If you’re a small business owner, freelancer, or running any online business, having a website that’s optimised well for SEO (search engine optimisation) is essential. In this article, we’ll share the best SEO tools for small businesses.
These SEO tools will help you create content that ranks high on search engines to reach more people and ultimately make more sales. Best of all, many of the tools below are free and easy to use. These tools will help you find keywords to target, track your analytics, and write better website copy.
Related read: 5 Helpful SEO Tips to Promote Your Online Business
Why SEO is Important for Small Businesses?
SEO is what brings more traffic to your website. More people can find and learn about your business if your website is optimised well for SEO. The goal of this is to generate more leads and make more sales.
SEO works great for all kinds of businesses, especially small businesses with a smaller marketing budget. This is because when you optimise your content for SEO, it’s evergreen. It works while you sleep and offers 24/7 marketing.
For example, if you have a blog on your website (which is highly recommended if you’re hoping to optimise for SEO), your content is always on the internet and bringing traffic to your website.
But what are SEO tools? These are programs, plugins, and websites that can help you monitor and research what is happening with your website and also help you create content that is going to rank in search engines.
Here’s a quick overview of some fo the best SEO tools before we dive into each one:
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Best SEO Keyword Analysis Tools for Small Businesses
Keyword research is essential when you’re writing content for your website. When you target keywords that your ideal client or customer is searching the internet for, you have a better chance of ranking high on Google for that keyword. This means more people will find your website.
Table of Contents
Semrush
One of the most popular keyword research tools is Semrush. It gives you a lot of information, including what your competition is ranking for. You can also specify the country you’re in to make sure you’re targeting your intended audience.
Semrush has various packages with different rates, depending on what you’re looking for. Some packages even offer a website audit.
Ahrefs
For a free keyword generator, many small businesses and bloggers like to use Ahrefs. You can find keyword ideas at no cost or pay for a monthly plan to get more insights to improve your website.
Keysearch
Personally, Keysearch is my favourite keyword research tool and I’ve had great results since using it. For an affordable price, you can get a lot of helpful information, including keyword suggestions and what pages are already ranking for each keyword. (Use discount code KSDISC for 20% off your plan for life).
Google Trends
I recommend using Google Trends in addition to one of the keyword tools above. While the previous tools help you find specific keywords to target no matter the topic, Google Trends helps you find trending searches.
Google Trends uses real-time data to analyse popular keywords. It also shares information about demographics and related topics to help you learn more and ensure you’re using the best keywords for your targeted audience.
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Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses (SEO Plugins)
Plugins are an addition to computer software, which are a great and sometimes easy way to ensure you’re leveraging your website the best you can. Some plugins work for anyone, and others are specific to your website builder.
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant
While Semrush is an excellent tool for keyword research, they also offer a plugin you can use while writing content. Whether you’re writing in a Google doc or on your website builder, you can use Semrush SEO Writing Assistant.
This useful SEO tool helps you create SEO-friendly content by giving tips on optimising your images, links, and tags. It also helps you improve engagement and readability and check for plagiarism to ensure all of your content is original.
Yoast SEO
If you use WordPress for your website, Yoast SEO is said to be the #1 plugin for search engine optimisation. This plugin offers countless features to help you make the most of your website.
From automated SEO improvements and faster loading times to SEO analysis and a Google preview, you can do many things with Yoast SEO. Most businesses who use Yoast will tell you that it makes a huge difference in ranking high on search engines, getting more eyes on your website, and growing your business.
Rank Math
Rank Math is another fantastic WordPress plugin, and it makes optimising your content for SEO easier than ever.
You can use Rank Math to make your website appear the way you want it to, and it offers many tools to help you run a successful website. Businesses can use Rank Math to run a detailed SEO analysis to identify issues, measure and track keyword rankings, add schema, get personalised AI help, and so much more.
Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses (Tracking Analytics)
Small businesses often overlook tracking their analytics. However, you want to make sure you’re doing this to ensure what you’re doing with your website is working so here are some of the best SEO monitoring tools.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the top SEO tools for analysing your website’s success. You can use it to fix any issues and measure your site’s traffic and performance. It’s one of the most straightforward tools to ensure your site is showing up and doing well on Google.
Tip: You can also use Google Search Console to request indexing for any new page you publish on your site for the chances of ranking sooner than if you publish it and leave it alone.
Google Analytics
While Google Analytics can be trickier to learn than Google Search Console, it’s well worth it. This platform offers valuable insight into your website’s data to help you get a better look at your online business. You can learn about your overall traffic and conversions, user volume by day and hour, how users find your site, and more. It is one of the best SEO review tools available, and it’s fre!
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Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses (AI Content Assistant)
AI (artificial intelligence) writing has become very popular over the years. And many marketing experts believe AI will continue to grow. Businesses are using AI tools more because they can help them save time and money.
It’s important to know that while these tools are beneficial, they’re not always error-free, so it’s critical to fact-check and proofread before publishing your content.
Bear in mind that Google has stated they aren’t going to rank content that has been solely created using AI tools, which isn’t going to help your SEO strategy long-term.
Chat GPT
Chat GPT has been all anyone is talking about recently and while I would never recommend using an AI tool to create all your content, it can certainly be a great tool to help support your business.
Chat GPT is particularly good for asking questions and condensing hours of research into a short time, bearing in mind it still does make mistakes. It can also help create listicles or titles.
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Jasper
Jasper AI is a very popular writing tool which offers over 50 content templates to let you choose what works best for your needs.
Rytr
Rytr is one of the leading AI content writing tools that can help you write your content and copy quicker. It doesn’t have as many features as other options, but it is more affordable.
You can find various templates on Rytr to best fit your project. Ryter also has a built-in grammar check to help catch errors.
AISEO
AISEO (All in One SEO) is similar to Jasper and Rytr, but there is a free version of the tool which is great for simple projects. This is a great way to save time and money writing content for your website.
Upgraded versions of AISEO provide more features for better SEO optimisation. You can also use an upgraded plan to optimise more than one website.
Other SEO Tools for Small Businesses
Below, we’ll share a few more mentionable SEO tools to help you create the best content.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker
You can use Ahrefs Backlink Checker to track backlinks to your site. When talking about SEO, high-quality backlinks are important because they show Google that other resources find your content valuable enough to link to it from their own website.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker has a free and paid version, each offering different features that give you better insight into your website’s backlinks. You can see which pages are linked to the most, what sites are linking to your page, link spam, and more.
Moz
Figuring out which SEO tools you should use for small businesses can be tricky because there are so many options. For an all-in-one kind of SEO tool, Moz is great!
You can use Moz for many tasks, including website audits, tracking your performance, analysing backlinks, and keyword research.
Although Moz is pricey for many small businesses, you can use it in place of various other tools, so it can be worth it. You can also try it out at no cost for one month to make sure you like it.
Animalz Content Tool
Animalz Content Tool is different from any others on this list. It connects to your Google Analytics account to help you refresh your content so that you can increase your website traffic while saving time.
Use Animalz Content Tool to figure out what blog articles you have on your site that could be improved for better traffic. It offers suggestions for updating, expanding, or optimising those posts. This is one of the best free SEO tools available.
It can be overwhelming to decide which tools to use to improve your SEO. We recommend starting with 1 or 2, becoming familiar with them, then implementing more as you go. You’ll find that once you use any of these a couple of times, it becomes a natural part of running your website.
Google Index Checker
Quickly check whether your posts have been indexed (or deindexed) on Google with this free index tool. Just paste your URLs into the box and wait a few seconds. Note, you can only check ten links at a time.
We hope you found a few new SEO tools you’d like to try out. Optimising your website for SEO can help you reach more people and grow your business. If you found this article helpful, please consider sharing!