If you recently saw Jeremy Skillings speak to your networking group or chamber of commerce, he promised that he would give you the links to tools that he mentions in his talk, and here it is. With the hectic and constantly changing world of SEO, there is a lot to keep up with, and we will try to keep this page up to date and organized as much as we can.
Remember, You Can Be Found offers discounts to members of groups Jeremy speaks to. Just mention your chamber or group when you contact us and you will get a 0 discount on your custom made SEO plan. Until then, check out some of these tools potentially mentioned in the talk:
Content Tools
Copyscape Duplicate Content Checker: This tool will search for duplicate content around the internet that matches your content. Sometimes business owners learn the hard way that the content they got from their writer was actually used on many other sites. Google doesn’t like that and typically won’t rank content that is duplicative.
Siteliner Audit and Internal Duplicate Content Checker: This is a newer tool from Copyscape that looks at a number of things on your site, but the main thing I would use it for is checking for internal duplicate content. Most likely you know if you have used the same text over and over on your site. For example, a page for each town you service that says the same thing each time. Google typically won’t reward these pages with rankings. If this is a problem on your site, you will want to go through and make those pages unique.
Local Business Tools
Google My Business (GMB): Claim your business here, or once you have claimed it, this is where you go to see stats, make posts, answer questions or reviews, and add and correct your business information. There is lots to do here and more is being added all of the time.
- How to Claim Your Google My Business Listing: Video and instructions on claiming your listing if you don’t own it.
- How to Post on GMB: Video to show you how to do a post on your Google My Business page.
Moz NAP Checker: This will show you your current distribution for your business Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP). Put in your business name and the zip code and it will show you any inconsistencies out there related to your business, as well as distribution scores across the internet.
Page Speed Tools
GTMetrix: This tool will analyze your page speed and give you scores on different aspects of your speed. The magic 3-second rule we discussed is in relation to the pages fully loaded time. This tool will also tell you the things causing your speed issue. Recommendations may be technical, but your developer should understand. You can also often search for a WordPress plugin that addresses the issues that come up and try to add them to help solve your problems. Typically I would recommend you have your developer help with this, but some of you that know what you are doing can do this on your own.
Google Page Speed Insights: Might as well get your information directly from Google. This tool comes from Google and does similar work to what GT Metrix does. It will email a report to you with similar suggestions to what GT Metrix does.
Technical SEO Audit Tools
Screaming Frog: Screaming Frog will allow free site audits up to certain site sizes. Even when paid, it isn’t overly expensive. It brings back a lot of data, but you do need to know what to look for, as the data can be overwhelming and is not necessarily presented in a pretty way. You need to download this tool to use it.
Google Search Console: This tool will only tell you how Google sees your site, but let’s be honest, that is the most important thing anyway, and if Google finds an issue, it is probably causing you problems in other search engines too. You need to set up Search Console through a validation process. There are a few options there such as using Google analytics or putting a code snippet on your site. Once you have it set up and collecting data, you can learn a lot about technical issues Google may be finding with your site.
SEO Link Strength Tools
Moz Strength Checker: Moz has a tool that is free for up to 10 queries per month. You do have to create an account to use it, but you can get a general idea of your site strength, as well as some of your key competitors with the tool, to see where you stand. Links are the top individual factor for ranking strength, so it is important to know where you stand. Moz is also respected in the industry as a good source of link information and has expanded their index in the past year.
Other industry standard tools like AHRefs and Majestic sometimes will allow a free trial period before being forced to pick a paid plan. You may be able to take advantage of this for a short period. Majestic has the largest link index in the world, so is a good source to find out who is linking to you or a competitor.
