1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is to the online marketer like air is to the human being. You can’t live without it.

If you’re not yet using Google Analytics, I recommend that you begin doing so as soon as possible. There is no other data source that provides high quality and detailed information like Google Analytics. In a Google-dominated era, it’s what we have to work with. Most of the other data tools simply piggyback on Google’s data using the API.

Assessment

You can’t ignore Google Analytics. Virtually all the actionable and important data about site visitors, traffic, etc., comes from this critical source.

More Information

• Check out a discussion of how Analytics helps to drive high converting search traffic.
• Learn a few Google Analytics reports that can help generate organic traffic.

2. Google Search Console

If Google Analytics is the air that an online marketer breathes, then Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) is the food that the online marketer eats.

The word “webmaster” in the former name is a bit of a misnomer. The tool is for more than webmasters. It’s for SEOs. The very focus of the tool has to do with “search” and “optimization.”

Some of GSC’s best insights come from just glancing at the dashboard. SEOs and marketers need to keep up with the dashboard on a regular basis.

Google Search Console provides some of the same data as Analytics, but in a simpler and more straightforward way. There’s less tweaking you can do with the numbers, but easier access to them.

One of the most important datasets is the link data. (Search Traffic → Links to Your Site → More). Staying up to date with toxic backlinks is one of the most important defensive actions you can take.

If you ever have to deal with the dreaded manual penalty, or are routinely disavowing stubborn spam links, you will become very familiar with Google Search Console.

Assessment

Clearly, Google Search Console is indispensable. You need the data, you need the tools, and you need the power. I wish that more SEOs saw the value of the tool and used it more.

More Information

Check out a tutorial on using Google Webmaster Tools.

3. Keyword Planner

Since the Keyword Tool has been replaced, Keyword Planner is the premier way of researching keywords.

You can find Keyword Planner by logging in to Google Ads → Tools → Keyword Planner.

Keyword Planner is the place to start when you’re doing any keyword research. Here are a few of the things you can do:

The Keyword Planner provides much of the functionality of the erstwhile Keyword Tool. The focus, however, is on Google Ads generation rather than simple organic keyword research.

Assessment

As the premier keyword research tool, you can’t expect to do much real keyword research without using Keyword Planner. You should use it, and become familiar with it.

More information:

You can check out an in depth discussion of the tool in my Keyword Planner tutorial.

8. Page Speed insight tool

As page speed is now a ranking factor, it’s critical for you to analyze website speed both on desktop and mobile. This free tool from Google is perfect companion for you.

One important thing; it shows the speed score instead of load time.

• It’s easy to use
• Shows speed score for the desktop
• Shows speed score for mobile

There are suggestions at the end which will help you to take action and improve the load time.

Check out Google Page Speed tool

Bonus:

ThinkwithGoogle test my site is a perfect companion for mobile site testing.

Head over to test my site

7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the best software to check the basic onsite issues by crawling website’s links, images, CSS, script, and apps. It lets you quickly audit and review a medium to a large size website.

The main benefit is to export important onsite SEO basics such as title, Meta description, headings, etc., to an Excel file.

A brief overview:

• Page Title: Missing, Duplicate, over 70 characters, below 30 characters, same as H1.
• Meta Description: Missing, duplicate, over 156 characters, below 70 characters.
• H1 & H2: Missing, duplicate, over 70 characters.
• Images: All URIs with the image link & all images from a given page. Images over 100kb, missing alt text, alt text over 100 characters.
• Redirects: (3XX, permanent or temporary) and more.

Download Screamingfrog Spider

2. Answer the Public

This is a very useful SEO tool. With the help of this SEO tool, you can find new keywords. In this, if you search any word, you will find many types of keywords related to that word. These keywords can be of many types such as: –

Questions

Prepositions

Comparisons

Alphabetical

Related

You can sort some important and similar keywords and include them in your article.

9. Google Trends

click here to Google Trends

As the name suggests, the tool lets you see what’s trending based on country and category. You can use it to gain insights on many things.

This can highly benefit you from selecting a topic, a keyword, gauge how popular a certain product is to how well your competitor is doing.

This could be a both blogging and SEO tools. Since writing about hot topics would attract more visitors. While targeting certain keywords can help step up your SEO game.