SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a very important factor in getting traffic to your website. Proper implementation of SEO makes your website easy to find when people search for a topic you have on any of the search engines like google.
In this post we are going to take a look at top 5 SEO tools.
1. YOAST SEO
I personally use this one. This is a very great search engine optimization tool for WordPress blogs.
It is a WordPress plugin. This plugin can help you do a very good on page optimization of your posts. It shows you exactly what you are doing right and what you are not doing right, in real time. It lets you put your focus key phrase in a box and then tells you how good your content is focused on that key phrase.
How Yoast SEO Helps Optimize Your Posts
Outbound Links: Yoast SEO helps you check that you have outbound links in your post. These are links that link out from your website to another website. You already know that sharing is caring. However, sharing is also reciprocal. Linking out to great websites that are important to your posts is a very good way to improve your search engine optimization by connection.
Internal Links: Yoast SEO helps you check that have internal links in your post. These are links within your website, that link to other pages or posts on your website and not an external website. This is very useful in search engine optimization because it makes the journey easier for search engine bots that crawl your website to index your pages in the search engine. Yes, that is true. Search engines make use of bots to crawl your website and that’s how you get indexed in google and co.
Keyphrase Length: As I said in the beginning, Yoast SEO lets you put your keyphrase on a box while you write your post and helps you show how good everything is revolving around the keyword. While using YOAST you will have to set a keyword first, before writing your post.
Meta Description: Yoast also checks if you put a meta description in your post. Meta description is that snippet of text that appears under the title of any search result you get in search engines, just below the website url.
This snippet of text tells you a bit about the post. However, If you do not set a meta description, google will try to find a relevant part of your post and use it in place of meta description.
Images: Yoast also ensures that you use images in your post. They say an image speaks a thousand words. Using images in your posts not only increases your search engine optimization but also boosts your readability rate.
SEO Title Width: Yoast helps you check that the title of your post is within the right length for better search engine optimization. Title is the blue big text like in the image above.
Yoast has a free version and premium version. On the free version, you can only add 1 key phrase in a post, but on the premium version, you can add more key phrases
To find Yoast SEO, from your WordPress dashboard, click on plugins, then click on add new, and enter “YOAST SEO” in the search box on the top right.
2. GOOGLE WEB MASTER TOOLS
This should have come first before Yoast, because it is through here that you can add or index your website to search engines first, before beginning to write posts. After that, you log in to your dashboard and you can see,
How your website appears on google.
How users are finding your website, and where your traffic is coming from.
See if there is any issue that google has found on your website, and make improvements to help google understand and present your website better.
It also shows you security issues on your website.
It’s a great free search engine optimization tool from google.
To use this tool, simply go to google search and key in “Google Webmaster Tools”. Click on the first result and add your website.
3. MOZ
This tool is a very powerful one. If you have multiple authors in your website, this tool can show you the best authors on your website, the best pages, and the best post topics on your website, that are bring more traffic. From this information, you can analyze your website, and know which authors to give more posts to, and what topics people love to read more.
You can also use it to research for keywords and see how good they are.
They offer 30 day free trial after which you can upgrade for $99/month.
To use this tool you can go to their website: moz with a .com extension.
4. Google Keyword Planner
This one is another free tool from google that helps you to research for keywords. With this tool you can find out the rate of competition around a keyword, and also find other keywords that are similar to the keyword. The less competition there is around a keyword, the better the keyword is. Such keywords with little competition rank higher easily when you use them in your post.
Google keyword planner will help you find the best keywords to use in your website. Note that it is part of google adwords so to use it, sign in to your google adwords and click on the tool and analysis drop down menu, then you will find the keyword planner. It’s free to use.
5. Site Booster
This one helps you share your website to many places. These include multiple search engines, popular review websites, mobile applications, and many more. In short it publishes your website to all relevant places in a short amount of time.
This will help your website to easily show up when people search locally, and the best part is, it has a free version, so you can get started for free. This is a must try for everyone seeking to have more people see their website. It cost nothing for a start.
To use this product, simply visit sitebooster with a .com extension
Finally
Traffic is everything. Without traffic to your website, there will be no need to put out content. That being said, organic traffic is one of the best traffic you can have. Organic traffic is usually traffic from these search engines, with natural visits.
If you want to succeed with traffic, you really need to take your search engine optimization more serious. These top 5 seo tools above should help you do a great job in getting started. You learn more as you grow, and with time, you will be on top of the rankings. Good luck.