SEO without the right tools is hardly possible. For each optimization and the associated performance measurement there are the appropriate tools. This article shows which smallseotools you should absolutely know and master in order to optimize your own website.
SEO has become such a comprehensive field of activity that there is no tool on the market that could cover all areas. The number of available SEO tools is meanwhile enormous and for the layman hardly to overlook. Depending on whether onsite or offsite optimization is involved, i.e. whether things should be analyzed directly on the page or with regard to external factors such as backlinks, different tools can be used.
The following overview shows a classification of the SEO tools according to their field of application:
In addition to the onsite and offsite areas mentioned above, there are also tools that can be used to cover aspects of both areas in combination. In addition, there are other tools that are summarized under the term “traffic”. They also include tools that can record user key figures such as length of stay, jump rates or demographic factors. The best known representative of this class is certainly Google Analytics.
Each SEO tool allows you to capture other SEO metrics or KPIs. These metrics are needed to identify the success or failure of a website, make it comparable and monitor changes over time.
The most important SEO indicators are:
Visibility
The rankings for individual keywords
User key figures such as length of stay, jump rate and proportion of returning visitors
Traffic figures such as number of visits, page views and unique visitors
The loading time
The domain authority (the number of different linking domains).
In addition, there are many other indicators that can be important depending on the subject of the analysis.
The following table shows a selection of the most important and best-known SEO tools. For each tool it is described what it can be used for, which key figures it delivers and what the usage of the tool costs. It also describes how important the analyses that can be performed with the tool are for the success of a website.
The most important SEO tool ever: the Google Search Console
A SEO tool that everyone should use is the Google Search Console (former name: Google Webmaster Tools). The Google Search Console provides important SEO data for every website. The only requirement is that you submit the page in advance and confirm the submission with a meta tag or HTML file that you upload to your server. Alternatively, further verification options are available.
The biggest advantage of the Google Search Console is certainly that the data comes directly from Google and is therefore highly relevant for the performance of a page in the search.
Keyword research: Google also provides valuable services here
When searching for new topics on a website, it is also about the question which keywords are relevant for a topic and how often these terms are searched. On the basis of these keywords, corresponding content can then be created. It should be noted that it is not a question of naming these keywords as often as possible or using them again in variants. This technique called keyword stuffing has not been successful for a long time.
Keyword research should rather serve to familiarize oneself with a topic or to discover additional perspectives.
You can use the keyword planner from Google, for example, to do this. This tool is available when you set up an account in Google’s AdWords service. With the help of this tool you can generate new keyword suggestions and also query the search volume for an existing list of keywords.
However, there is a limitation: Google only displays exact figures on the search volume of keywords for active AdWords accounts with a minimum turnover. For all others there is only a rough bandwidth, for example “100 to 1,000”. But this is often enough for an initial assessment.
Classification of the Google Keyword Planner:
Field of application: Onsite / keyword research
Key figures / KPIs: search volume, competition
Costs: can be used free of charge. Active campaign with minimum sales required for exact search volume.
Meaning: high
Google Mobile Friendly Test
Mobile devices such as smartphones are now responsible for a large proportion of Internet usage, and it is expected that this share will continue to rise. For this reason, it is especially important for a website to be easy to use and look good on these devices. Google has also taken this development into account and rewards websites that are optimized for mobile devices with better rankings. In addition, there is the new Google index, which is due to start next year: Here the rankings are calculated on the basis of the mobile display of the websites.
The best way to test the mobile friendliness of a website is to use Google’s Mobile-Friendly-Test. Here one receives immediately as result whether Google regards the tested side as mobilfeundlich or not. If not, hints are also given on what should be changed so that the site is easy to use on mobile devices.
