Okay! So, you have started doing SEO.

You think you need to embed keywords into content, headers, and title; and your site will reach the top, riding a magic wand.

That’s cool! I thought the same at first and as soon as I learned all those stuff I claimed myself an SEO Ninja. But guess what! There are millions of people who are doing exactly what I was doing and my misconception scattered right there!

I started reading, researching, and reading and researching… I found myself in the middle of an ocean that I hardly explored! Things like keyword research, link building, and content optimization seem to be simple but they’re actually the quicksand where you need to be cautious and aware to overcome the odds.

What I also found, is that, despite the difficulty level of SEO, there’re certain tools available on the internet that could make my job easier! And they actually did! I got a lot of help from the tools while optimizing my sites, and others.

I also get a ton of emails that revolve around the same query – ‘which SEO tools would be best for SEO?’ or ‘are there any free SEO Tools that can really help me?’ I took my time, jot down every little component, and got ready to refer the best tools out there.

So, here I am, with the list of the best SEO tools on the internet that contains both paid, free, and freemium (free and paid) tools, for different segments of SEO.

Let’s start.

List of Best SEO Tools (Free and Paid) for 2019-2020

I’m mentioning more than one tools for a single job. You can choose the one that fits your needs or even try multiple to settle for the best.

Ahrefs – Multi-Purpose SEO Tool

One of the biggest, most systematic, feature-rich, user-friendly, and functional (probably, the best) tools, Ahrefs allows you to perform multiple actions at one place. With a massive index updating system (with trillions of links) at least once every day, it’s undoubtedly one of the easiest tools to do primary SEO audit, backlink analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, and much more!

Apart from the range of features, Ahrefs’ USP lies in the simple user interface that helps even a non-technical person to get the research done with absolute ease. Ahrefs has become one of the tools I use every single day for different needs from viral content research to website audit.

Features of Ahrefs

Site Explorer: I spend most of my time on Ahrefs, exploring the Site Explorer section. Not only can you get to analyze a whole website here but also can inspect a specific web page.

• Put the URL, choose whether you want to analyze the whole site or just an URL, and hit the enter button.

• You’ll get to find the Ahrefs Rank, UR (URL Rating or Page Authority), DR (Domain Rating or Domain Authority), Backlinks, Referring Domains, Organic Keywords, Organic Traffic, and Traffic Value for your given URL.

Content Explorer: You can search the most happening and trendiest content on the internet just by typing the keyword! Ahrefs bot will find you the most popular articles for the keywords for specific regions (or everywhere). I always prefer this tool to see the current happenings and explore how the writings are being done. I don’t even need Buzzsumo if I have access to Ahrefs Content Explorer.

Keywords Explorer: One of the most important jobs, if you’re into SEO and marketing, Keyword research can be extensively done on Ahrefs.

• You can put any keyword (or a set of keywords, separated by comma or lines) to know about its search volume (global and country-specific), difficulty, clicks (paid and organic), return rate, and many more metrics.

• Moreover, you can get the other keyword ideas related to the one you have searched for.

Other Features: Well, Ahrefs has truly become one of the best resources to get your SEO jobs done at a faster pace. And that’s because this tool comes with a number of features that will need a whole new article to be described.

• You can get to see the referring domains, their domain authority, number of backlinks you’ve got from there as well as the number of dofollow links you are receiving.

• You can filter the links by link type like dofollow, governmental, educational, nofollow, and more!
• You can see individual backlinks from all pages of a single domain.
• Also, you can search a domain and see whether you have a backlink from the domain or not!

As I told you, Ahrefs is the best SEO tool to give you the right metrics before you make any move to your SEO projects. As per with me, I’ve learned after 10 years of experience and loads of mistakes, SEO is based on 50% strategy and 50% implementation! So, you need to strategize best to have the best implementation and get the best result!

Pricing

Well, it’s a freemium tool, means that it has both free and paid plans. While the free trial is for 7 days, you need to switch to a paid after that. The paid plans start from $99/month and go up to $999/month.

Official Website: https://ahrefs.com/

SEMrush – Freemium All-in-One SEO Tool

My second pick would be SEMrush for the fact that this tool has taken competitor analysis and keyword research to an insane level! SEMrush gives you the precise data of your competitor’s top keywords. So, you get the most profitable keywords without even grinding away in GKP (Google Keyword Planner). You just need to enter the competitor’s URL into SEMrush and the tool will show you everything that you need to know.

From the organic search volumes, paid search volumes, number of backlinks to organic and paid keywords separated by different countries, SEMrush displays everything that an SEO expert needs. Though the interface may seem a little complex at first, once you start using the tool, you’ll start understanding the treasures SEMrush offers to you. Every time I’m concerned about my competition, I pay a visit to SEMrush and put an URL; and boom – it helps me in every way with all the possible strategies of my competitor that I could have missed! In short, I feel vulnerable without SEMrush a single day!

Features of SEMrush

Backlink Profile: Okay, so, first thing first – during my competitor analysis, often the first thing I look for is their backlink profile and I believe this is the case for most SEO experts and aspiring SEO enthusiasts.

• You get to find all the domains who’ve given the valuable links to your competitor which can be the reason why they’re (or maybe) getting an upper-hand on the SEO part.

• Also, SEMrush will show you the anchor texts and linked URL of the backlinks alongside a pie chart, showing dofollow and nofollow links added with the number of text links, frame links, image links, and form links.
• The tool will also display the top anchor texts where your site has been linked.

• You can find the new and lost backlinks which will help you strengthen your link building strategy.

Keyword Distribution (Paid and Organic): The next thing I (and almost everyone else) love to find about my competitors is the top keywords they are ranking for. And SEMrush offers exactly what you need for spying on your competitor.

• Organic and paid keyword list will be given for different countries on a pie chart

• Also, the top organic keyword list will be there on the dashboard
• All keywords will be shown with the keyword difficulty, volume, CPC (Cost Per Click) and traffic potential
• You can discover the new and lost keywords along with changes in organic ranking.

Organic Competitors: You can also find the main organic competitors of yours on SEMrush since the tool suggests you the competitors (organic and paid) based on the URL you have entered. This is surely a sign of the best SEO tool that it is.

Branded vs. Non-Branded Search: This is a nice and unique feature of SEMrush which leverages you to find the types of searches your competitor is found from. Often, people find Intlum by searching Intlum, not by ‘SEO company in Kolkata.’  So, that’s a branded search we get.

If this is the scenario with your competitor, the whole strategy will go upside down since your competitor is not competing at all; rather they are doing business completely based on their goodwill!

Data Export: You want to study offline? Fear not, you can always export the SEMrush data.

Other Feature: Well, you can analyze websites for the desktop version as well as the mobile version! We can’t abandon almost 50% of the online searchers, can we?

Pricing

Registered users will get 10 requests for free on SEMrush and thereafter you need to make a purchase to their subscription plans which starts from $99.95/month (billed monthly).

Official Website: https://www.semrush.com/

Moz – Paid SEO Tool for Every Purpose

Moz is the veteran among the best SEO tools in the market. From a newbie to the experts in the industry, everybody falls for Moz, owing to its rich features. Moz is one tool that is extremely adaptable to the Google algorithm updates. Moreover, I totally liked the precision of the answers Moz gave me when I asked them any question for any concern on their chat portal. It’s a huge boon for every SEO analyst out there, trying to rank higher, convert better.

The insights from Moz would not only be a great help in measuring your website’s performance but also will come in handy for the improvement of your site. Moz has two major products that help in backlink analysis, rank tracking, keyword research, content optimization, and other important metrics.

Moz Pro: Moz Pro is, considerably, the most popular product of Moz which is a software suite which can be utilized for link analysis, keyword research and on-page optimization. This insanely trendy keyword research tool offers valuable information on SERP features that pop up in the search result for a given keyword.

MozBar: MozBar is basically an extension that helps you every time you enter into a website. Available for both Chrome and Firefox, MozBar, when installed in your browser would allow you to see the important SEO metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority along with the referring domains and number of backlinks of every web page.

Moreover, you can also see all the metrics of the Google search results which will help you evaluate the competition at a go. This feature is only available for the Moz Pro Subscribers.

Features of Moz

Open Site Explorer: You can analyze any link with your Moz Pro software by entering a URL. Moz will provide you every possible data and metric that you require. You can search for the whole domain, exact page, or subdomain.

• Quite like Ahrefs, Moz will also fetch you the crucial data like Domain Authority, Linking Domains (basically, Backlinks), Inbound Links (referring domains), Ranking Keywords.

• Open Site Explorer will also leverage you to find the backlinks with the anchor text, platform, and URL. Also, you can see the PA, DA and Spam Score of each backlink.

• You can export all the data or individual data in CSV format.

Fresh Web Explorer: Want to search where you or your competitors have been mentioned? Fear not! Moz has everything sorted for you! Visit Fresh Web Explorer, enter your search term, and get every information you require.

• A graph will display how many times your search term has been mentioned over a period of time.

• You can access a list of URLs where the term(s) has been mentioned along with the page authority and date when the term has been mentioned. I love to loiter around this tool as it helps me find out the fresh contents for a particular topic.

Keyword Explorer: Very much similar to the keyword explorer on Ahrefs, this tool helps you run your research for choosing the keywords for any specific region and language.

• It shows you the data for the monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and organic CTR (Click Through Rate).

• Moz bot will also suggest you a set of keywords against the one you have searched for with their metrics. I get a ton of benefits from this tool as I get a number of Long Tail keywords from here.

On Page Grader: This is an exceptional feature which is missing on Ahrefs. You can dig deeper into any web page of your competitor by entering the web page URL and a keyword you want to see the usage for. Guess what, you get an outstanding insight.

• On Page Grader shows you the page’s meta title, description, URL, the total number of keywords that are used, keyword location, and page score.

• Also, you can see the positive and negative factors of the page as it will show you how the SEO can be improved for the page. If you want to know more about any factor, you can click to see the description.

Note: I want to mention, I don’t follow everything that it says; it’s a bot after all! And I know I’m smarter than the machines.

Rank Tracker: Track ranking of your or your competitor’s pages against every keyword you can think of.

Pricing

Moz is freemium. While MozBar comes without any cost but Moz Pro is purchasable to use. While you can start the Moz Pro free trial for 30 days, you need to pay $179 + Tax/month for using it further.

Official Website: https://moz.com/

Google Search Console – Free SEO Tool for Website Performance Tracking

Especially, built for tracking down any website’s performance in Google search results, GSC also displays you any issues associated with your website like website indexing (for desktop or mobile), AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), security issues, and last but not the least for sure, it helps you with your backlink tracking! Therefore, it becomes one of the best SEO tools that we have right now.

Note: Before starting with this SEO tool, you need to install Google Search Console on your website.

GSC is basically the tool for tracking the search engine’s interaction with your website. And when you finish setting up the search console account by placing the tracking ID on your site and verifying your website on GSC, all you need is, kickstart your SEO analysis and rank your website on Google.

Google Search Console will fetch you an extensive range of highly crucial data that will undoubtedly be the key components for improving your website. The data will be organized in line with different metrics which makes it a tad more comforting (at least, for me). Information on Google Search Console will be separated smartly with different categories which makes it easier to distinguish distinct issues your site needs to work on with! When you combine all these data and evaluate them correctly, you’re all ready to skyrocket your search ranking.

Features of Google Search Console

When you have a Google product that helps you in SEO, that must be one of the best SEO tools. But there’re more reasons why GSC is on our list, and its features will explain to you why!

Performance:

• Your website’s performance graph will be shown with different key metrics like Total Clicks, Total Impressions, Average CTR, and Average Position for a particular range of time.

• Moreover, you can also get the performance analysis by Queries (search terms), top pages, top countries (where the traffic is coming from), devices (device, used for accessing your site), and search appearance (how the search result appears) with clicks, CTR, position, and impression for each information.

• You can also fetch data from a specific web page of your website. I use it a lot to know the search term, used for the best-performing page of my site.

URL Inspection: Quite needless to say, you can inspect any web page URL by this tool!

• You can get data for coverage, mobile usability, and AMP.

• All the metrics will be shown with green check buttons or red exclamatory button. So, you’d know where to work on!

Coverage and Sitemaps: This feature makes you aware of the indexing issues your website has.

• Inside Coverage, you can find the number of errors, valid pages with warning, valid pages (which have been indexed), and excluded pages.

• Also, the Coverage section will give you the details of the errors with the error type, validation, trend, and the number of pages which have that particular error.
• Also, any particular error can be fixed by requesting Google for Validating the Error.
• Sitemaps section shows you the active sitemap of your site with the sitemap type, submission date, last read date, active status, and number of URLs under the sitemap.

• Sitemap submission is immensely easy since you just need to put the sitemap URL extension on the given field at the top and hit the Submit button.

Mobile Usability and AMP: I always keep an eye on these two sections on GSC since Google is extremely touchy about the mobiles, these days!

• The mobile usability and AMP sections also show the errors with valid pages; this time, for the mobile version of your site.

• Here, just like Coverage, you can see the error details listed by type, validation, trend, and number of pages with that error.

Links: Internal and external linking have one of my top concerns from the day I started SEO. And GSC is one of the best SEO tools in 2019 that assists in a total evaluation of the linking your website has.

• You can get the crucial and updated data like the top linked pages for external and internal links along with the figures.

• There will also be a list of backlinks (along with the source URL and number of backlinks, built there) your website has managed to build.
• GSC will also help you know the most used anchor texts which can very well be the keyword you may target in recent future!
• Lastly, all the data can be exported; so, you don’t have to be online every single time.

Other Features: There are a number of other important features that revolve around the security of your site. GSC will promptly let you know whether there’s any minor or major security issue under the Security Issues section. And the same goes with Manual Actions where you will be notified by the tool if there’s anything that is needed to be taken care of.

Pricing

Well, here’s the good news! Google Search Console is a bit difficult to understand at first but it’s a free SEO tool!

Official Website: https://search.google.com/search-console/

Serpstat – Freemium All-in-One SEO Tool

One of the best growth hacking SEO tools available in the market, Serpstat is one of my favorite content marketing, search analytics, and keyword research tools that would hand you the keywords which can be used to grow your website traffic drastically. Quite like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz, this is also an all-in-one SEO platform which can be useful for a number of SEO analysis jobs. Serpstat was free before; but now, they restrict the information after a certain limitation. Moreover, you would not be able to access all the features if you’re not a paid subscriber.

However, Serpstat still pops up in my list because the pricing is fairly affordable, compared to the other similar online SEO tools. You would not only be able to analyze your competitors and find keywords, but you can also compare domains and URLs, track the ranking, do a site audit, analyze backlinks, and more! Well, there’s a precaution: while I was doing my research for this article, there’ve been some functionalities which were not working properly on Serpstat. I hope that’s a glitch in my case, and you’ll not face any trouble.

Features of Serpstat

Competitor Analysis: Serpstat allows you to analyze your competitors just by entering the URL of your website or any web page.

• Right after you put your website URL and hit enter, Serpstat will automatically fetch the other competitor of yours based on the nature of your website and generated keywords.
• The competitor list will come with the common keywords, missing keywords, relevance rate, number of keywords generated on the site, and visibility.

• Moreover, you will be able to edit the list of competitors and include one of your own preference.

Keyword Research: Serpstat’s core strength lies in Keyword Research and when you’d know the features, you’d know why!

• You’ll get a nice overview of the keyword (search volume, competition, CPC, and difficulty) you want to analyze.

• There’ll be a list of related keyword list for both organic and paid marketing with their individual volume, CPC, and other metrics.
• You’ll be able to find the Keyword Trends along with the list of competitors for the keywords. The keyword trend data is fetched from Google Trends, which is another viable SEO tool, described later in this article.

So, when you see the list filled with the biggies, looking for another keyword would be a smart idea, I guess (if you don’t have much authority on your site, compared to them).

Backlink Analysis: The backlink analysis tool of Serpstat will help you know more about the backlinks your website has built till date. There will be analytical data with clear and precise data alongside a number of features.

• There’ll be statistics for referring domains, referring pages, indexed pages, linked domains, outbound links, and unique outbound links.

• Moreover, it will also clearly show you the number of dofollow and nofollow links, referring IPs, and subnets.
• You can also find the graphical representation for the unique backlink history and referring domains along with a bar diagram for New & Lost backlinks.

• Also, you’ll get the data for anchor text, domain extension (domain extensions that have given you the links), and countries where your backlinks are found.

Rank Tracker: Serpstat is the most appropriate SEO tool for rank tracking and many SEO experts are there who access the tool for tracking the keyword ranking for their website and for their competitors. You can get the real-time ranking for your entered URL here.

Site Audit: I, precisely, get shocked to see people who call themselves SEO analyst (even, experts) and don’t audit a website prior to the optimization process! A website audit hands you the right information to decide where you need to work on and where not! And Serpstat passes with distinction when it comes to the website audit.

• You can check the website loading speed which turns out to be a huge factor for user experience and eventually, ranking these days! The website loading time data will be shown separately for desktop and mobile along with the issues that are there!

• Also, they’re going to give you a score based on your website’s current status. This score helps you evaluate your current website condition and improvements you (may or may not have) made.
• It will show you the high, medium, and low priority issues along with green check marks for a number of ranking factors (arranged in different categories) that ensure you’re going towards the right direction.

Pricing

Serpstat is free to use at first, but comes with limitations in terms of features and data. If you want to get the full access, you have to upgrade your free plan to a paid plan which starts from $55.20/month (for yearly subscription).

Official Website: https://serpstat.com/

Ubersuggest – Free Keyword Research SEO Tool

Well, if you want to find a completely free SEO tool, Ubersuggest would surely pop up as a viable candidate with a promising performance for keyword research, website analysis, content ideas, and backlink analysis. A product of a notable name in the SEO industry, Neil Patel, this promptly becomes one of the best SEO tools for the people who are just starting out and do not want to invest in the paid tools.

Ubersuggest allows you to analyze any given keyword or URL for a specific region! Ubersuggest helps you discover the short and long-term keywords along with their competition, CPC, volume, trends and more as the key metrics. Here, you’ll be able to get the keyword idea for both Organic SEO and PPC campaigns. Moreover, this tool also works exceptionally well for spying on competitors as you can put any URL here, and the tool will help you find the backlinks, keywords, monthly traffic, domain score, and top pages of the website along with the important metrics like estimated visits, rank, and social shares that help you evaluate a website’s marketing strategy and improve your SEO techniques.

Features of Ubersuggest

Astounding but true, Ubersuggest comes with a range of lucrative and rich features that can easily give a tough competition to the paid marketing tools available on the internet.

Domain Overview: The domain overview section covers each and every aspect of a domain that can come in handy for your optimization process.

• There will be definitive figures for organic keywords, organic monthly traffic, domain score, and backlinks (along with the number of nofollow links).
• You will get a graphical presentation for your monthly website traffic which can help you in understanding the improvement over time.
• Also, there’ll be a bar diagram, representing the keywords’ SERP positions over time.

• You can find the top pages and keyword lists by country.

Keyword Research and Analysis: Ubersuggest has truly been a revolution among the free SEO tools with such innovation and precision in keyword research and analysis.

• You can search for any keywords for any given countries and Ubersuggest will fetch the most crucial data for the term.
• You can not only find the key metrics of the searched term, but the tool will also show you the related keywords and keyword suggestions (they call it Keyword Ideas) and their monthly search volume, CPC, and keyword difficulty (both for paid and organic search)
• When you are studying a website (your new project, your own site, or your competitor site), you can easily find the keywords for the domain along with their SERP position, estimated visits per month, and other data for different countries.

Content Ideas: The latest addition to Ubersuggest, Content Ideas offers you the topics for your content based on your searched term. Here, they’ll show you the related contents written by other websites along with their website URL, estimated visits for the article, backlinks for that page, and social shares. So, you know where they stand.

Website Audit: Auditing a website for SEO is immensely easy on Ubersuggest. It offers useful insights on the crucial metrics that can surely boost up your website to the next level.

• You’ll get an on-page SEO score with a health check for your entered website.
• The tool will also bring out the errors on your site and display them in a hierarchy from critical errors to warnings and recommendations. So, you know where to work on at the very first.
• Moreover, it will also show you the loading time of your site both on desktop and mobile. So, you don’t need to visit any other platform.

Note: If you want to optimize your website loading time, read our extensive guideline.

Backlink Analysis: Ubersuggest shows precise data when it comes to your website backlinks.

• Each of your backlinks will be listed with the source domain score, page score, link type (text, frame, image, etc.), anchor text, first seen and last seen.

• The free SEO tool will also showcase the source and target URL.

• You can filter the backlink list by the backlink type (dofollow or nofollow) and some advanced filtration options.

I really looked up to the articles written by Neil Patel and now, I spend even more time on the site owing to the awesome features and functionalities provided by Ubersuggest. It’s really uncanny to have such a great SEO analysis tool for free but when there’s actually one available, we should all take advantage and boost our SEO results.

I want to give you a caution that sometimes the tool can take a little time to function but that’s completely okay because you’re saving a lot of bucks!

Pricing:

Free (No Hidden Cost)

Official Website: https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/

Screaming Frog SEO Spider – Freemium Website Audit SEO Software

Personally, I get surprised when I don’t find Screaming Frog SEO spider, making the list of the best SEO tools on many articles! There’s no way anyone can create an SEO tool list without mentioning this outstandingly intuitive and precise SEO software. Without any doubt, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is one of the top names when it comes to analyzing a website (whether it’s yours or your competitors’). If you are looking for a site audit, experts would always suggest you the software because of its speed, precision, and almost unlimited features.

With this revolutionizing downloadable SEO software, it’s super-fast to crawl your site or your competitor site and inspect every minute SEO factor which would ensure a drastic improvement for an error-free site. You can discover whether there’s a 404 error, duplicate content, bad redirection, word count, tags, headers, and everything else you can think of! Screaming Frog SEO Spider enables you to find opportunities for quick fixes and get ideas on the optimization improvements.

In simpler words, what I can tell from my personal experience is, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the best SEO software to have a quick site audit alongside a wonderful opportunity to get easy and actionable insights. If you’re still in hesitation, I’d suggest you take a look at its features!

Features of Screaming Frog SEO Spider

If you ask, nine out of ten people (who possess SEO knowledge) would happily recommend you this tool for the site audit. That’s because the tool is feature-rich and advanced in terms of functionality.

Broken Link Detection: The SEO Spider of Screaming Frog quickly crawls each and every component of your website and finds out the server error along with the