This are my top SEO tools stack that took a complete SEO beginner like me from 1k to 20k global traffic in 8-12 months. For web designers, bloggers, content writers, and digital marketers, SEO can be quite intimidating. There are many complicated SEO tools out there. If you ask me, most of them are unnecessary for marketers looking to grow their sites.
I personally don’t enjoy complicated processes. I prefer keeping SEO simple by maintaining a lean and straightforward tools stack.
Top SEO Tools for Digital Marketers
There are complex software tools in the SEO market that calculate keyword density and latent semantic indexing keywords. SEO can come off as a complicated process involving scary-looking third-party tools such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, BuzzStream, Majestic SEO, and others.
Keep your SEO tools light, keep your stack lean, and focus on topical/ search intent and link acquisition – the ultimate needle movers for traffic.
Keyword Research
You can start with Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console. They are both free and give pretty good data. There are many professional-grade keyword research tools too. I highly recommend Ahrefs, SEMRush and Mangool Tools.
Backlinks Prospecting and Research
- Ahrefs
If there is one SEO tool that is essential to SEO success, it’s Ahrefs. It’s commonly called the Swiss Army knife of SEO tools for a reason. Ahrefs can do everything from keyword research, backlinks research, and keyword rank tracking to pulling out a technical SEO site audit. Not to mention, they recently introduced an affordable starter’s plan.
I highly commend the team at Ahrefs for building this beast of a software.
- Majestic SEO
I use Majestic SEO extensively for backlinks prospecting.
- Hunter.IO
I use Hunter.IO to get email addresses for white hat outreach. Hunter.IO is simple to use. Simply plug a website and get the contact information almost immediately. You can also bulk find emails. This is extremely useful for guest blogging, skyscraper and PR outreach. Hunter included an email verification feature on their platform recently. It’s a useful feature to verify the emails before you send outreach emails.
Keyword Ranking Tracking Tools
- Google Search Console
Google Search Console gives you an ‘average’ keyword position ranking. You can do this by checking Google Analytics data under User Acquisition: Landing Pages and Search Queries. Take a look at the queries you are driving traffic from.
- Ahrefs Rank Tracker
To keep my SEO stack light, I didn’t purchase custom SEO keyword tracking platforms. The lower plans in Ahrefs have a limit to the number of keywords you can track. However, if you’re managing just a couple of sites, I can assure you it’s more than enough. You can always upgrade to higher-tiered plans.
Outreach Tools for Link Building
- Mailshake
I tested both Mailshake and Lemlist and found that both are great. Lemlist has a pretty cool user experience whilst Mailshake isn’t too far off either.
I integrate Mailshake with Gmail from Google Workspace and use them as a combination to do outreach at scale. The key to successful outreach is being able to filter deliverable and non-deliverable emails, choosing the right ones to outreach to.
This is done by running your email data through an email verification tool or the email verification feature in Hunter.io. Oh yes, you’ve got to get your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup as well to increase email deliverability.
Technical SEO and On Page SEO Tools
- All in One SEO
I started off with All in One SEO stuck to it since. It doesn’t matter, just pick one and focus on other aspects of SEO such as link acquisition. Like I mentioned, your needle mover is going to be acquiring backlinks.
In my opinion, a beginner may make the mistake of focusing too much on technical SEO such as meta descriptions and title tags. Technical SEO is necessary in the larger scheme of things; however, content and links are going to be the needle mover. (Trust me, I used to fiddle around with title tags and meta descriptions)
- Ahrefs Site Audit Tool
I am a huge fan of Ahrefs site audit tool, a feature the team at Ahrefs has been working on through the years. It doesn’t look like you need to be a software whizz to use it, and it can send you automated monthly or weekly reports on your site’s health.
The Ahrefs site audit tool is able look at everything from broken links to technical SEO errors such as missing meta descriptions.
The SEO experts often cite ScreamingFrog as a great technical SEO tool; however, I think Ahrefs also does a great job at pointing out technical errors in SEO. Like I mentioned, keep it lean.
- Broken Links Checker
I used to use the broken links checker site a lot as a beginner, but these days I run it through Ahrefs just to keep things leaner and simpler. Simple plug and play. The best part: it’s free.
Reporting and Data Analytics
- Google Analytics 4
This is the bread and butter tool for traffic analytics. Google Analytics 4 can give you data on rankings, search queries, user acquisition, and more. You can set up goals, look at your audience breakdown and bounce rates.
- Google Search Console
Google Search Console helps you track how your site is indexed and any indexing errors. Google Search Console also gives you keyword rankings and average click-through rates.
Free SEO Plugins For Optimization and Speed
Technical SEO can already sound complex (at times). I’m always looking for plugins to avoid manual solutions such as finagling around writing code.
There aren’t perfect solutions; however, plugins can help with optimizing code on your website to increase speed.
- WP-Smush
Optimizing images on your website is one way to increase your website speed. WP Smush compresses all my images that are hosted on the website. This plugin compresses images automatically and it’s quite user-friendly.
- Autoptimize
This plugin helps optimize HTML, JavaScript, and CSS code. Basically, it rearranges the code on your page to make it “smaller sized” for the internet. The most recent version is pretty user-friendly and easy to use.
Page Speed and Mobile Friendly Testing
- Google Page Speed Insights
Google Page Speed Insights is a tool developed by Google to test your website’s speed performance. You simply enter the URL of the website into Google page insights and Google will run a diagnostic for you.
You can then get a professional and preferably a technical web developer to fix the errors for you.
I find it useful as gauge (and also proof) to clients if they are to hand me a broken/ laggy website.
- Google Mobile-Friendly Test
You can use Google’s mobile friendly guide to test if your website is mobile friendly.
SEO Content Marketing Needs
- Upwork
If you’re outsourcing SEO content, design or need help with technical web development issues, you can consider Upwork. I use it for all my outsourcing efforts.
You can find cost competitive talent on Upwork. I hire the majority of my writers from Upwork. My offshored SEO team was also found on Upwork.
I like Upwork’s team management process. The ability to keep it simple with their messaging platform. Yes, they charge fees and take a percentage, however you are paying for a simple HR system.
There’s no need for you to manually log into your bank to transfer money to a freelancer/contractor. This makes my life easier as they simply charge to your card and send you an invoice.
Secondly, I like Upwork’s hourly screen monitoring feature. If you have contractors working for you by the hour, this feature comes in handy.
- Copyscape
Copyscape is used to check for plagiarism and duplicate content if you outsource your content. It’s not entirely free, but it’s extremely low cost.
High quality and researched content can’t be written by robots.
If you’re going to outsource your content, it’s important to check against plagiarism (duplicate content is a big no no in Google’s eyes) or you can use tools such as Siteliner to analyse your current site’s content.
- Grammarly
I use Grammarly to check grammar mistakes. The better your grammar, the better the user experience, the higher your keyword rankings.
For Photos and Design
- Canva
Canva is awesome for text-based images and etc. for the basic designer. It’s a surprising user friendly tool. I use it to create basic PDFs and banners.
- Flickr
I use Flickr because their images are awesome. They are a lot more unique than the run of the mill Google search and steal.
Local SEO
Local SEO can be a game changer a small business. You can get listed on Google maps pack for FREE.=
Project Management Tools for SEO
- Google Workspace, Google Sheets and Google Docs
There’s nothing like using Google sheets, Google docs to project manage. So much so that if a contractor sends me a word document, it ruins my day.
I use Gmail, Google workspace, Google sheets and Google docs to manage my entire SEO process for clients, my team and content writers. Everything from keyword research, content audits, blogger outreach, content placement coordination, team management, content creation and delivery.
In my unpopular opinion, Google Sheets beats all other project management tools hands down any day of the week. It’s simple to use and easily malleable.
How I Think about Purchasing SEO Tools
It’s inevitable that you’re going to deal with some technical issues in when it comes to digital marketing down the lines. This is why you want to pay for great support.
Whenever I have questions about hosting/security/technical problems, I want to be able to reach a human being and have my problems solved within an hour or two.
You’ll be surprised that these problems arise at all the wrong times when running an SEO campaign such as email deliverability issues or your site going down on you once you hit a certain traffic limit (that happened to me).
This is why getting good service providers is going to save you countless hours of navigating technical issues.
Instead of spending time and effort bargaining every nickel and dime with service providers, spend your time on executing great SEO instead.
Cheaper services can save you $10 a month until you run into problems. Imagining scoring a guest post on a major publication, your website crashes and your service provider can’t handle the traffic. Technical problems can cost you thousands of dollars in revenue. It’s worth it to pay for good service providers.
Stay Lean
Lastly, I can’t emphasize again that the lesser tools you use, the better it is. SEO can already be a complicated process from the get go. If you’re going to include too many variables in your process, you’re going to confuse yourself and your team.
Keep your SEO tools stack lean, efficient and mean.