What are the basic tools required for SEO?
There are some tools you should be using.
On-page SEO tools
These tools help you optimize your pages to rank higher in the search engines.
SERPSim
SERPSim shows what your web page will look like in Google’s search results. All you have to do is enter your proposed title, meta description, and URL.
SERPSim will also tell you if your title and description are too long. You should fix these issues to avoid truncation in the search results.
Google's Rich Results Test
Google’s Rich Results Testing tool checks the structured markup on your page to see whether it’s eligible for rich snippets in the search results.
Merkle's Schema Markup Generator
Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator creates structured data markup in the JSON-LD format. Just select the type of Schema markup you want to generate, fill in the form, then copy and paste the generated markup onto your site.
Technical SEO tools
These tools help you improve the technical aspects of your website.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free service from Google that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in their search results.
Use it to find and fix technical errors, submit sitemaps, see structured data issues, and more.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a desktop-based website crawler. It’s one of the most popular tools available for analyzing and auditing technical and on-page SEO issues.
With the free version, you can crawl up to 500 URLs.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix analyzes the loading speed of your web pages. Alongside the performance score, it also shows actionable recommendations to make things load faster.
Google's Mobile-Friendly test
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test checks how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. It also identifies specific mobile-usability issues like text that’s too small to read, the use of incompatible plugins, and so on.
With Google's move to mobile-first indexing, having a responsive website is more important than ever.
Smush
Smush is a free WordPress plugin for compressing, optimizing, and resizing images. Use it to ensure your web pages load lightning fast.
Note that free users can only optimize 50 images at a time. You have to keep clicking the “resume” button to optimize the next batch of 50.
Robots.txt generator
Robots.txt Generator creates a properly-formatted robots.txt file in seconds.
More advanced users can use the custom option to create individual rules for various bots, subdirectories, etc.
HEADMasterSEO
HeadmasterSEO is a simple tool for bulk checking the status codes for a list of URLs. The free version allows you to check up to 500.
If you prefer a web-based application—and only wish to check up to 100 URLs—try HTTPstatus.io.
Keep-alive Validation SEO Tool
Use this tool to check if persistent connections are enabled or disabled on your web pages.
Chrome DevTools
Chrome DevTools is Chrome’s built-in web page debugging tool. Use it to debug page speed issues, improve web page rendering performance, and more.
From a technical SEO standpoint, it has endless uses.
View Rendered Source
View Rendered Source is a Chrome Extension that shows how the browser has rendered a page’s original HTML into the DOM, including modifications made by JavaScript.
It’s a great tool for those who need to audit or troubleshoot JavaScript issues.
Hreflang Tag generator
Generate hreflang tags to specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage. Just add your desired URLs, select your target country and language, then click generate.
Local SEO tools
These tools help you rank higher in local SERPs.
Google My Business
Google My Business lets you manage how your business appears in Google Search and Maps.
Claiming and optimizing your GMB profile is likely the most important thing you can do in local SEO. According to Moz's 2018 study, GMB is one of the top local ranking factors for both “snack pack” and organic results.
Whitespark's Google Business Review Link Generator
Whitespark’s Google Business Review Link Generator creates a shareable link that lets customers review your business with one click.
Since getting reviews on your Google My Business profile is crucial for local SEO, you should consider sharing this link via email, social media, and elsewhere to make the reviewing process as easy as possible.
Do you have funds to invest in premium SEO tools?
Start with Ahrefs. You can try us for 7 days for $7.
Here’s a brief overview of the main tools you get with Ahrefs:
Site Explorer: Analyze the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL.
Keywords Explorer: Perform keyword research with our database of 10+ billion keywords.
Content Explorer: Discover the most popular content on any topic.
Rank Tracker: Track rankings for up to 10,000 keywords on desktop and mobile.
Site Audit: Check your website for 100+ SEO issues.
Alerts: Get notified of new & lost backlinks, web mentions, and keyword rankings.