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We know the importance of search engine optimization strategies in a content marketing plan . 80% of people do research online before making a purchase, and these numbers will continue to grow as time goes on.
The good news is that today there are rich people database package hundreds, maybe thousands of SEO tools (both free and paid) to work on the positioning of your website, especially when your page is the gateway for your leads.
But we don't want to give you an endless list of crawl pages, but rather, help you understand what types of tools you should use depending on the objective you want to achieve and what phase of your SEO project you are in.
If you're just starting out, you might try a unifying platform that combines several features, but if you're interested in focusing on backlink building or your content, you'll need to consider other options. Below are four categories to help you choose where to start.
1. The Google Suite
When it comes to SEO, it's all about Google, so the main tools to use to improve your positioning are, precisely, Google developments. We are talking about:
Google Analytics: This is the mecca of SEO, essential for analyzing and understanding the performance of your website. Analytics presents you with all the criteria related to your website traffic: demographic data, main traffic sources, conversion reports and campaign analysis. This tool - free - can help you understand your traffic sources and the pages with the most interaction . You can also create dynamic reports by date and detect trends within your website. It also offers us the possibility of measuring the page loading time, a key factor to take into account to have a page optimized for search engines.
Google Trends: Google Trends is used to find the topics that are being written and read about in the country you choose. The most active searches give you a clear idea of where to direct your content according to the geographic area you want to target. We know that Content Marketing is important to improve your SEO, and to define this strategy it is essential to understand the searches that are carried out in your region, in order to be present from the first moment.
Google Adwords. It works for searching for keywords, which are essential for the positioning of the website. Unlike other ADS platforms such as Facebook, the Adwords interface is very specialized.
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2. Link building tools
In an SEO strategy, it is very important to build quality backlinks that direct traffic from other websites to yours. You can use tools to see what new links you have, how many backlinks each page has, how many have been lost, and therefore draw up a strategy to recover them.
Some of the best ones are Webmasters Tools or Search Control , which is a Google extension to remove negative backlinks from your website; Ahrefs to see how the competition builds its links; Open Site Explorer helps you analyze your own and your competitors' backlinks through campaigns.
Let's debunk the myth of not linking to other websites. Remember: your mission is to help your prospect, and the more information you can give them, the better the user experience. Just don't forget that every time you send a user away from your website, do it in a new tab and not in the same one, so they can have the chance to continue exploring within your website if they want to.
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3. Audit tools
Automated evaluation of your page is essential to improve certain SEO elements that are not optimal. For example, you can use Page Speed Insight to detect how fast your website is and if the loading speed is not optimal, take appropriate corrective action.
An audit is not complete without knowing the broken links that need to be fixed. Broken Link Checker finds them for you, and the free version can analyze up to 2,000 pages. There are also audit tools that combine the functions of others, such as Screaming Frog, which covers all aspects of SEO and guides you through fixing them one by one in a simple way. It is a downloadable tool that works from your desktop.
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4. Content tools
Search engines are very strict with duplicate content policies. If someone copies your content and posts it as their own, you are not only a victim of plagiarism, but you can also be penalized by Google. To identify if other portals have copied your content, you can use the free version of Copyscape to analyze your site.
The paid version has an added benefit, it allows you to scan the content your writers produce to make sure it is completely original, not copied from other sites or subject to search engine penalties. It's a very simple tool that can save you a lot of headaches. Other apps like Similar Web can be used to analyze competitors' sites and see how much traffic they are increasing.