AI Search
The methods to improve rankings and traffic, as we know, are changing. In these evolving times, you need one of the best SEO tools to help you with tasks like keyword research, tracking backlinks, and improving on-page content.
The SEO itself is a hectic task; finding one for your digital marketing campaigns where multiple options exist can make this further overwhelming.
That’s why we went through hundreds of SEO tools for different purposes to come up with this list. The round-up of 21 tools also includes DemandSage’s favorite, as chosen by our content and SEO heads.
If you don’t have the time to review all the tools, check out our top 10 recommendations for the best SEO tools with a clear indication of their starting subscription prices, and who they are best suited for:
Continuing the details and the list further, here is a detailed overview of the 21 best search engine optimization tools you can try in 2026, including both free and paid SEO tools and software
Semrush is one of the top SEO and content marketing suites for executing comprehensive digital strategies. It provides a robust set of tools for marketers and agencies to perform effective keyword research, site audits, backlink analysis, rank tracking, competitor insights, and more in one platform.
Some key features include accurate keyword difficulty metrics to identify profitable targets, an SEO writing assistant for optimizing content, and an on-page optimization checker identifying technical flaws. Site audits evaluate problems negatively impacting organic visibility.
Competitive research is aided by tracking rankings of competitors for target keywords to analyze their strategies. Backlink tracking provides data on the most powerful links gained by competitors to inform effective link building.
Semrush is a popular SEO tool among small and mid-sized enterprises. It also gives you detailed metrics on your ranking pages, website traffic, keywords, domains, backlinks, ads, and more. If you are new to Semrush, check our in-depth Semrush review for detailed insights.
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Pricing: Semrush SEO toolkit comes with three different pricing options. You can save up to 17% with our exclusive Semrush Coupon by purchasing an annual plan.
Also, check Semrush Alternatives if you are within budget.
Ahrefs is the #1 SEO tool on our list and is suggested by many top SEO experts as their favorite tool because it offers all the data and features that a beginner needs to start a website or increase its traffic in search engines.
Ahrefs is widely used as a keyword tool, competitor analysis, backlink audits, and more. You can also analyze your competitor’s website traffic and search engine rankings using the site audit feature. You can extract a plethora of data using Ahrefs’ tools and then use it to create your SEO strategies.
Ahrefs is also known as the second-largest website crawler after Google. All the SEO experts recommend this as one of the top SEO tools because of its ease of use. With its position tracking feature, you can see your website’s top pages and the top keywords.
We also use Ahrefs for its backlinks analysis feature to find internal and external backlink opportunities and broken links. The keyword explorer tool of Ahrefs gives you a complete overview of a keyword.
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Ahrefs used to offer a free trial, but it is no longer available. Check our detailed article on Ahrefs free trial.
Moz Pro is one of the best SEO tools available. This tool tracks rankings of keywords, analyzes backlinks, does site auditing, uses keyword tools, and so on. Moz Pro is a suite of all the SEO tools you need to get higher rankings, organic traffic, and better visibility on search engines. Moz has many tools for free, such as link explorer, keyword explorer, domain analysis, competitive research, and MozBar.
Moz is also known for its SEO guides. Suppose you are a beginner in using SEO tools. The pro version of Moz provides solutions for keyword research, rank tracking, on-page optimization, custom reports, site crawling, and link research. It can also help you quickly outrank your competition. You can also prioritize keywords based on metrics to focus on what’s important. We have also done a detailed comparison of Semrush and Moz for you to check out.
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One of the most SEO tools available in the market is GrowthBar. With just one click, you can write perfect blog posts with AI and see billions of backlinks and keywords. It can also show you Google Ads data for any website.
This tool is created using one of the best language models, OpenAI. Because of that, all the results you get are 100% correct, and you can use these insights to create a strategy to take your blog to the next level. You can also use this tool’s AI writing capabilities to write unique content within a few minutes.
It has a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface, and because of that, more small businesses, entrepreneurs, and content writers are using it. Many prominent brands, including Dell, MagicJack, Product Hunt, and Instagram, use this tool for their daily content and SEO needs.
It also comes with a free Chrome Extension, giving you actionable insights while surfing the web.
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Sitechecker.Pro is a website auditing and monitoring platform for identifying SEO issues and optimizing pages for higher rankings. It offers both one-time audits and continuous monitoring to diagnose opportunities.
The tool crawls a site to extract technical and accessibility data, including page speed, mobile-friendliness, meta info, links, and more. It then checks for violations of best practices and flags them. Users also get actionable tips for fixing flagged problems like broken links or missing alt text.
Sitechecker.Pro further compares site metrics like speed and security with top competitors so you can close optimization gaps. Historical data offers insight into performance changes over time. For large sites, the bulk audit API enables programmatically analyzing up to 5 million pages. Get to know more about Sitechecker.Pro through our in-depth review here.
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SurferSEO tool is an excellent on-page optimization tool as it helps you create SEO-optimized content and lets you optimize existing content to get better rankings.
It is also more streamlined for keyword research, giving users an excellent way to rank their competitors’ keywords on Google.
It allows users to map an effective keyword strategy from the content planner. And with the site audit feature, you can ensure your website is free of any technical SEO issues. You can take your game to the next level with the help of SurferSEO. Check out our detailed review of Surfer SEO to learn more about its tools and features.
But not everyone will be able to purchase SurferSEO as they are a bit pricey; that’s why we have tested other alternative SurferSEO tools for you.
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SurferSEO provides 3 different plans and a free trial for those who have just started a new website and want to grow it quickly. You can save up to 17% when you purchase the annual plan.
If you are looking for a top SEO tool that can fulfill the needs of a large business or agency, then SE Ranking is the one for you. You will get a bunch of SEO tools with SE Ranking, such as keyword rank tracker, competitive research, website audit, social media analytics, backlink checker, and more. With the website audit tool, you can find out what errors affect your website’s SEO performance to get ranked in search engines.
This tool offers many B2B solutions, such as white label, SEO reporting tools, API, and more. Its competitor analysis tool allows you to analyze your own or your competitor’s domain for free.
You can also get key metrics of any domain, such as traffic, backlinks, keywords, competitors, ads, global metrics, and historical data. With its social media management tool, you can also maintain a social presence among your visitors.
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Serpstat is a complete growth hacking tool for marketing, PPC, content marketing, and SEO. It is an affordable tool that will fit right into your budget. It can help you analyze your competitors, perform SEO tasks, and manage your in-house SEO team.
Serpstat offers robust features such as site audit, keyword analysis, rank tracking tool, competitor analysis in organic & paid search, API & integration, SERP crawling service, and more.
You can also find keyword trends country-wise. It also helps you analyze keywords and domains in batches. The user interface of Serpstat is easy to use, and even a beginner can easily understand it.
You can find relevant competitors using the competitor analysis tool if you don’t know your competitors. You can also analyze any domain for free, and it will provide you with all the relevant data that you will need.
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SpyFu is a fantastic SEO tool that can help you boost your SEO and PPC profits. It eliminates the guesswork of SEO and gives you access to ranking history, backlink strategies, top pages, and keyword tracking of any domain.
This is the only SEO tool you will need to dominate your competition. It offers plenty of features that will give you the upper hand over your competitors.
It lets you find out your competitors’ strategies and use them to your advantage using the tools of SpyFu. It can help you increase the traffic to your site, track your keywords, and make better connections with your visitors. With its PPC competitor research tool, you can find out for which keywords your competitors have placed their ads on Google. It also offers a PPC ad rank tracker tool that can track the rankings of your PPC keywords.
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Mangools is a great SEO tool because of its easy-to-use user interface and offers the best value for your money. It is an all-in-one SEO tool that will fit your budget easily. With Mangools, you can find the perfect keywords for your niche, get SEO metrics of any Google search results, track the rankings of your pages, find out powerful backlink opportunities, and find out the authority of your competitor’s websites.
Mangools offers many SEO tools such as SERPChecker, KWFinder, SERPWatcher, SiteProfiler, SERP Simulator, Link Miner, SERP Volatility Checker, and SEO Browser Extension.
It also offers free learning materials such as tool guides, SEOpedia, the complete SEO guide for beginners, and an on-page SEO guide. If you are having issues using the tools of Mangools, then you can also check the how-to guide of that particular tool.
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Ubersuggest is one of the best free tools available in the market. The marketing & SEO expert Neil Patel created this tool. It is a tool suggested for keyword research by Neil Patel. that can help you quickly find profitable keywords for which you can easily rank.
Using this tool, you can also identify the search intent behind any keyword because it shows you the top SERP results for its long tail and short variations.
You can generate as many keywords as you want with Ubersuggest. It also shows you key metrics for a particular keyword, such as seasonal trends, keyword volume, competitors, and CPC.
It also offers you the domain overview, top-ranking pages for a keyword, related keyword suggestions, content ideas, and backlink data.
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If you want to rank your pages on Google, then there is no better tool you can use than Search Console. This tool was previously known as Webmaster Tools. This tool gives you the perspective of Google for your website.
It can measure the traffic to your website and give you reports on any issues related to indexing and site maps. You can use Search Console’s suggestions to improve your website’s SEO.
To start using this tool, you will need to verify the ownership of your website. Using the Google Analytics tool, you can also connect your website to Google Search Console. Using Google Analytics is unnecessary, but you will have control over the indexing of your pages. You can get a complete overview of your website’s traffic, such as the engagement rate, how many clicks your pages are getting daily, and more.
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Pricing: Completely free of cost.
Majestic SEO Tools is a great marketing SEO tool because it offers many marketing and SEO tools similar to Semrush. One of its unique features is the Majestic Million, which lets you check the ranking of the top million websites.
The rankings are a bit similar to the Ahrefs rankings parameter. If you want an overview of any domain, enter its URL in the site explorer tool, which will show you all the domain details.
It also gives you the option to export all the data in CSV files so you can use it to your advantage. Majestic is also one of the best SEO tools, and they have been adding new features and improving the existing ones ever since.
That’s why many experts prefer Majestic over other SEO tools. You can also build your SEO campaigns using the Citation Flow and Trust Flow feature of Majestic.
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WooRank is another SEO tool in our list that gives in-depth details of any domain. It offers a free SEO tool called Website Review, which analyzes your website and provides insights into it.
It also offers paid tools that can help you with SEO and marketing. You can use the data WooRank provides to boost the rankings, traffic, sales, and leads. To check your website’s score for free, you just need to enter your website’s URL in the search box.
It is the only marketing tool you will need for your website. You can also review as many websites as possible and generate custom reports to share with anyone. It offers tools like competitive analysis, technical website audits, keyword research & tracking, white-label reports, and instant website reviews.
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Advanced Web Ranking is a tremendous SEO tool for tracking a large volume of keywords. You can track your keywords on a hyper-specific level, including the search engine results feature.
You can track around 4000+ search engine results and more than 1770+ countries for not only Google but also Amazon, YouTube, etc.
The advanced web ranking tool also performs a deep competitor analysis, including deep metrics like market share, estimated page views, visits, and new competitors.
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AuthorityLabs is an SEO rank-tracking software that is accurate & reliable. It has a very smooth interface that is user-friendly. If you have multiple sites, then you can use AuthorityLabs to set them up completely and optimize the SEO campaigns of those websites.
It offers you tools to monitor, track, and improve your keywords’ performance. You can monitor keywords to see how they are performing on search engines.
It also allows you to track your competitor’s keywords to compare your and your competitor’s keyword performance side by side.
AuthorityLabs completely focuses on monitoring and improving the performance of your keywords; that’s why it is one of the best rank tracking tools. AuthorityLabs gives two solutions, and they are AuthorityLabs Rank Tracker and AuthorityLabs Data Services.
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Pricing: AuthorityLabs comes with four pricing options. The plus plan costs $49/mo, the pro plan costs $99/mo, the pro plus plan costs $225/mo, and the enterprise plan costs $450/mo.
Here are some of the best free SEO tools for you to try.
If you want to know whether your SEO efforts are fruitful for your website or not, then you will need an analytics tool such as Google Analytics. It is one of the most used analytics available on the internet. It also helps you see where your website’s traffic is coming from. Whenever you optimize your website, you can see the results of those optimizations on Google Analytics.
Google Analytics gives you access to plenty of data for your website, which you can use to improve it quite a bit. You can also see real-time activities on your website on Google Analytics. Setting up Google Analytics for your website can be tedious, so I have created a step-by-step guide here to help you do so easily.
If you don’t have the budget to buy a keyword research tool, then you can use this free keyword research tool from Google. If you are looking for keywords for Google Ads, then Google Keyword Planner is the best tool for you. Its data is believed to be the most accurate because it is a tool from Google itself.
We have also experimented with Google Keyword Planner and found that this statement is not completely true because the search volume of the keywords is not always accurate. Google Keyword Planner has one more limitation: It cannot show the exact average monthly searches; it only shows a range of average monthly searches.
RankMath is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that helps you optimize your website’s content. It allows you to add the Meta Title, Permalink (Slug), and Meta Description of any of your website’s pages. To use this plugin, all you need to do is download it from the plugins section of WordPress, activate it on your website, and start optimizing your content.
RankMath also helps you check your website’s Google Search Console data directly on the WordPress dashboard, redirect URLs, track your keywords’ rankings, and find and fix broken links. RankMath also gives your pages a score, and the higher the score, the better the chances of ranking on the search engines.
SEOQuake is a free SEO Chrome Extension offered by Semrush. This extension shows you all the SEO parameters of a website while you are browsing the internet. You can conduct an on-page SEO audit of a website with just a click. Apart from that, it can also examine external & internal links of a website, compare URLs and domains in real-time, and export the entire data in a file format.
With their Link Examiner tool, you can examine the quality of the links and see the anchor text in which the link is given. You can adjust the parameters and metrics of SEO Quake to only show the important ones in the report. SEOQuake can audit your website’s SEO in a flash and show you the SEO performance of your website. You can share the exported reports with anyone you want.
Google Trends is another great SEO tool that the SEO community has underutilized. If you’re a complete beginner in the SEO field, you can get started with Google Trends immediately. The best thing about this tool is that it is very straightforward, giving you many important metrics that everyone should consider while doing keyword research.
With Google Trends, you can find trending ideas, topics, and keywords that you can explore and create content for to rank faster on Google.
You need to look for only three things while doing keyword research on Google Trends, and they are trends of the keyword over time, comparison between before & now of the keyword trend, and popular topics.
You can easily see the trend of any keyword for any country and find profitable keywords for your business.
Sage Bonus: If you are planning to buy these SEO tools, now is the best time, as the Black Friday SEO Deals are LIVE!
So this is our handpicked list of the best paid & free SEO tools. Now the only question remains: Which one should you choose?
If you want advanced marketing and SEO features, you should go with Semrush. But if you wish to ease of use and more data on your website, you should consider Ahrefs. Google’s Search Console is a must-use tool for your website because it will give you daily activity reports.
All in all, it all comes down to your requirements & budget. We hope you can choose an SEO tool from our list. Let us know your thoughts on this list in the comments section below.
Use a combination of these SEO tools to analyze and buy expired domains that can potentially give you a high percentage of profit. Check out this guide to learn how to buy an expired domain and the common platforms to get them from.
FAQ on SEO tools
You don’t need to use expensive SEO tools to rank your website. Using these SEO tools, you can improve site speed, analyze data, improve rankings, fix broken links, and even audit your website. These are the best SEO tools for beginners: Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, GTmetrix, Check My Links, and Open Link Profiler.
You can manage your website’s SEO if you are well-versed in SEO strategies.
The paid SEO tools depend on several factors, as every website’s requirements are different regarding SEO optimization. Here are a few SEO tools that are worth purchasing for your website: Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Pro.
It usually takes nearly 3-6 months to see results for your SEO efforts with the help of leading SEO tools.
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