Technical SEO Tools

Technical SEO tools are an essential part of the SEO optimization process.

They help in analyzing a website and find areas of improvement to lay down a strategic roadmap towards better search rankings. The SEO process is divided into multiple segments and there is a tool available at every step which makes life easier for every webmaster to conduct an SEO audit.

This list includes both paid and free versions of the technical SEO tools along with the best features that make these tools beneficial for everyone.

Here are the top 20 technical SEO tools:

1. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

The first step to analyze a website is to crawl the website and perform an SEO audit.

This tool does the same and is pretty good at it, you can even say that it is the best crawling software available.

If your website has 500 pages then you can use the free version of the Screaming Frog however if you want to crawl a bigger site then go for the paid version of the tool.

Some common elements that screaming frog SEO spider can find for you are:

The paid version for Screaming Frog allows you to crawl unlimited URLs and would cost you £149.00 per year and the free version lets you crawl 500 URLs on a site.

There are more additional features to this tool as the ability to generate XML sitemaps, review robots & directives, extract data with XPath and lastly, you can easily integrate it with Google Analytics to compare the analytics data with the crawl results.

2. MozBar

I love this tool for its multitasking ability.

You can use this tool for link building, technical analysis, competitor analysis, and much more.

In order to use this tool, you would need to download the MozBar browser extension and also create an account with Moz.

Check out the things Moz bar can do for you:

MozBar is a free SEO tool and is compatible with Google Chrome.

The biggest benefit of the Moz bar is that it reveals all data really quickly and one does not have to wait long before everything they want to see is right in front of them.

The best feature of this tool is the ability to export Google search results pages into an excel file along with each URL in-depth information. This allows webmasters to perform a manual outreach or study the links for links.

3. GTmetrix

Website speed is highly important and this tool helps you analyze your site’s speed and provides a detailed report about areas of improvement you can make to enhance the speed further.

GTmetrix is also a free tool that allows you to enter your URL into the search column and run a speed test. You will be able to get a complete report of the website speed test showcasing the summary of your page performance based on key indicators of page load speed.

Some important features of GTmetrix are listed below:

Once you have the site speed test results you will be able to see the key elements, URLs slowing the web page or the site down.

You can now start correcting these errors and re-test the website for new updates. If a website load time is under 3 seconds it is considered to be effective and good.

4. Mobile-Friendly Tester

We all know how important a mobile-friendly website is for a business as the number of mobile users is constantly growing every day.

This tool shows you how your website looks on a mobile device by simply entering your URL and clicking the run test button.

The best feature of this tool is that it provides a list of mobile usability problems detected, which makes it easier for webmasters to diagnose the issue.

The key benefits & features of this tool are mentioned below:

If your website is not mobile user-friendly yet then it’s high time you consider implementing the same.

To know more about mobile-friendly sites read this resource.

5. Google Analytics

Data analysis is important for the success of SEO.

Google helps webmasters with data analysis providing deep insight and study of the traffic trends on their site.

The process of adding analytics to your website is really simple, just sign up for Google analytics which will provide you with a tracking code, integrate the code to your website, and in few hours you start to see your website data.

The best features of the analytics tool are:

As an SEO professional and a webmaster, you need all this data to layout an effective SEO roadmap.

You can track your e-commerce conversions and also create a strategic approach to every product page.

All in all, this is a must-have tool to track your website visitor’s behavior and to know the basics like what they did on the site, how much time they spent and where did they come from. Ain’t that some awesome stuff.

6. Google Structured Data Testing

Every page on your website should pass on the right message to Google bots in order for the page to be rank for the right keywords and in order to do so, webmasters need to add the right schema markup to your site and the pages.

If you do now know which schema markup to use on your site or a particular page then you can always visit schema.org and find relevant schema markup for your site.

In order to ensure that the schema code is right, verify it using the structured data testing tool.

The best feature of the tool is the ability to check your competitor’s schema markup by simply entering the URL in the search box and clicking the run test.

You can then copy the code and edit it then place it on your own site.

There are three types of schema markup formats that Google understands:

The key advice here is to always ensure that you have allowed your structured pages to be crawled by Google bots in the Robots.txt files.

7. Google Search Console

This tool allows you to monitor your website from the eyes of Google and helps you make performance-based changes to rank better in the SERPs.

The best feature of the search console is that it allows you to submit a new URL for inspection and allows you to manually invite Google bots to index the new URL.

We got some impressive reasons for why you should use the search console:

Webmasters can use the search console data and connect it with the analytics data in order to get a more precise and accurate technical analysis of the website performance. The maintenance of the site, as well as the ability to take technical decisions, becomes much easier with this tool.

8. KWFinder

Keyword research is the most important activity in the SEO process.

This tool is easy to use and helps webmasters find a bunch of keywords based on location as well as language. This proves highly effective when targeting local rankings.

To get started, visit the website and type in your keyword in the search box and select the location and language you want to target, and hit the green Find Keywords button.

The best feature about KWFinder is its ability to show you the most relevant keywords however it also shows the auto-suggested Google keywords along with the most searched questions around the keyword.

Here is a list of SEO metrics that KWFinder shows:

All featured metrics, statistics, tricks & tips offered by KWFinder makes keyword research really simple and accurate.

Customer support for KWFinder is available via chat and email.

9. UberSuggest

This is a keyword research tool.

A lot of times webmasters make the mistake of targetting keywords with low volume which leads to a waste of time and efforts as then you would have to re-evaluate your SEO strategy and create a new roadmap for your website to rank for highly potential keywords.

This can easily be avoided by using Neil Patel’s UberSuggest tool.

The best thing about this tool is that it is completely free with no catch and it shows you important data along with keyword suggestions such as who ranks for the keyword, social shares & PPC data.

Here are all the features of UberSuggest:

In a world where nothing is free, this tool can come as a savior for all newcomers and people who are getting started with SEO.

Even though it is a free tool its ability to provide good keyword research is marvelous and thus I strongly recommend this tool.

10. Keywords Everywhere

This tool is amazing for SEO professionals and for webmasters who like keyword data at their fingertips.

Keywords everywhere is a free browser extension that can be added to Chrome & Firefox.

The best feature of this tool is that it provides you the keyword search volume, cost per click & competition data right on the Google search.

The websites that this tool currently support are:

The main benefit of installing this extension would be the amount of time it saves for SEO professionals and other pros in need of keyword research.

11. Ahrefs

During the SEO process, you may want to check on the keyword density or the number of backlinks your competitor has or maybe check on the real-time link building opportunities regardless of the task Ahrefs can help you with all of them.

This is truly a powerful tool and is mainly used for checking link building.

The best feature about Ahrefs would be that it scans the websites in every 15-20 minutes to check on the real-time links associated with the site.

Here are the most popular features of Ahrefs:

Ahrefs has been the top choice of many SEO professionals due to its awesome features and capabilities.

12. Check My Links

This is a broken link checker. Broken links are viewed as a link building opportunity by SEO pros.

You can add the Check My Links extension to your browser and analyze a webpage to find any broken links present on it.

It will color code valid links in green and highlight the broken ones in red.

Once you find the broken links you can reach out to the site owner and inform them of the broken link and offer a suitable replacement from your own site.

Site owners usually appreciate the gesture and tend to accept the offer giving you the link juice.

It’s a simple process and the best part is that it’s free.

The best features of Check My links are:

Although this is a manual process of finding broken links and can be tiring, however, can definitely come in handy.

13. Disavow.it

There are multiple reasons why you would want to disassociate with a backlink and Google as a leading search engine understands it.

Sometimes it is important to clean up your website backlinks due to reasons like:

Google provides an easy way to tell the bots that you want to disconnect with the link and do so you need to create a file of all your bad links and upload it to Google’s disavow tool.

This is where Disavow.it comes in, as it allows you to easily create a disavow file for you to upload.

If the disavow file is not in the right format it Google may ignore your request and you may never get rid of those negative links.

Here is how it works:

1. Open Notepad.
2. Enter all your links in it, one link per line.
3. Save the file  to your computer
4. Visit disavow.it
5. Upload the notepad which would be in .txt format
6. You can also paste the links directly into the disavow.it page and avoid creating a notepad.
7. Select domain threshold which is the number of URLs per sub-domain, before introducing a ‘domain:’ entry.
8. Click Create/Clean Disavow File button.
9. Download the disavow file.
10. Upload to Google Disavow tool.

Usually, it takes a view weeks for the links to be disavowed however there is no certain time frame.

Personally, I have seen links getting disavowed in a time frame of 3 months, this could be because of the high volume of submitted links through the disavow tool.

14. Remove’em

Remove’em is a more advanced link removal tool that can be used for monitoring site links, and as a service for penguin recovery.

It has the ability to send out regular reports and create disavow files.

Features of Removeém include:

This tool works wonders for site owners who are trying to recover their website from a penalty and ensure the website gets only genuine white label backlinks.

15. Botify

This tool claims to be an advanced version of the Google webmasters tool.

It allows webmasters to perform:

The best feature of this tool would its ability to crawl a site instantly and provide valuable data from the eyes of a search engine.

16. Barracuda Panguin

Google updates its search engine algorithms on a regular basis and sometimes it affects site rankings drastically.

It is tough to understand the reason for the drop in rankings, however, using Panguin SEO tool you can check on the recently implemented algo changes and make necessary changes to your site to improve rankings.

Uses ad features of Panguin SEO tool are:

It provides a detailed market performance of a website and enables webmasters to study the site’s data and look at areas of improvement.

17. WhiteSpark

If you want to rank in the local map pack and dominate the local SERPs then you need to use this tool.

You can use this tool to build citations for your local business which helps to boost your rankings in three map pack.

3 major uses of WhiteSpark are:

I find WhiteSpark’s citation building service to be the most effective as compared to other service providers like BrightLocal, Yext, and Moz Local.

18. Forecheck

Forecheck is a powerful website analysis tool that runs like a search engine crawler at a fast speed.

The generated reports provide a detailed insight into relevant search engine ranking factors & elements.

Features of this tool are:

This tool analyzes your website and provides specific issues in it that is making it rank lower than the competition. For example, it has a duplicate content report platform which shows pages with similar content in blocks, it also analyzes all of the canonical links and indicates the SEO problems.

19. Hreflang Tags Generator Tool

If you have different variations of a web page to target various regions in their specific languages you need to tell Google bots about it.

The best way to do so is to add hreflang tags to your website for your multi-language or multi-country site.

This tool will help you to generate the hreflang tags patterns to use in the different language and country versions of your pages, using the correct values and syntax following Google’s specifications, with ISO 639-1 for languages and ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 for countries.

Key features of this tool are:

As per Google, even without taking any action, Google might still find alternate language versions of your page, but it is usually best for you to explicitly indicate your language- or region-specific pages.

20. Kill Duplicate

If another website has the same content as that of your site and has better rankings signals than your website, it may rank higher in search results.

Kill Duplicate tool allows you to precisely identify who stole your content also to take necessary measures along with provides a strategy to stop the content theft and track your actions over time.

Important features of this tool are:

Protect your content using this awesome tool.

Conclusion,

We at Egochi use these technical SEO tools on a daily basis when optimizing our and client websites. The opportunities are endless, if you are a well trained SEO professional or even starting out with the SEO process, you would definitely love these tools.

I hope you benefit from this post and are able to enhance your skills.