Improving your SEO and boosting your website ranking isn’t hard with some of the best SEO tools. Granted, improving your rankings intuitively is pretty hard. Even if you’re an SEO expert, doing so efficiently is tedious and jarring.
However, with the top SEO software on the market, it’s more than enjoyable. These tools will allow for better keyword optimization, competition monitoring, and improving your site health. In addition, they’ll provide new content ideas to keep the website fresh.
No doubt, SEO is the #1 factor in the whole ranking game. For this reason, the best SEO tools in 2024 are necessary. Today, we have plenty of ground to cover. Our team tested dozens of these tools and we’re ready to divulge our experience with them.
We’re feeling generous, so today’s list will consist of 10 tools. We’ll focus on the absolute best choices by discussing 10 premium options with all the latest and greatest features you can find. Let’s not deflate our excitement and move on to the subject right away!
What Is an SEO Tool?
First off, we need to go over what is an SEO tool (or software) and how would we define it.
Well, as many of you know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO can be performed manually and if you’re experienced enough, you could, in theory, do it on your own.
However, it’s incredibly difficult because SEO trends frequently change, and keeping up with the pace on your own is… well, very hard! You never know if a particular keyword will rank well, its search volume, difficulty, and so on.
Things like this and many other information can be obtained from the best SEO tools in 2024. Henceforth, an SEO tool is software that you can use to optimize your website for search engines by taking advantage of many of its built-in functions.
SEO experts, website owners, and digital marketers use them to improve their Google rankings. This, in turn, gives their websites better visibility and a higher potential to appear in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
This is a broad example and there are many types of SEO tools:
- Keyword search tools
- Keyword position tracker
- Tools for Competition Analysis
- SEO tools for creating backlinks
- Site-audit SEO software
- Content optimization from an SEO perspective, and so on…
The good thing is that you don’t have to get a separate tool for each. In most cases, these categories overlap, like in Semrush, which offers ALL of the aforementioned benefits. On our list, you’ll also see more limited, specific SEO software for audits, Competition Analysis, etc…
We, however, recommend using an all-around tool like Semrush or SE Ranking, which we discuss in the following article. They will aid every aspect of SEO and improve this aspect dramatically by utilizing a vast arsenal of tools.
However, if you think only particular aspects of your website SEO are lacking, you can save money by going for a tool that focuses on a specific aspect.
Regardless, now that you know what is an SEO tool, it’s a good time to divulge our top 10.
Best SEO Tools in 2024: Our Detailed List
When discussing premium SEO tools, we need to clarify that we’re considering paid options. Sure, some of them might offer a free trial but their business model revolves around paid subscriptions and top-of-the-line features.
To be honest, for maximizing your SEO ranking, premium tools are recommended. However, some of you will find a few benefits of free services useful but that’s unlikely if you have high demands. We’ll talk about them in a separate guide.
For now, let’s focus on the task at hand. Our top 10 premium SEO tools in 2024 include:
1. Semrush
- Pricing starts at: $117.33 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: 14 days
- Money-back guarantee: 7 days
Semrush is a no-compromise option and is our favorite SEO software in 2024.
This software offers a comprehensive interface with in-depth domain and keyword analysis tools. It allows you to carefully examine your competitors and their rankings to improve your SEO promptly.
We like Semrush’s attention to detail, as it allows you to control every aspect of your website. You can analyze organic traffic, manage PPC, and improve your social media and marketing aspects. Moreover, Semrush has a full Site Audit function.
It allows you to carefully inspect your site, showing information like Core Web Vitals and the presence of broken links. Also, its link-building tool allows you to get new opportunities for quality backlinks on other sites, which is yet another crucial functionality.
Semrush offers a Keyword Magic Tool as well, which gives you millions of keyword suggestions to improve SEO. Every keyword is analyzed thoroughly, as Semrush can show you search intent to help you reach the targeted audience more effectively.
This tool has the App Center where you can get additional apps to improve the overall experience. On top of that, its AI-driven tools can help you optimize your content, improve its readability, and ensure it ranks well among the competition.
Granted, this is an expensive option, as it’s really the best SEO tool on the market. However, our site offers the option to get a 14-day free trial without paying a dime upfront! On top of that, Semrush already offers a few nifty discounts to take note of.
Namely, if you opt for the annual payment, you can save 17% on every plan. This is accompanied by a non-conditional 7-day refund policy. If you’re dissatisfied, which likely won’t happen, Semrush will gladly issue a refund.
To gain a clearer understanding of the different plans available, we recommend reading the Semrush Pro vs. Guru comparison.
2. SE Ranking
- Pricing starts at: $52 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: 14 days
- Money-back guarantee: No
SE Ranking is a much cheaper option than Semrush. However, it’s still an amazing SEO tool with a 14-day free trial and flexible plans. SE Ranking is best suited to smaller businesses and freelancers who want to be able to enjoy in-depth keyword analysis and suggestions.
The tool offers three plans, Essential, Pro, and Business, all of which have a litany of functions. Some of them include Site Audits, Backlink Analysis, and Keyword Research.
All of these are handy for improving your search engine ranking, especially with the addition of competitor analysis.
By using it, you can see how you rank against your competitors and improve even more to get ahead of them. Keyword tracking is excellent here, it’s incredibly accurate and shows you information like keyword suggestions and ranks.
Our team likes its On-Page SEO checker option that utilizes an AI to help you SEO-optimize your pages better. Like Semrush, its Content Marketing features are vast and SE Ranking even includes an AI Writer to aid your content creation.
SERP data for specific keywords can also be obtained thanks to the SERP Checker. SE Ranking offers solutions for all businesses, even Enterprises. The Essential plan at under $52 a month is very enticing and a lot more affordable than Semrush’s Pro plan.
Even the Business plan at under $192 a month is particularly great, as it allows for 5 manager seats, unlimited projects, and priority support. We found that the Pro plan at under $88 a month is the best deal, as it also offers unlimited projects and up to 3 users.
Historical data on keywords and domains, On-Page SEO Checker, and all other features we mentioned are in this plan. For this amount of money, you’ll be hard-pressed to get a better SEO tool in 2024.
Check it out below and claim your 14-day free trial now.
3. Ahrefs
- Pricing starts at: $108 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: No
- Money-back guarantee: No
When discussing the best SEO software of 2024, it would be unwise to skip Ahrefs.
Ahrefs is almost on par with Semrush, offering a rich suite of SEO tools at your disposal. Its dashboard looks similar to Semrush, with the same great domain/keyword analysis options.
Being extremely versatile, Ahrefs can perform website and backlink audits, keyword research, and audits on competitor websites.
Furthermore, Ahrefs is nifty for getting new content ideas. Its Content Explorer function is more than great for this purpose.
It’ll advise you on the most popular topics according to the keyword you typed. Like most of the SEO tools in this segment, it can track your ranking on Google, letting you see where you stand among your competitors. We like its huge URL database of nearly 40 billion.
This means link building and backlink analysis are phenomenal, as you’ll get excellent opportunities from the huge database. Accuracy-wise, Ahrefs’ reports and analyses are spot-on, which isn’t strange considering it updates its metrics every 24 hours.
Another notable feature is the SERP comparison, which can compare rankings for the same keyword according to the given parameters. At the moment, Ahrefs offers 4 plans and they’re not particularly cheap. The Lite plan at under $108 a month sounds great.
However, if you need more, the Standard and Advanced plans at $208 and $374 sound quite opulent. Not to mention the Enterprise plan at a whopping $14,990 a year, which screams luxury. Also, Ahrefs doesn’t offer a refund policy, which sounds ridiculous.
Compared to Semrush, it’s slightly less intuitive, so you need to be moderately experienced in SEO tools. That doesn’t take anything away from its greatness as one of the closest rivals of Semrush which gives it a run for its money in many aspects.
4. Moz Pro
- Pricing starts at: $39 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: 30 days
- Money-back guarantee: No
Moz offers a solid selection of free SEO tools. However, you’ll find it the most impressive in its paid plan called Moz Pro. In this case, the tool includes some of the best domain and keyword analysis functions, offering plenty of chances to boost your SEO.
Much like its rivals, the Site Audit function makes this service phenomenal, as Moz Pro offers solutions and explanations to make the site “healthier.”
We like that Moz can track your ranking based on thousands of keywords and phrases, offering impressive accuracy.
Moz’s interface is intuitive and you’ll likely get used to it quickly. Its reports and graphs are good-looking, giving you an overview of all the information you need to have. Crawling with Moz is extremely simple and the service can examine the entire site in no time.
It even gives you low and high-priority problems to fix to ensure the website is functioning as it should. When discussing SEO optimization, Moz Pro includes the Page Optimization Score and topic suggestions to improve it.
Additionally, Link Building is handy, as it gives you link opportunities to other sites. There’s also the Keyword Research tool that you can use to better target the audience. Even better, Moz Pro shows the domain authority score of you and your competitors for a full image.
Now, a tool like this can’t be cheap and you’ll have to shell out a bit more money on it. The cheapest plan starts at under $39 a month but the silver lining is a gargantuan 30-day free trial. However, you should bear in mind the other downsides of Moz Pro.
They include below-average customer support and the lack of a proper mobile app. Worse yet, the 30-day trial we mentioned is valid only for the Standard and Medium plans. Large and Premium plans that offer more aren’t subject to this trial – such a shame.
5. Mangools
- Pricing starts at: $19.90 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: No (it offers a limited free version)
- Money-back guarantee: 2 days
At #5, we have Mangools, a well-known SEO tool for multiple purposes. Its most notable tool is KWFinder, which helps get insightful keyword suggestions and information. However, Mangools is more than that and is a respectable SEO tool to help you rank higher.
Our team likes its LinkMiner tool, which allows for in-depth backlink analysis. Mangools offers a few more tools, such as SERPWatcher – a functional rank tracker. It allows you to track the keyword performance and see the best and worst-performing keywords.
Other tools include SERPChecker for SERP analysis and Site Profiler, which gives you an overview of the analyzed website. Mangools is fast, snappy, and reliable, providing valuable information about different SEO aspects of sites and keywords.
Now, it’s not as great as Semrush or SE Ranking. For example, it lacks site audits, on-page SEO optimization, and a link-building tool of Semrush. However, it has an amazing SEO tool extension for your browser, which allows for additional functions.
The key highlight of Mangools as one of our favorite SEO tools is the price. It starts at under $20 a month, making it way more inexpensive than Semrush or SE Ranking. Mangools isn’t lacking much and if you’re not too demanding, we’re sure you’ll enjoy it immensely.
Actually, this is a paramount free SEO tool as well. All of its 5 excellent tools can be used without paying – forever!
6. Majestic
- Pricing starts at: $41.67 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: No
- Money-back guarantee: 7 days
Among the best SEO tools for 2024 is Majestic. While not as majestic as Semrush and its free trial, this SEO software is affordable and packs quite a punch.
First of all, it offers a cool-looking interface with graphs and easy-to-read reports.
However, it’s not an all-around tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Instead, its focus is on backlink analysis, with a few other handy features here and there.
Since backlinks are vital for SEO improvement, we think Majestic can help you out nonetheless.
Furthermore, the tool is known for a huge database of backlinks, which is why it works so well for this purpose. Information like the Historic and Fresh Index can be seen as well, and both are updated daily to provide the best accuracy.
We like its Majestic Million feature, which shows the ranking of the top million websites – unique. Depending on the plan you choose, this number can go up to 20 or even 100 million, giving you a wide specter of information.
Apart from backlink-related features, Majestic includes a keyword generator, keyword checker, and flow metric history. The latter compares the stability and strength of domains, while the keyword generator provides you with new, high-ranking keywords.
The Lite plan starts at just $49.99 a month, while the best-value Pro plan is at $99.99 a month. Finally, Majestic offers the API plan with full API access, custom monthly data, and up to 5 users on an account. You can think of it like a business plan – sort of.
As you can see, Majestic is affordable, and for most users, its Lite plan should do the trick. Even the Pro plan is cheaper than Semrush’s most affordable plan.
Alas, comparing Majestic and Semrush is unfair because the latter is superior.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Pricing starts at: $259 per year
- Subscription lengths: Annual
- Free trial: No (free version is included)
- Money-back guarantee: 14 days
Screaming Frog came up with the SEO Spider solution, one of the top SEO software tools. It’s aimed at domain and keyword analysis with a splendid crawling feature for good measure.
SEO Spider won’t win any medals but its crawling ability is more than impressive.
Depending on the website’s scope, crawling is incredibly fast and accurate while offering information about broken pages and links. Another perk of SEO Spider is superb SEO optimization thanks to the ability to check your meta tags and link numbers on pages.
This helps you get everything in order and improve your internal linking and keyword game. On-Site SEO Auditing is also a thing here and thanks to it, you can get rid of duplicate content to improve your ranking on Google and other search engines.
Even better, SEO Spider can crawl JavaScript pages and the option to schedule your audits comes in handy. Therefore, SEO Spider can work automatically in the background and report back to you in case it finds any issues.
The paid version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider is mighty, with features like Google Analytics integration, segmentation, Search Console integration, and even grammar/spelling checks to ensure your content is top-quality. But that’s not all – the free version is here as well!
It can crawl up to 500 URLs but lacks proper customer support and many integrations we mentioned. Its price isn’t overly expensive and at $259 per year, you can get up to 4 licenses, which means each license costs this much.
However, SEO Spider isn’t very robust and it’ll be great only for smaller domains. Larger, more content-filled sites are better off with Semrush, SE Ranking, or Ahrefs, despite SEO Spider’s option to get over 20 licenses.
8. Woorank
- Pricing starts at: $53.25 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: 3 days
- Money-back guarantee: No
Woorank isn’t your run-of-the-mill SEO software and it has a few things going for it.
We like its user-friendliness. It’s easy to set up and use, offering one of the prettiest interfaces. Woorank is handy for advanced SEO optimization through keyword and domain analysis.
Users who decide on Woorank usually praise its backlink management features and our team likes its option to track SERP rankings. As one of the best SEO tools of 2024, Woorank can conduct site audits to ensure everything works smoothly.
In addition, Woorank’s Keyword Tool shows you precise information about the performance of specific keywords. Like SEO Spider, this tool includes a page-crawling function that examines each page on the site for potential problems.
Competitor Analysis is another good thing about Woorank. It’ll reveal your competitor’s keywords and show their technical performance. Users can track and compare up to 3 competitors at a time in all plans, which is a handy feature.
We should also mention its Website Review function, which functions similarly to an audit. It’ll score your website according to the best SEO practices, letting you discover how you grade against your competitors. Woorank can be tested for free, which is always welcome.
Its pricing is perhaps a bit higher, as the Pro plan, which is the cheapest, comes at a speck under $90 a month. The more expensive Premium plan is capped at $199.99, and the Enterprise plan for teams is based on several parameters price-wise.
Woorank can track only 250 keywords and crawl up to 10,000 pages in the Premium plan, which won’t make you excited. However, integrations with Google Analytics and Search Console are present, plus, there’s a 3-day free trial to give it a go.
9. SpyFu
- Pricing starts at: $16 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: No (a free version is included)
- Money-back guarantee: 30 days
One of the reasons to use SpyFu is that it’s among the best-value services when discussing SEO software. Instead of being an all-arounder, SpyFu focuses on analytics and in-depth web scraping to identify keywords purchased by companies through AdWords.
SpyFu is, in a way, a tool for spying on your competition. It enables you to see which keywords they purchase and implement in online advertising campaigns. As a result, you gain insight into the most profitable keywords that generate more conversions.
Despite sounding a bit complicated, SpyFu is surprisingly easy to set up and use. Also, we should point out its domain and keyword-related functions like the option to discover organic and paid traffic, paid keywords, and monthly PPC clicks for a particular site.
SpyFu comes with an impressive amount of information to aid your SEO optimization and increase traffic and CPC. The Basic plan, for example, offers 6 months of historical data and 250 sales leads/domain contacts, making it one of the top SEO tools today.
Even better is that it can track 5,000 keyword rankings a week and includes 10k-row data exports. This plan starts at a measly $16 a month, by the way. SpyFu offers 3 plans and Professional and team plans are much better, with many “unlimited” features on the list.
We found the Professional plan the best-value option at $36 a month. This one has API access, custom branding reporting, unlimited search results, data exports, and domain overview PDFs. Each plan can be tested for free for 30 days – splendid!
10. SEOptimer
- Pricing starts at: $14.25 per month
- Subscription lengths: Monthly and annual
- Free trial: 14 days
- Money-back guarantee: 7 days
The last entry on our list is SEOptimer. Despite its 10th place, this SEO ranking tool is quite decent if you prioritize SEO audit and a solid choice of diagnostic tools.
Its audit features are more than impressive, as SEOptimer will give you lots of valuable data about your site.
We’re talking about usability, linking, on-page SEO, performance, and so on. SEOptimer has a Website Crawl function to extract even more data and inform you of potential issues. In general, the app is devoted to many types of SEO audits to ensure your site is working well.
For example, each parameter received a grade from F to A+ depending on its quality. The entire auditing process lasts for merely 2-3 minutes depending on the scope of the site, which is fairly quick. After that, SEOptimer provides you with numerous SEO indicators and recommendations to improve SEO and rank more effectively.
SEOptimer’s Performance analysis is particularly great. It shows you your website speed, script errors, and image compression which can also speed up the site. Apart from that, SEOptimer offers nifty tools like keyword ranking and SERP presentation.
Its keyword ranking function is unlike Semrush’s equivalent and shows only the top 10 keywords that the page is ranking for. Given its limited scope of effect, SEOptimer is affordable and comes with a useful 14-day free trial for new users.
Those who decide to pay for it and enjoy PDF reports, page crawling, and white-label SEO software features, should know that the cheapest offer starts at a tad over $14 a month. It goes up to $44 or so a month for the so-called Agency plans, which is fairly inexpensive.
How We Tested the Best SEO Tools
Now that you know all about the best SEO tools in 2024, it’s a good time to talk about our testing procedure. Although the list contains 10 entries, our team constantly tests dozens of SEO software and notes the results to stay in touch with their newest updates.
These 10 are, based on our real-world tests, the most reliable SEO tools you can get. Here are the criteria we used to test each choice on our list.
Features & Options
Our #1 criterion for testing these SEO tools is their array of features. When you’re looking to improve your SEO ranking and bring in more audience to the website, you’re excited to have as many features as possible. We recently discussed the pricing of Semrush, for instance.
There, we explained that this tool is probably the most feature-rich option for the money. We can say that all our SEO tools excel in many aspects Semrush, SE Ranking, and Ahrefs are more all-around choices for the most demanding users.
However, SEOptimer excels at SEO audits, while SpyFu aims to boost your earnings by detecting the most profitable keywords. It’s good to know that all our choices offer keyword/domain analysis functions to bolster their quality.
Other notable features include SERP tracking, competitor analysis, various audit functions, and special options like backlink analysis, link-building tools, and on-page SEO checkers. As you can see, there’s plenty to look forward to.
Ease of Use & Compatibility
You’ll agree that dashboards of the best SEO tools in 2024 can look intimidating. While most are difficult to use, our selection focused on those on the opposite side of the spectrum. Semrush is a stellar example, as it looks complex at first but is incredibly intuitive.
On top of that, we ensured that our choices were compatible with an array of platforms. Semrush, for example, has a mobile app, which, while not as great as the desktop counterpart, still helps perform crucial actions on the fly.
Flexible Pricing
Flexible pricing is one of the key aspects of today’s selection. Each service offers plentiful subscription plans to pick from, so we’re pretty sure you will find one to your liking. There are monthly and annual plans, along with many bonus features that you can buy if you like.
Also, pretty much all tools on this list offer plans for smaller and larger websites. This means that, if you own a small site, you don’t need to shell out more money for an opulent plan that you won’t take advantage of.
Free Trial/Free SEO Tools
Most notably, ALL our picks have a free trial that lasts from 14 to 30 days. This enables you to fully test the service you’re using and decide whether or not to purchase it. Semrush even includes a 7-day money-back guarantee, so if you dislike it, which is unlikely, you can get a full refund.
Test Semrush for Free for 14 Days
Let’s not forget that some of our picks have free SEO tools. Moz, for instance, has free domain analysis, keyword explorer, and competitive research, along with a heap of other tools. They’re limited, of course, but can still be used for free.
Summary: What’s the best SEO tool?
With the 10 best SEO software in 2024, you’ll be spoilt for choice.
However, if you’re after the creme de la creme of the SEO tools, our #1 recommendation is Semrush. It’s a tool you won’t have to replace, as it offers all you need for small and large websites.
This tool’s keyword analysis, site/backlink auditing, on-page SEO functions, and Keyword Magic Tool are only some of the most awesome features it offers. While not the cheapest option, Semrush perfectly justifies its price with undeniable qualities.
Don’t forget to claim its 14-day free trial through our site and enjoy 14 days of this mighty software for free. SE Ranking is a more budget-friendly option with all-around SEO features but an octave or two below Semrush. Still a powerful choice for many.
Other picks, like Ahrefs and Moz Pro, are phenomenal if you don’t mind paying more. If you, however, seek more specific tools, SpyFu and SEOptimer are decent as well. Nonetheless, we think we’ve said enough for today.
We’ll leave you to take a pick and start improving your website SEO right away.
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