Do you have a website but aren't getting many visitors? You may be looking to improve your lead generation through organic traffic (traffic from search engines) without spending a fortune on Google ads. Therefore, you’ve decided to implement an organic marketing strategy for your site. But SEO is like baking - there’s a precise recipe to follow for it to work. In this article, we present the 10 essential tools that we consider indispensable for any business owner, regardless of their sector to enhance their SEO ranking.
The 10 best SEO tools to optimize your website's natural referencing
"I want Google to display my business when you search for a query (keyword) on Google."
Ranking is a strategic marketing challenge for companies of all sizes:
- Keyword analysis
- Content writing
- Structured data
- Position tracking
There are a vast number of tools available to improve your natural referencing. But if you had to choose only 10, which ones would you pick?
Our team has optimized this selection of tools to assist you. Our selected tools have been used and tested by our experts. Some of the tools are paid, while others are free. They all offer at least a free version that will allow you to try them out and see the benefits you can derive. Each tool has its own features which we summarize briefly, but if you want more in-depth details on each function or simply want to know how it works, you can refer to their user documentation.
1 - Why include SEO in your marketing strategy?
In the long run, an SEO strategy will save you money because SEO is indeed effective, but at what cost! The competition among advertisers is fierce, causing your short-term budget to skyrocket. Instead, you could invest in optimizing your domain.
Google, Yahoo, and Bing are search engines. Search engines are computer programs that find web pages for users based on their search queries. Why is it important to optimize for search engines (SEO for short)?
Many websites use SEO techniques to ensure their site ranks in the top search engine results. The importance of SEO lies in the fact that your site will be seen by new customers through the main results page of the search engine, encouraging potential customers to choose your business as their first option. It is also the best way to ensure that your website is visible without even having a dedicated marketing budget because visibility on search engines is free!
In short:
• Enjoy increased visibility and qualified traffic
• Generate more leads and increase your revenue
• Establish your leadership in your market
2 - Our selection of software to use by theme
2.1 Technical performance
(1) Website: Webflow
Everything starts with your website. Significant improvements can be made if you follow a few simple steps to ensure that your site is well optimized, such as hosting speed, reliability, the structure of each page, title tags, and meta descriptions – all of which are important for achieving solid results in search engines. No other service is better than Webflow when it comes to optimizing your site with a focus on SEO. Are you currently on WordPress or Wix? Check out our migration offers to Webflow.
(2) Technical analysis: Lighthouse chrome extension
With a single click, you will receive a comprehensive diagnosis of your site on four major themes: security, performance, SEO, and accessibility. You will also get free recommendations on how to improve your site, directly from Google. The Lighthouse is the perfect tool for your technical analysis.
(3) Analytics: Google Search Console (connected to your Universal Analytics)
If there were only one indispensable tool to help you optimize your Google ranking, what better option than Google itself? Google Search Console allows you to track detailed search impressions (even mobile sources), view rates, click rates, and even your position by keyword. Moreover, it’s free, which is fantastic! As a bonus, legend has it that Google favors sites that use and plug their solution...
(4) On-page diagnostics: Detailed SEO extension
This tool allows you to uncover the details and understand the entire structure of a site. You can use it to quickly analyze your competitors but also to audit your site. For example, the Export Image Alt Attribute feature lets you identify the images on your site that lack ALT data. Detailed SEO extension is the perfect plugin for a quick analysis.
(5) Schema Markup: Schema Markup Generator (JSON-LD) from MERKLE
It is well known that search engines like Google appreciate structured data (known as schema markup). Indeed, this helps them understand the information on your site more quickly. Validating your website's schema.org can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Fortunately, there’s a tool that simplifies this process: Schema Markup. The process is really easy: just enter your data, verify it in a few clicks, and then add it to your site. Whatever type of website you have, if you want to increase its authority in Google's search results, you should try this tool!
2.2 Keywords and position tracking
(6) All-in-one 360° tool: Semrush
In simple terms, Semrush is the online SEO tool that lets you know everything about your domain. Semrush is an essential tool for anyone looking to get ahead online.
Whether you are a marketing professional or a business owner working on a website, this tool allows you to explore your competitors' strategies, find the most effective keywords to optimize your content, and examine various aspects of SEO ranking. Since it allows you to monitor multiple websites from a single account, Semrush is one of the best tools that can help you improve your search engine results in just a few minutes each day! Just provide your URL and let Semrush crawl your site for users to easily know:
- Quality backlinks
- Domain authority
- Health of the website
- Keyword tracking
- SEO recommendations
- Conduct a competitive analysis
The list could go on, but I recommend at least trying the free version to get an idea.
(7) 360° Tool 2: Ryte
Just like SEMRUSH, the free version of Ryte offers even more potential. The software has a different interface but meets the same needs: to improve your SEO. The tool provides a complete SEO analysis and highlights areas for improvement, such as your site’s performance, accessibility, keyword strategy, and backlinks.
(8) Keyword tracking: Octopulse
It is essential to track your position on the keywords you want to rank for. Octopulse provides you with a simple and clear dashboard that allows you to track 500 keywords in search volume as well as your position relative to your competitors on those keywords.
2.3 Blogging and SEO: Content is king
Content, especially text (keywords), is one of the most important elements of your site. There are many things you can do with your text regarding SEO. For example, you can use web-specific language and ensure that you use the "keywords" count appropriately. You can also employ various writing techniques to make sure you use the words you want to be found. We'll explore these options in this final chapter.
(9) On-page performance wording: 1.fr
Paste the URL of the page you wish to analyze and improve. You will receive a score of up to 100 and recommendations for words to use to optimize your page's performance for organic search results. 1.fr also offers a list of words to use to improve your on-page SEO performance.
(10) Blog writing: Dokey (Formerly Contentmachine)
Blog writing has become an exact science. Understanding how to choose the best keywords, how to structure your content in your mind before putting it into text, or how to arrange sentences so they rank high on Google searches - all these things have been studied and refined.
Using a "content analysis" allows you to write an article with scientific precision and achieve immediate results in natural SEO by crafting your articles in a way that they rank well from the start. Dokey is the ideal tool for optimizing your content for SEO!
Conclusion of the SEO tool article
It is beneficial to start your natural referencing strategy by building your website on a solid foundation. Properly qualify your web data and then use a set of analysis tools to assess your status. At first, the list may be long, but here are my 3 tips:
- Choose quality SEO tools over quantity
- Analyze keyword search volumes and position yourself accordingly
- Do a little bit of SEO every day and let time do its work!
I did not discuss link and backlink strategy in detail in this article, but the next article on natural referencing (the link between backlinks and domain authority) will address this. If you want to be informed of its release, please enter your email on the right. It's free.
If you would like to learn more, I highly recommend The Moz Blog, which is an excellent source of information and advice for everything regarding natural referencing.
The SEO offer from Digidop
The goal of Digidop in digital marketing is to help small and medium-sized French businesses find new clients via the internet. We are a certified Webflow agency, which means we have the expertise to create and build a website optimized for your organic search objectives. Our SEO offering consists of two parts:
- Migrate or develop your website on/to Webflow with SEO structure optimization.
For example: Migrating a WordPress website to the Webflow website creation engine. Optimize SEO through coherent linking and the proper use of H1 / H2 / H3 tags, as well as using 301 redirects to bring as many of your old visitors to your new site.
- We offer a comprehensive content strategy that will help you optimize your website for search engines (SEO) and provide insights on your website traffic, along with monthly reports on all your objectives.
Our promise is simple - to increase your SEO rankings! If you have questions about SEO, analysis, or tool selection, and wish to schedule a free appointment with one of our experts, you can find all the details here.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Do customer reviews influence our SEO?
Google's goal is to provide the best possible experience for its users. Customer reviews are a form of social proof, meaning they are taken into consideration by Google to help it better understand the experiences of your business and how you might meet the needs of its users.
What is the best free website analytics tool?
Without a doubt, the Google Search Console. If you are a web developer, Google Search Console is your best friend. It will help you better understand issues on your website and how to resolve them. Similarly, it provides clear insights into what works best on your site regarding keywords or search results.
What’s the difference between SEA and SEO?
SEA is the term used to describe paid search traffic. You pay for your ads per click and refine your search engine optimization tactics by targeting online users' keyword searches.
SEO, or organic/natural search, is free traffic that consists of improving your ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). If you hire an agency, it may require a financial investment, but it will eventually pay off through increased traffic to your site.
What is the long-term value of natural SEO?
A good natural SEO strategy adds value to your domain name in the long term. If you wish to resell it, its position in Google will carry authority and generate traffic, preventing expenses for paid AdWords marketing.
SEO strategy: WordPress or Webflow?
We prefer to recommend the Webflow solution, which offers great freedom in SEO settings. WordPress also has many advantages due to its numerous plugins that can help you achieve results easily. However, we prefer using Webflow for the quality of its Amazon Web Services cloud hosting and the design power that will also provide an advantage in UX, resulting in longer average engagement and conversion times.
