Over the last 20+ Bambrick Media have used a vast array of tools to help us analise, design, publish and monitor SEO Campaigns for hundreds of clients. We’ve always sought out the best SEO tools for the job at hand, it is the most effective way to get the best results for our clients’ SEO campaigns. The majority of the tools we use we pay for, either as a subscription fee or a one off payment, over the years we have come across some excellent free SEO tools as well.
WHAT IS SEO?
Starting with the basics is always the best way to get people on board, on that – SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website via web pages from search engines. SEO specifically targets unpaid (organic) traffic, as opposed direct traffic or paid traffic. SEO is not one thing, it is in fact many things done regularly, over time.
How We Choose Which SEO Tool To Use
The tools we use at the SEO Agency are the best there are for the SEO process we need to work on at a particular stage of the SEO campaign. SEO campaigns are composed of a number of different disciplines that can be processed independently or in parallel. These processes have been refined over time to deliver the best results in the shortest amount of time, they are:
- Website Audit
- Keyword Research
- Local SEO
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO
- SEO Campaign Monitoring
Now let’s go through each list item and we’ll provide an overview of what the process is and the tools we use. For the purposes of this article, we can assume that you are familiar with Search Engines, that’s probably how you ended up reading this article this far, don’t stop!
Website Audit
WHAT AND WHY A WEBSITE AUDIT?
A website audit report allows us to check the current “health” of a website. Before we begin a SEO campaign we need to know a few things:
- What keywords is the website being ranked for currently?
- How much work do we need to do to fix anything that is broken?
- How much work do we need to do to achieve the goal we set?
By answering the few questions, we can then use the website audit report as a benchmark as the SEO campaign continues to grow and develop over time.
The Tools We Use To Generate A Website Audit Report
SEMRUSH
SEMrush has a suite of on page SEO tools that we use to improve online visibility by helping us discover all important marketing insights. When producing website audit reports the tools allow the Bambrick Media SEO marketers to:
- See what keywords a website is currently ranking for and their respective organic search volumes
- Anything broken or missing – 404s for missing pages, missing metadata, broken links etc
SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER
This allows us to generate a complete list of web pages on a website, allowing us to analyse the URL structures and all of the page loading speeds. Both are important ranking factors Google uses to rank websites.
A WEB BROWSER
A simple google search formatted as follows “site:www.bambrick.com.au/” informs us how Google currently indexes a website. Some businesses don’t need or want all of their web pages indexed for a number of reasons.
GTMETRIX
Now that we have the list of pages speeds we can view in more detail the slowest ones. GTMetrix provides us with detailed graphs and charts that illustrate exactly what happens as we webpage loads.Using this data we formulate a plan to improve page loading times.
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (GSC)
As Google SEO tools go, GSC is one of the best free SEO tools available. As a SEO audit tool it is invaluable, we can use it more to check indexing statuses, search visibility, what keywords it ranks for and so much more.
Keyword Research
WHAT IS SEO KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research is the process of finding and analysing the best search terms that people enter into search engines to find what they want. We use many tools for keyword research, for the purposes of this document we’ve shortlisted the best three.
THE TOOLS WE USE FOR KEYWORD RESEARCH
Moz
We found that Moz offers us access to the best proprietary metrics including Keyword Ranking Difficulty, Spam Score, Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA). These are the most highly correlated metrics with actual Google rankings available to any agency.
SEMRush
One of the many on page SEO tools that comes with a SEMRush subscription is a keyword research tool, not only the best keywords for our SEO campaigns but we can use a range of SEO analytics tools to see what other websites are ranking for.
Google Ads Keyword Research Tools
Despite its intended purpose, Google Ads keyword research tools are also some the best google SEO tools as it allows for to accurately get counts for the the numbers of searches (per month) for almost any keyword, almost anywhere in the world – countries, cities, suburbs.
Local SEO
WHAT IS LOCAL SEO
At a high-level Local SEO works like any other Google search. When someone searches for something, Google scans through its index to provide the best results for that person’s query. What makes Local SEO different is that Google uses a different set of ranking factors to rank the local search results.
THE LOCAL SEO TOOLS WE USE
SEMRush
As a first step in a local SEO campaign is to produce what’s referred to as a local report, the SEMRush has a SEO audit tool allowing us to look at the client’s current directory listings and highlight any errors and inconsistencies. After the report is presented to the client we will take steps to improve their local SEO rankings.
Bright Local
When it comes to building and tracking citations, this is the tool to use. They’ve developed an amazing online reputation & helped us grow our marketing agency. BrightLocal’s powerful tools make local marketing success simple – by allowing us to change clients details on just one dashboard as opposed to multiple directory accounts.
On Page SEO
WHAT IS ON PAGE SEO
On-page SEO is the practice of optimising individual web pages in order to rank higher and drive relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the page content as well as the HTML source code of a page – both of which can be optimised to improve rankings.
THE ON PAGE SEO TOOLS WE USE
Moz
Moz has an excellent On-Page Grader to help us understand how well optimized a web page is for a target keyword and where we can make improvements. This is also a great tool to create one-off reports for web pages for clients. Another benefit is that we can see how a competitor’s page is doing for the same keyword.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog is deservedly praised for being an excellent, on-site SEO tool. We can scan a whole website, regardless of its size to review important details of web pages – such as title lengths, metadata, page loading errors and page loading speeds. Useful details we need to refine an SEO campaign.
Off Page SEO
WHAT IS OFF PAGE SEO
Off-page SEO (sometimes referred to as “off-site SEO”) refers to an number of activities taken outside of a client’s own website that impacts their rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). This can be backlinks, social media mentions, directory listings – essentially anything on another website.
THE TOOLS WE USE OFF PAGE SEO
Google Search
Obvious to include Google granted, but Google indexes entire websites. Translation: Google has a list of every place a website is ranked and could potentially ever want to get your site linked in. Another free, easy to use limitless Off page SEO resource form Google.
Moz
We like to start an SEO campaign with a detailed link profile analysis and Moz link explorer does just this – very well. It gives us insights into a website’s authority and rankings. Link Explorer measures backlinks, most valuable pages, linking domains, and anchor text so we can build high-quality links to better compete online.
SEO Campaign Monitoring
THE IMPORTANCE SEO CAMPAIGN MONITORING
Monitoring SEO campaigns is vital to our agency since this helps clients determine which elements in their SEO strategies are working. If a campaign is underperforming we make the appropriate changes to get it back on track. SEO monitoring is an ongoing process.
THE TOOLS WE USE FOR MONITORING SEO CAMPAIGNS
Google Analytics (GA)
In our opinion one of the best google SEO tools, it provides another set of free SEO tools that allows us to analyse in-depth details about website visitors. It provides valuable insights that can help you to shape the success strategy of your business, not an easy SEO tool to use unless you put the time and effort in to learn.
Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is a set of free SEO tools from Google that helps us monitor, maintain and troubleshoot a website’s presence in Google Search results. We Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on a website. As well as providing another way to view sites that link to our client’s website.
Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) Cloud
When it comes to tracking keyword rankings key against a location this is the best tool on the market. Founded way back in 2002, AWR Cloud is a great keyword rank tracking tool that helps Bambrick Media get the most insights out of ranking data.