With over a billion websites on the net and another one being built every three seconds, there is no guarantee that your website will rank at the top of search engines like Bing or Google. It can be even more frustrating if you’ve recently launched a new website for your business.
Google and Bing prioritize the highest-quality content, and as a new player in the field, your website may not have established the necessary credibility to rank well.
Luckily, through effective digital marketing resources and tools like search engine optimization (SEO), you can elevate your website to the top of search engine rankings, attracting more traffic and conversions.
Search engine optimization is an online marketing strategy that involves refining a website or webpages to enhance their visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is achieved through techniques such as keyword research, quality content creation, and optimizing for mobile devices.
However, manually implementing SEO optimization can be time-consuming, tedious, and prone to errors.
This is where SEO software comes into play; providing a solution to streamline and automate these tasks, making the SEO optimization process more efficient and effective.
SEO software refers to any type of tool or software application designed to assist website owners, digital marketers, and SEO professionals to optimize their websites for search engines.
By utilizing SEO software for your website, you can enjoy multiple benefits such as:
- Saving time, since tasks that would have taken hours, such as keyword research, site audits, and backlink analysis, can now be completed within minutes
- Conveniently accessing the data and insights you need to make informed decisions about your website, since the software can track your site’s performance, analyze your competitors, and identify areas for improvement
- Optimizing your content for the right keywords and attracting targeted, organic traffic
- Identifying high-quality backlink opportunities and tracking the effectiveness of your link building efforts
In today’s article, we’ll discuss different ways to utilize SEO software as an effective digital marketing tool to achieve better rankings for your website or webpage.
By implementing these strategies, you can rest assured that your website is optimized for success.
1 – Optimizing Your Web Content
When users demonstrate a desire to stay on your website, it increases the likelihood of achieving higher rankings. Google naturally perceives such sites to be meeting users’ expectations effectively.
However, randomly generating content for your website will hardly improve your ranking in the search engines. You’ll want to switch to a more consistent content SEO practice that will satisfy your target audience and persuade them to stay on your site.
This can be accomplished in three major ways:
1 – Optimizing Page Speed
Source: portent.com
Every second counts when it comes to page speed. Research shows that most online buyers expect a website to load within two seconds. Each additional second of load time increases their chances of leaving the site.
This can result in higher bounce rates, reduced page views, and ultimately lower SEO rankings.
“Unfortunately, most mobile pages take much longer to load than their desktop counterparts, and mobile users expect pages to load much faster on their mobile devices. If the page takes too long to load, users will immediately bounce, causing your site to lose out on a large number of potential customers.”
— Jillian Streit, website strategist at Blue Frog
Fortunately, you can take advantage of available SEO tools to increase your page load speed.
A notable example is the Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI), a free tool that tests your website’s performance. It helps identify areas that are slowing down your website and suggests ways to improve them.
Another useful free SEO software tool is the WebPage Test, which has partnered with Cloudflare. It provides free speed tests and offers a detailed breakdown of how fast the various elements of your page load.
The tool also allows you to run customized page load time tests based on different user conditions, such as location, connection, time, and browser. This helps you understand how different visitors experience your site.
There is also Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a coding standard that enables websites to load faster on smartphones. It’s a Google feature that makes heavy desktop websites more compatible for mobile phones, ensuring faster loading times.
Adopting AMP has proven to be an effective method for boosting rankings, with up to 80% of publishers reporting increased visibility and click-through rates after adopting the software.
Furthermore, a study revealed that Google AMP pages offer loading speeds four times faster and consume eight times less data compared to conventional mobile-optimized pages.
2 – Optimizing Content Visibility
Source: quicksprout.com
When it comes to content for your website, there’s no substitute for quality. The key driver for your search engine ranking is relevant, authoritative content.
The quality of your content will highly influence your site’s dwell time (the amount of time that visitors spend on your site) and ultimately affect SEO ranking.
Visitors who find rich, unique, and useful content on your site will stay longer to consume it all. This improves your website’s traffic, enhancing its relevance and authority.
There are several ways to further optimize your content’s visibility:
- Identify and target particular keyword phrases
- Use keywords and metadata strategically, such as placing them in titles and alt tags
- Constantly monitor your rankings with ranking tools to make adjustments accordingly
- Strategically link to relevant sources
High-quality long copy can also help to increase your content’s visibility. According to a past study, long copy ranging between 2,000 and 2,500 words ranks highest in search engines.
While SEO ranking doesn’t entirely rely on content length, long copy provides a better opportunity to offer more value, add keywords, incorporate backlinks, and increase dwell time.
Websites that produce rich content tend to get more links than those with short copy content. In a previous study by Moz that aimed to see the correlation between backlinks and word count, the results showed that people are more willing to link to in-depth content than they’re willing to link to short-form content.
Fun Fact: On average, a webpage that secures a first-page ranking on Google contains more than 2,000 words of content.
3 – Improving User Experience
When users can’t find what they need on your site right away, chances are that they’ll leave and never return.
There’s a simple concept that Google follows: if you can’t offer an excellent good user experience, then you don’t deserve any promotion in search engine rankings.
A positive user experience not only leads to increased user satisfaction but also improves metrics such as bounce rate, dwell time, and conversions, which can positively impact your rankings.
One way to create a better user experience is through mobile optimization.
More and more online buyers are consuming content on their mobile phones. A recent report from Hitwise revealed that nearly 60% of all web searches come from mobile phones, with sectors like food and beverage reaching 70%.
“According to our analysis, 62% of searches resulting in a visit to the Hitwise Retail 300 (a collection of the top 300 retail websites) now come from smartphones or tablets.”
By optimizing your site for mobile users, you can provide a seamless experience across various screen sizes and improve user satisfaction. The more mobile-friendly your site is, the more time your visitors will likely spend there.
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly using SEO tools that offer mobile-friendly testing. This helps you identify any responsiveness or usability issues specific to mobile devices, allowing you to optimize your site accordingly.
Below are popular SEO tools to consider:
- Google mobile-friendly test: A free SEO tool from Google that allows you to test how mobile-friendly your website is.
Simply enter your website’s URL, and it will analyze the page and provide feedback on its mobile-friendliness, highlighting any issues that need to be addressed. - WebPage test: A performance testing tool that includes a mobile-friendly test feature.
It analyzes your website’s mobile performance, including rendering and usability, and provides insights for optimizing the mobile experience. - HubSpot website grader: A free tool that provides an overall website analysis, including a mobile-friendly assessment.
It tests your site’s mobile responsiveness and offers recommendations for improving the mobile experience. - Moz: A widely-used SEO tool that includes a mobile-friendly testing feature.
It assesses your website’s mobile-readiness, identifies potential issues, and offers suggestions to optimize your site for mobile devices.
Another way to improve your site’s user experience is by enhancing its readability. You don’t want your audience to stop reading your content halfway and leave your site because they find it too difficult to digest.
Consider SEO software tools that can assist you in assessing and enhancing the readability of your website’s content; such as Textmetrics, Hemingway Editor, The Readability Test Tool, Yoast SEO, and Readable.
These software will analyze factors like sentence structure, paragraph length, word choice, and readability scores.
Pay specific attention to the readability scores, since they indicate the reading level required to understand your content. Aim for a lower readability score to make your content more accessible and easier to comprehend.
Some of these SEO software will even flag instances of passive voice or complicated language that may make your content difficult to read. Opt for active voice and use plain language to make your content more engaging and understandable.
Furthermore, the SEO software tools will ensure that your headings and subheadings are appropriately structured and tagged, helping both visitors and search engines understand the hierarchy and organization of your content.
Expert Tip: A well-organized and intuitive navigation menu can greatly enhance the user experience. Ensure that your website’s navigation is clear, easy to follow, and allows visitors to find what they need quickly.
2 – Conducting Keyword Research
Once you have a user-friendly website in place, the next crucial step is to research key phrases and words. This helps you to determine precisely what your clients and target customers are looking for on Google and other search engines.
Failure to conduct a proper keyword analysis may lead to creating content that your target audience may never read.
Fortunately, there are several keyword research tools that can help you determine the most common words and phrases relating to your content, and your competitors using these terms.
When used correctly, these keyword research tools will simplify and streamline your workflow, making it easier to target the right keywords and provide you with the data you need to rank for them.
They include:
- Keyword Generator to find popular keyword ideas
- Keyword Difficulty Checker to check the difficulty of a keyword ranking
- QuestionDB to find question-based keywords
- Keyword Surfer for lightweight keyword research
- Google Keyword Planner to research paid keywords
If you’re new to SEO, a free keyword research tool will help you discover some great keywords for your website.
However, as your website continues to grow and your time becomes limited, paid keyword research tools are a more convenient option. They provide more data and allow for more efficient workflow, helping you find the right keywords in less time.
Good examples of paid keyword research tools are Ahrefs and Semrush, which can also assist in local SEO research.
3 – Analyzing Your Website Performance
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. The top ranking websites are as a result of months (or even years) of hard work, optimizations, and consistent content uploads while fixing technical SEO and improving internal links.
Therefore, while content is king when it comes to boosting your search engine rankings, you need to analyze your website’s performance to ensure it’s reaching its full potential.
You can do this through various steps:
1 – Conducting Competitor Analysis
Compare the content, design, and overall presence of your website to your competitors, and identify areas for improvement.
Software SEO tools like SpyFu, cognitiveSEO, and Semrush offer robust competitor analysis features, including keyword analysis, banklink analysis, traffic analysis, rankings and visibility, social media analysis, and content analysis.
Through these different analyses, you can gain valuable insights into your competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. You can see what keywords they’re targeting, the backlinks they’re building, and the type of content they’re creating.
You can also monitor their SEO campaigns by tracking their link building activities, keyword rankings, and website changes.
With all this information, you’ll be able to make effective, data-driven decisions, refine your own SEO approach, and stay ahead in the competitive landscape.
2 – Tracking Your Website’s Ranking
You need to track your website rankings over time to see if your SEO efforts are paying off.
With the right analytic tools, you can monitor your results to give you a better understanding of how your website is performing. You can track the number of visitors, page views, and other important metrics to get an idea of how successful your efforts are.
Google Search Console (GSC) is an excellent free SEO tool that can track your site’s Google search engine data. Moz is another great paid tool that can measure multiple search engine metrics for your site.
Other SEO software tools to consider include Google Analytics and Wix Analytics.
They’ll help you closely monitor your website’s visibility in search engines, make data-driven decisions to optimize your SEO strategies, and provide valuable insights into keyword performance.
You’ll also be able to identify what works and what doesn’t for your website, which will help you fine-tune your SEO marketing strategy and make improvements that will help boost your rankings.
Features to Look For in an SEO Software Package
When you work extra hard to produce quality content for your audience, you want to ensure that it gains maximum exposure and draws visitors to your website.
SEO software can be a powerful online advertising tool to make this happen.
The right SEO software will help you analyze the effectiveness of your content in the best way possible, so that it surfaces higher and more frequently in search engines.
Below are some of the top key features you should look for when selecting an SEO software package:
- Rank tracking: Rank tracking is arguably the most critical feature in an SEO software.
Choose a software that offers accurate and up-to-date rank tracking across different search engines and locations. Semrush or AccuRanker are great choices. - Social media integration: Search engines will analyze various aspects of your social media activity to gauge your online authority and relevance.
Consider SEO social media marketing software like HubSpot and Hootsuite that will allow you to track social media mentions, analyze engagement metrics, and monitor social media performance alongside SEO efforts. - Banklink analysis: Backlinks are among the key drivers of search engine rankings, so it’s important to choose software that offers backlink analysis capabilities.
This includes monitoring your own backlinks, analyzing competitor backlinks, and identifying opportunities to acquire high-quality links. - Keyword research and analysis: A good SEO software package should offer robust keyword research and analysis tools that will reveal target keywords you can use to drive traffic organically.
Opt for SEO software with keyword research tools that can also reveal the monthly search volume of a particular keyword on Google, the SEO competition of the keyword, and the cost per click for the keyword on Google Adwords. - Site auditing: A great SEO software package should provide site auditing tools to identify technical issues that may affect your website’s performance in search engines.
This includes checking for broken links, duplicate content, crawlability issues, and other factors that impact SEO. - Competitor analysis: Choose software that allows you to analyze and compare your website’s performance against competitors.
This can include monitoring their rankings, backlinks, and overall SEO strategies to gain insights and identify areas for improvement.
With several options available on the market today, selecting the right SEO software for your website typically boils down to the one that offers the most features with the fewest limitations.
We recommend choosing an SEO tool that’s within your budget and won’t impose limitations (such as the number of keywords you can research and competitors you can analyze) that prevent you attaining maximum SEO optimization.
As long as you select an SEO tool that provides as much functionality as you need, it will serve as a valuable asset to your business’s online promotion efforts.
If your budget allows, you may even choose to subscribe to different SEO tools simultaneously, since they can each offer different insights.
Check out this detailed guide to top SEO tools and their features, including both paid and free versions.
The table below compares a selection of different SEO software packages based on their key features:
| SEO Software Package | Social Media Integration | Backlink Analysis | Site Auditing | Competitor Analysis |
| Semrush | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AccuRanker | No | No | Yes | No |
| Ahrefs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Moz Pro | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Search Console | No | No | No | No |
| Serpstat | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raven Tools | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SpyFu | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
SEO Software: The Digital Marketing Tool You Need to Outrank Your Competitors
From improving a website’s structure and content to tracking progress and analyzing results, the potential for success with SEO software is almost limitless.
It can lead to unprecedented levels of success and exposure in the world of digital marketing.
This is why businesses or digital marketers cannot afford to operate without solid knowledge in SEO software tools.
At OnDigitalMarketing, it’s our mission to educate aspiring entrepreneurs and digital marketers on the different ways to leverage social media, the internet, and analytics to grow their brands and successfully promote their products or services.
We provide learning materials that cover a multitude of digital marketing topics, including SEO learning.
If you’re just starting your journey to digital marketing, then our Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing and Social Media (written for an absolute beginner) is a perfect place to start.
It covers key topics in digital marketing, including how to produce high-quality content to rank for SEO. The book also comes with a free SEO PDF from Moz that’s ideal for all SEO beginners.
Check out our Digital Marketing Syllabus to see in detail all the classes we offer.
Bonus Tip: Incorporate high-quality images, videos, infographics, and other visual elements into your content to make it more visually appealing and engaging for your audience.