Best SEO Tools & Software Of 2024

If you want your website to rank higher on Google, then consider adding Ahrefs to your tech toolbox. Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool that helps you find keywords your customers are searching for and evaluate keyword volume and difficulty. With Ahrefs, you can also track keyword rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), monitor website backlinks (sites linking back to your website) and audit your website so you can optimize it for search.

Simply put, Ahrefs is one of the most powerful SEO apps on the market. Ahrefs’ extensive suite of features requires a bit of a learning curve to master, but its uncluttered dashboard makes Ahrefs easier to navigate than other advanced SEO software on the market.

If you want to get a taste for how Ahrefs works, you can sign up for a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account. AWT offers limited access to search traffic and keywords, backlink data and SEO health, but it pales in comparison to what a full Ahrefs plan offers.

Ahrefs offers four pricing plansthat range from $83 to $833 per month when paid annually. If you prefer to stick with a month-to-month plan, your monthly payment will range from $99 to $999.

The Ahrefs Lite plan is often sufficient for small businesses. To tap into Ahrefs’ full power, you’ll need to go with either a Standard or Advanced plan, which are packed with more features including Site Explorer, Content Explorer, Domain Comparison and the ability to track six months to two years of backlink and ranking data.

Ahrefs provides several online resources to help you master the platform and SEO. The online Help Center houses dozens of articles and troubleshooting guides while the Ahrefs Academy features a variety of video tutorials.

Customer support is provided via email and online chat, and for the most part, you can expect a timely response to your queries. Phone support is not available.

Who should use it:

Forbes Advisor considers Ahrefs the best overall SEO tool on the market. With four plans to choose from, Ahrefs is right for all types of users, from beginners to advanced technical users.

Read more:
Check out our full Ahrefs review.

KWFinder doesn’t have the massive feature collection you’ll find in a power tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Yet, KWFinder’s suite of SEO essentials makes it an ideal keyword tool for those on a budget. Even better, it’s easy to use, even for beginners.

KWFinder offers a handful of free tools, including an SEO browser extension, a SERP volatility checker and a SERP Simulator. You can also use the KWFinder keyword search tool for up to five free keyword lookups per 24 hours.

If you want to experience the full breadth of KWFinder’s tools without committing to a paid plan, you can sign up for a free 10-day trial. KWFinder offers three plans: Mangools Basic, Mangools Premium and Mangools Agency. Save up to 40% with annual plans, which range from $19.90 to $89.90 per month.

Paid plans include keyword research and suggestions, competitor keywords, SERP lookups and tracked keywords. The Basic plan is relatively limited on how much research you can do; for example, you’re limited to 25 competitor keywords and 100 keyword lookups every 24 hours. This is likely acceptable for light users, but the Premium or Agency plan will better serve those with more intensive SEO needs.

KWFinder hosts some helpful user guides on its site but, overall, its online support resources are limited. Customer support is available via email or live chat; phone support is not offered.

Who should use it:

KWFinder is a reliable SEO tool for anyone on a budget, especially beginners and those whose SEO needs are relatively basic.

WooRank joins Forbes Advisor’s list of top SEO tools for a number of reasons, including simplicity, reliability and the actionable insights it delivers. WooRank’s interface was designed with ease of use in mind; the consensus in user reviews is that the platform is easy to navigate.

WooRank comes with essential SEO features for keyword analysis, competitor analysis, backlink management, tracking SERP rankings, grading website page quality and conducting full website audits. Local, mobile, social and global SEO tools are also available.

You can try WooRank for free for three days. Paid plans range from $53.25 to $133.25 per month when paid annually—you get four months free with annual billing. Month-to-month pricing ranges from $89.99 to $199.99 per month. Custom-priced Enterprise plans are also available.

The Pro plan is WooRank’s entry-level option, and it lets you optimize one website, track 50 keywords, compare your site against three competitors and crawl 2,500 pages with WooRank’s Site Crawl tool. The Premium plan lets you optimize up to five websites, track 250 keywords, crawl up to 10,000 pages and compare each of your sites against three competitors.

WooRank’s extensive online Help Center comes with helpful articles to get you up and running quickly. Customer support is available via email, and WooRank advises that it may take a day or two to respond, which is certainly not optimal. Live phone support is not offered.

Who should use it:

WooRank is a user-friendly SEO tool that delivers actionable insights, making it the perfect tool for anyone looking for a simple solution that still produces excellent SEO results.

Users and SEO experts agree that Semrush is one of the most powerful and feature-rich SEO apps available today. Use Semrush for keyword research as well as for conducting in-depth audits of your website, creating and tracking PPC campaigns and improving your overall rankings in search engines.

You can get started with Semrush with a seven-day free trial. Monthly and annual plans are available; you’ll save up to 17% when you pay annually. Semrush offers three plans that range from $108.33 to $416.66 per month. You will receive a full refund if you decide to cancel your subscription within seven days of subscribing.

Semrush offers a number of add-ons, though they come with rather steep price tags, so they’re not right for all users. For $200 per month per user, you can access Semrush .Trends, which helps you analyze competitor website traffic and unveil their marketing tactics and strategies. ImpactHero is another popular add-on. This AI tool examines your content by buyer journey stages and detects the copy that works the best; ImpactHero is available for $200 per month.

Semrush offers so many tools and resources that even those experienced in SEO should expect a learning curve; that curve is much steeper for beginners. To its credit, Semrush understands its platform requires some user training. Semrush offers a vast online Help Center, complete webinars, e-books, podcasts and how-to articles. The Semrush Academy features dozens of free courses and certification exams.

Email support is available to customers and requests are typically answered within one business day. You can also access support via online chat or phone. U.S. support hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (ET).

Learn more: Read our full Semrush review.

Who should use it:

If you’re well versed in SEO tactics and SEO is critical to the success of your business, then take a close look at Semrush. This all-in-one tool offers everything you need to optimize the sites you manage for search.

Forbes Advisor’s pick for best local SEO tool is BrightLocal. You can use BrightLocal to find and track keywords, perform local SEO audits, track competitors and monitor and protect your online business reputation—which is essential to succeeding as a business that serves a local community. The platform integrates with Google Analytics, Facebook, Google Business Profile Insights and Twitter.

Choose from three plans: STrack, Manage and Grow, which range from $29 to $44 per month when paid annually. The primary differences among the plans involve the degree of SEO tool access and the number of reports you require to manage multiple locations effectively. With the Single Business plan, you can manage up to three locations.

BrightLocal also offers a Simply Listings account for $2 per site pay-as-you-go plan or $100 per location, per year. With Simply Listings, you can expand your visibility by getting your company information into dozens of online business directories. The $100 plan gives you access to Active Sync and GBP Post Scheduler as well.

BrightLocal’s dashboard is relatively intuitive, though users new to SEO may have a modest learning curve. To get familiar with the platform, you can book a BrightLocal platform demo or sign up for a 14-day free trial. The free BrightLocal Academy offers extensive training on how to conduct local SEO using the platform.

Support is offered via live chat and an online messaging form. Live support hours are Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET. Phone support is not available.

Who should use it:

BrightLocal is ideal for local businesses that want to optimize their online visibility in their area while projecting a positive image to prospective customers.

It wasn’t too long ago that AnswerThePublic was a free keyword (KW) search tool, but now it comes with an affordable monthly price tag starting at $9 per month. Recently, NP Digital, marketing expert Neil Patel’s company, acquired the popular tool so free is mostly gone. Technically, you can still use it for free for one search, free for three searches if you register an account or you can sign up for a seven-day free trial.

What’s great about AnswerThePublic is the way in which it provides information about KWs and search volume. You can type in a search phrase and get back the questions users are asking in search engines, including what, where, why, who, when, which, can and how questions. You can view them as a visual wheel or data boxes that categorize the types of questions, along with color-coded search volume and CPC info.

Most KW search tools are pricey, but AnswerThePublic is fairly affordable with three plans that cost $9, $99 or $199 per month. Another benefit is that you can choose a lifetime plan, which costs just a single payment of $99 for the Individual plan, $79 per month (billed annually) for the Pro plan or $149 per month (billed annually) for the Expert plan. The biggest difference between these plans is that the low-priced plan is only for one user and 100 searches per day; the Pro plan limits you to three users, but doesn’t limit searches; and Expert plan users have zero limits.

Who should use it:

AnswerThePublic is a good starting point for entrepreneurs and small businesses that are just starting their site’s content plan and need to do KW research, but aren’t ready for all the other more complex tools.

One of the most obvious benefits of using Google Search Console for debugging your website is that it’s made by Google, the main player of search engines. The data you collect via the Google Search Console is from Google, so you’ll know it’s accurate. It’s a useful free tool to help you crawl your site for errors, which is important because you can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.

However, the data from Google Search Console may not be complete, such as link data or keywords for which you’re ranking. Plus, you can only use Google Search Console for sites you own. This means you’ll still need a separate (likely paid) tool to audit a competitor’s site to see which links it’s grabbed.

Who should use it:

Anyone who has a website should at least start with Google Search Console; it’s free and can give you helpful information about your site, link data, page speed and errors.

Screaming Frog is a bit like Google Search Console in that it can help you debug and resolve issues on your website, but it goes much deeper than Google. This tool, which you’ll need to download and install on your computer, is a spider that crawls your website and searches all the pertinent spots for blunders. It can find broken links, missing page titles and meta descriptions, show you where tags and titles don’t match and other on-site SEO issues.

There is a free and paid version of Screaming Frog, but no free trial. The free version is likely enough if you’re just starting out with a single website as you’re limited to 500 URL, or page, crawls. The paid version, which costs $259 per year, is good for one user, so if you have more users than that, you’ll have to purchase more, but the more you purchase, the higher the discounted rate (five to nine licenses cost $245 per license per year; 20-plus licenses cost $225 per license per year).

Who should use it:

Screaming Frog is an excellent tool for anyone running a website who needs to periodically check for on-site SEO issues quickly.

More than anything, Google Analytics is used to help you understand your site traffic, user behavior and whether your SEO efforts are working. When you use this tool in conjunction with Google Search Console, KW trackers and other SEO tools, you should have a better understanding of where traffic is coming from, such as paid versus organic traffic.

Google Analytics also helps you see site visitor engagement metrics, such as when a user exits your site (and which page) and conversions on landing pages. Most small businesses use the free version of Google Analytics, but there is a paid version. Google has never published pricing for the paid version.

Who should use it:

From solo entrepreneurs to enterprises, Google Analytics is a necessary tool for measuring your SEO performance when it comes to traffic and user behavior on your sites.

Moz Pro is commonly compared to Ahrefs because both SEO software provide similar features. You can use Moz for link building, rank tracking, competitor analysis and keyword research. There are a couple of benefits in choosing Moz as an Ahrefs alternative, including its slightly lower price point and its data pool for backlinks.

When it comes to competitive analysis, Moz Pro may be one of the best just because it offers more links than most of its competitors. There are more than 40 trillion links of data in its system and more than 700 million domains. It’s a more complete solution for link metrics than some of the best SEO software out there. Its reporting options are also generous; you can pull an unlimited number of reports on all plans.

Moz Pro starts at $79 per month (billed annually), which is slightly less expensive than Ahrefs. There’s also a 30-day free trial available, which lets you test out all the features of Moz Pro. Moz Pro has a steep learning curve, but it’s relative to other SEO tool suites on the market.

Who should use it:

If you pull data often and want access to one of the biggest link databases in the industry, Moz Pro may be a better choice for your SEO tool suite.