Tips For Choosing The Best SEO Tools For Your New Website

Jonathan Dolan, Owner at Off Main Marketing – Published on February 22 2024

Jonathan is a LinkedIn Top Marketing Voice

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This blog post presents my contributions to a LinkedIn Collaborative Article about “Tips For Choosing The Best SEO Tools For Your New Website”. NOTE: Contributions to LinkedIn Collaborative Articles are limited to just 750 characters each. Due to their comprehensiveness, each contribution has some overlapping points with the other contributions.

I hope you find the advice and tips in this post helpful in your marketing journey!

Know Your Goals

(Contribution 1 of 5)

TEXT: This may sound like a fluff ☁️ sentence, but if you DON’T have specific SEO objectives, then you WILL most likely either:

🅰️ Only use one SEO tool (that either doesn’t do everything you need it to, or if it does, you’ll wildly underutilize it)

🅱️ You will use multiple SEO tools (that have a lot of overlapping abilities – thus wasting money and creating a clunky operation).

In my experience, the average business should have:

▪️1 robust SEO tool to optimize the content on each individual page of their site (like Yoast SEO or AIOSEO)

▪️Plus at least 1 other tool that gives additional insights, such as what keywords the competitors are using on their websites, and current search trends across the internet (like SEMrush, or Moz Pro)

Evaluate Your Budget

(Contribution 2 of 5)

TEXT: What’s the difference between expensive SEO tools that cost THOUSANDS of dollars a year, and less expensive or free tools? 🤔

Here’s a short list to give you some frame of reference:

💵 Less Expensive / FREE

– Yoast SEO: Optimize the content on each webpage (FREE)

– Google Trends: Search trends reports (FREE)

– MozPro: See internet search trends and the keywords your competitors are using – not as easy to use as the more expensive products ($40 / month)

💵 💵 Expensive

– SEMrush & Ahrefs: Everyone talks about these, because they single handily do a lot, and are easier to use then cheaper products. They spy on competitors websites, identify keyword gaps in your strategy, provide backlinks guidance, etc. (but cost around $100/ month)

Compare Your Options

(Contribution 3 of 5)

TEXT: After you determine what your website’s goals 💫 and budget 💵 are for SEO tools,

Next look at:

1️⃣ How easy is it to use? (because it’s wasteful to purchase a robust platform if no one on your team has the time or skills to use it properly)

2️⃣ How will the data be incorporated into your organization’s management workflow? (because if management doesn’t have an SEO review as part of their routine, or if they don’t understand how to make informed decisions with the reports the tool gives them – Then What’s The Point?)

3️⃣ Does your industry have specific requirements for what SEO tools are allowed to do? (for example the newest HIPPA policies have further limited the kind of data that can be gathered on health care industry websites)

Test and Measure

(Contribution 4 of 5)

TEXT: Once you have selected one or multiple SEO tools ⚒️ to try out, NEXT:

🧪Perform A/B testing:

▪️For example if you’re a Sporting Goods 🏀 company and you have Yoast SEO on your site (which instructs you on how to optimize the content on each individual webpage)…

…then create 2 blog posts on a topic such as “What’s the difference between indoor and outdoor basketballs”…

…(be sure to set up 1 post without using Yoast’s tools, and a 2nd post that does)…

…Then do the same thing with at least 15-20 other topics (so you now have robust A/B testing on your site, and you can begin identifying what optimizations work for you, and what don’t.)

🙏 Please also test how the review of these findings fits into your organization’s management workflow.

Here's What Else To Consider

(Contribution 5 of 5)

TEXT: In addition to the differences all SEO tools 🛠️ have (Price 💵, Abilities ⚙️, and Ease Of Use 😌) – ALSO CONSIDER:

1️⃣ The Time & Resources That Go Into Establishing Domain Authority:

Your Domain Authority (the search engines’ determination on your knowledge and credibility on “Blank Topic”) is what determines how high you rank.

And the best way to establish authority, is to consistently create great new content – which is grueling… and leads into the next consideration👇

2️⃣ Your Resolve:

Since you don’t have domain authority yet, it’s going to be A WHILE before you achieve significant results.

But if you’re serious, start with a “Content Map” of the top 50-100 Keywords in your industry, and 10-20 corresponding blog posts for each.

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