Search engine optimization (SEO) provides you with information and data about your website and can contribute to your site’s success. SEO tools can help you find issues and weaknesses that can stop you from ranking well or being seen on a search engine results page (SERP).
Why SEO Is Important
Understanding why SEO is so important helps to know how search engines like Google assess websites and compile and rank SERPs.
Google uses Google bots to crawl the web, meaning that automated programs constantly navigate links around the internet, discover new webpages, and update content. Once a webpage is located, it is said to be indexed.
Once a page is indexed, Google tries to understand it, analyzing it for relevancy using hundreds of different criteria. The more relevant Google thinks the website is, the higher it will appear on the SERP.
This ranking can make or break the traffic to a site. Studies show that 75% of consumers never explore beyond the first page of search results.
This is why SEO is so important. The more traffic your website sees from users specifically looking for your products or services, the more likely these clicks are to convert to sales. Below are five tools that every SEO must use:
5 SEO Tools You Need to Start Using
1. Keyword Research and Mapping Services
Every website manager is probably familiar with how keywords work, but many businesses do not take full advantage of their potential. Keywords are what users query in a search engine, and SEO means matching as many of these words and phrases as possible.
Without thorough keyword research, your business may miss out on unique and effective keywords that would bring potential customers to your site. However, when the page uses well-researched keywords, it will mean more traffic to your site.
It may be surprising how proper research can lead to integrating words and phrases naturally into your site that will increase SERP ranking.
2. Content-Creation Services
When Google indexes sites, it doesn’t look at keywords alone. To determine that a site has relevant and up-to-date content, the Google bots continually monitor websites and note what is substantial and what is not. Continuously producing new and engaging content is the best way to keep your site fresh in the eyes of Google. This is one of the most important things to do for SEO.
There are many ways that content creation services will help create content, including studying the most common keywords and integrating them into your website in the most effective way possible. One common way a webpage can continually add unique content is to maintain a blog.
A blog is also an opportunity to explain and expand on the details of the products, expand information on services offered, and encourage users to spend more time on your site. Content creators will suggest topics, compose blogs, and analyze what blogs bring the most traffic for their clients.
Blogs are also a chance for a company to target different audiences that a more general homepage might not.
Content-creating services can also create social media posts and tweets. More shares and likes on social media lead to higher SERP rankings.
3. Analysis of Your Competitor’s SEO
A significant part of SEO is understanding not just what your website is doing well but how your competitors’ SEO is performing. When you know what is working for your competitors, you can better evaluate what would work better for you.
Furthermore, when you understand what your competitors aren’t doing, you can take advantage of their weaknesses.
For example, if your competitor fails to use specific keywords or phrases that would bring web traffic, it is advantageous that you do.
If you provide a product or service that your competitor does not, it is important to identify this and create keywords and content that will bring traffic your way and away from the competitor.
When a potential customer finds precisely what they are looking for at your website in the SERP, these clicks are more likely to convert to sales.
4. Link-Building Services
People may be surprised to learn that not only what your website does can influence your SERP ranking, but that what happens off-site greatly affects it as well. When Google indexes a website, it looks at what quality websites link to your own.
The logic is that if high-quality websites link to your site, your content is quality. For example, if you are a sporting goods business and many respected sports organizations link to your website, your company demonstrates authority on sporting goods.
Link-building services can examine who is linking to your website and the quality of their content. If your site’s link is from a questionable, low-quality, or spam source, this will hurt your natural SEO.
Services can work to reject these links so that they do not harm your business.
On the other hand, link-building services can reach out to other high-quality sites and work with them to get a coveted link from their site to yours. One common way of doing this is to request that your site write a guest blog for the other site.
If the other site accepts, you obtain a link from them to you, increasing your SEO and SERP rankings. Some websites may charge you minimal costs for this service, but it is often worth it. Link services will also monitor that these helpful off-site links are maintained and advocate for you if trouble arises.
5. Search Engine Saturation Analysis
A webpage is not helping your SEO if Google is not indexing it. Unfortunately, many businesses have pages that are not indexed at all, therefore not affecting their SEO positively.
A thorough, up-to-date analysis of your site can identify dead links in your site, pages not used to their full potential, complicated navigation, and outdated content.
Conclusion
These five SEO tools can help any website looking to increase traffic. The easier a potential consumer can find the specific thing they’re seeking in their search engine, the more likely these users will go to your site and convert to sales.
