SEO helps websites rank, but that can be difficult for small online businesses without using targeted keywords.
That`s because SEO prioritizes authoritative sites on the search engine results, making it difficult for small sites to rank.
To beat the competition and rank your business, use SEO tools. They help find keywords with high volume and low competition, which can boost your small online business rank and drive converting traffic.
Some of the effective ones to rely on include:
1. Google Analytics
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| Image source: Google Analytics |
This SEO tool tracks and reports the traffic and activities happening on a website.
When you install it on your website, it shows how much traffic your website gets and where it`s coming from. You will know whether the traffic comes from emails, social media, or search engines.
That enables you to understand the marketing channels that drive more traffic and focus on them.
You will also know what keywords bring the most traffic and whether the traffic converts or not.
That helps you learn your audience`s preferences and create content targeting keywords that align with search queries and drive traffic.
Besides, Google Analytics helps know the content that gets more views and the audience`s demographics. This enables you to create the appropriate content format and use a tone of voice that appeals to your audience.
What`s better, Google Analytics is a free tool.
All you have to create an account and connect your website, and it will start collecting data.
Here is how to add your website to Google Analytics.
2. Google Search Console
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| Image source: Google Search Console |
Erroneous websites are unindexable, making them unable to rank.
When you create an account with Google Search Console, you will be notified any time your website has errors like a lack of image ALT text, poor meta description, mobile unresponsiveness, etc.
This SEO tool helps fix errors to facilitate indexing and enable your website to rank on relevant search queries.
Besides, it gives stats like
- Keyword rankings
- Number of keyword clicks
- Number of times your website ranked per certain keywords
Knowing these metrics enables you to focus on the keywords that have a higher chance of ranking your site and driving traffic.
Google search console also provides link reports, which entails showing orphan pages on your site so you can interlink them.
Opharn pages are unlinked with other pages on a website. Interlinking them helps content to be found through other pages on a website, which increases traffic.
Here is how to conduct internal linking and increase your website traffic.
This tool also gives reports on your backlink authority. This involves showing how much traffic the backlinks drive. If they drive little traffic, it means you are linked to an unreliable website.
Therefore, you can remove the backlinks and find more authoritative backlinks that can drive more traffic to your site.
Besides, the backlink reports help identify spammy backlinks and remove them to increase your website authority.
Check out this off-page SEO content and learn how to find quality backlinks to your website.
The good thing is you can use this tool for free.
To use it, create an account and add your website, and it will show your website performance and how to improve it.
See how to connect your website to Google Search Console here.
3. Screaming Frog
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| Image source: dagmarmarketing |
If you need a quick website audit, this is the tool to use. It helps reveal all errors on your website and suggests how to debug them.
With Screaming Frog, you can find your keyword performance to help you tweak or replace your content keywords to raise your website rank.
Moreover, this SEO tool helps identify broken links. Such links hinder people from visiting the linked sources and search engines from crawling. Fixing them boosts your website's authority and reliability, increasing traffic.
Besides, Screaming Frog examines content for duplication. Apart from confusing search engines about the page to rank, content duplication is regarded as plagiarism, which lowers websites' rank.
This tool reveals that also so you can remove one of the identical content or set canonical pages to enable indexing.
If your website loads slowly, lacks meta tags and is unresponsive on different devices, Screaming Frog shows that and directs how to debug them.
When it comes to competitor analysis, this tool can help you as well. It enables seeing your competitors` website's high high-performing keywords, type of content, and target audience. This helps in identifying marketing gaps you can replicate and improve your business.
Concerning pricing, this tool costs only £199 per year.
That can be expensive for a small online business. If so, you can use the free version, which helps find broken links, examine metadata, audit Hreflang attributes, etc. However, you won`t have many features compared to the paid plan.
Here is a step-by-step process of how to use Screaming Frog to boost your site's SEO optimization.
4. Ahrefs
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| Image source: Ahrefs |
Do you want to find backlinks for your website? Ahrefs is one of the best tools to help you find authoritative websites to link out to.
With this SEO tool, you can analyze relevant websites to see whether they have high traffic that can drive readers to your site.
Besides, you can use this tool to analyze competitor websites and see whether they drive conversions and get insights to improve your small online business.
Perhaps you use keywords related to your business, but the search intent is irrelevant to your brand goals. For instance, your goal is making sales but you use informative keywords. That drives traffic that doesn`t convert.
Competitor research enables you to identify the keywords that bring your competitors conversions so you can tweak your content and drive conversions too.
Here is how you can identify your audience's search intent and target keywords that drive traffic that converts.
You can also use Ahrefs to conduct keyword research and get more keyword suggestions, volume, and difficulty.
This helps know the topic that your audience wants so you can focus on it and increase traffic.
What makes this SEO tool perfect for small online businesses is that it has a free plan. However, it doesn`t give in-depth reports as you would if you used the paid plans.
You can purchase your plans for $99–$999 per month.
Check out this resource and learn more about how to use this tool.
5. Moz
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| Image source: Moz |
If you want to know your website authority, Moz has got you covered.
A website`s authoritativeness is determined by its domain age and whether it hasn`t practiced black hat SEO.
The quality and quantity of backlinks also contribute to a site's authority. Quality backlinks are the ones that have high traffic and are relevant to your business.
Moz shows this information so you can avoid finding low-quality backlinks that can lower your site authority.
Besides, you can use this SEO tool to research keywords. Apart from showing keywords volume and difficulty, it suggests the ones you should prioritize and rank.
If you want to do competitor research, Moz can also help you.
You can track your competitors' websites to know their high-performing keywords and use them to rank your site too.
Moz also helps conduct a site audit and suggests how you can debug it in case of any errors.
You can access this SEO tool`s features for only $99–$599.
The free Moz Community account is enough for small businesses. It offers unlimited access to features like
- MozBar
- Keyword explorer
- Link explorer
- Domain analysis
- Competitor research
Here is an in-depth resource about how to use Moz.
Use SEO Tools and Boost Your Small Online Business
SEO optimization helps websites rank and drive traffic, but if you are unknowledgeable, you will use irrelevant or too competitive keywords and lower your site rank.
To ensure you use keywords that align with your audience and have low competition, use SEO tools.
They enable you to find high-volume and low-competition keywords that drive traffic.
SEO tools also help check backlink authority so you can find inbound links from reliable sites and increase your small online business` trustworthiness.
Moreover, they help do a site audit to know how your site performs so you can improve it, raise its rank, and drive traffic.
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