Even those who have the most rudimentary understanding of SEO know that getting a site to the first page (let alone position one) is an immensely challenging task.

There is a lot that goes into researching, crafting and optimizing an SEO strategy. However, given that the majority of marketers claim that organic search is their highest ROI marketing channel, it is critical for retailers to overcome the complexities and challenges and learn to master this discipline.

Fortunately, in today’s digital marketing landscape, retailers have a panoply of different SEO tools at their fingertips, thereby easily revealing tons of optimization opportunities.

Harvesting the insights that such tools offer is critical for competing in the hyper-competitive SERPs. This is a fact. The question is: Which SEO tools are essential to earning better rankings?

To help answer that question, today, we will cover seven of the most influential and informative SEO platforms on the market.

Ready to enhance your SEO strategy? Read on.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the single most popular SEO tools available, and for good reasons.

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As it stands, Ahrefs is the second best site crawler the web has to offer, coming in right after Google. The platform’s Site Audit tool helps users gain a comprehensive understanding of existing optimization opportunities related to the site’s structure, title tags, descriptions, content length, backlink profiles and practically anything else imaginable.

Additionally, sellers can utilize Ahrefs as a competitive analysis tool, uncovering the competition’s backlinks, thereby giving users a starting point for building up their own profile.

Retailers can also leverage the tool in the same way they would a platform like BuzzSumo, finding the most linked content within a niche. This information gives retailers the insights necessary to enhance their eCommerce content marketing strategy and boost their SERP rankings.

Similarly, Ahrefs can also be leveraged as a keyword research tool, enabling users to uncover keyword opportunities, establish the difficulty for rankings for specific terms and phrases and finding related keywords that also rank for target phrases.

Taken in its totality, Ahrefs is one of the most comprehensive and insightful SEO tools available to digital marketers today.

SEMrush

Another top-rated SEO tool that can help merchants increase their rankings is SEMrush.

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SEMrush, while another extensive SEO tool, specializes in three key areas:

  • Keyword research
  • Competitor analysis
  • Google Ads optimization

Using SEMrush, retailers can pinpoint trends that are occurring within their niche, audit on-page SEO efforts and optimize those pages for enhanced performance.

Moreover, SEMrush features a robust keyword research tool that helps sellers uncover the words and phrases competitors are utilizing and how well they are ranking in the SERPs for those terms. Additionally, merchants can see how much traffic their rivals earn from different devices (i.e., desktop and mobile) for various keywords.

Speaking to the Google Ads optimization portion of the platform, retailers can dive into the competition’s advertising strategies, analyzing their PPC spend and the amount of traffic earned through their paid search efforts. Additionally, SEMrush users can find out the exact search terms on which their promotional rivals are bidding, how the competition’s tactics change throughout the seasons and tons of other valuable insights.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg for what SEMrush is capable of doing. Because of the tool’s deep and illuminating insights into the various aspects of a competitor’s marketing strategy (which also includes social media and content), SEMrush has earned a reputation as one of the best SEO tools in the industry.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

When it comes to auditing an eCommerce website, few tools are as powerful and fast as Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

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Using this tool, merchants merely enter the URL for their site and Screaming Frog will start its crawl, uncovering broken links, duplicate content issues, missing tags and tons of other optimization opportunities.

Screaming Frog’s comprehensive crawling abilities go over a site with a fine-toothed comb, finding problems with HTTPS protocol, response codes (such as 404, 3XX and others), meta descriptions, H tags, images and all other elements of a site.

Because of the incredibly detailed nature of Screaming Frog, eCommerce websites that feature an extensive catalog and a staggering number of pages can find tremendous value in the insights that this SEO tool lays out in an easy-to-read manner.

SpyFu

SpyFu is a powerful competitive research platform that allows merchants to type in any URL and see every keyword that site has bid on through Google Ads, the organic terms for which the destination ranks, how many monthly clicks the site generates for specific phrases, how these rankings have fluctuated over time and a plethora of other valuable details.

Moreover, users can easily view essential keyword data, such as the number of times a term is searched per month, as well as the difficulty for ranking for that word.

SpyFu also features tons of other great SEO elements, such as backlink profile analyzers and outreach tools, features for uncovering top-performing content within a niche, SEO reporting components and tons of other valuable ingredients.

LongTail Pro

Keyword optimization has changed over the years. Where short-head words used to reign, long-tail terms now hold power. However, finding the right long-tail keywords can be quite challenging.

LongTail Pro solves that problem.

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LongTail Pro is a keyword research tool dedicated to finding lengthier, less competitive keywords that convert.

Given that long-tail phrases are more specific and more clearly display a searcher’s intent, LongTail Pro is all about driving sales.

Through this tool, retailers can cross-reference rank value and profitability, thereby allowing merchants to select the most advantageous and high-converting terms for their pages, thus significantly enhancing eCommerce SEO content marketing efforts.

Additionally, LongTail Pro takes the keywords that are used by a seller’s competitors, thereby adding another layer of value to the tool. 

Using this tool, retailers can access:

  • Keyword suggestions based on terms entered
  • Keyword competitive analysis
  • Keyword metrics to determine which are most useful for a seller’s efforts
  • Rank data reports

Moz

Another widely acclaimed SEO tool that can help sellers increase their rankings is Moz.

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Moz provides retailers with a wide array of tools such as website auditing features, backlink analysis functionality, keyword research components, rank tracking and so much more. Additionally, Moz provides merchants with tons of optimization insights to help content increase visibility in the SERPs.

Moz can also help sellers with their off-page optimization efforts, uncovering link building opportunities that aid in increasing a site’s authority and rankings.

Majestic

A favorite SEO tool among industry experts is Majestic (formerly known as Majestic SEO).

Majestic is an SEO platform that specializes in link analysis. Unlike some of the other tools featured on this list, Majestic does not aim to be a comprehensive SEO system. Instead, it provides in-depth, detailed information on backlinks.

Majestic’s primary features include a Site Explorer and a component called The Majestic Million.

Using the platform’s Site Explorer, retailers can get a high-level overview of their website’s link profile. Through this analyzation process, Majestic will provide retailers with an extensive list of backlink-related metrics, including (but not limited to):

  • Trust flow
  • Citation flow
  • External backlinks
  • Referring domains
  • Referring IP addresses

Through this element, retailers can also obtain information on which keywords they can potentially rank for, which sites are closely related to a retailer’s and other great features.

While the Site Explorer is undoubtedly the meat of the platform, The Majestic Million enables retailers to see the rankings of the top one million websites, based on which have the most referring subnets.

Final Thoughts

Search engine optimization is a discipline that becomes increasingly difficult with each passing year. As a plethora of new merchants enter the space, the competition levels in the SERPs rise.

Prominent SEO tools like those listed above will always help retailers to improve the performance of their online stores, while also keeping an eye on what the competition is doing.

By integrating these tools into a seller’s technology stack, eCommerce brands can earn more visibility in search engines that drive the majority of online retail clicks and conversions.

If your company is ready to advance its search performance and generate the SEO outcomes that have eluded it thus far, reach out to Visiture for a free consultation and website audit. 

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Ronald Dod is the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of Visiture, an end-to-end eCommerce marketing agency focused on helping online merchants acquire more customers through the use of search engines, social media platforms, marketplaces, and their online storefronts.