What are the Best SEO Tools in 2021?

Published by Kabir Chibber on June 27, 2021June 27, 2021

“SEO Tools are the only way you are going to rank on Google. You can’t do it alone.“

We all know that the best way to get high quality traffic that converts is through organic search. People search things all the time, in fact you probably searched up something to have landed on this article right now.

According to a study, google alone processes about 2 Trillion searches a year. Search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) then have to prioritize each and every website that is shown to the people that search for something. This is called SEO. I won’t get into the details of SEO right now, but at its very base, SEO (search engine optimization) is a way a website can optimize itself to be more appealing to Google and be ranked higher. You can see this post by Brian Dean to learn more.

Google themselves confirm that they make about about 6 changes to their algorithm a day. That’s almost 2000 updates a year! Your site will be affected by all of them, so to keep your site ranking, you need to constantly tweak your site. That’s why large corporations have full-sized teams working on SEO.

But we are not all large corporations with billions of dollars to spend! Even we at Kabducation don’t have the budget for that. Luckily, many companies have come through and provided us with free or reasonably priced SEO Tools. Before we dive in to our list of the best SEO tools in 2021, let’s get one thing out of the way.

What are the SEO Tools?

SEO tools are certain tools that help you analyse your site, find mistakes in your SEO, track your rankings and help your pages do well on google. But it doesn’t just end there. Most SEO tools help in other ways too, like tracking backlinks, domain authority, tack your competitors, measure your load times and so much more. These tools are pretty much your mentors to fix everything you do on your site.

But….. there is a catch. Even though these are made by professionals, a lot of the time at a ridiculously low price, these tools are based on algorithms and will ask you to fix some things that are not meant to be fixed. For example, Kabducation’s Subscribe Now page has a low word count, but a subscribe now page does not need to be a large thesis, however, the SEO tool doesn’t know this. So keep that in mind when you use these tools.

But now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the Best SEO Tools in 2021, here are our favourites:

Best SEO Tools in 2021

1. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free-to-use SEO tool created by SEO guru Neil Patel to audit your site, analyse SEO errors, create backlink opportunities and so much more. This is the tool Kabducation uses most extensively and is backed up by a large number of informatory blogs and videos on NeilPatel.com. Here’s a quick overview

Advantages

• Accurate and helpful audits
• Accurate information for keyword research and rank tracking
• Excellent tool to analyse Competitors
• Excellent at finding backlink opportunities
• Fair pricing for premium plans
• Excellent at finding new content Ideas
• Backed by an amazing set of blogs and videos

Disadvantages

• Only three keywords searches a day for free plan
• Not as competitive towards link building (eg. doesn’t have outreach features)

2. SEMRush

This tool needs no introduction. SEMRush is an instantly recognisable name in the SEO industry. Started by Oleg ShchegolevI’m in 2008, SEMRush is the go-to platform for many website owners to audit there site, build links and mange their social campaigns. Here’s a quick overview:

Advantages

• Best link building tool out there
• Great to manage social and paid campaigns in one place
• Great and accurate rank tracker
• Good to find Toxic vs. Good links to your site
• Great for competitive analysis
• A lot of features in their free plan

Disadvantages

• SEO audit is not as accurate and can struggle a bit
• Pricing is a litttle high for smaller businesses

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the best and most reliable company for everything related to SEO. Founded by Dmitry Gerasimenko, Ahrefs has quickly went on to become one of the largest and instantly recognizable SEO Tools in the world, with millions of users across the globe. Here’s a quick overview:

Advantages

• Keyword research for a variety of Search engines
• Accurate Domain authority, Domain ranking, and backlink tracking
• Gives search traffic estimations as well as actual results
• Shows ranking history
• Has an amazing content analyser for link building and other recommendations
• SEO Tool is also pretty accurate
• Pricing is no problem at all, with the free version being more than capable enough for most.
• Has a content base filled with blog content as well as video content.

Disadvantages

• The Ahrefs tool does not provide competitive link building features in free plan
• It isn’t able to give as accurate data for really small/beginner websites

4. Moz

Moz is one of the best known SEO Tools in the world. Founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004, Coz is famous for its domain authority tracking and has quickly become an instant hit in the SEO community. Here’s and overview for Moz:

Advantages

• Reliable for Domain Authority tracking
• Amazing for rank tracking
• Great chrome plugin to track SEO on the fly
• Amazing to monitor and track backlinks
• Fairly good for SEO tracking
• Good content to support the tool

Disadvantage

• Very Domain authority focused
• A lot of the best features are paid for

Yoast SEO Tool (Plugin)

If you are on WordPress, Yoast SEO is the best plugin to optimize your site for On-page SEO and be noticed by google. It provides detailed instructions on how to optimize your post for SEO and makes perfect sitemaps for Google and Bing to consume. It is also available on a variety of other platforms like TYPO3, Neos CMS, Drupal, etc. and happens to be the plugin Kabducation uses since we are a WordPress site. For more information on compatibility, click here. Here’s a quick overview:

Advantages

• Amazing for optimization
• Automatically integrates Search consoles for all major search engines
• Makes detailed and carefully designed sitemaps
• Has a good blog that explains features
• Creates breadcrumbs and other SERP optimizations automatically
• Available for a variety of platforms
• Provides readability analysis along with SEO

Disadvantages

• Not available on other popular visual website creators like Wix or Squarespace
• Focused on On-Page optimization, doesn’t have as many off-page tools

Conclusion “What are the Best SEO Tools”

To conclude, Ubersuggest is an all-round champion. SEMRush is great for PPC campaigns and link building, but the SEO Audit is a bit inaccurate. Ahrefs is close, but loses some points in link building. On the other hand, Moz is great, but very Domain Authority focused and pretty expensive for beginners. Yoast SEO is amazing for optimizing specific posts and pages on your site too but doesn’t provide off-page SEO tools.

So what’s the verdict? Well, it’s complicated. No one tool can help your website grow. You have to use a combination of all these tools to get your site to the top. The great part is that a lot of the time, these tools funnel you towards using their specialities.

Ubersuggest for SEO audit, SEMRush for social media, backlinks and rank tracking, Ahrefs for keyword research and a general report, Moz for Domain authority tracking, and Yoast SEO for optimization of specific posts and pages.