Top 7 Search Engine Optimization Tools That Actually Boost Your Traffic

Are you doing all you can to improve your website, but failing to see the desired results? If your answer is yes, say no more. We understand your struggle. Search engine optimization is a never-ending process and without the right tools and strategies, you’re guaranteed to get lost in cyberspace. That’s why we’ve listed seven SEO tools we know will actually boost your traffic, so let’s dive right in.

1. Link Profile Analysis

Link profile analysis is an essential function of any specialized SEO toolbox, but to fully understand its value, you need to understand what a backlink is. it’s most likely that some of your web pages have been mentioned on another website and referenced through links.

These links leading to your website are your linking profile and they are often used as a measure of success and reliability. When it comes to getting your website to rank higher on a search engine results page (SERP), it’s important to rack up referrals from other websites as this further adds to your credibility. A search engine considers those links as sort of a recommendation or nomination.

That being said, other than by increasing your rank on results pages, how can a link profile analysis tool get you more traffic? The first way is self-directed and revolves around evaluating your own performance and understanding what contributes to your successes and failures. Let’s say you’ve got a blog that you’ve been advertising; how do you know that it’s gaining traction?

By checking if it’s been referenced by other websites, especially the big names in your field. Another example is if you’ve been gaining a lot more traffic lately, you should be able to determine whether the increase in traffic is because of the remarkable article mentioned that you got or because of your social media ad campaign. Understanding what works for you is critical to your marketing strategy.

The second way link profile analyses help is by allowing you to view your competition’s profiles. As you do so, you can see where they have the upper hand and where they don’t. You can also deduce how they’ve managed to get referenced by a major website or how they’ve managed to succeed despite not having been mentioned at all. In general, what you want is to be referred to by a high number of high-quality sites. The higher your domain authority number is, the better, and your SEO suite will show you how to improve your linking profile.

2. Schema Markup

To start with, what is Schema Markup? It is code that improves how search engines read your page, and in turn, improves how they show it to users. When an engine looks at a web page, it sees content and its formatting (titles, headings, names, etc.) but it doesn’t understand the significance or meaning of what it sees. The Schema code helps turn those words into meanings, thus showing users your FAQ section or reviews section under your website on the SERP in response to a search query.

That way, a website understands what content would best serve the user, and you get the traffic you need since you were able to provide the most accurate result.

While the Schema Markup is code, you don’t have to learn how to code in order to use the tool and reap the benefits. There are many software programs and plugins that can help make the process a lot easier for you. Simplest of all, you can use the Structured Data Markup Helper offered by Google. After choosing the web page you want to markup and the type of content, you need to scroll through the page, defining content, from the author’s name to the date of publishing. Once done, click on “create HTML” to get the piece of Schema code. Next, go to your website’s source code or your content management system and paste the created HTML file.

If you would like to test the effectiveness of your Schema Markup, Google also provides a testing tool that allows you to see how your website looks when someone searches for it. If the code worked, then there should be a statement under the name of your website indicating the browser cannot display text because it depends on the user’s query.

3. On-Page Auditing

A huge part of optimizing your website depends on the content on your page. Is it unique enough to stand out? Is it strong enough to compete with other websites? Is your content too wordy? Not informative enough? What is wrong with it, and what is right about it? These are all questions you need to ask yourself when planning your 2021 SEO strategy; you need to set clear goals if you want to know how to improve.

Otherwise, you’re guaranteed to flounder for a while until you can find your footing. An on-page audit can give you the performance analysis you need to evaluate what needs to change and what is already effective.

A common SEO problem that many face with their websites is that their title tags aren’t long or unique enough. Other websites, on the other hand, don’t have enough text in their title tags. In both instances, clicks are and will be hard to come by. A long title will get cut off mid-sentence by the search engine showing the result.

Too short of a title won’t be enough to explain what your website is about for a search engine to rank you high enough. As for the uniqueness factor, it plays a huge role because “unique value” is a metric by which a ranking is assigned to a website. How do you assess your website’s value and understand the on-page problems that are keeping you from getting the top spot on your SERP? By using an on-page auditing tool.

4. SEO Checker

While specialized tools are great, using an all-in-one can offer a unique benefit. Here’s how your SEO checker can help you out. A checker takes a website and retrieves all the related SEO data, then analyses it in order to present performance scores. However, instead of giving you one score solely based on your link profile or your on-page content, it presents those individual scores as well as an overall score. That overall score can serve as an indicator of how well your SEO strategy is doing.

Not just that, but as you master the use of your checker, you can also know how to accurately track your ranking. Even better, you can compare your performance with that of your competitors, regardless of whether or not they are listed under the same keywords as you. With a little creativity, you can turn your checker into an SEO diagnostics tool to identify the chinks in your armor. If your competitor is ranked higher than you for the same keyword or term, it means that the problem must be with your backlinks, content, or some other aspect of your page.

If your competitor is ranking the same as you or lower for one term, but a lot higher for another term that you don’t use, it might mean that their choice of keyword is more successful. In that case, you should consider adding another term to your list of keywords. In summary, your all-in-one SEO checker can help you rack up traffic by accurately showing you where you stand, where you should be, and where your competition is. That way, you can set realistic and achievable goals to improve.

5. CTR Analysis

If you’ve ever posted an advertisement online, you must know a little about the clickthrough rate. As a website owner, your main aim is to get clicks. A click means that someone opened your website and saw your content: it’s traffic. Things like ads, listings, and keywords are called impressions, and they’re used to generate clicks and, therefore, traffic.

So, how does the CTR tool calculate your clickthrough rate? By dividing the clicks you got by the number of impressions you have. If one of your ads is viewed by fifty users and it gets twenty-five clicks, then your CTR is 50%, which is a phenomenal number, given that today’s averages are in the single digits.

From here, it’s easy to predict how a detailed analysis can help you generate more traffic. First and most importantly, it sheds light on the effective parts of your marketing strategy. Secondly, it tells you which of your marketing endeavors is damaging your website’s quality score and hemorrhaging money in the process. Third, combined with other data, detailed analysis can reveal underlying issues with your SEO process. If you have a high CTR, but you’re also suffering from a low conversion rate, it means that your content is either irrelevant or too weak.

Having mentioned quality scores in the paragraph above, it’s important to note how your CTR results factor in when it comes to how a search engine views your website. A high clickthrough rate is interpreted by browsers as relevant, helpful, and sought after by users. In other words, having an above-average CTR will improve your SERP ranking.

6. Speed and Performance

User-friendliness is a key factor in qualifying for a higher ranking. A user wants a website that’s fast, secure, and boasts completely functional links and media. If that’s not the case, they’ll go back to their browser’s homepage. Because a browser aims to be as helpful as possible, it ranks its websites according to how fast they are and how well they can handle the traffic. Being able to find out your own speed and performance metrics will help you hone your website and streamline its content so as to stay ahead of the criteria.

When you test your web page’s speed, you’ll find several metrics assessing your performance. As we’ve seen on PageSpeed Insights, there will be six of these metrics; each is there to calculate how long your page is both visible and interactive.

• First meaningful paint: The time taken for a page to show its first piece of content, regardless of whether it’s a background color, a search button, or a logo.
• First contentful paint: This metric is similar to the one above, except that the first content has to be of benefit to the user which makes it a slightly more accurate measure of speed.
• First CPU idle: The time it takes for the page to be responsive, regardless of whether or not its contents are fully visible.
• Time to Interactive: Similar to the first CPU idle, this metric calculates responsiveness, but it requires the page to have displayed its useful content first.
• Speed index: T The time it takes for a page to be completely visible; the most accurate measure of speed.
• Max potential first input delay: The amount of time a website takes to respond to a command of yours.

By optimizing your content, compressing your media files, and running diagnostics on your servers, you can remarkably increase the speed of your page and improve your ranking.

7. Keyword Research Tool

There’s no shortage of creativity on the web, but unfortunately, what makes a keyword good and effective isn’t related to creativity. There’s a lot of science that goes into it. Not only do you need a highly relevant keyword, but you also need its market to be unsaturated. For example, if you’re an online shoe store and one of your terms is “online shoe store”, chances are, you’ll be competing against every store in your country. On the other hand, if you switch to a more specific keyword, like “running shoes on a budget” you’ll have higher chances of generating traction. Why? Because you’re getting more specific while eliminating some of your competition.

Still, with all the information on how to choose a keyword, you’ll never be able to generate the perfect one for yourself. After all, you’re not an AI software that’s able to generate keywords relevant to any website, then run test processes to find the most effective of keywords by eliminating the irrelevant, highly competitive ones. Keep in mind that your keywords determine when a search engine should seek out your website and when it shouldn’t. It’s the equivalent of bait. If you throw your bait in the wrong pond, no matter how good it is, you won’t catch a thing. The right pond, however, will get you the biggest catch there is.

Having read all of the above, your head must already be flooding with ideas about what you should be doing next. This excitement is what you need to take your blog or online business to the next level. Before taking action, though, take a moment to find out where you stand. As we’ve mentioned above, you can’t decide where to go unless you know where you are.

Before you start optimizing your site, make sure you utilize checkers and metrics to ensure you spend your time and effort wisely. Start by looking yourself up online and noting where you are on the SERP. Once you’ve done that, you can zero in on the parts that most require your attention. Good luck!