics
CRO, A/B testing, analytics.
Mouseflow
Live click tracking.
Optimizely
A/B testing.
Survey Monkey
Get visitor feedback.
Visual Website Optimizer
A/B & MV testing.
Design
Canva
“Amazingly simple graphic design for blogs, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers and so much more”.
HTML Color Picker
Use the online image color picker right to select a color and get the html Color Code of this pixel.
International SEO
Flang
Hreflang testing tool.
Hfreflang Generator
Hreflang tag generator from Aleyda Solis.
HREFLANG Sitemap Tool
Create HREFLANG Sitemap.
Impersonal Me
Search de-personalized, via Portent SEO Kaitlin McMichael.
International Geo-Surfing
Search international, get SERPs.
Lexipedia
Displays a handy little chart with every definition of a word and synonyms. It’s a lexicon-builder’s dream.
Search From
Simulate using Google Search from different location or device or perform a search with custom search settings – useful for searching Google as if you were somewhere else and for SEO & SEA testing.
Search Latte
Build Google searches in any combination of Google supported top level domain, country and language.
Word Reference
Online translator.
Keyword Research
AdWords Keyword Tools
Generate keywords from a seed keywords or enter a list to obtain search volume and other data points.
Google Analytics
Look at the keywords that drive traffic – especially historical data before the onset of (not provided). Matched Search Queries – the keywords a searcher typed before clicking on an AdWords ad.
Google Correlate
Find searches that correlate with real-world data.
Google Search
Look at related searches at bottom.
Google Suggest
Don’t hit enter when you start searching. Thanks to Wil Reynolds.
Google Trends
Get idea of up or down trend & also look at hot trends for new ideas.
Google Webmaster Tools queries
Look for striking distance keywords. Export for further analysis in Excel or other tools.
Keyword Eye
Free section requires signup.
Keyword Spy
Organic & paid info. Recently added killer backlink analysis.
Keyword Tool
Like Ubersuggest: get 750 google keyword suggestions for free.
Lexipedia
Create “wonder wheels” of related terms – hover for definitions.
Local Keyword Tool
Local SEO keyword research tool – enter Zip & KEYWORD, get list of KEYWORD plus local cities.
Market Samurai
Research a list of keywords you enter or enter a seed keyword to generate related keywords; huge amount of associated metrics is available.
Merge Words
Concatenation tool.
Meta Glossary
Get definitions and related terms for keyword research.
Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool
Keyword difficulty tool.
Moz On-page Grader
Grade a page for a keyword.
SEMrush
Enter site: get keyword list export, organic or paid
SEO Chat
Keyword suggestion tool.
SEO Chat Keyword Suggest Tool
Like Ubersuggest, you can generate lists of related keywords using a root term. Need to play with this, check it out.
Social mention
Download top keywords; use wordle/compose to create word cloud to visualize. Hat tip to Ben Lloyd.
Sonar Solo
Visualize social trends.
Spyfu
Organic & paid info.
Suggester
Suggester is another free tool like Ubersuggest where you can input a seed term and generate variations – download to CSV is desired.
Tag Crowd
Make your own tag cloud from any text.
Topsy
Enter keyword, look at trends & spikes.
Trend Hunter
Trend Hunter.
Ubersuggest
Generate list of keywords from seed; enter into AdWords tool for volume etc.
Wordle
Create word clouds.
Wordstream
Generate keywords – paid tool.
Wordstream Free Keyword Tools
In addition to its paid offerings, Wordstream offers a suite of free keyword tools offering access to thousands of keyword suggestions.
Wordtracker
Generate keywords – paid tool.
Yahoo Glimmer
“An RDF Search Engine”.
Yelp Trends
Yelp Trends tool.
YouTube AutoSuggest
Just like Google Autocomplete.
Online Reputation Management
Complaint Search
Search all complaint websites at once.
Rank Checking
The relative importance of checking rankings is debatable. In fact, it was at SEMpdx SearchFest industry conference where I heard my first full-blown rant from Conrad about the uselessness of checking rank (he recommended focusing on traffic and conversions) – that was 4 years ago and before the Google Hummingbird algorithm update and before Google started rewriting queries based on perceived user intent. I’ve used and still use rank checkers, but the effectiveness of SEO strategies based on keyword ranking really seems to be dying if not already dead. That said, here’s some tools I’ve used:
Rank Checker for Firefox
This light and easy desktop tool checks rankings with the click of a button. Quick, easy and free.
Advanced Web Ranking
Actually, AWR does much, much more than just rank tracking and is definitely worth checking out (this is a paid tool).
Authority Labs
I haven’t used AL in awhile, but have used their service and it’s generally very good – I’m sure they’ve made improvements since (this is a paid tool).
Social Media
Circle Count
Google Plus Analytics
Facebook Debugger
Debug your OG tags
Facebook Power Editor
Facebook Power Editor Download page
Find People On Plus
The ultimate Google+ directory that’s great for research, outreach, and link building. Sort by keywords, profession, country, and more.
Follwerwonk
Find influencers; competitive research.
Hashtagify
Search and find the best twitter hash tags.
Hootsuite
Create tabs to listen on a particular topic or hashtag
Know Your Meme
Internet Meme Database
Knowem.com
Check for if your brand is available across multiple social sites
Meme Generator
Easy way to generate those images with text at top and bottom like “what if I told you…”
Pinterest Rich Pin Validator
Test structured markup and get approval in same process (per Cyrus’ Moz post)
SharedCount
Want to know how any piece of content was shared socially across the major services? This is the tool to use.
SharedCount API
Harnessing the combined statistics of Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and more, the SharedCount API puts a ton of social data at your fingertips.
Social Authority API
How much reach and social authority do your followers have? How about the people you’re trying to connect with? The free Social Authority API will tell you.
Social Crawlytics
ID competitors most shared content
Social Sites Image Size Template
Complete data on all image sizes for major social media sites
Sonar Solo
Visualize social trends
Twitter Land
Social media analytics
Twitter Validation Tool
First submit domain (per Cyrus’ Moz post) – then check URL
Twitteronomy
Analytics and more for Twitter via Matt McGee glowing recommendation.
Conclusion
You can greatly improve your efficiency and productivity by using these tools – that certainly has been my experience. I’m confident that you’ll find at least one tool on this list that will be beneficial to you. If you want to download an Excel spreadsheet containing all of these tools you, grab that by Commenting below. I’m also confident you’ll know of a tool or two that is not listed here that you think should be, so feel free to share those with all of us in the comments below.
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