Overview of the best 5 SEO check tools
No one will find you if you end up on page 10 of the search results! How to fix that
Table of Contents
YOAST SEO
Yoast refers to itself as the WordPress SEO Plugin, No. 1. If you run a WordPress site, you should use a plugin that seamlessly integrates with WordPress. YOAST has taken “SEO for everyone” as its mission and makes it incredibly easy, even for beginners, to do successful SEO. Even the free basic version of YOAST offers many useful features, like the SEO traffic light and the readability traffic light. With the SEO traffic light, you, as a website manager, can see how well each individual page is optimized for the respective keyword. YOAST is so great because it provides concrete statements about which SEO requirements you already meet and which deficiencies you need to address to get a “green” SEO traffic light.
Often overlooked but also relevant is the readability index. Here, Yoast also indicates with a traffic light how readable Google or other search engines find the text. This is an important ranking factor because search engines prefer texts that are easily understandable.
YOAST has many other useful additional features in the premium version, such as local SEO, URL structure manager, redirect manager, support for structured data, and 24/7 premium support.
In addition, holders of the premium license benefit from the YOAST SEO Academy, where many tutorials explain the SEO craft vividly and make it usable for practice. Even for users of the basic version, a visit to the YOAST website is worthwhile because the blog is free, and it already contains so much concentrated SEO knowledge like hardly any other site.
YOAST is in English.
Learn more at https://yoast.com
Google Keyword Planner
When we start with a new website, we begin with a keyword analysis to find out which search term is the most searched for. Additionally, we narrow down the language and region to get relevant results. For this, we rely on the free Google Keyword Planner. To use it, you only need to create a free Google Ads account and access the keyword tool in the web interface.
Learn more at https://ads.google.com/
Google Lighthouse Report
Before a new website goes live or during the operation of a website, we like to use the Google Lighthouse Report to evaluate the most important SEO areas and, if necessary, optimization suggestions. For this, we use the Google Chrome browser and the browser extension “Lighthouse Report” to get an evaluation in the areas of performance, accessibility, best practice, and SEO.
Important to know: Google tests the mobile version of your website.
In addition, we also rely on Seobility, see point 5.
Download the browser extension here: Google Lighthouse Report
Google Search Console
Once your website is live and needs to be found, you should register it with the Google tool “Search Console.” This service is free and accessible through a web interface via login, only a Google account is required. The Google Search Console has many advantages: - You verify your website with Google (multiple ways are possible, e.g., via DNS entry or FTP upload of an HTML file). - You submit your website for crawling to Google so that Google can index your new website and subpages as quickly as possible and list them in the search results. For this, you register your site for URL inspection, and you can also directly inform Google about your sitemaps for pages, blog posts, categories, authors, etc., so that all relevant components are crawled quickly. - When you add new subpages or blog posts, you can immediately inform Google about them through the Search Console so that Google crawls and indexes them as quickly as possible. From now on, the Search Console becomes your best friend in the impenetrable jungle of potential pitfalls: As soon as Google detects an error, you will be notified by email. Errors can include readability problems due to too small text or elements too close together, pages not readable by Google, content wider than the screen, and similar issues. - Additionally, Google Search Console provides you with monthly email updates on key metrics such as visitor numbers, keywords your website was shown for, and other basic analyses. Alternatively, you can proactively log into the web interface to view the analyses.
You can access the Google Search Console here.
Seobility
In addition to Yoast and the Lighthouse Report, we rely on Seobility. Why? Because seobility is a jack-of-all-trades among SEO tools and goes beyond Yoast and the Google Lighthouse Report. The web-based software is already a great help in the free basic version, as it includes the three main areas of on-page optimization, rank tracking, and backlink analysis, taking a lot of SEO work off our hands. The tool already includes many functions in the free basic version. In the first step, seobility crawls the entered URL, including subpages, and conducts a comprehensive on-page SEO check. Technical and content-related errors are highlighted, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation. The results are clear and well explained. We optimize the website structure, perform keyword monitoring, and observe competitors and other market participants with seobility. In the premium version, more features are added, such as direct recrawling, more domains that can be crawled, more precise analysis, more competitors, and more keywords that can be checked.
Try Seobility for free: https://www.seobility.net/de/
SEO check tools: our conclusion
Even in the free basic version, SEO beginners and advanced users can find many easy-to-use aids. Google products are generally free to use.
If you want to go even deeper than with the applications presented here, we recommend Sistrix and Searchmetrics in addition. Both tools are very comprehensive and are usually used for the websites of larger, often multilingual companies.
Are you interested in an SEO check for your website? We look forward to receiving your non-binding inquiry.
