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Email marketing is one of the oldest and best tricks in the communication playbook, and newsletters are an excellent tool for brand awareness, audience engagement, and lead nurturing. But newsletter planning is challenging. Coming up with and delivering fresh ideas...
Oct 30, 2024
Search engine optimization involves a lot of things — keyword research, content planning and creation, page analysis, and that’s just to name a few. This process can turn into a real headache without the right set of SEO agency tools in place.
That’s why today I’ll walk you through some of the best SEO tools currently available. To make the research easier for you, I split this list into multiple categories — from content collaboration platforms to SEO reporting tools, and more.
But first, let’s see more of the key features you need to look for when picking an SEO software solution.
SEO tools span across numerous categories — be it on-page, off-page, or technical SEO, for example — and their functionality set can significantly differ from one another. Still, there are a few must-have features you should keep an eye on, regardless of your choice.
Prioritize SEO tools that allow for seamless collaboration between team members and clients — especially for creative processes. A platform that centralizes all feedback ensures that both teams and clients are on the same page, and eliminates the risk of having feedback fall through the cracks.
Monitoring all your SEO data in one place, like keyword performance or your top traffic sources, makes optimization straightforward. This also allows you to integrate your SEO workflow into your other marketing agency tools. For example, if social media doesn’t drive as much traffic to your website as you’d hoped, you can use social media tools to identify and fix the issue.
Platforms that let you generate keyword ideas, spot long-tail variations, and save them into separate lists will give you a much more structured approach to your content creation processes. For example, you could organize a large set of closely related key phrases into dedicated keyword lists — perfect for topic clusters.
Planable handles all things content creation-related — from setting up your blog content calendar to writing first drafts, leaving feedback, and handling approvals. It’s a content planning platform that stands out through its collaboration tools.
Post scheduling, approvals, feedback, media library, and cross-company collaboration features in Planable
You can leave feedback through in-context comments, suggestions, and annotations — just like Google Docs but better. The platform’s collaboration tools also extend to image and video editing, while the option to store all digital assets under its dedicated Media Library is also a nice touch.
Collaboration on a blog post in Planable
Planable is solid in the client collaboration department too. Onboarding clients onto the platform is as easy as sending an invite email or link — no account setup needed. From there, you can create separate workspaces for each client and assign custom permissions (like viewer-only, approver, editor, and so on).
Roles and permissions in a Planable workspace
Planable lets you keep comments or complete posts internal – perfect for hiding them away from the client’s view until they’re ready. Coupled with its customizable approval workflows, you gain complete control over content review processes.
Multi-level-approval workflow in Planable
Content organization is also a walk in the park with Planable. You can schedule and re-schedule posts across multiple platforms and draft and approve content across multiple formats via its Universal Content feature. Plus, using the drag-and-drop calendar, you can keep an eye on important work via color-coded labels and an ample filter set.
Key features
Pick between optional, mandatory, or multi-layer approvals, or skip over the approval process completely. Leverage multi-level approvals to set up step-by-step review processes involving multiple teams, and ensure content is in tip-top shape before reaching the client.
Make quick tweaks to visuals via a broad selection of filters or get into the details and fine-tune exposure, vignetting, brightness, and so on. Leave feedback through direct comments.
Check whether feedback was implemented correctly with version control. See each tweak under the Activity tab and quickly restore content back to a previous version in case of unwanted changes.
Use Planable’s built-in editor to add headings and sub-headings and structure content into bullet points or numbered listicles. Embed hyperlinks, images, videos, and even Tweets.
Schedule social media posts across all major networks directly within the platform. Set up cross-network or recurring posts, and use Planable’s built-in AI assistant to quickly edit captions or generate new ones from scratch, with hashtags included.
Drawbacks: Planable lacks dedicated keyword research and SEO performance tracking capabilities.
Pricing: Paid pricing plans start at $33 per workspace per month (yearly billing). Planable also offers a free version that lets you schedule up to 50 posts in total.
If you seek a straightforward word processor with simple, yet solid collaboration tools, Google Docs should be more than enough. The platform lets you create and edit content with other team members in real time — completely for free.
The platform’s paid plans also include extra features, like basic approvals and custom branding, along with functionalities from other Google Workspace products (chat rooms, polling, breakout rooms, and so on).
Key features
Drawbacks: Google is lackluster in the features department — it lacks dedicated client collaboration tools, multi-level approvals, etc.
Pricing: Paid packages start at $6 per user per month (yearly billing).
QuillBot is a free copywriting tool that uses AI to perform grammar checks, handle rewrites, and detect plagiarized or AI-generated content.
The platform also includes a paraphrasing tool — handy for tweaking AI-generated texts and avoiding duplicate content issues. QuillBot’s paid packages will also generate custom text summaries based on your input — great for repurposing long-form blog posts into quick social media posts or email newsletters.
Key features
Drawbacks: QuillBot’s free plan is quite limited — it lacks tone and readability suggestions and includes limited language support.
Pricing: You can use QuillBot for free, while the Premium version costs $4.17 per month (yearly billing).
WordPress is a content management system fit for all sorts of use cases — blogs, small business websites, online stores, you name it.
The platform stands out through how easy it is to get a website up and running — set up your WordPress account, pick one of thousands of native or community-made templates, and tweak its design according to your needs.
WordPress also has a huge plugin library that expands on the platform’s feature set. For example, Elementor gives you more control over the design process, while free SEO tools like Yoast SEO are perfect to develop and manage SEO campaigns.
Key features
Drawbacks: The platform’s page editor is slightly restrictive. Page elements snap into place via pre-determined grids.
Pricing: You can get started with WordPress for free. Paid packages start at $4 per month (yearly billing).
Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) is an all-in-one eCommerce platform designed to help online stores scale their operations.
The platform includes an ample set of AI-powered functionalities that deliver personalized product recommendations based on website visitor behavior, product popularity, and more.
Adobe Commerce also includes B2B-specific tools, like quote management and customer-specific catalogs, for instance.
Key features
Drawbacks: Users report that the platform is heavy on hardware, which can cause performance issues.
Pricing: Pricing is not disclosed — you’ll need to contact the sales team to get a custom quote.
In contrast to WordPress, Joomla is suitable for more advanced users. The platform offers more out-of-the-box functionalities, like technical SEO tools, built-in news feeds, and cache management.
Joomla also gives you access to all of the platform’s features completely for free, making it much more scalability-friendly compared to WordPress.
Key features
Drawbacks: Joomla is more technical compared to WordPress, and requires some development expertise.
Pricing: You can use Joomla for free.
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool available on the Google Ads platform. The keyword planner gives all the data necessary to set up successful ad campaigns — from keyword suggestions related to your products or services to insights on search trends, and bid estimates.
You can then use this data to plan and roll out your advertising campaigns with Google Ads, as well as measure and optimize their performance.
Key features
Drawbacks: Google Keyword Planner mostly focuses on PPC campaigns. Although it can also be useful for identifying keywords for organic search results, it lacks other organic SEO-specific features, like dedicated topic cluster planners and content auditing tools.
Pricing: Google Keyword Planner is completely free to use.
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool with particularly powerful backlink analytics capabilities. The platform’s backlink checker gives you detailed insights regarding your website’s — or your competitors’ — domain authority, total number of backlinks, and referring domains.
You’ll then receive a list of your top referring root domains, along with the pages they linked to (both dofollow and nofollow links), and the anchor texts they used. Ahrefs also displays the domain authority score of referring websites — perfect to spark potential partnerships.
Key features
Drawbacks: Scalability with Ahrefs might be a challenge — there are large pricing gaps between plans.
Pricing: Ahrefs starts at $29 per month (monthly billing).
KWFinder is a dedicated keyword research tool — it gives all the insights necessary to optimize content for high positions in search results.
All you need to do is type in your seed keyword and the platform generates dozens of long-tail keyword variations, along with their ranking difficulty, search volumes, cost-per-click, and so on.
Key features
Drawbacks: The keyword research tool is part of Mangool’s product suite. It comes bundled with other SEO tools, which may not bring the best value for money if you’re strictly looking for keyword research tools.
Pricing: Paid plans start at $17.91 per month (yearly billing). You can also try KWFinder for free and perform up to five searches.
SE Ranking is a robust platform with powerful SEO, content, and market research capabilities. Its Keyword Suggestion Tool helps SEO professionals, content creators, agencies, and businesses better understand what their audiences are searching for and create content that is friendly to readers and search engines.
Keyword Suggestion Tool by SE Ranking helps find queries that resonate with your audience and have traffic potential. You’ll also get all the necessary keyword metrics and thousands of suggestions, including long-tail keywords, question-based queries, etc.
Key features:
Drawbacks: This tool allows you to conduct keyword research for Google only and lacks keyword data for Bing or Yahoo.
Pricing: SE Ranking starts at $65.00 per month with 1,000 keyword/domain checks per day. The annual plan comes with a 20% discount.
Google Analytics reveals everything you need to know about your website visitors. The platform’s website traffic analysis tool lets you know what pages attract the most visitors, how much they spend on each specific page, their traffic sources, and so on.
You can also set up custom events via Google Tag Manager — perfect to gain further insights on conversions and micro-conversions.
Key features
Drawbacks: GA4 could do with some improvements in the user experience department — most users report a steep learning curve.
Pricing: Google Analytics is completely free to use.
In contrast, Google Search Console (GSC) gets into the technicalities — you can track page speed performance, spot 404 error pages, and analyze your website’s structure for crawlability.
The platform also offers suggestions to fix any potential issues, like compressing images for faster loading speeds, for example. Google Search Console also runs in the background — it notifies you via email whenever it finds site problems.
Key features
Drawbacks: Just like with GA4, Google Search Console can be rather tricky to use.
Pricing: You can use Google Search Console for free.
Screaming Frog lets you perform in-depth site audits and spot anything that might be wrong with your website — from broken links to unoptimized metadata, unnecessary redirects, duplicate content issues, and even grammar or spelling mistakes.
The platform also generates XML sitemaps to enhance website crawlability, while its native GA4 and Google Search Console integrations give you further insights into optimizing site performance.
Key features
Drawbacks: The platform’s free plan is limited to 500 URLs — not suitable for large websites. The paid package is only available as an annual subscription.
Pricing: Screaming Frog starts at $259 per year (one user included).
Planable is the best option for content collaboration — its ample set of team collaboration features, coupled with dedicated client workspaces and straightforward calendars, make content planning and creation processes a breeze.
As for content management, WordPress and Joomla cover rather similar functionalities. However, Joomla is more code-centric — perfect for advanced users who seek more flexibility in customization. WordPress, on the other hand, is an excellent alternative for ease of use. And of course, Adobe Commerce should be your go-to if you mostly work with online stores.
In terms of keyword analytics, Ahrefs is a highly capable tool. KWFinder is a great alternative for cost-effectiveness, while Keyword Planner is a solid choice for SEM campaigns.
Wrapping with analytics tools, GA4 and GSC are the perfect free combo to get a 360-degree overview of your campaign performance. Screaming Frog is an excellent option if you also want to diagnose technical SEO issues, like broken links, slow page speed, and so on.
Digital marketing enthusiast, language nerd, and content writer. Horea loves writing about SaaS and anything that involves boosting online presence – from SEO to social media, web design, and more. His content is allergic to fluff and eats research for breakfast.
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