Announcing the Top Rated SEO Tools for 2019

TrustRadius Top Rated

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) tools help users grow organic traffic on their website, social profiles, or mobile application by increasing the site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). A few ways SEO teams can boost the ranking of specific webpages or mobile apps is to (1) feature original, relevant, and interesting content, (2) adjust site architecture to make it more intuitive and easy for search engine crawlers to find, and (3) increase external links (or backlinks) to their site. SEO tools help users track and measure SEO performance with features such as keyword analysis, backlink management, technical site audits, site ranking tracking, and traffic analytics and reports. Some products offer the ability to measure additional metrics such as share of voice and social media presence (e.g. likes, shares, and mentions) within their industry’s market.

Many SEO professionals and specialists have multiple tools in their SEO arsenals that range from free or plugin products to enterprise level platforms. While some may compete directly, many of the tools listed below are used in conjunction with one another to help SEO teams understand the complete picture of how their website, social profiles, or mobile application is performing in terms of PPC and organic search traffic.

Here are the winners:

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a free search engine crawler tool offered by a UK based search marketing agency and available via desktop application. This product enables users to crawl websites in order to find broken links, identify redirect loops and duplicate content, conduct technical site audits, analyze page metadata, and assess internal linking and site structure. Screaming Frog also integrates with Google Analytics, a popular free web analytics tool.  Reviewers emphasize that Screaming Frog is designed especially well for running site audits and can quickly identify broken links and redirect loops on user’s websites.

“Screaming Frog is the best tool to crawl any site, anywhere, hands down. We use it for all of our SEO auditing purposes. We also use it to quality check new builds in both staging and live environments, some behind password restrictions and other various logins. Even our project management team has found use with it to quickly check changes across multiple pages instead of going to each page one by one.”

– Anthony Daronzio | SEO Director | Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications (Accenture)

[easy-tweet tweet=”Screaming Frog is the best tool to crawl any site, anywhere, hands down.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Conductor Searchlight

Conductor Searchlight is an SEO and content marketing platform that enables users to track their site’s SEO performance against competitors, monitor keyword rankings, and gain insights about what content is performing best on their site. It includes features such as keyword analysis, competitor analysis, site audits, content marketing performance tracking, SEO reporting and analytics, and the ability to discover what terms your target audience are currently searching for with Conductor’s database of global search keywords. A large portion (46%) of Conductor users on TrustRadius are from mid-sized businesses. Reviewers highlight the user-friendly UI, customer support, and clear reporting as strengths of Conductor Searchlight.

“Conductor support gets a perfect 10/10. First, when first signing up for Conductor they will have a real person take you through as much training as you need. Second, they assign an employee to check on your brand and assist you on a weekly basis. This is so helpful because they bring little things to my attention that I might’ve missed. Lastly, everyone I have interacted with at Conductor has been as kind and as helpful as they possibly could.”

– Calton Montoya | Web Content and Development Specialist | Zurn Industries, LLC

[easy-tweet tweet=”Conductor support gets a perfect 10/10.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Ahrefs

Ahrefs Site Explorer is an SEO tool that specializes in providing users with in-depth competitive analysis for key metrics such as organic traffic growth and number of backlinks. This product enables users to investigate which keywords their competitors are ranking for, assess the quality of their competitors’ backlink profile, and find out whether other vendors are engaging in paid search advertising. Ahrefs users are primarily from small (47%) or mid-sized (39%) businesses. According to reviewers on TrustRadius, Ahrefs has a wealth of keyword and link data that yields high quality keyword searches and backlink reporting.

“Ahrefs is my favorite SEO tool I have used. I have worked at SEO agencies and used all kinds of tools but Ahrefs has stood out to me as the best. The overall link data that you can see is top of the line. Seeing every link your client has and their competitors is important for strategy. It shows detailed keywords and rankings as well.”

– Jordan Comstock | Digital Marketing Specialist | busybusy

[easy-tweet tweet=”Ahrefs is my favorite SEO tool I have used.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free web monitoring and analysis tool that enables users to gauge their site’s performance in terms of search engine optimization on Google. This tools helps users to identify indexing problems on their website, view Google search traffic data, make sure that Google is able to crawl their site, view their site’s backlink profile, and troubleshoot for other search features such as mobile usability. Google Search Console reviewers consistently reference the value of the tool in terms of being able to identify indexing issues on their site, measure sitemap functionality, and gain organic search insight compared to the cost of the tool (it’s free!).

“Google is the dominant search engine so it’s a dead-given that you want to be using their platform for optimizing and managing your website presence on Google. No other platform compares to Google Search Console when it comes to accessing raw data on how google is viewing your site and identifying opportunities to optimize site structure and content to increase traffic and rank.”

– Nick Kretz | VP Growth, Head of SEO | Xivic, Inc.

[easy-tweet tweet=”No other platform compares to Google Search Console” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

SEMRush

SEMRush is a search engine marketing platform that provides users with insights about their site’s organic traffic, keyword rankings, social media presence, content performance, and backlink profile. It includes features such as keyword tracking & analysis, organic traffic and PPC search growth, social profile monitoring, site audits, backlink audits, SEO content templates, gap analysis, and competitor domain-to-domain analysis. Almost half of SEMRush users (48%) on TrustRadius are from small businesses. Reviewers identify in-depth competitive analysis, keyword research, and site auditing as three things that SEMRush does particularly well.

“The ‘Site Audit’ tool lists out the number of errors, warnings, and notices on your website or blog page and provides instructions on how to fix these errors and why it is important to fix them. By working through this list, our website score has increased by 11% in the past week. We have increased the number of our healthy pages, increased crawlability, and overall increased our searchability.”

– Whitney Slothower | Marketing Coordinator | Stego Industries, LLC

[easy-tweet tweet=”SEMRush: By working through this list, our website score has increased by 11% in the past week.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

SpyFu

SpyFu is a search marketing product that enables users to compare their own search traffic growth against that of their competitors. It offers a wide range of competitive analysis and keyword analysis tools such as monitoring competitors’ PPC and organic search traffic, keyword grouping, keyword ranking comparison, and smart keyword recommendations. SpyFu also provides their users with a set amount, depending on plan level, of domain lead contact information and ‘top lists’ of domains that spend the most on Google Adwords and have the highest organic traffic. About 50% of SpyFu users on TrustRadius are from small businesses. Reviewers consistently highlight how easy it is to gain insights about what their competitors are doing in terms of SEO and SEM (e.g. who spends more on Google Adwords, who’s ranking for specific keywords) with SpyFu.

“SpyFu is a great tool to get an overview of your competitors’ keywords they are ranking for, estimated ad spend on Google Adwords, samples of their ad copy and allows you create projects to help you track your SEO and marketing efforts.”

– Lee’Ann Burgess | Founder | Social Vibe Marketing, Inc.

[easy-tweet tweet=”SpyFu: Allows you create projects to help you track your SEO and marketing efforts.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins offers a set of tools designed to help WordPress users optimize their website’s content so that it can be more easily found by search engines like Google and Bing. Yoast gives WordPress users the ability to control things like site breadcrumbs & target keywords and provides title and meta description templates for content. Yoast also includes features such as content analysis tools, readability analysis, and an integration with Google Search Console. A large portion (48%) of Yoast users on TrustRadius are from small businesses. Reviewers note that Yoast is one of the best tools for WordPress users to create content that will easily be picked up by search engine crawlers, preview social posts, and make sure keyword phrases are being fully utilized within a piece of content.

“The Yoast Plugin is the go-to SEO app for any WordPress website. As a blogger I have a self-hosted WordPress site, Yoast has been instrumental in getting my pages to rank. It’s like an SEO checklist at your fingertips and the fact that there is a free version is amazing! I teach marketing classes and actually tell the business owners and bloggers in my classes to make sure they use this app.”

– Rachel Hensley | Independent Business Owner | Miami County Live

[easy-tweet tweet=”The Yoast Plugin is the go-to SEO app for any WordPress website.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free component of the Google search engine that surfaces data about the most searched queries. This tools allows users to visualize search data for a specific phrase or keyword and segment this data using various filters such as geographic region, time frame, search category, and type of web search. Google Trends also provides users with insights about what the latest trends are and also gives a more historical views of search popularity. Many reviewers comment that Google Trends does a great job of tracking interest in a specific topic over time, which can provide insights about how seasonality and geographic region may influence organic traffic for businesses within a given industry.

“We really love using Google Trends for helping our clients in the digital space, both in terms of SEO and paid media strategies. It helps us get a better feel for the landscape of different industries online, the demand for products & services, the competition in those spaces, the seasonality that occurs, and how our strategies fit into all of those things.”

– Austin Voigt | Paid Media Manager | Augurian

[easy-tweet tweet=”We really love using Google Trends for helping our clients in the digital space.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

BrightEdge

BrightEdge is an SEO and content marketing platform that enables users to weave their content, local, global, mobile, and social SEO strategies together and measure organic traffic and searchability performance across these channels. It includes features such as competitive analysis, backlink management, SEO recommendations, keyword research, forecasts of on-site traffic impact for content publication, and share-of-voice reports. A large portion (46%) of BrightEdge users on TrustRadius are from mid-sized businesses. According to reviewers, the level of customer care and ability to conduct in-depth keyword tracking are two of BrightEdge’s strengths.

“Keyword tracking is taken to the next level. Typically keyword tracking tools show the data, your current rank, and other general information. With BrightEdge, you get all of that plus keyword intent overtime and a benchmark of where your competitors are at.”

– Justina Logozzo | Part-time Lecturer | Northeastern University

[easy-tweet tweet=”BrightEdge: Keyword tracking is taken to the next level.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Moz

Moz is an SEO platform that provides users with a set of tools to help them gauge the overall health of their website by tracking key metrics, conducting site audits, and identifying new linking opportunities. The MozPro platform includes features such as keyword research, site audits and crawls, backlink research, site ranking tracking, and a free SEO toolbar that allows users to see link metrics, find keywords on pages, expose page elements, and view webpage and domain authority scores. Reviewers on TrustRadius note that the Moz community forum, keyword rank tracker, and crawler engine are three benefits of using this product.

“MOZ does a really good job at creating an open, no judgement community forum where ideas and concerns can be freely expressed without ridicule or embarrassment. Whether you think you are a beginner or an expert, you are welcome to speak your mind and ask your questions. Their free articles, white papers, vlogs, etc are all really well done resources for any SEO professional.”

– Verified User | Director in Marketing | Education Management Company

[easy-tweet tweet=”MOZ does a really good job at creating an open, no judgement community forum.” user=”trustradius” template=”qlite”]

Congratulations to the winners of the Top Rated SEO Tools Award!

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2019 Top Rated SEO Tools list must have been in the top tier of their category TrustMap as of January 15th, 2019. To qualify for the SEO Tools Top Rated Award, products must have at least 10 reviews written within the past year, a TRScore of at least 7.5 out of 10, and must receive at least 1.5% of the traffic in their category.  Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the TrustMap based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about TrustMaps and Top Rated methodology, check out this page.