12 Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses in 2024 (Compared)

As a small business owner, you know the importance of marketing. In today’s digital world, search engine optimization (SEO) is important to make sure your website gets noticed online.

By implementing effective SEO strategies, you can enhance your website visibility in search engine results and drive more organic traffic to your website.

However, SEO can be both complex and time-consuming, and if you don’t have a budget to hire an SEO expert or agency, an SEO tool is your best option.

So, in this article, we’ll show you some of the best SEO tools for small businesses that can optimize your marketing efforts and help you achieve better results.

Let’s dive in!

What to Look for in the Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses?

Consider the following factors while choosing the best SEO software for your small business:

• Keyword Research: Information about the volume and difficulty level of the different keywords.
• Domain/ URL Analysis: Data about the performance of other sites that you can use to research your competitors.
• Position Tracking: You can track the position of your website pages in search engines for different keywords.
• Keyword Gap Analysis: Information about the keywords your competition ranks for but you don’t.
• Link Tracking: You can identify your own backlinks and your competitors and link-building opportunities.
• Site Audit: A complete check of your site, including keywords, on-page SEO, technical issues, and backlink metrics.
• Browser Extension: Some popular SEO tools offer a Google Chrome extension that lets you immediately check a website’s metrics while browsing it.

Top 12 SEO Tools for Small Businesses

Below are some of the best SEO tools that help you increase traffic to your website.

1. Semrush

Semrush is one of the best SEO Software for small businesses.

It is a powerful all-in-one digital marketing platform that offers many tools for SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media, and more. It’s a popular choice among marketers and businesses of all sizes, thanks to its broad features and simple user interface.

With Semrush, you can perform in-depth research and analysis of your website’s performance, as well as your competitors’ sites. This helps you to identify opportunities for improvement, optimize your campaigns, and keep ahead of your competitors.

Learn more in our complete Semrush review.

Best Semrush Features:

• Keyword Magic Tool: This helps you find new keywords to target. It provides a list of related keywords and metrics on the search volume and keyword competition.
• On-Page SEO Checker: This tool analyzes your website’s pages to identify areas where you can improve your SEO. This includes things like title tag optimization, meta description optimization, and keyword usage.
• Backlink Analytics: This tool helps you analyze your website’s backlink profile. This provides data on the number of backlinks on your website, their quality, and the source of those links.
• Site Audit: It analyzes your website for potential SEO issues. This includes things like broken links, duplicate content, and technical errors.
• Organic Traffic Insights: This feature gives insights into your website’s organic traffic. This contains information on the keywords generating traffic to your website, the sources of your traffic, and the devices people use to view your website.
• Keyword Gap Analysis: It helps you identify keywords that your rivals are ranking for, but you are not. This may help you identify new opportunities to boost your website’s SEO.
• Position Tracking: This allows you to track your website’s rankings for certain keywords over time. As a result, you identify which keywords are performing well and which ones need improvement.
• Social Media: This allows you to track your social media performance and measure the impact of your social media campaigns.
• PPC: This tool helps you optimize your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. It includes features for keyword research, ad copy creation, and campaign management.

Semrush Pricing:

Semrush offers three pricing plans:

• Pro: The Pro plan costs $139.95 per month ($117.33 billed annually) and offers access to all the basic features, including keyword research, website audit, and competitor analysis. It also includes 10,000 results per report and 5,000 keywords to track.
• Guru: The Guru plan costs $249.95 per month ($208.33 billed annually) and includes all the features of the Pro plan, as well as additional features like content marketing tools, historical data, and branded reports. It also includes 30,000 results per report and 1,500 keywords to track.
• Business: You have to contact them.

Semrush Free Trial:

Semrush offers a 7-day free trial, and you can get access to all features in that period. You need to enter your credit card details to use the Semrush free trial. However, you can also use the Semrush free version with limited features.

Try Semrush 7-Day Free Trial

2. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an All-in-one SEO tool for small businesses.

It is the best alternative to Semrush (and Ahrefs, which we’ll discuss next).

However, it’s hugely useful if you’re searching for a rank tracker or a tool that can check where your website stands in search engine results for particular keywords.

One of the best advantages of SE Ranking is that you can choose a custom pricing plan, depending on the number of metrics you need and at which frequency.

Overall, if you want a more affordable, powerful SEO tool than the market leaders, SE Ranking is the best choice.

Best SE Ranking Features:

• Keyword Rank Tracker: Track keyword rankings in any location, search engine, and device with 100% accuracy
• Keyword Research: You can use it to discover new keyword ideas, see which websites are already ranking or running ads for your target keywords, and more.
• Backlink Checker: It allows you to monitor and analyze your competitors’ website backlink profiles.
• Competitor Research: This tool helps you analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies so that you can learn from them and improve your own strategy.
• Website Audit: This feature analyses your website’s SEO performance and identifies areas for improvement. It includes checks for technical errors, on-page SEO issues, and backlinks.
• On-page SEO Checker: This feature examines your website’s pages to see how effectively they are optimized for search engines. You’ll get a detailed report with recommendations on how to improve your pages’ SEO.
• White Label: SE Ranking allows you to create custom reports with your own branding and logos, making it easy to share data with clients or team members.

SE Ranking Pricing:

SE Ranking offers three pricing plans:

• Essential: The Essential plan costs $65 per month ($52 billed annually) and offers features such as 5 websites to analyze, tracking 500 keywords, a 1,00,000-page audit, etc.
• Pro: The Pro plan costs $119 per month ($95.20 billed annually) and offers features such as 30 websites to analyze and track 2,000 keywords, a 250,000-page audit, etc.
• Business: The Business plan costs $259 per month ($207.20 billed annually) and offers features such as unlimited websites to analyze and track 5,000 keywords, a 700,000-page audit, etc.

SE Ranking Free Trial:

SE Ranking offers a 14-day free trial, and you can get access to all features in that period. You don’t need to sign up with a credit card to use SE Ranking’s free trial. Just set up an account, and you’re good to go.

Try SE Ranking 14-Day Free Trial

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another small business SEO tool on the market.

It helps you optimize your websites so that search engines rank them better for specific keywords. It was founded by Dmitry Gerasimenko in 2010, and it is currently used by the world’s largest companies, such as Netflix, Facebook, LinkedIn, eBay, and Shopify. Ahrefs’ bots crawl your website and search engines and provide actionable insights.

Best Ahrefs Features:

• Content Explorer: This allows you to find content ideas and link opportunities. You can search for content by keyword, topic, or domain.
• Site Audit: This feature allows you to scan your website for technical SEO issues. Ahrefs will identify any issues that could be affecting your website’s ranking in search engines.
• Site Explorer: It allows you to analyze your competitors’ websites in detail. You can see their backlink profile, organic traffic, top pages, and much more.
• Backlink Audit: This tool helps you identify and fix backlinks that are harming your website’s SEO. You can also use it to find new backlink opportunities.
• Rank Tracker: This tool tracks your website’s rankings for specific keywords over time. You can use this information to see how your SEO strategies are paying off.
• SEO Toolbar: A free SEO Chrome extension that you can add to your browser. It offers SEO metrics such as domain rating, backlink profile, etc., of any website you visit.
• Webmaster Tools: A free tool that allows you to monitor your website’s SEO health and performance.

Ahrefs Pricing:

Ahrefs offers four different pricing plans:

• Lite: The Lite plan costs $129 per month ($108 billed annually) and offers features such as site explorer, keyword explorer, site audit, rank tracker, etc.
• Standard: The Standard plan costs $249 per month ($208 billed annually) and includes all the features of the Lite plan, as well as additional features like SERP updates, 6-month history, content explorer, etc.
• Advanced: The Advanced plan costs $449 per month ($374 billed annually) and includes all the features of the Standard plan, as well as additional features like site audit, 2-year history, Google Data Studio, etc.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan costs $14,990 billed annually and includes all the features of the Advanced plan, as well as additional features like API, unlimited history, audit log, etc.

Ahrefs Free Trial:

Ahrefs doesn’t offer a free trial. Previously, they used to offer a 7-day free trial worth $7, but it’s not available anymore.

Try Ahrefs

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a great free SEO tool for small businesses. It allows website owners to track and manage their site’s position in Google search results.

It notifies you when Google is unable to crawl and index your website’s pages. You’ll also get some suggestions on how to resolve crawl issues.

Most significantly, it displays the keywords your website ranks for and anchors texts, average position, impressions, and other information. You may use this information to identify keywords to improve your ranking by simply enhancing your content quickly. You may also use the keyword information to generate fresh blog article ideas.

For more, check your guide on how to submit a WordPress website to Google Search Console.

Best Google Search Console Features:

• Search Analytics: This report shows you how your website is performing in Google Search. These include the number of impressions, clicks, and CTR for your website’s pages.
• Index Coverage: This feature shows you which pages of your website are indexed by Google. Additionally, you can also discover which pages are not indexed and troubleshoot any indexing issues.
• URL Inspection: This allows you to see how Google is crawling and indexing a specific page on your website. You can also use this feature to request that Google re-crawl a page.
• Mobile Usability: This shows you how your website is performing on mobile devices. You can check your website for mobile usability issues and request Google to fix them.
• Sitemaps: This report shows you how Google has processed your sitemaps.
• Enhancements: This feature allows you to add structured data to your website. Structured data is code that tells Google what your content is and how it should be treated.

Pricing:

Google Search Console is a free Google tool.

5. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a popular free keyword research tool. It allows you to find new keywords, check their search volumes, and determine how much it costs to target them.

While Google Keyword Planner is essentially a PPC (pay-per-click) advertising tool, you can also use it to research keywords for your SEO (search engine optimization).

Best Google Keyword Planner Features:

• Keyword Ideas: Offers a vast database of keyword ideas to help businesses discover new keywords they might not have thought of. These suggestions are based on the search queries that users enter into Google, making them relevant and up-to-date.
• Search Volume: The tool provides information about the monthly search volume for specific keywords. This helps you determine which keywords have high demand and are worth targeting in your advertising campaigns.
• Competition: Provides data on the level of competition for a given keyword. This metric helps you understand how many other advertisers are bidding on the same keyword and how difficult it might be to rank for it.
• Cost-per-click (CPC): The tool also provides data on the average CPC for a given keyword. This data is especially useful for businesses planning their advertising budgets and determining which keywords to bid on.

Google Keyword Planner Pricing:

Google Keyword Planner is a completely free Google tool.

6. Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is an on-page optimization tool.

It is intended to improve your organic rankings. But, it does more than just provide the basic rules that some SEO plugins, such as AIOSEO, do. However, it goes beyond the fundamentals of on-page SEO techniques.

The best feature of this tool is that it uses co-relational SEO factors. As a result, you can easily create a properly optimized page for any search term or keyword.

The tool basically crawls web pages and finds which pages already rank for a specific keyword. It also analyzes what those pages have in common and then offers you useful and actionable recommendations. As a result, you may create a similar page to the one you are competing with.

Moreover, Surfer SEO analyses web pages based on 500 different factors across the top 10 results. Then, it compares those sites to your page and offers you insight into what is and is not working.

It also looks at things like text length, page speed, keyword density, referring URLs, referring domains, etc.

Overall, Surfer SEO is the best option if you’re looking for the best AI SEO tools to optimize your content.

Best Surfer SEO Features:

• SERP Analyzer: This feature allows you to analyze the top-ranking pages for your target keywords.
• Content Editor: This allows you to analyze your own content and see how it compares to the top-ranking pages.
• Keyword Tool: It helps you find the right keywords for your website.
• Backlink Analysis: This helps you identify backlinks to your website.
• Grow Flow: This helps you improve your website’s SEO performance by providing you with actionable tasks.
• API: Surfer SEO offers an API that allows you to integrate the tool with other SEO tools and software.
• Plagiarism Checker: This allows you to check your content to make sure it’s 100% original before you publish.
• AI Outline Generator: Creates an outline that can help you improve your content creation process.
• Keyword Surfer: A free SEO Chrome extension that offers keyword volume and useful metrics within Google search.

Surfer SEO Pricing:

Surfer SEO offers four pricing plans:

• Essential: The Essential plan costs $89 per month ($69 billed annually) and offers 30 optimized articles per month.
• Scale: The Scale plan costs $129 per month ($99 billed annually) and offers 100 optimized articles per month.
• Scale AI: The Scale AI plan costs $219 per month ($179 billed annually) and offers 100 optimized articles per month and 10 AI articles per month.
• Enterprise: You can contact them for the Enterprise plan.

Surfer SEO Free Trial:

Surfer SEO offers a 7-day free trial with all its popular features: Content Editor and Keyword Research (each with 5 credits). The trial also includes access to Surfer AI.

Try Surfer SEO 7-Day Free Trial

7. Moz Pro

Next on our list of the best SEO tools for small businesses is Moz Pro. It is a popular all-in-one SEO software suite that offers tools designed to boost search engine visibility. It offers basically all of the same features as Semrush.

You may perform keyword research, site audits, rank tracking, and look for link-building opportunities.

Additionally, you can also create keyword lists that include all semantic terms, as Semrush does.

Best Moz Pro Features:

• Keyword Explorer: Find keywords that are relevant to your target audience and that have a good chance of ranking well in search engines.
• Link Explorer: Analyze your backlink profile and see how it compares to your competitors.
• Site Audit: This allows you to see how well your site performs in terms of technical SEO and on-page optimization.
• Rank Tracker: This allows you to track your website’s ranking for keywords over time.
• MozBar: A free Chrome extension that allows you to see SEO metrics for any website.

Moz Pro Pricing:

Moz Pro offers four pricing plans:

• Standard: The Standard plan costs $99 per month ($79 billed annually) and offers 3 campaigns, 300 keyword rankings, 100,000 pages crawl/week, etc.
• Medium: The Medium plan costs $179 per month ($143 billed annually) and offers 10 campaigns, 1,500 keyword rankings, 500,000 pages crawl/week, etc.
• Large: The Large plan costs $299 per month ($239 billed annually) and offers 25 campaigns, 3,000 keyword rankings, 1,250,000 pages crawl/week, etc.
• Premium: The Premium plan costs $599 per month ($479 billed annually) and offers 50 campaigns, 4,500 keyword rankings, 2,000,000 pages crawl/week, etc.

Moz Pro Free Trial:

Moz Pro offers a 30-day free trial, and you can get access to all features in that period. You need to enter your credit card details to use the Moz Pro free trial. However, if you don’t have a credit card, you can use Moz’s free tools.

Try Moz Pro 30-Day Free Trial

8. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free website analytics service provided by Google. It shows you where your traffic is coming from, what pages your visitors are looking at, and how long they stay on your website.

Furthermore, Google Analytics helps you to track your marketing ROI. You can examine which marketing channels are bringing visitors to your website and track conversions.

Check out how to add Google Analytics to a WordPress site.

Best Google Analytics Features:

• Real-time Tracking: Google Analytics allows you to see the real-time performance of your website. These include the number of active users, their geographic location, and the pages they are currently viewing.
• Audience Insights: You can gain valuable insights into your website’s audience demographics, including age, gender, interests, and location.
• Behavior Flow: Analyze how people interact with your website, which pages they visit, and how long they remain on each page.
• Goal Tracking: Google Analytics allows you to track specific user actions, such as form submissions, purchases, or clicks on a particular button.
• E-commerce Tracking: If you have an e-commerce website, Google Analytics can track important metrics such as revenue, transactions, and conversion rates. This information can help you identify opportunities to optimize your online store and increase sales.
• Multi-Channel Attribution: This allows you to track your website visitors’ journey from the first time they visit your website to the time they convert. This data can help you understand your website’s marketing funnel and optimize your marketing campaigns.

Pricing:

Google Analytics is free.

9. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is a sophisticated AI writing tool that can help you enhance your blog posts and website content. It uses artificial intelligence to help you with keyword research, content optimization, and writing better headlines.

GrowthBar is a great tool for bloggers and content teams who want to improve their writing skills and produce high-quality content.

Best GrowthBar Features:

• AI Writing Tool: Using GrowthBar’s AI Content Writing tool, you can create long-form blog posts and then optimize them with GrowthBar’s SEO suggestions.
• Keyword Research: It allows you to find profitable keywords with high search traffic with low competition.
• Keyword Tracking: Track how your website performs for all of the important keywords in your niche. You can also track your competitors’ rankings and compare your keyword rankings to theirs.
• Backlink Tracking: This lets you track your own backlinks and monitor your competitors’ backlinks.
• SERP Analysis: This provides insights into a keyword’s top-ranking pages and helps you analyze their on-page SEO factors and backlink profiles.
• Chrome Extension: Offer a Chrome extension that allows you to see important SEO metrics directly in your browser.

GrowthBar Pricing:

GrowthBar offers three pricing plans:

• Standard: The Standard plan costs $48 per month ($29 billed annually) and offers 25 AI content outlines, 500 AI paragraph generations, 25 keyword tracks, etc.
• Pro: The Pro plan costs $99 per month ($79 billed annually) and offers 100 AI content outlines, 2,000 AI paragraph generations, 1,000 keyword tracks, etc.
• Agency: The Agency plan costs $199 per month ($129 billed annually) and 300 AI content outlines, 5,000 AI paragraph generations, 5,000 keyword tracks, etc.

GrowthBar Free Trial:

GrowthBar offers a 7-day free trial, and you can get access to all features in that period. You need to enter your credit card details to use the GrowthBar free trial.

Try GrowthBar 7-Day Free Trial

10. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

The Screaming Frog is a web-based SEO tool that “crawls” your whole website.

It is considered one of the most recommended SEO tools available online by experts.

It keeps track of the crawl level, internal and external links on each page, keyword elements such as title and meta description, and their lengths and HTTP status codes.

Best Screaming Frog SEO Spider Features:

• Find Broken Links: Crawl a website in real-time to find broken links (404s) and server errors.
• XML Sitemap Generation: Quickly create XML Sitemaps and Image XML Sitemaps that can be submitted to search engines to help them crawl and index your website.
• Schedule Audits: Schedule crawls to run at chosen intervals and auto-export crawl data to any location.
• Integration with Google Analytics: It integrates with Google Analytics to provide valuable insights into user behavior, site traffic, and other metrics.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider Pricing:

Screaming Frog SEO Spider offers two pricing plans:

• Free: The free plan offers 500 URLs to crawl.
• Paid: Paid plan offers unlimited URLs to crawl.

Try Screaming Frog Free

11. Seobility

Next, an SEO tool that provides all of the SEO features is Seobility.

Seobility is a strong all-in-one SEO tool that allows you to track your website’s performance, which is useful for SEO improvement. SEObility’s daily updates and link-building tools make it simple for business owners to increase their search engine rankings.

Furthermore, it quickly crawls all of a website’s connected pages and identifies problems such as duplicate content and broken links.

Best Seobility Features:

• SEO Audit: It provides a report that highlights any potential SEO errors that need to be addressed.
• Keyword Monitoring: It allows you to track your website’s ranking for certain keywords and gives insights into your website’s performance in search engines.
• On-Page Optimization: Provides suggestions for optimizing your website’s on-page content, including metadata, header tags, images, and internal and external links.
• Backlink Analysis Tool: Monitor the link profile of your website and your competitors to find opportunities for new backlinks.
• Mobile Optimization: Seobility analyzes your website’s mobile friendliness and provides suggestions for optimizing your website for mobile devices.

Seobility Pricing:

Seobility offers three pricing plans:

• Basic: The Basic plan is free to use and offers 1,000 crawled pages, 100 checked internal links, and use on one project.
• Premium: The Premium costs $50 ($480 billed annually) and offers 25,000 crawled pages, 25,000 checked internal links, and use on three projects.
• Agency: The Agency plan costs $200 ($1,920 billed annually) and offers 1,00,000 crawled pages, 50,000 checked internal links, and use on 15 projects.

Seobility Free Trial:

Seobility offers a 7-day free trial, and you can get access to all features in that period. You need to enter your credit card details to use Seobility free trial.

Try Seobility 7-Day Free Trial

12. Google My Business

Google My Business is a local SEO Tool. It is a free service provided by Google that lets you create, manage, and optimize your business listing on the search engine.

Having GMB makes it easy for potential customers to find valuable information about your business online.

If you set up your Google business profile correctly, customers can find you in Google Maps and search results.

Best Google My Business Features:

• Business Information: You can add your business’s name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and other important information.
• Events: Add events, such as sales, promotions, or new product releases, to your GMB profile.
• Reviews: Respond to reviews that customers leave for your business.

Pricing:

Google My Business is completely free.

Start Driving Results With These Small Businesses SEO Tools

SEO is vital for small businesses, whether as a solo channel or as part of a bigger digital marketing strategy. However, you will not go far without the right tools.

The best SEO tools for small businesses will help you in your keyword research, content creation, and website analysis. What combination you will need depends on your business.

First, test out some of the top free SEO tools for small businesses, such as Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner.

From there, you build out a bigger toolkit to help you make the most of your SEO effort.

That’s it!

For more, check out these other helpful resources:

• 10 Best AI SEO Tools You Should Start Using Today
• 23 Best Free SEO Tools for Bloggers
• 6 Must-Have SEO Plugins for WordPress
• The Ultimate On-Page SEO Checklist
• SE Ranking vs Semrush Comparison

Lastly, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on the latest WordPress and blogging-related articles.