Any niche marketer worth his/her salt will tell you that search engine optimization (SEO) is hard work and you’ll need to play the long game. Trying to win at SEO without tools is achievable… but extremely arduous.
The right tools will save you a ton of time and be able to dig out data that would take you ages to compile and collate. Considering that things online change rapidly, by the time you’re done compiling your data, it might be outdated.
So it goes without saying that you need a couple of the tools to compete with the big boys. Let’s look at what you should get… and why you need to get them.
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SEMRush
This is without a doubt one of the best keyword research tools on the market.
It will give you the latest keyword data in real time. Besides that, it provides excellent competitor analysis – so you’ll know if you can compete for a keyword or if it’s beyond your reach (for now).
Every marketer trying to rank his/her site in Google wants to rank their keywords on the first page, preferably within the first 3-4 results. That’s where most of the organic traffic is.
With SEMRush, you’ll be able to optimize your content, track where your keywords rank, improve your on-page SEO and so much more.
These metrics are crucial to giving you the competitive edge in the rankings and help you to get on the coveted first page of the SERPs.
SEMRush is a highly advanced and in-depth tool with a relatively easy to use interface. You’ll be blown away by how useful and indispensable this tool is for your SEO work.
It’s best to take SEMRush up on their 7-day free trial here and give the cool software a spin. Once you discover how powerful it is, you’ll never look back.
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Link Whisper
This is one of those SEO tools that those in the know use for all the sites they have, but they don’t tell others about it.
One could even say that Link Whisper is spoken of in whispers among the SEO experts (pun fully intended).
So why is Link Whisper so useful?
One of the most important metrics that Google looks at when deciding if your site is worthy to rank on the first page – is the number of links you have pointing to your site.
Internal links are links on your site that point to content within your site.
For example, one blog post on your site may have links pointing to another related post on your site.
These are internal links, and besides keeping the visitor on your site longer (which increases retention rate) – it pleases Google to see a site that is sticky and counts these links too.
While internals may not be weighted as heavily in Google’s algorithm (as compared to external links) when calculating the ‘rank worthiness’ of a site, they still play a very important part.
External links to your site will require you to reach out to other website owners and network with them to get link to your posts and so on.
All this is laborious work… and as your website grows, you may have hundreds of pages.
Internally linking them can be a formidable task that’s not only confusing, but time-consuming too.
This is where Link Whisper is so handy. Its artificial intelligence will give you link suggestions while you’re writing your blog post.
It works in the background by ‘scanning’ your past and present content and automatically knows when you have opportunities to add an internal link in your content.
You can even choose the keywords you want links for – and Link Whisper will look at both old and new content on your site and present you with spots you can add links to.
Besides finding links, Link Whisper will even show you broken links for you to fix.
It’ll also give you reports on your internal links and the traffic data from Google – and so much more!
It’s brilliant, extremely easy to use and very effective for improving your site’s SEO. This is one of the best SEO tools you could invest in.
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Rank Math
There are many SEO plugins for WordPress on the market such as: Yoast, All in One SEO, Rank Math and so on.
We’ve found that Rank Math is without a doubt the best of the lot. Even big brands like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Backlinko, MOZ, etc. recommend Rank Math as their SEO plugin of choice.
Rank Math works by doing an SEO analysis on your blog post/s and tells you how to optimize the content so that it will be favored by the search engines.
The analysis is based on a set of 30 or so factors that matter to Google. It’s impossible to manually do this fast. You need a tool to speed things up.
The good news is that there’s a free version of Rank Math.
Once you install it, you’ll see how advantageous it is for on-page optimization… and how easy it is to use.
Rank Math will also track the position of your keywords in the search engine and check if your site is indexed by Google (and when it was last crawled).
It also has many other advanced features in the paid version that will truly take your SEO to the next level. Definitely worth checking out.
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Nitro Pack
We live in a world of microwaves, instant social media notifications, text messages, entire seasons of shows dumped on Netflix for binge-watching, etc.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that most people have no patience.
They want things fast and they want them now!
Even Amazon offers same-day delivery and one-day delivery. They understand that speed is everything these days, as far as pleasing customers go.
The same applies to your website. It needs to load FAST.
Preferably within a second or two. People don’t want to wait and will click off your page in a heartbeat if it takes too long to load.
How we got from waiting minutes for a dial-up connection (with weird robotic noises) to connect… to now expecting sites to load in a fraction of a second is anyone’s guess.
But impatience is here to stay.
Google understands this and rewards sites that load fast with better rankings in the search results. This is one of the most important factors.
One uber cool tool that will take a site from sluggish to speed demon is Nitro Pack.
This plugin is PROVEN to work.
Don’t believe us?
No problem. Just visit GT Metrix (https://gtmetrix.com/) enter your site and see how quickly it loads. Note down the stats.
Next, go to Nitro Pack’s official website, sign up for their free plan… add Nitro Pack to your site and activate it. Now run the site in GT Metrix again and you’ll see the improvement in your site’s performance and speed.
The test of the pudding is in the eating – and Nitro Pack will be delicious once you see your site’s load speed get a boost. Go ahead and give it a try. You’ll definitely get it.
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Legiit
Legiit is not a tool per se. It’s more of a time-saving opportunity that presents a lot of SEO potential for you to leverage.
This site is similar to Fiverr, but more focused on SEO gigs such as: outreach, social media SEO, keyword research, foundation links, Google map citations, guest posting, and much more.
You can find freelancers to do a lot of the cumbersome SEO tasks for you.
This is a huge time-saver and it lets you focus on your marketing and business… while someone else does the mundane SEO legwork for you.
A word of warning: not all freelancers are made equal. Some know what they’re doing… and some don’t.
Do NOT entrust your SEO to a gig provider who doesn’t have positive ratings on Legiit. Furthermore, not all gigs will be beneficial to your website’s SEO.
Some may raise red flags and make the all-seeing eye of Google turn its attention towards you.
Always remember – too much too soon is a surefire way to get your site penalized by Google. Your SEO ambitions must be tempered with common sense.
For example, if your site is 3 weeks old and barely gets any traffic, suddenly buying a gig on Legiit that offers you 500 links from PBNs (private blog networks) to your site will not make sense.
Where did those sites get links to your pages from, if hardly anyone is visiting your site?
The links are not ‘proportional’ to the traffic you’re getting. That can only mean one thing to Google – you’re up to no good (SEO-wise) and your site will not get the rankings you’re struggling to achieve.
So, use Legiit sparingly… and wisely. It’s a potent tool, if you don’t abuse it.
In conclusion…
The 5 tools mentioned above will improve your site’s SEO by leaps and bounds. However, you’ll also need good content on your site and the ability to network and get other reputable sites to link back to you.
You’ll also need patience and the ‘stamina’ to endure Google’s sudden updates and changes to its algorithm as it tries to stay ahead of those who constantly seek to manipulate the rankings.
It’s a never-ending process of trying to stay on top of things when it comes to ranking well and abiding by Google’s guidelines.
This may seem like a lot of work, and it is… but once you rank well for several good keywords, your efforts will pay off and you’ll enjoy an increase in sales/commissions, etc.
Organic traffic is the holy grail of online marketing, and like Indiana Jones, you’ll need to chase it to find it.
The 5 tools mentioned above are akin to your mile markers that will guide you on this SEO journey.
Use them and your SEO efforts will yield fruit.
