The second blog in Wehi Web’s newest blog series.
The SEO Tool Kit
Apparently a poor workman blames his tools. Well today Wehi is celebrating the tools that we use everyday in a series of blogs. The series will cover tools for social media, SEO, graphic design and organisation.
SEO Tools
Search engine optimisation or SEO is a vital part of your business’ online presence but it often gets overlooked in favour of more pressing concerns like sales or branding. The tools below will make your business to find online and keep you on top of your SEO strategy. You can learn more about SEO and performing your first SEO audit in our blog here. Alternatively you can contact Wehi for a free consultation here.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog may initially look overwhelming but it is a reliable tool for SEO audits.
Screaming Frog is a free piece of software that analyses the SEO profile of your website. Simply put Screaming Frog crawls through your website and takes note of missing elements that are holding your website back. Screaming Frog flags any dead links or pages that lack meta-descriptions; errors that search engines use to make your website harder to find for customers. The programme does contain a large amount of data that may overwhelm first time users. Just concentrate on the columns relating to links, titles and meta- descriptions until you better understand your business’ SEO goals. This tool is useful for regular SEO audits of your website. I use Screaming Frog about once a week to check for dead links.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is the ideal entry point for understanding SEO.
Ubersuggest is a free tool by content creator, SEO and social media expert Neil Patel. The tool is used for tracking your website’s SEO performance and finding content ideas. Ubersuggest is great for finding keyword ideas, checking your site’s traffic and counting how many other sites have referenced you. The paid version of Ubersuggest allows you to track multiple projects. This means that you can monitor your own website, your customer’s or even a competitor’s SEO performance. The site offers you a breakdown of any issues it discovers affecting your website and offers helpful suggestions to fix them. I use this tool for initial assessment of customer’s SEO performance and for content ideas. Occasionally I use Ubersuggest during Wehi weekly SEO audit.
Keywords everywhere
Keywords Everywhere can change the way you find and understand Keywords.
Keywords Everywhere is a useful web browser extension for finding new keywords. Everytime you search for something on websites such as Youtube and Google the extension places a list of related keywords. These can be used as secondary keywords in your SEO strategy. The extension also offers lists of related searches. This feature is great for discovering unmet customer needs and for possible content ideas. Keywords Everywhere is not a tool that you can use as a sole research tool. The greatest value I have received from this extension is a consistent window into how Wehi’s customers search for products and services. I store secondary keywords I discover during research using Evernote; an application I discuss below.
Nightwatch.io
Nightwatch.io is the best entry level tool for SEO.
Nightwatch is a piece of software Wehi used to replace Ahrefs. It is a paid tool that aggregates data from SEO resources such as Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Nightwatch has a nice theme which is intuitive but does not provide as much feedback as other SEO resources. It does not provide enough backlink analysis. This would hinder a blogger looking to build authority or an online business trying to grow its organic reach. Nightwatch is a great tool for a new business getting to grips with SEO or a small to mid sized business with a limited budget.
Speed checker
Speed is important as visitors will get frustrated with a slow website and leave to visit a competitor’s website. This has two effects; a drop in traffic and Google lowering your website’s rankings. Most of the tools discussed above give you an indication of your website’s speed. However, if you want the most accurate results you need to turn to a specific tool. Wehi uses PageSpeed Insights by Google and Web.dev (Formerly Lighthouse) to regularly check our website’s performance.
It is important to use speed checkers such as Web.dev to make sure your website is as fast as possible.
I have included the tools that have had the greatest impact on my and Wehi’s working day. Each app took a small window of time to get used to but have returned this investment becoming valuable tools. Not all of the above tools will be an exact match for your business or start-up but they are a useful place to start. Exploring these tools will help you to understand how you work day-to-day and the areas you need a tool to sharpen up your practices. I regularly explore new tools and compare them to our current arsenal. This quest keeps Wehi flexible and allows us to allocate our time to what we love doing; building professional websites for interesting projects.
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Comment below now to suggest other handy tools or ask questions about the tools above.