Best SEO Tools in Comparison

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), also known as search engine optimization, includes all measures aimed at increasing the organic traffic and visibility of a website in search engines. High visibility means that the website and/or individual sub-pages of the website are displayed particularly high up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). The rule is: the higher the ranking, the more website visitors. These can then be converted into leads or paying customers.

A central component of SEO is competitor analysis. By examining the strategies of competitors and the SERPs, it is analyzed which methods are most effective and where there is potential for improvement. An indicator of user interest is in many cases the CTR (Click-through Rate or Click Rate). In addition, it's important to understand the search intention of the user. If you know what users are looking for and why, you can optimize the website to offer exactly what the users are looking for. Website improvements can occur on various levels. It often includes the optimization of content, the improvement of usability, and the technical optimization of the website. The result is usually a higher click rate and better ranking in search engines.

SEO, together with Search Engine Advertising (SEA), i.e., the placement of paid advertising in the search engine, forms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or also search engine marketing. By the way: The term "search engine" is often equated with Google and for good reason: Because the search engine Google has a market share of about 94% in Europe.

What is an SEO tool?

SEO tools are software or SaaS solutions that assist in the search engine optimization (SEO) of a website. A distinction can be made between “All-In-One” solutions and “Speciality Tools”. It is also possible to distinguish between free SEO tools – which are particularly suitable for very small websites – and paid tools, which are primarily suitable for websites with 100 URLs or more. Many software providers, especially those offering paid tools, offer extensive free trial versions. This gives everyone and every business the opportunity to get a picture of whether the functional scope of the software is suitable for their needs before purchasing or registering.

Why are SEO tools important?

Today, the Google search engine is indispensable, because a large part of the people who search online turn to Google. This also means that most visitors come to websites via Google Search Results Pages (SERPs). While it is possible to attract visitors to your own website through advertisements in the search engine (SEA), this can be extremely costly as bids are placed on the placements of the advertisements. Hence, SEO is a must for companies, freelancers, and self-employed individuals.

However, ensuring that your own website appears on the first page of the Google rankings is not so easy under certain circumstances. This is because there are countless pages for each search term (keywords), from which Google selects and displays the best search results for users' queries using algorithms. The algorithm is extremely complex and evaluates countless factors, such as the words used in the search query, the relevance and usefulness of websites, the location and settings of the searchers, the Page Rank as well as the expertise of the sources.

Therefore, it is no longer sufficient to simply structure the website as desired or to just produce any content. In addition to an SEO strategy, SEO tools - especially for large websites - are indispensable as they provide important data for search engine optimization. They help understand what users are looking for and reveal potential optimizations for websites. Better rankings can thus be achieved with the insights gained from SEO tools.

SEO tools have become indispensable for both beginners and advanced users. Website operators who have just started find helpful guides and analyses in them, which make getting started in the world of search engine optimization easier. Advanced users, on the other hand, use the specialized functions of these tools to perform deeper analyses and further refine their strategies. But what specific functions do SEO tools have?

Functions of SEO tools

The functions of search engine optimization tools depend on whether they are All-In-One tools, i.e., tools that cover all areas of SEO, or Speciality Tools, which specialize in one area of SEO (more on this below). Common functions are:

• Keyword research

  • Keyword suggestions
  • Short- and long-tail keywords
  • Search volumes

• Rank tracking and keyword monitoring

  • Rank on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
  • Ranking alerts and hints (e.g. on keyword cannibalism)

• Website structure analysis

  • Link structure
  • Analysis of internal linking
  • Assistance with link building

• Performance analysis & user friendliness

  • Page speed and loading times
  • User Experience (Keyword: Core Web Vitals)
  • Readability and usability
  • Optimization of responsive design (mobile devices, desktop, tablet etc.)

• Off-Page SEO

  • Analysis of the backlink profile
  • Backlink monitoring
  • Link building

• On-Page SEO

  • Optimization of metadata (Meta-Titles & Meta-Description)
  • WDF*IDF analyses
  • Text creation and text optimizations

• SEO Reporting

  • Data visualizations
  • Custom reports

• Competitor analyses

  • Analysis and monitoring of competitors and rivals

Which SEO tools should I use?

Regardless of the type of tool, unfortunately, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for "the best SEO tool". However, answering the following questions can help you find the right SEO tools for you. If you are just starting your search, you should ask yourself these questions:

• What data & KPIs do you want to record regularly?

• Which data do you really need and which would be just "nice to have"?

• What is your budget for tools?

• Who in your company should deal with and evaluate the tools?

• How many accesses do you need for the respective tools?

• Is someone already familiar with certain tools?

• For which countries or languages do you need to collect data or is the SEO tool suitable for local, national, or international SEO?

• In which company size or form do you want to use the SEO tool (e.g. SEO tools for enterprises, for self-employed individuals, or agencies)?

If you have already answered these questions and now want to compare your narrowed down choice of tools, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Who should operate the tool and is the usability suitable?

• Are there good tutorials or workshops that you can use to get to know the tool?

• Are there differences in the quality of the data?

• Which tool can be best integrated into your workflow?

• Which tools offer a free trial version?

Are SEO tools worth their money?

Whether the purchase of paid SEO software and tools is worthwhile depends entirely on how they are used afterwards. Especially all-in-one tools are often associated with high monthly or yearly costs. But even specialty tools can - depending on which sub-areas of SEO are in focus of your own optimization - not be exactly cheap. That's why the tools should really offer you real added value in everyday life.

Paid tools are often far ahead of free SEO tools: both in terms of the functional range of the information offered, the reliability, or the quality of the evaluations and data provided. Especially in industries where there is high competition in SEO, paid tools can therefore often deliver better relevant insights than free tools. This can save you a lot of time that you can use for the actual optimization of your website. To find out whether a paid offer is worth it for you, you should simply try out the tools. Many providers offer you a free test of the software or even individual consultation.

OMR Reviews SEO Software Grid Overview with the Best Tools (Q4 2021)

For Q4 2022, 14 SEO tools qualified for the SEO Tool Grid in December 2021 with the help of the OMR Community and the weighted amount of over 1,000 submitted reviews. Our Grid sorts the tools vertically according to their market presence and horizontally according to their weighted average Net Promoter Score (NPS). For inclusion, a minimum of 15 qualified reviews from the last 12 months and an average NPS of at least 7 are required.

All-In-One Toolbox vs. SEO Specialty Tool - A Comparison

Toolboxes (also known as SEO Suites) often cover many different areas of search engine optimization. They are particularly suitable for getting a comprehensive overview of the SEO performance of your own website and those of your competitors. Often additional "modules" are offered that give insights into the CPC-/Ads performance and monitor the success of your own social media channels. Speciality tools, on the other hand, are especially suitable for the targeted optimization of sub-disciplines of SEO, such as content optimization & keyword research, optimizing technical issues e.g., the loading speed or monitoring important Offpage KPIs.

Advantages and Disadvantages of All-In-One SEO Tools

SEO toolboxes can help you get a general overview of your search performance. Many tools also calculate so-called visibility indices (SI), which allow you to compare yourself with competitors. Another advantage is that you have many key figures and data in one place: The toolbox offers you a central point of contact when you want to evaluate your SEO success. Even if you want to keep an eye on other online marketing channels, many tool providers offer you the possibility to collect and evaluate relevant data. The disadvantages of SEO suites include having functions available that you don't necessarily need or that are very complex. Here, you should always plan time to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the functions of the toolboxes using workshops or tutorials. So if you only use a small part of the functions in everyday life or in general, it's worth taking a look at specialty tools. If you decide for a tool suite, you must also carefully consider who would use it. This determines the number of your accesses, which can have a significant impact on costs. On the other hand, you might be able to share these tools with other departments and thus also save costs.

Here are popular SEO Tool Suites:

• Seobility
• Sistrix
• SE Ranking
• Ryte
• Searchmetrics
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush

Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO Speciality Tools

Besides the all-rounders, there are also "specialists", i.e., tools that specialize in only one part of SEO. These tools shine in particular when you are deeply involved in the optimization of your website. The speciality tools also often provide extensive insights from which concrete action recommendations and to-dos can be quickly derived. For the different areas of SEO optimization, it is therefore often worthwhile to use different tools or at least to add them as a supplement to the All-In-One solutions. The areas of SEO optimization are:

• Technical optimization (Audit & Crawling Tools)
• Content or On-Page Optimization (Keyword & Content Research, Ranking Tracking)
• Offpage Optimization (Backlinks & Digital PR)

The biggest advantage of SEO specialty tools can also be the biggest disadvantage: Since the data collected and evaluated in such tools are very specific and extensive, the purchase of the specialty tools is only worthwhile if you deal intensively with the corresponding sub-discipline of search engine optimization. A second point to consider is that many of the specialty tools focus only on your own website. So if you're interested in comparing yourself with competitors, you should instead opt for toolboxes.

SEO Speciality Tools in Detail

Technical Optimization: SEO Audit and Crawling Tools

The first step for a technical analysis of a website from an SEO perspective is to record all URLs that a website contains. Since in most cases you can't do this manually, you'll need tools to do this job for you. So-called "Crawling Tools" simulate the Google Bot and record all URLs that Google can see too.

Besides the mere data collection, most "crawlers" also provide a direct evaluation of the data - including concrete action recommendations. SEO performance data like impressions and clicks can also often be connected directly with the crawl data. Using SEO crawlers, the technical basis for your own SEO strategy and the success of your own website can often be laid.

Here are popular SEO Audit and Crawler Tools:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Seobility
• Sitebulb
• Website-Success Module from Ryte
• Lumar
• Audisto Crawling

Content Optimization

SEO Tools for Keyword & Content Strategies

While tool suites already give you useful tips for keyword and content potentials for your website: For comprehensive keyword and content strategies, the use of specialized tools is worthwhile.

If you want to research on which keywords you should optimize your website and what content you should write for it, tools will help you find the keywords suitable for your website. With them, you can research e.g. the monthly search volume of individual or multiple keywords and display additional keyword suggestions. Depending on the scope of the research and the variety of topics, free or paid keyword tools can be used.

The Keyword Planner, operated by Google as a tool for Ads campaigns, is free, but for researching keywords and gathering the monthly search volume per keywords it is unfortunately only limitedly usable. Exact data on search volume for keywords is, for instance, only available to users of accounts that have actively placed Ads campaigns via the tool. SEO professionals, therefore, often use tools from third-party providers nowadays. Most tools offer either limited free research or at least free trial periods.

Here are popular SEO Keyword Tools & Content Strategy Tools:

• Keyword Tool
• KWFinder from Mangools
• Answer the Public
• Keyword-Tools.org

SEO Tools for Content Creation & Optimization

Once you've figured out what search engine optimized content to write for your website, you may be faced with the challenge of planning and organizing your content, especially if it involves a large amount of text. In order not to get tangled up in Excel spreadsheets and avoid Duplicate Content, there are content tools that help you with the creation and management of your content. Besides the organization of content creation, these tools also offer useful functions for editors to optimally design the texts from an SEO perspective. Some specialty tools focus exclusively on writing search engine optimized texts. Most tools have functions such as:

• a snippet preview, in which you can see how your snippet - consisting of the title and meta description - is likely to be displayed in the organic search results

• a WDF*IDF research, which gives you hints about which other keywords you should include in the texts

• W-questions tool, which gives you hints on how to structure your texts and which questions you should answer for your readers

Here are popular SEO Tools for Content Optimization:

• SEOlyze
• WDFIDF-Tool.com
• Contentbird
• Content Editor Module from Ryte

SEO Software for Ranking Tracking

For the continuous monitoring of keyword rankings on your website, tools like AccuRanker are suitable. Especially if you want to monitor a larger number of keywords and in different languages, these specialty tools are a cost-effective alternative to tool suites.

Here are popular SEO Ranking Tracking Tools:

• Keyword.com
• AccuRanker
• SE Ranking

Offpage & Backlink SEO Tools

Another topic that has been accompanying SEO experts for a long time is offpage optimization. Backlinks, i.e., the linking from other websites to URLs of your own website, contribute to the position at which a website is displayed in search results. Checking the existing backlinks of a website for quality criteria is called Backlink Audit. Backlinks can be divided into qualities.

High-quality are links that are a) thematically fitting and b) come from websites that are themselves well linked on the internet, i.e., have a "good" backlink profile. "Bad" backlinks, especially thematically inappropriate or spam-site originating links, can be quickly identified using offpage tools. So, for a data-based analysis of your own backlinks, you can't get around backlink tools. Some of the questions that offpage tools can answer include:

• How many and which websites link to my website?

• What are the anchor texts of the links?

• What links have I gained new? And which ones have I lost?

• How much "trust" do the linking websites have? Could the links be potentially harmful for my website?

• Are there important backlinks that refer to non-existing URLs?

When compared to tool suites, specialty tools for offpage optimization usually have better backlink databases, so they typically find more backlinks.

Here are popular SEO Offpage Tools:

• LinkResearchTools
• Majestic
• Ahrefs

SEO Tools from Google

In addition to the tools mentioned so far from third-party providers, Google itself also offers SEO tools that can help with SEO optimization. The free SEO tools from Google, especially the Google Search Console, also show many SEO data that no other tool providers can show you. These include data on indexing or index coverage, i.e., which of your URLs can be found in the Google search and where there are problems, as well as clicks, impressions and also average rankings of your keywords. However, many of the aforementioned SEO tools often also offer you the possibility to directly link the Search Console. Regardless of whether you decide for an All-In-One SEO tool or also specialty tools: The Google Search Console is definitely worth it.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, can provide you with important insights into the behavior of your users. This can also help to further grow the success of your own website.

Decision Tree for Selecting the Right SEO Software

So, there are many good SEO tools - but which one is the right one for your needs? Apart from the reviews and information on OMR Reviews, our decision tree for selecting the right SEO tool can support you: By answering these simple questions, you will surely find the right SEO software category for your requirements.

Conclusion

Those who know how to use SEO tools correctly can gain crucial competitive advantage in search results from the insights gained. Free SEO tools offer beginners a wonderful introduction to data-driven analysis and optimization of their own website. SEO experts, on the other hand, usually rely on a mix of many different tools and SEO suites.

Given the rapidly changing and ever-growing range of SEO software, it can be a challenge to find the individually suitable tool. To be able to make the right decision, a comparison of the different SEO tools is therefore indispensable. The tool reviews of other SEO experts can also help to get an overview of the tool offering.