There’s a lot more to blogging than simply writing up your blog post and hitting publish. If you never move beyond that, you can’t expect your blog to have much of an audience.
These days, it takes careful and strategic planning, an understanding of SEO and the addition of a social media presence to rank well in Google. SEO is the most important – and often the trickiest – but several tools make this complicated process a lot easier. Here’s a list of 8 SEO tools that every blogger should use to increase traffic.
The Best SEO Tools for Bloggers to Increase Traffic
Let’s face it – bloggers are brilliant, but they can’t do it all without a little help. These tools will help you ensure that all the content your posting is SEO rich. From using the right keywords to having a killer readability score, these tools cover it all.
When it comes down to SEO plug-ins for WordPress, Yoast is a favorite among bloggers around the world. The tool encompasses multiple aspects of SEO all in one go including keyword density, title length, keyword placement, and more.
On top of all the keyword fine tuning you’ll be able to do, Yoast is also a prime readability tool, optimizing your readability to suit your SEO needs. This includes things like sentence length, the amount of passive versus active voice, use of transition words and phrases to give you the gist of it.
Overall, Yoast SEO is one of the best free plug-ins available for WordPress and there’s even more options if you choose to go premium. There’s a reason that it’s used by bloggers and businesses around the world and there’s a reason it started off this list. If you’re only going to choose one SEO tool, Yoast is probably your best bet.
Unlike some of the tools on this list, SEMrush doesn’t have a ton of free features that you can take advantage of. What it does offer however, is much more powerful and certainly worth the price tag that comes with it. This app gives you the ability to look at your website SEO, content, social media, and rankings all in one easy to navigate place.
This tool can provide you with an overview of SEO on your entire site, or for individual pages or blog posts. You can compare your site to competitor sites, look at keyword rankings and suggestions, and SEMrush makes suggestions for overall improvements. If you’d rather pay for one all-in-one SEO tool, rather than jump back and forth between several analytics and SEO tools, then this is probably what you’re looking for.
Not every part of SEO is related to keywords and their placement – so having an analytics tool is important no matter what. The cool thing about Google Analytics (other than the fact that it’s free!) is the fact that it also shows you keyword insights you might not get otherwise. For example, you can find data on what terms people searched that landed them on your website in the first place.
Overall, Google Analytics is one of the best free website tools out there – and millions of websites rely on these statistics to improve their organic search. By better understanding what keywords brought users to you, you can more efficiently plan future content to cater to the needs of your client base.
Most of the time, the concept of keywords is a simple two- or three-word phrase. If you run an ice cream shop, for example, your keyword phrase might be ice cream in “insert town here”. But KWFinder is going to bring you what are called long-tail keywords – or longer phrases that are easier to rank for.
Going back to the ice cream shop example, dozens might be using the keyword “ice cream in “town name”. On the other hand, a long-tail keyword like “ice cream in “town here” open late” might get you more results because less companies are using those long-tail keywords.
Like KWFinder, Google Keyword Planner is a tool you’ll want to use to your advantage to find lesser used keywords. With this tool you can enter keywords or groups of keywords you plan to use, and Google will provide you with a ton of useful information. Things like monthly search volume for each keyword or phrase, how much competition there is for a specific keyword, and suggesting keywords and phrases you might not have considered using.
This sort of tool is perfect for helping with content calendar creation by giving you insight on what your customers are looking for. Plus, it will give you options for alternative keywords and phrases to not only use instead of, but to pair with, the ones you already have, to help boost your ranking.
If you’re looking for something that offers a lot of options for little or no money, Moz Tools has got your back. They offer a full set of completely free SEO tools. These tools aren’t limited to keywords and simple analytics either. You also have options that evaluate links so you can find better link building opportunities and compare your efforts to your competitors.
Along with offering a bunch of free tools, Moz offers a toolbar that is built into the Chrome browser that analyzes different metrics of search, social media and more. Overall, this is one of the best free SEO tools out there.
Developed by well known blogger and SEO guru Neil Patel, Ubersuggest is another free tool that you want to have in your SEO arsenal. It identifies keywords and helps you to understand the intent of those searching. It does this by showing off the current top rankings for both short and long-tail keyword phrases.
It also provides keyword volume, competition, seasonal trends and more. Really, this tool takes the best of some of the others on the list, Google Keyword Planner and KW Finder, and rolled them into one easy-to-use and convenient tool that will work wonders for both organic SEO and paid PPC ads.
Another tool that many bloggers wouldn’t be without is BuzzSumo. This is a great tool for understanding your content calendar and planning it out more efficiently. Along with general keyword research and discovery, this tool looks at as their website says “billions of data points” to help improve your overall SEO strategy.
BuzzSumo also helps you find influencers in your industry, who you can reach out to for collaboration, further growing your brand presence while strengthening your SEO efforts. To top it all off, there is also a monitoring feature that tracks comments (on blog posts, social media, etc.) and keeps track of industry trends so that you can act quickly when the opportunity arises.
SEO is Everchanging and Your Strategy Should Be Too
The truth is that few things in SEO stay the same forever. At least, when it comes to best practices for keyword placement and usage and the quality of writing that’s accepted. Ten years ago, you could stuff a 300-word article full of fluff and junk writing and as long as the keyword was in there X number of times, you were likely to rank high.
These days, it takes careful and strategic planning as well as great writing. Those keyword stuffed horror stories became 500-word blog posts with clunky keyword usage. From there, search engines evolved again to look at the quality of the content and the source it comes from. Now, they prioritize long-form content with just the right keyword density and carefully selected long-tail key phrases to really do the job right.
There are so many more great SEO tools out there – these are just a few of the most common and useful tools used by bloggers at all stages in their career. Using these tools will give you an edge when writing for your own blog or planning content for client blogs and shouldn’t be overlooked. Start with one or two of these tools that are free and you’re sure to see a difference in your traffic and overall engagement.
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