Working with SEO techniques today is certainly not an easy task. Challenges are increasing, especially if we consider the accelerated evolution of digital marketing and the demands of search engine algorithms.
Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, has become a challenging opportunity for specialists and professionals who have decided to use this marketing strategy, especially because algorithms are updated from time to time and are becoming more demanding, it is no longer enough to use keywords and create high-quality content.
What about SEO today?
Nowdays SEO is very different from SEO three years ago. Thousands and thousands of brands around the world are getting involved every day to appear organically within the first positions in search engines. It is a fact that 75% of users never go beyond the first page of search results. Today’s SEO is not only about doing a keyword search and implementing it within the content of a website, but it is also about keeping up with the advance of algorithms and their latest Google updates: Panda 2011, Penguin 2012, Hummingbird 2013, Pigeon 2014, Rankbrain 2016, Fred 2017, Florida 2.0 2019 and Bert 2020.
Google’s main objective is to seek to improve the user experience in terms of navigation with effective results that meet the specific need of the search. For this reason, the algorithm evolves to qualify and offer the user helpful and valuable content within the top positions. It is important to highlight that the algorithm also evolves to identify and penalize websites that perform inadequate SEO practices, such as the use of irrelevant keywords, purchase of articles and poor-quality links, spam, excessive use of keywords, use of hidden text, among others.
Taking into consideration the previously stated, SEO’s goal is not to create a strategy, it is about how to make that strategy be productive. And it is at this point where those who want to start engaging in this type of strategy should ask themselves: what are the best techniques and which tools are the most appropriate tools to improve my brand positioning and avoid penalizations?
There are many tools, some better than others. Some are inexpensive and offer great benefits and others, not so affordable but almost do the job for you. The fact is that the choice is quite a challenge, especially for people who are just starting to venture into this wonderful but challenging world. Although there are many on the market, it is worth mentioning that none of them teaches the fundamental principles of search engine optimization, this is up to each person.
Best SEO tools to improve your positioning
The following are what we consider to be the 4 most intuitive, flexible and easy to manage tools to improve the positioning of your website:
1. Moz:
Moz, beyond a simple keyword search tool, is a set of resources for analysis, monitoring and optimization of sites based on SEO techniques. This tool makes easier to know website authority, monitor the number of domains, their content and referral links. It also provides alerts related to possible errors or opportunities for improvement of the website.
In terms of functionalities and tools, Moz offers: keyword exploration, evaluation and analysis of the status of a website, analysis of up to three thousand links and suggestions of keyword-related terms. In our opinion it is one of the most complete tools for implementing SEO techniques.
2. SEO-Quake:
The advantage of this tool is that it is a free Chrome extension, ideal for keyword research and for the comparison of own and competitor information to make better business decisions. It is very complete and easy to use.
Among all that we can highlight about this tool, we can say that it is ideal for SEO audits of your page and competitors, examine internal and external links, compare domains and URL’s in real time and export all data to a file for further analysis. No wonder more than 300,000 users are using this platform.
3. Ahrefs:
Its added value is clear and concrete: “with Ahrefs, you don’t have to be a SEO professional to rank and get more traffic”, something that we are sure to say is true. We must say that among our recommendations, it is the simplest and most intuitive tool. It offers free learning material and an active community willing to provide help and support.
Ahrefs offers a set of tools ideal for: website optimization, competitor analysis, keyword and search term exploration, industry performance content related to your brand and tracking SEO progress. It is definitely an excellent choice for everyone from beginners to experienced experts.
If you’ve ever heard that content is the king of SEO, you’re right. That’s why we consider this tool in the list. The cool fact is that it allows us to collect, based on a keyword, information about that topic to answer user queries. What is not so good is that searches on the day are limited, so you must wait until the next day to make new searches.
Answer The Public is ideal and valuable for content marketing strategy. Depending on the keyword entered and searched country, we will get content related to prepositions (to, with, for), questions (who, what, which, which, when, why, where), comparisons (or, vs., and) and content related to the keyword. Undoubtedly a great tool as a generator of new ideas to write content.
5. Ubersuggest:
One of the most powerful and complete tools used by specialists is Ubersuggest. It also works as a Chrome extension and provides very accurate and valuable data about keywords on Google, YouTube, Amazon, among others.
Ubersuggest offers advantages such as: keyword refinement, search indexes and volumes, suggested keywords, CPC (cost per click) availability, competition analysis, results filtering and the option to export data in CVS. Without a doubt, this is one of the tools that is most knowledgeable about the advances in the digital environment.
6. Screaming Frog:
Screaming Frog is, in our opinion, the easiest website crawler to use. If you need to make a technical audit of sites for SEO improvement, this tool is the most indicated. The good news is that you can download it for free and crawl up to 500 URLs, another option is to buy a license to access advanced features, but it is not so necessary.
With this tool you can identify broken links, analyze titles and meta descriptions, generate XML sitemaps (public URL’s), schedule audits, track heavy images that affect the loading speed of the website, identify 404 errors, visualize site architecture, discover duplicated content and extract the data. In short, a lot of details that will surely be useful for SEO optimization.
As we mentioned before, there are many tools. But for us, these five are the ones that have worked best because they are designed to easily optimize content and achieve good positioning in search engines. The invitation is to investigate others and select the one that best suits your needs to create effective content that meets SEO standards and your expectations of engagement and conversion.
Regarding SEO techniques it is important to take into consideration that Google expects the website and content to meet quality standards that determine whether your website is relevant to visitors or not. It is necessary to adopt techniques within the website and outside it, do not miss details and consider crucial factors such as site content with keywords included and distributed organically, mobile search optimization or responsive web design, site loading speed, HTML validation, title tags assignment (H1, H2, H3), robots meta-tags for website indexing, presence on Social Networks with frequent content and content creation on a blog.
To make content to connect with the audience, it is also important to consider the use of an appropriate language:
- Understand their needs and communicate how the product/service fulfills them, prioritizing keywords with the most potential traffic.
- Communicate the message in a consistent way, organizing the information to make it clear.
- Increase page views by improving internal links, encourage the permanence and reading of all the website content, the goal is to make them visit as many pages as possible.
- Get them to recommend the content, links on other websites that point to yours.
- Improve the loading speed of the web, optimizing images, reducing average content, reducing font styles, limiting the use of animations, and disabling unused plugins. Remember that 53% of your visitors will abandon your website if it does not load in 3 seconds or less.
About SEO automation vs. manual SEO
Another option you might consider is SEO automation. It’s a smart way to automate repetitive tasks that would normally be done manually. This is where the use of tools becomes critical. Many of them are very helpful for saving time, providing more accurate analysis, and monitoring on a large scale.
Although SEO automation tools are designed to automate various aspects of their performance, none of them cover all the elements that need to be monitored comprehensively.
To conclude our recommendation is that you invest time and energy in learning more about SEO. It is an almost infinite world to discover, but once you dive into it, you will learn wonderful things. Another recommendation is to have an expert ally in the area willing to work closely with you to teach you, guide you and help you generate more organic traffic to your website, improving the chances of generating more sales. If that is your intention, rely on Interfaz, our experts will know which techniques will fit your marketing objectives.