8 Essential Tools We Use for Our SEO Campaigns

Effective SEO requires the right tools to monitor, analyse, and optimise your site for search engines. At Platform81, we rely on a range of powerful SEO tools to ensure our clients’ websites are performing at their best. 

From tracking keyword rankings to identifying technical issues, these tools help us stay ahead of the curve and make data-driven decisions that lead to better search engine performance. In this article, we’ll explore eight essential tools we use in our SEO campaigns and why we love them.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool provided by Google that helps website owners, SEO professionals, and marketers monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.

Key features include performance reports that track clicks, impressions, and keyword rankings, as well as an index coverage report that identifies issues with how Google crawls and indexes websites. It also offers tools for URL inspection, mobile usability analysis, and Core Web Vitals, helping us address technical issues and improve user experience. 

Why we love it

• The data comes straight from Google
• It’s without a doubt the best information we can get about queries a site is ranking for
• When you know where to look, you can find valuable insights into how to optimise web pages further

Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ key features include a powerful Site Explorer, which allows us to analyse a website’s organic traffic and backlink profile, and Keyword Explorer, which offers in-depth keyword research, providing search volumes, keyword difficulty, and click potential. 

Content Explorer helps discover high-performing content in your site’s industry, while the Rank Tracker monitors keyword rankings over time. Additionally, Site Audit identifies technical SEO issues, such as broken links, crawl errors, or performance problems, helping us optimise your site.

Ahrefs also provides detailed competitor analysis, allowing you to benchmark your site’s performance against others in your industry. 

Why we love it

• It’s one of the few tools that allows us to get detailed search data about competitor websites.
• It boasts a database of around 30 billion keywords, offering extensive keyword research capabilities.
• Ahrefs shows the top 100 ranking pages for any query, along with detailed data for each page, allowing us to further improve our clients’ pages through thorough SEO on-page analysis.

Moz

Moz is a well-established SEO toolset that uses various features to enhance their website’s search engine visibility and optimise their digital marketing efforts. Its Keyword Explorer offers detailed keyword analysis, including search volume, difficulty, and opportunity scores to help us target the right terms. 

But where MOZ shines is Link Analysis: Moz’s Link Explorer provides insights into your backlink profile and competitor link analysis and uses their proprietary Domain Authority metrics to benchmark your site’s authority compared to competitors. Moz has spent considerable time creating educational resources for the SEO community which makes it a staple in our toolkit.

Why we love it:

• Moz’s Keyword Explorer provides valuable insights with metrics like difficulty and opportunity scores, making keyword targeting more strategic.
• Domain Authority is a trusted metric that helps us assess how competitive a site is in its niche.
• Moz’s Link Explorer is excellent for analysing backlinks and understanding how competitors are performing in terms of link-building strategies.

Accuranker

Keyword rankings are essentially the number one SEO KPI. Increasing a site’s ranking is the very first thing that needs to happen before your site can become more visible in search. AccuRanker is a specialised tool designed to track keyword rankings with precision and speed. It provides real-time data on how your keywords perform, allowing us to track daily movements and monitor ranking progress. 

This tool can also integrate seamlessly with Google Analytics and Search Console, giving a holistic view of your SEO performance. 

The Competitor Analysis feature helps us compare rankings against your top competitors, and the platform’s ability to segment and filter keyword data makes it easy to focus on specific areas. Lastly, SERP History shows how search engine results pages have changed over time, offering invaluable insights into ranking trends as Google updates their understanding of query intent.

Why we love it:

• AccuRanker’s speed and accuracy are unmatched when it comes to tracking keyword positions in real-time.
• The tool provides detailed competitor insights, helping us keep track of how competitors are performing on the same keywords.
• Integration with Google Analytics and Search Console allows for easy data consolidation and a complete view of SEO performance.
• The SERP History feature offers invaluable insights into ranking changes over time, which is great for analysing long-term trends and patterns.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal is a powerful tool designed specifically for local SEO, helping businesses manage and optimise their online presence in local search results. Its Rank Tracker monitors keyword rankings across Google Maps and Bing Maps providing insights on how your business performs at a local level.

Citation Building and Monitoring is another standout feature, ensuring your business’s information is consistently listed across various directories, which is crucial for local SEO. The Google My Business (GMB) Audit tool helps optimise your GMB profile, enhancing visibility in local search. 

Additionally, BrightLocal offers Review Management, allowing us to monitor and respond to online reviews effectively. It’s an all-in-one platform for improving local search visibility!

Why we love it:

• BrightLocal’s local rank tracking gives us precise data on how businesses are performing in Google’s local pack results and across different locations.
• The Citation Monitoring feature ensures business listings are accurate and consistent, which is vital for local SEO success.
• Managing lots of reviews can be challenging so, the Review Management system allows us to stay on top of customer feedback and build a strong online reputation.

Sitebulb

Sitebulb is a website auditing tool designed to help us identify and fix technical SEO issues that may affect rankings. It offers detailed site crawl reports that highlight issues like broken links, missing tags, duplicate content, and page speed problems. 

Sitebulb’s visual reports make it easy to understand complex data, providing actionable insights to improve a site’s technical performance. The tool also features Structured Data Validation, allowing SEOs to check and improve your schema markup for better visibility in search results. 

Mobile and Desktop Analysis ensure your site performs well across devices, and Crawl Comparison allows us to track improvements over time. 

Why we love it:

• It allows us to perform in-depth technical SEO audits and provide detailed reports on on-site health, highlighting issues that may otherwise go unnoticed.
• The tool’s visual reports make it easy to interpret complex crawl data, offering actionable recommendations for improving SEO.
• Structured Data Validation ensures your schema markup is optimised for better search engine visibility.
• The Crawl Comparison feature allows us to track the progress of SEO fixes and see how a website improves over time.
• The tool can mimic GoogleBot and show us exactly how Google sees your site, wich helps us tremendously debug technical issues.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog allows us SEOS to crawl websites efficiently, and identify issues such as broken links, duplicate content, missing metadata, and redirect chains. With its ability to extract key data points and audit common SEO elements, Screaming Frog allows us to generate comprehensive reports on a site’s health. 

The tool also offers XML Sitemap Generation, Redirect Auditing, and Structured Data Validation, helping ensure your site is optimised for search engine crawlers. Integration with Google Analytics and Google Search Console provides additional insights on user behaviour and search visibility. Screaming Frog is highly customisable, making it an essential tool for diagnosing technical SEO issues and enhancing website performance.

Why we love it:

• Screaming Frog’s fast and efficient crawling helps us identify SEO issues like broken links and missing metadata quickly.
• The tool’s integration with Google Analytics and Search Console adds valuable data, helping to cross-check site performance and user behaviour.
• XML Sitemap Generation and Redirect Auditing make it easy to ensure a site is set up correctly for search engines to crawl and index.
• Structured Data Validation ensures your schema markup is correctly implemented, improving search engine visibility and SERP features.

Page Speed Insights

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a tool designed to analyse the performance of your website and provide insights on how to improve its loading speed, both on desktop and mobile. It measures Core Web Vitals, including metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which directly affect user experience and search rankings. 

PageSpeed Insights also provides recommendations for performance improvements, such as image optimisation, reducing JavaScript execution time, and leveraging browser caching. As these metrics come directly from Google, the tool is crucial for SEOs to identify and resolve speed issues that can negatively impact rankings and user satisfaction.

Why we love it:

• PageSpeed Insights’ Core Web Vitals analysis helps us identify critical performance issues that affect user experience and SEO rankings.
• It provides actionable steps for improving page load times, especially on mobile.
• Its simple scoring system makes it easy to prioritise speed improvements and see the impact of changes.
• Mobile and desktop analysis ensures that the website performs well across all devices, which is vital for SEO success and user engagement.

Successful SEO campaigns rely not just on expertise but also on the right tools to provide valuable insights, track performance, and uncover opportunities for improvement. With our expertise and the power of these cutting-edge tools, we can optimise your website, boost your search rankings, and ensure you stay ahead of your competition.

Partner with us, and we’ll use the best resources in the industry to achieve your business goals and grow your online presence. Contact our friendly team today and let us take your SEO to the next level.