What self respecting Internet Marketer doesn’t have a list of their own web based Internet marketing tools? To be fair, I cannot take the credit for any of the the SEO tools or other tools here… so have tried to give the right people credit where it is due. I have, however, managed to modify the odd script or changed it’s use to be more appropriate for the things I do. I generally put these together for my own benefit – but you are welcome to bookmark this page and use them.

I originally wrote this list a decade ago, but have updated it moving forward. They are the ones I use…

SEO Tools for 2020

My Tools:

I have been (or still am) involved with a couple of tools which have to top this list…

inLinks

inLinks: I am now CEO of inlinks, which is the first serious tool to try and build Knowledge Graphs for any given website. This then allows you to semantically build internal links and schema on the fly. It is also great for creating new content because the content briefs also use semantic meaning to fully build out content briefs. inLinks currently lets you analyze the first 20 pages of any site for free. Start by trying a URL on their home page.

Inlinks just won the Best Search Software Tool award in 2020 at the UK Search Awards.

Majestic

Majestic: Shows you all the external links into any website or webpage. Whilst there are some worthy competitors, as of writing, Majestic is the only truly global index which can analyze and evaluate at the individual link level on a page. Most systems will eavluate a link based solely on the strength of the page it comes from, but Google’s Reasonable Surfer patent makes it clear that not all links on a page are evaluated equally. Majestic therefore created Link Context, which is really powerful. I remain an enthusiastic ambassador. Majestic has incredible amounts of data – not JUST about links… technically they are one of the largest indexes of the Internet that there is.

The Other Good SEO Tools

Desktop Crawlers

Good SEOs need good spidering capabilities. There are many things you can do with your own web crawler and often you will not be able to spot issues in any other way. I think that these crawlers form the foundation of many site audits and are tools that you will use time and again.

There are two currently standing out that I use. Screaming Frog and Sitebulb.I have licenses for both, but I have to say that SiteBulb is the friendlier of the two right now. Both tools will crawl any site you ask and look for SEO and site performance issues. I was running a Sitebulb audit when I decided this page needed completely rewriting!

Cloud Based Crawlers

I would say Deepcrawl and onCrawl are fighting out this corner right now. I have used onCrawl more, whilst I think Deepcrawl has also fully integrated Majestic… (onCrawl lets you connect your Majestic account though.)

I also use SEMRush. They are massive and they kind of do everything, so they remain a staple tool for quickly checking competitors, search rankings, search volumes, all sorts of things.

Google and Microsoft Tools

Google Search Console is a must. I also use: Google Trends to quickly see what is considered a search term and what is considered an entity. This is pretty useful, actually, but there is also Google’s NLP API demo which also extracts entities from text.

A REALLY useful tool is Google’s knowledge graph query lookup finder. (Change the search term from Adidas before you hit search).

I am not a big fan of Google sheets, but many SEOs are… I much prefer the power of Microsoft Excel and I don’t know many serious SEOs that can yet live without Excel in their armory.

Whilst we are on Microsoft products, Bing also has a Webmaster Tools product, which you should certainly not ignore… not least because it is free.

Wikipedia:

I don’t use Wikipedia (so much) as an online encyclopedia as much as I use it to identify what is an “Entity” in this crazy new world of Semantic Search. Wikipedia URLs are also used in inLinks.net to clearly tell inLinks what entity you believe a piece of cornerstine content should be about.

VPN

I have had at least  two VPN subscriptions over the year, StrongVPN and Private Tunnel. I currently recommend Private Tunnel. It is based on a solid opensource system. It is good value and I can see Google from most countries that I need to view from. Having a VPN is also good for using the WiFi at search conferences without them snooping on you and for watching BBC iPlayer when outside the UK.

Non-SEO Tools that an SEO should also have

Dropbox: The ultimate way to have a “virtual” folder that you can use securely from any PC. I am now using Microsoft OneDrive a bit more as well, but it’s not quite so intuitive.

LastPass: You cannot possibly remember separate passwords that are complex enough in this industry. Lastpass is great because it remembers near impossible to crack passwords for you and syncs them between yourt browsers and devices.

Trello: Love this as a project planning tool. Great if you have an Agile mindset.

What do other SEOs use?

This post pulled in a bunch of SEOs to share their favourite tools.

Looking for a guy to do some work for you?

I don’t do consulting now, but  I’ve recently found out that Rishi Lakhani certainly does.
Find him at: Rishi Lakhani‘s site.