Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the digital marketing strategies that help small businesses compete with large and multinational companies. Small companies and startups run SEO campaigns to grow organic website traffic, improve brand awareness, and increase leads in a cost-efficient way.

However, search engines update their algorithms frequently and consider new search signals regularly. The frequent changes and updates make SEO complex and challenging. Large enterprises overcome SEO challenges by hiring additional search engine optimizers and content creators.

However, small businesses overcome existing and emerging SEO challenges through automation. They automate routine SEO activities and tasks by leveraging the best SEO tools for small businesses. Some of these firms implement free SEO tools, while others use the free version of premium SEO tools.

Hence, your company or startup can use a wide range of tools to automate various SEO tasks and activities. But you cannot boost SEO automation without combining multiple SEO tools. We are making it easier for you to drive SEO automation by discussing some of the SEO tools used widely by small businesses.

Overview of 17 Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses

1. Google Search Console

The free SEO tool provided by Google helps you measure and track a website’s search performance using various metrics. After adding your website to Google Search Console, you can measure its traffic using a slew of filters – search type, search query, device, country, and search appearance.
At the same time, you can use Google Search Console to detect and fix issues affecting your website’s search performance. You can identify the pages indexed and excluded by Google by generating index coverage reports. Also, you can boost the website’s search visibility by differentiating high-performing pages from low-performing pages.

2. Google Keyword Planner

The design goal of the tool is to help users find the most relevant keywords for Google Ads. However, Google Keyword Planner is used widely by SEO professionals to get keyword suggestions for a specific product, service, or business. In addition to suggesting relevant keywords, the tool shows monthly searches for each keyword.
You can leverage the free tool by planning ad campaigns and defining advertising goals. Google Keyword Planner will suggest keywords and popular keyword ideas according to the predefined advertising goal. You can use the keyword ideas strategically to boost your website’s search engine visibility.

3. Google Trends

The tool provided by Google helps you boost SEO campaigns by understanding what your target audiences are searching for. In addition to showing trending search queries, Google Trends shows the search performance of the exact and related keywords over a period of time.
You can use the tool to find popular search queries for a specific search term. Also, you can find more relevant search queries using filters like region, category, and search type. Hence, you can leverage the tool as one of the best SEO tools for small businesses to conduct competitive keyword research and identify events triggering search volume spikes.

4. Ahrefs

The Lite edition of this premium SEO software tool is hugely popular with small businesses. Your firm should consider Ahrefs to automate important SEO tasks like keyword research, website audit, competitor analysis, and keyword rank tracking. Also, the tool helps you find content ideas and link-building opportunities.
You can use the Site Explorer provided by Ahrefs to keywords and web pages ranking higher on search engine results pages. Likewise, the tool helps you understand what keywords and content help your competitors increase website traffic organically. You can implement these ideas and insights to outperform competitors by boosting your SEO strategies.

5. Moz

Moz allows you to use a slew of free SEO tools. You can use the keyword research tool provided by Moz to find traffic-driving keywords. Likewise, you can get actionable insights using the competitor analysis tool. At the same time, the link explorer tool helps you find link-building opportunities by exploring over 40 trillion backlinks.
Moz provides a domain analysis tool that helps you calculate the probability of your website appearing at the top of search results using many metrics. Each of these SEO tools for small businesses helps you boost SEO campaign performance by leveraging huge sums of online data. Also, you can use the desired SEO tools without increasing overheads.

6. Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing software package. The premium software suite comes with an SEO toolkit. You can leverage the SEO toolkit provided by Semrush to automate crucial SEO activities like website audit, on-page SEO, keyword research, competitor analysis, and keyword rank tracking.
Also, the SEO toolkit helps you boost a website’s search visibility by finding link-building opportunities. You can use the tool provided by Semrush to audit backlink profiles, find backlink gaps, identify toxic backlinks, and analyze competitors’ backlink profiles.

7. Rank Ranger

You can consider this premium SEO software to leverage custom rank tracking. Rank Ranger helps you boost SEO campaigns by tracking the search performance of your website for specific keywords. You can use the tool to identify your top competitors and track the search engine ranking of their websites.
Hence, it becomes easier for you to boost the search visibility of the website by working on low-ranking keywords. Rank Ranger allows you to customize the keyword rank tracking process by generating daily, monthly, or weekly reports.
You can further track the search ranking of the desktop and mobile versions of the website across multiple search engines, including Google, Bing, and Baidu. But you have to combine Rank Ranger with other SEO tools to automate additional SEO activities.

8. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

You cannot boost a website’s search engine visibility without focusing on technical SEO. Your SEO strategy must focus on identifying and fixing all technical issues that make it difficult for search engines to crawl and index the website. Screaming Frog SEO Spider makes it easier for you to find common SEO issues by conducting online website audits.
You can leverage the distinct SEO software to find many SEO issues, including duplicate content, broken links, and faulty redirects. Also, Screaming Frog helps you improve the page title and meta descriptions of web pages. You can use this software to fix technical issues in 500 URLs without escalating costs.

9. Surfer

The premium software simplifies SEO strategizing by providing a content editor and a keyword research tool. You can use the content editor provided by Surfer to optimize content for search engines using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. At the same time, the keyword research tool provided by Surfer helps you find and embed the most relevant keywords in the content.
It helps you create relevant content by understanding what type of content your competitors publish. You can increase your website’s search engine visibility by conducting site and content audits using the useful tool provided by the software. Small businesses access the premium software by creating a free account.

10. SimilarWeb

Free tools provided by the premium software help you understand and analyze website traffic using multiple metrics. In addition to sharing insights gained by analyzing your website traffic, SimilarWeb helps you compare your website traffic with the traffic of competitor websites.
The dashboard provided by the software helps you boost SEO activities by generating reports based on real-time website traffic data. At the same time, the market intelligence tools provided by SimilarWeb make it easier for you to understand the behavior of the target audience. But you have to spend money to avail of the premium tools and solutions provided by SimilarWeb.

11. Ubersuggest

You can use Ubersuggest to boost your SEO strategies by understanding what strategies work for your competitors. The tool helps you gain insights into the SEO and content marketing strategies used by your competitors. Also, you can leverage Ubersuggest to detect relevant keywords, get content ideas, and find link-building opportunities.
Hence, you should consider this premium SEO tool to understand and emulate the SEO strategies used by competitors. But your team can use Ubersuggest for free only for 7 days on a trial basis. You have to subscribe to a lifetime or monthly pricing plan to use the software in the long run.

12. Exploding Topics

It becomes easier for you to outperform competitors when your SEO strategy detects the right topics and keywords early. Exploding Topics helps you find keywords and topics that are currently trending but yet to become popular.
You can use the premium software to find trending topics and keywords based on specific categories like startup, e-commerce, software, health, fitness, finance, and fashion. Also, you can pick the right topics and keywords by evaluating their growth over a period of time.

13. Yoast

Yoast is currently the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. You must consider this premium software while optimizing a WordPress website for search engines. The features and tools provided by Yoast help you optimize a web page for specific keywords. At the same time, the software makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index web pages by generating XML sitemaps.
The content analysis tool provided by Yoast helps you optimize content for search engines despite having no technical knowledge. Also, you can use the bulk editor to update page titles and meta descriptions in minutes. However, the free version of Yoast lacks some of the advanced features and tools provided by Yoast Pro.

14. SEOquake

You can use the popular SEO toolkit as a browser extension. Hence, it becomes easier for you to assess the search performance of your own website and competitor websites. The SEOquake helps you conduct website audits in real-time.
Also, you can use it to gather elaborate information about the internal and external links on a web page. At the same time, SEOquake allows you to choose from a slew of SEO parameters while evaluating a website.

15. RankIQ

This SEO toolkit is developed to cater to the needs of individual bloggers and businesses running blogs. You can use RankIQ to reduce the time and effort required to optimize a blog post. It helps you choose the best blog topics by evaluating relevant topics using relevance and score.
Also, you can use the writing assistant provided by RankIQ to optimize both new and existing blog posts. The software helps you choose the most relevant keywords by suggesting low-competition keywords with high-traffic potential.

16. Seobility

Seobility is a premium SEO toolkit. It comes with features and tools to facilitate on-site audits, keyword rank tracking, and backlink analysis. Seobility conducts on-site audits by crawling the whole website including external and internal links. Also, it tracks the ranking of keywords across cities and countries.
It finds link-building ideas and opportunities for your SEO project by analyzing the link profiles of competitor websites. You can use the basic version of the software for free. But the version allows you to optimize a single website project. You have to upgrade to premium versions of Seobility to optimize multiple websites and crawl additional web pages.

17. SEOptimizer

The SEO audit and reporting tool provided by SEOptimizer is popular with small businesses and startups. You can consider premium SEO software to conduct SEO audits comprehensively and regularly. The audit reports generated by the software help you understand the changes and improvements required to boost your website’s search engine ranking.
At the same time, you can boost SEO activities using an SEO crawling tool, keyword research tool, and keyword tracking tool. The API provided by SEOptimizer enables you to create custom SEO solutions based on over 100 data points. You can use the software for 14 days by opting for a free trial option.

Final Words

As a cost-efficient digital marketing strategy, SEO helps small businesses beat the competition. However, frequent search engine algorithm changes make SEO complex and challenging for small businesses. Small companies and startups overcome various SEO challenges using the best SEO tools for small businesses.
However, you should remember that each SEO tool automates specific tasks and activities. You cannot boost SEO automation without using multiple SEO tools. It is always advisable to keep in mind the SEO tasks to be automated while comparing and evaluating these SEO tools popular with firms with low digital marketing budgets.