With so many SEO tools and SEO guides around it’s hard to know where to begin.
But I’m about to show you.
And many are free.
But, first, let me get all melancholy.
With a tear in my eye, here’s the last of the Fast Track SEO Course series posts.
There’s been about 30 posts in total – certainly too many to count – and you should have enough to get out there and grab your slice of the Google action.
(There’s plenty more in the published version of this course – available for a fiver over at Amazon)
Essential SEO tools and the best SEO guides
In this post you are going to get yourself tooled up.
Here are the essential SEO tools and insispensable SEO guides.
Essential SEO tools
Crawls any website to reveal its meta titles, meta descriptions, URL lengths, use of H1 and H2 tags, word counts and much, much more besides.
Without this – or another web analytics tool – you are shooting in the dark.
Part of the AdWords suite this essential tool is slowly and quietly being reserved by Google for its advertisers only. “You can make money without doing evil”, indeed.
As they say on the BBC, other keyword tools are available. (Start here)
A robust set of link tools that lets you analyse and track any domain in granular detail. (Check out the review of two others here.)
Another keyword tool but one with a difference. It gives you insightful information on the keywords that are driving traffic to your site and also lets you find out information about your competitor’s paid and organic search keywords, rankings and traffic data.
Google now calls its tool the Search Console. It allows you to gain very useful insights into how the search engine sees your site.
Bing hasn’t seen the need to rebrand. But it does just about the same thing.
See the changing shape of searches across time and territories – and get some great content ideas for hitting that sweet spot too.
More content hitting sweet spot niceness from this fantastic content marketing and ideation tool.
Helps with rankings, competitor research, backlink analysis and content auditing. But should you be put into a flap by the flap of the Penguin’s wings it is its unnatural link detection and removal that you’ll love. Almost makes the whole tiresome process a pleasure.
And if you need more, look no further than this:
Never less than prolific Brian Dean (aka Backlinko) has compiled this wonderfully user-friendly guide to the best SEO tools out there.
Bookmark it right now.
Just use the filters to see tools that may help and the pithy reviews and screengrabs will enable you to make up your mind.
Awesome.
The best SEO guides
Look, over yonder: here come three wise men bearing gifts.
And a fourth trailing in their wake.
Accept these guides as gifts.
Take them with you to refer to in times of blind panic or sheer uncertainty.
They will comfort and protect you in your SEO quest.
It’s been a pleasure sharing this learning journey with you.
See you again at the top of Google.
Parting gift #1:
The perfect refresher guide to SEO: keep it close to hand and refer to it often. It contains 54 pages of advice from the best in the business and has been downloaded three million times. Click the link above below and make it three million and one.
Parting gift #2:
Brian Dean’s definitive guide to link building
Neil Patel, a man who knows more than a thing or two about building links himself, once said, “when it comes to link building, Brian Dean is the best in the business.”
Well, here the man they call Backlinko has curated everything he has written into an interactive odyssey in which all roads lead to link heaven.
Take your time over this one – there’s so much you can gain from it.
And handle with care: the advice is explosive.
Parting gift #3:
The greatest curated collection of SEO resources
The truth is there are so many articles about SEO to guide you.
But you haven’t got time to read them all – what you need is a way to sort the boss articles from the dross articles.
And that’s what you have here.
Select the area of SEO you need to know more about and read on, knowing you are reading articles that matter rather than articles that natter.
You still here?
Good. We’ve saved the best till last.
In my totally unbiassed opinion this is the most accessible SEO guide out there and it covers everything you need to know while showing you everything you need to do.
Truly indispensable.
Enough said!
You’ve got everything you need – now knock those SERPs for six.