Last Updated on March 31, 2020 by Santhosh Muralidhar

Data and Reporting are very critical in SEO. For instance, It could be like you want to gather detailed data about your keywords, backlinks, site structure, etc. This is where SEO tools play a very big role. In this article, I would like to share some great information about the features & advantages of using some of the best SEO tools.

1.Moz

Moz is one of my favorite tools to check the domain authority of a website. 

The link explorer of Moz is very handy to analyze the complete backlink profile of a website. 

It gives data related to Domain authority of the linking websites, Discovered and lost links and percentage of no-follow and do-follow links for a particular website.

We could check the inbound links, outbound links and page rank as well.

Also, it gives a detailed report about the keyword rankings and related data for a website.

Moz could also be used for doing basic keyword research tasks. 

The SERP analysis feature helps users to identify the websites which are ranking on page 1 of Google for a particular search term.

It also shows the CTR and search volume associated with the keywords for different locations.

I found the spam score feature of Moz to be very helpful. This actually helps to identify and differentiate between the websites having high-quality backlinks from the sites having poor low-quality backlink profile. 

2.SpyFu

SpyFu is one of the best tools for doing Competitor SEO keyword analysis and rank tracking.

The tool can also be used for PPC keyword research.

SpyFu gives a breakdown of detailed reports of all the keywords that drive clicks and traffic for your competitor website.

The keyword overview features show the search volume and estimated clicks associated with a search term.

You could find similar keywords and question-based search terms for the main target key phrase as well.

Along with that, you could see the recommended keywords for the Google Ads campaign.

This could help advertisers and marketers to create a great list of target keywords for the paid ad campaigns.

The tool allows you to see the competitors who are bidding for specific keywords. And you could easily find all the ads that are being run by your competitors.

Note: Although SEO and paid search are different things, there is always scope for integrating your PPC and SEO activities together in many ways.

Scrolling down a little bit, you could find the reports related to the competitor’s organic ranking history and search ranking analysis.

Basically this shows the ranking history of your competitor site for your target keyword.

For example, if my target keyword was “how to start a blog”, then my competitor website “first guide” was ranked at #6 spot in February 2019 and jumped to #2 spot in January 2020.

I personally love using the historical keyword ranking feature of SpyFu. That helps me to see the keyword ranking positions for over up to 5 years to my competitor websites. 

By using the related keyword feature we can find all the close variations and long-tail variations of the main target keyword.

SpyFu tool provides other useful features like PPC research, SEO research, etc.

By using SEO overview you can get a general overview of the website’s estimated organic clicks, inbound links, shared organic keywords, etc. 

You could also find and analyze the keywords which have shown improvement in rankings for a particular website.

SpyFu also has a robust backlink analysis tool. It can basically pull up detailed reports about your competitor’s backlink profile.

The tool can be used for developing a great backlink building campaign/ outreach campaign strategy for your website.

3.Screaming Frog

This is a great tool especially for doing technical SEO and on-page SEO.

After entering the URL of a domain, the spider will start crawling all the pages on the website. 

It will show the status and status code for each page on the website.

For example, in my site, it says that the page URL “https://digitalsanthosh.net/recommended/bluehost” has a status code 301 and it has been permanently redirected and moved.

The tool also shows the meta title and descriptions, H1, H2 headings, keywords for every individual web page.

On the right-hand side of the screaming frog dashboard, you could analyze the site structure of the website.

Under the overview tab, you can find more useful data related to crawling depth of the website, pagination, AMP, structured data, Sitemap, Link metric, javascript, CSS, images, HTML, etc.

You could go through each and every specific tabs and reports in the tool to get more information.

4.LSI graph

LSI graph is one of the best tools to find semantic keywords and LSI keywords for your content.

The tool can be used for free.

And the usability of the LSI graph tool is very swift and easy.

First, you will have to enter your target keyword and click on generate.

This will help you generate a great list of relevant LSI keywords.

In some of my previous blog posts, I had written detailed explanations about using tools like SEMrush, Ubersuggest and Google search console. I kindly request you to read those articles to get more information about using those tools.

I hope you got some great information about the best SEO tools in 2020. Please do share the article on social media sites.

Thanks.