Looking for a proven SEO toolset for your small business?
With so many moving components to building out a successful small business SEO campaign, it’s impossible to manage everything without the right toolset.
For starters, you’ve got technical audits, keyword research, content optimization, link building, on-page SEO, and rank tracking. And then there’s the nuances between local, regional, and national campaigns.
In fact, when you run a Google search for “SEO software”, you’ll get about 374 million results:
As a small business owner or busy marketer, you don’t have the time to vet all those tools.
After all, not all SEO software is created equal.
Some are all-in-one toolsets, while others are built for a specific purpose. Each one is different. And many are not a good fit for small businesses.
So, how do you know which one is right for your business?
To help save your time, I’ve put together a shortlist of the SEO software that I’ve used to help dozens of small businesses grow their organic traffic, and hundreds of other SEO experts have vouched for.
We’ve broken out the toolset by category, and included the top use cases for each tool in the list.
Top 20 SEO Tools for Small Businesses in 2020
You may be looking for an all-in-one SEO platform or a tool for a specific area of your campaign. To make it easier for you to navigate, we’ve broken down the results by the core areas of an SEO campaign:
Disclaimer This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
All-in-One SEO Software for Small Businesses
Let’s start with the best all-in-one SEO software. These platforms have the feature sets to cover your entire SEO campaign, including technical audits, keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO, and reporting.
SEMrush
SEMrush has been voted the best all-in-one SEO platform, as well as a leading tool across all major SEO categories, including keyword research, competitor analysis, link building, rank tracking, and reporting. It’s a true all-in-one platform used by over six million professionals, from companies such as ebay and Quora.
Key use cases:
- Analyze your competitors’ traffic strategy and engagement across different channels and devices with the Traffic Analytics tool.
- Find which subdomains, subfolders, URLs and keywords drive the most organic traffic to a given website.
- Use a series of advanced filters to find high-intent keywords.
- Compare the keywords of up to five competitors to find keyword gaps at the URL, subfolder and domain levels.
- Discover which pages on your competitors’ websites are attracting the most backlinks.
- Use the Backlink Audit tool to identify and remove toxic backlinks.
- Diagnose and fix technical and on-page SEO issues in the Site Auit report.
- Use the SEO Writing Assistant to analyze content quality – readability, tone of voice, originality – and check for potential over-optimization (related to keyword stuffing) and duplicate content issues.
- Run technical content audits with the Content Toolkit.
- Monitor your keyword rankings at national, regional, and local levels in the Position Tracker tool.
- Use the pre-built Reporting templates and third-party integrations to build branded and white-label reports for your business, boss or clients.
- Manage all your SEO campaigns and projects – rankings, site audits, link building, on-page SEO, backlink audits, brand mentions and content audits – from a single dashboard, and share access with different team members and/or clients.
Pricing: SEMrush has three subscription plans, starting from $99.95/month.
Bonus resources:
SEMrush Review (38 Practical Use Cases)
SEMrush Free Trials: Test Drive Pro, Guru or TA
How to Win Featured Snippets (& Rank in Position #0)
How to find high-value competitor keywords
[VIDEO]: How to Find Keyword Cannibalization Issues
19 Practical DIY SEO Tactics
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset covering competitor and keyword research, rank tracking, content analysis, backlink analysis, and site audits.
Key use cases:
- Analyze the keywords, organic traffic, and backlink profiles of your competitors with Site Explorer.
- Discover loads of new keyword ideas your customers are searching for with Keywords Explorer.
- Use the SERP Overview report’s link and traffic data to more accurately qualify keyword opportunities.
- Analyze the top-performing content on any topic in any niche with Content Explorer.
- Track your keyword ranking progress, including their SERP features, across your website in Rank Tracker.
- Find and fix technical and on-page SEO issues on your website with Site Audit.
Pricing: Ahrefs has four subscription plans, starting from $99/month.
Bonus resources:
Ahrefs Review (60+ Practical Use Cases)
10-Step SERP Analysis Framework
Technical SEO Software for Small Businesses
The Technical SEO category covers the tools you can use to check on the foundational aspects of your website, like page speed, structured data, and overall site health.
Search Console
Google Search Console is a free technical SEO tool that lets you identify and fix a range of issues, such as indexing and mobile usability.
Key use cases:
- Identify indexation and crawling issues, and submit pages to be crawled with the URL Inspection tool.
- Monitor core web vitals – page speed and user interaction – across devices.
- Identify pages that don’t have many internal links – e.g. orphan pages.
- Uncover page speed and mobile usability issues.
- Find which queries and pages generate the most search impressions and click each month.
- Compare and monitor impression, click and CTR performance over time.
- Check security and manual action alerts from Google.
- Integrate with Google Analytics and Google Data Studio for reporting.
Pricing: Google Search Console is free.
Screaming Frog
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool is a powerful and flexible website crawler, suitable for both small and large sites. It highlights a long list of technical issues like broken links, blocked resources and slow page speed, plus on-page issues with titles, meta descriptions, and duplicate content.
Key use cases:
- Uncover technical issues such as broken links, server errors, blocked resources, and redirect loops.
- Analyze issues with page titles and meta descriptions – e.g. too long, too short, missing, or duplicates.
- Discover duplicate and thin content pages.
- Verify schema markup and microdata formatting.
- Identify potential malware or spam issues.
- Review Robots.txt files and generate XML sitemaps.
- Integrate with third-party tools – Google Search Console, Google Analytics and Page Speed Insights – and map traffic, conversion and link data to URLs at scale.
Pricing: The premium version of Screaming Frog is £149/year, or there’s a free version with limited features.
Sitebulb
Sitebulb is a website auditing tool that generates user-friendly, color-coded reports, maps, and graphs to help you improve your site’s overall health and performance.
Key use cases:
- Unearth crawling and indexing issues.
- Spot on-page issues, such as thin content and missing elements.
- Find and fix duplicate content, titles, meta descriptions, and URLs.
- Improve user engagement with achievable reading scores.
- Identify orphaned pages and URLs with very few internal links.
- Discover problems with broken links or internal links to redirects.
- Use the Link Explorer tool to analyze and optimize anchor text.
- Create site maps and perform click depth analysis.
- Generate white-label PDF reports for executives, clients and sales prospecting.
Pricing: Sitebulb has two subscription plans, starting from $13.50/month.
Merkle JSON-LD Schema Markup Generator
The Merkle JSON-LD Schema Markup Generator has lots of options to help you create Schema.org structured data markup that you apply to your website.
Key use cases:
- Generate JSON-LD schema structured data markup for:
- Articles, Events, Breadcrumbs, FAQs, How-to posts, Job posting, Local business, Organization, Person, Product, Recipe, Video, and Sitelinks search box.
- Integrates with the Rich Results Test.
Pricing: The Merkle JSON-LD Schema Markup Generator is free.
Rich Results Testing Tool
Google’s Rich Results Testing Tool can test all types of structured data markup from JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa data sources. Rich results include carousels, images, or other non-textual elements.
Key use cases:
- Test a URL or an isolated code snippet.
- Check which search feature enhancements are valid for your markup code.
- Check both mobile and desktop versions of a result.
- Integrates with Search Console reports.
Pricing: The Google Rich Results Testing Tool is free.
Bonus resources: Best SEO Audit Tools
On-Page SEO Software for Small Businesses
The On-Page SEO software category features data-driven tools to help improve your content so that it ranks higher in the SERPs.
Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO analyzes 500+ on-page signals in one go, so you have an easy-to-follow recipe for higher rankings. See what’s working for your target keyword right now, so you can improve your existing content or build content briefs for writers. Check out my in-depth review here.
Key use cases:
- Audit any URL and generate an action plan to optimize existing content.
- Create new content with perfect keyword density, common words, and precise copy length that will outrank your organic competitors.
- Find out what structured data your competitors use.
- Uncover topical questions and answer them in your content.
- Generate detailed content briefs and share them with your writers.
- Identify common backlinks across the top pages of the SERP.
- Use the Silo Planner to identify new cluster topics.
Pricing: Surfer SEO has three subscription plans, starting from $59/month.
Off-Page SEO Software for Small Businesses
The Off-Page SEO category features tools for activities such as prospecting and outreach management for small business link building campaigns.
Mailshake
Mailshake is a “cold email” outreach tool that’s ideal for link building campaigns. It comes with proven email templates, automatic follow-ups, and powerful analytics, and also includes Lead Catcher, a lightweight CRM, where you can manage and reply to leads.
Key use cases:
- Send personalized outreach emails in bulk.
- Schedule automatic follow-ups based on opens, replies, and clicks.
- Track the performance of your campaign in the analytics dashboard.
- Select from a library of proven templates for link building, guest posts, sales and content promotion.
- Use the built-in email verification tool to clean your prospect lists and maximize deliverability.
- Integrate with other software, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and loads more via Zapier.
Pricing: Mailshake’s email outreach option starts from $59/month/user.
Hunter
Hunter is an excellent tool for quickly finding and verifying email addresses when you’re planning outreach campaigns. Simply enter your prospect’s domain, or open a URL in your browser, and Hunter will search for all-known contact details.
Key use cases:
- Find the email addresses of a domain, or target an individual.
- Verify email addresses in bulk before starting outreach campaigns.
- Compose, personalize, and schedule follow-ups in cold email campaigns.
- Scrape the email addresses behind the websites you’re browsing with the Chrome extension.
- Find email addresses directly in your spreadsheets with the Google Sheets Add-on. (Ideal for bulk uploads and more extensive campaigns).
Pricing: Hunter offers a limited-feature free version, plus a premium version starting from $49/month.
Bonus resources: Best Link Building Tools
SEO Reporting Software for Small Businesses
In the SEO reporting category, we’ll review the best tools for small businesses to track rankings, organic traffic and conversions.
AccuRanker
AccuRanker is the “fastest” Rank Tracking tool that delivers the most up-to-date and accurate keyword rankings data on-demand.
Key use cases:
- Track keyword rankings across all major search engines, including YouTube, Yandex, and Baidu, as well as Google and Bing.
- Review historical data to evaluate changes in your keyword rankings.
- Discover which SERP features, like featured snippets, drive the most traffic.
- Analyze desktop vs. mobile ranking performance.
- Analyze the ‘Share of Voice’ score to gauge your position in the market.
- Map conversion and revenue data to keywords and URLs.
- Integrate with third-party tools like Google Data Studio, Search Console, and Google Analytics to combine data from different sources.
Pricing: AccuRanker starts at $99/month for tracking up to 1,000 keywords.
Bonus resources:
AccuRanker Review (13 Reasons to Invest)
Best SERP Tracking Tools
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that lets you see where your traffic is coming from and how visitors are interacting with your website.
Key use cases:
- Compare organic performance metrics across devices.
- Check top referral traffic sources.
- Check conversions (goals) and transactions by organic channels.
- Diagnose the source of organic traffic drops with the Content Drilldown and Landing Pages report.
- Identify which pages are driving the most organic traffic and conversions.
- Find high traffic/ low conversion pages.
- Use engagement metrics – bounce rates, time on page etc) – to diagnose potential UX issues.
- View which path visitors take before converting.
- Monitor branded vs. non-branded organic traffic growth.
Pricing: Google Analytics is free.
Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is an all-in-one reporting tool that lets you fetch data from multiple sources, including first-party connectors like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, and third-party connectors like SEMrush and Salesforce.
Key use cases:
- Pull data from multiple sources into a single report – e.g. combine keywords, traffic, links, and sales data.
- Filter data based on locations, devices, and channels.
- Automate reporting with customized date ranges.
- Create different types of data visualizations with built-in templates.
Pricing: Google Data Studio is free.
Supermetrics
Supermetrics is not a standalone reporting tool. Instead, it picks up all the marketing data you need from different sources – like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Sheets, Google Ads and many others – and brings it to your favorite reporting, analytics, or storage platform.
Key use cases:
- Pull your data into Google Sheets, Data Studio, Excel, and BigQuery directly.
- Fetch your data into more advanced data visualization tools like Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI via its API.
- Use the pre-built templates or segment the data to create custom charts and graphs.
- Schedule regular data transfers to automate your marketing reporting.
Pricing: Starts at $39/month for Data Studio and $69/month for Google Sheets.
Start your free 14-day trial here.
Bonus resource: Best SEO Reporting Tools
Local SEO Software for Small Businesses
In this category, we’ll review the best local SEO tools that help you manage your online reputation and collect customer reviews and feedback.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a free platform that lets you feature your business and key information, including customer reviews and contact information, in Google Maps.
Key use cases:
- Connect with your customers across Google Search and Maps.
- Optimize your profile for increased visibility in search results.
- Give customers more ways to reach you.
- Display up-to-date information and customer reviews.
- Publish Google posts for more engagement.
- Manage and respond to every Google review and the Q&A section.
Pricing: Google My Business is free.
BrightLocal
BrightLocal is an all-in-one local marketing platform that puts you in control of SEO, business listings, and online reputation. It’s ideal for small businesses with three locations.
Key use cases:
- Monitor keyword rankings at a city and zip code level.
- Identify and build missing business listings on top directories, plus niche, industry-specific sites.
- Manage all your reviews from across the web in one place.
- Reply to Google and Facebook reviews with a single click.
- Run a comprehensive local SEO audit in minutes.
- Maximize online visibility with the citation and data aggregator service.
- Integrate with Google Analytics for deeper insights.
Pricing: BrightLocal starts at $29/month for small businesses with up to 3 locations.
Start your free 14-day trial here.
GatherUp
GatherUp lets you collect customer feedback and online reviews into one centralized platform so you can improve your website’s visibility in local search results.
Key use cases:
- Manage your customer feedback and online reviews in one platform.
- Engage your customers with proactive requests to generate feedback and new reviews.
- Capture Net Promoter Score, survey questions, and customer feedback.
- Build quality reviews on relevant sites, like Google, Facebook, and Trip Advisor.
- Display the latest reviews and ratings on your site, with Schema markup.
- Monitor review sites, including Google Questions and Answers.
Pricing: GatherUp plans start at $75/month per location and cover up to 10 sites.
Google Review Link Generator
The Google Review Link Generator from Whitespark lets you find your business and generate your unique Google Review link. You can then share the short URL with your customers and get more reviews on your Google My Business listing.
Key use cases:
- Attract more customers by displaying positive reviews on your Google My Business listing.
- Take customers directly to the review text box on your Google My Business listing.
Pricing: Google Review Link Generator is free.
Bonus resources:
127-Point Local SEO Checklist
Best Local SEO Tools
SEO Plugins for Small Businesses
In this category, we’ll review the best single-purpose SEO plugins for your WordPress site.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin designed to make your WordPress site load faster. It’s easy to set up and use, and offers extra functionality like Image Lazy Loading to improve page load speed.
Key use cases:
- Improve your site speed by preloading the cache.
- Compress all of your HTML, CSS, and JS files through minification.
- Caches static content, so pages don’t have to load again for returning visitors.
- Improve page load time by loading images as users scroll down.
- Optimize your WordPress database and Google Fonts.
- Integrates with all CDNs, like MaxCDN and Cloudflare.
Pricing: WP Rocket starts at $49/year for one site.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the #1 all-in-one SEO plugin for WordPress with over 5 million active installations and over 25,000 5-star ratings for the free version. The premium version includes a redirect manager, content insights, internal link suggestions, and free support.
Key use cases:
- Generate XML sitemaps and sync to Google Search Console.
- Optimize meta titles and descriptions on pages and blog posts.
- Gives you cornerstone content and internal linking features to help you rank for the right keywords with the right pages.
- Translates your content to structured data where possible to help search engines understand your website.
- Apply meta robots tags (e.g. no-index, no-follow) to selected pages.
- Customize canonicalization settings and redirect URLs.
- Generate Open Graph data for sharing posts on social media.
Pricing: Yoast SEO Premium starts at $89/year for one site, or download the free version here.
Bonus resource: Best WordPress SEO Plugins
Which Small Business SEO Software Are You Adding to the Arsenal?
So there you have it – 20 SEO tools across 7 categories that you can use for your small business SEO campaigns.
You can either opt for an all-in-one toolset like SEMrush or choose a few single-purpose tools from each category.
Let us know below which SEO software you’re going to add to your arsenal.
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