Use These 7 B2B SEO Tools to Track Your Success

Understanding the importance of tracking your B2B SEO projects is crucial for any marketer looking to optimise their online presence. By monitoring your SEO efforts, you can uncover valuable insights and make data-driven decisions that propel your business forward.

Here are a few key reasons why you should track your B2B SEO projects:

1. Measure success

Tracking your SEO projects allows you to measure the effectiveness of your strategies and tactics. By analysing important B2B SEO key performance indicators (KPIs) such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates, you can determine which aspects of your SEO efforts are delivering the best results. This will enable you to replicate successful strategies and fine-tune your approach to consistently improve your online visibility and reach.

2. Identify areas for improvement

Regularly monitoring your SEO performance helps you pinpoint areas where your website may be underperforming. This enables you to identify issues, such as technical glitches, content gaps, or poor user experience, and prioritise your resources to address them effectively. By continually refining your website, you’ll create a better user experience and boost your site’s overall performance.

3. Stay ahead of the competition

Staying ahead of your competitors is crucial in the B2B space. By tracking your SEO projects, you can benchmark your performance against industry standards and your competitors, allowing you to refine your strategies and maintain a competitive edge. This ongoing analysis will enable you to spot trends and capitalise on emerging opportunities before your competitors do.

4. Inform content creation

SEO metric tracking can provide you with valuable insights into the topics and keywords that resonate with your target audience. This information can help inform your content creation efforts, ensuring you produce relevant and engaging content that drives traffic and generates leads. By understanding what your audience is looking for, you can create content that addresses their pain points and positions your company as a thought leader in your industry.

5. Optimise ROI

By tracking your B2B SEO projects, you can allocate your resources more effectively and optimise your return on investment (ROI). As you focus on the strategies that yield the highest results, you’ll be able to make the most of your marketing budget. This targeted approach to your SEO efforts will help you maximise the impact of your campaigns while minimising wasted resources.

To help you stay ahead of the game, we’ve compiled a list of the top seven B2B SEO tools that every marketer should use. These tools will assist you in tracking and improving your website’s performance and ultimately help you grow your business.

Keep in mind that the most effective approach is often to use a combination of these tools to cover all aspects of your SEO strategy. With the right mix of tools and consistent monitoring, you’ll be well on your way to achieving SEO success. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the most indispensable tools in any SEO’s arsenal!

Google Analytics

Created by Google, Google Analytics, or GA for short, is a powerful web analytics tool that tracks and reports website traffic, offering detailed insights into user behaviour, demographics, and acquisition channels. GA’s advanced segmentation and filtering capabilities allow you to dive deep into your data to uncover patterns and trends that may impact your SEO efforts.

GA essentially enables B2B marketers to track their organic traffic, monitor user engagement, and measure the effectiveness of their SEO strategies. By analysing visitor behaviour and conversion paths, you can better understand how users interact with your content and identify potential bottlenecks that may be impacting your SEO performance. Additionally, Google Analytics allows for goal setting and tracking, making it easy to measure the ROI of your SEO efforts.

Main features of GA

What can you expect from using Google Analytics? Here are its biggest features:

• Real-time reporting: Monitor user activity on your site as it happens, allowing you to react quickly to changes in traffic or user behaviour.

• Audience analysis: Understand your audience demographics, interests, and behaviour patterns to tailor your content and marketing strategies accordingly.

• Conversion tracking: Set up goals and track conversions, helping you measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and identify areas for improvement.

Pros

• Free to use: Google Analytics offers a wide range of powerful features at no cost, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes, including startups and small businesses. This allows marketers to gain valuable insights without having to invest in costly tools.

• Integrates with other Google products: Easily connect Google Analytics with other Google services like Google Ads, Search Console, and Data Studio for a more comprehensive marketing analysis, streamlining your workflow and data management. This integration provides a more holistic view of your marketing efforts and can lead to better decision-making.

Cons

• Can be overwhelming for beginners: Due to the vast amount of data and features available, Google Analytics can be challenging for new users to navigate and understand, potentially leading to confusion or incorrect interpretations of data. Users may need to invest time in learning the platform or seek assistance from experienced professionals.

• Data privacy concerns: Some users may be concerned about sharing their website data with Google, which can potentially be used for advertising purposes or to gain insights about their business strategies. This may lead to hesitation or reluctance in adopting the tool by privacy-conscious businesses.

Cost of GA

Google Analytics is essentially free for most users. However, for much more advanced GA tools like intraday data, unsampled results and enhanced data freshness, Google offers an enterprise-level tier called Analytics 360.

Google Search Console (FKA Google Webmaster)

Formerly known as “Google Webmaster”, Google Search Console (or GSC) is a suite of tools provided by Google that helps website owners monitor their site’s presence in Google search results and address any issues. It offers valuable insights into your website’s search performance, such as keyword rankings, click-through rates, and crawl errors.

This tool is essential for identifying technical SEO issues and ensuring your site is properly indexed by Google. By monitoring your website’s search performance, you can quickly identify areas for improvement and adjust your SEO strategies accordingly. This tool is particularly useful for detecting issues like broken links, duplicate content, and slow-loading pages, which can negatively impact your search rankings.

Main features of GSC

Much like Google Analytics, Google Search Console has a few key features that may be helpful for your SEO endeavours:

• Search queries: Discover the search terms that drive traffic to your website and optimise your content accordingly.

• Click-through rates: Analyse your website’s click-through rates (CTR) to identify high-performing content and potential areas for improvement.

• Technical issues: Identify and resolve technical issues, such as crawl errors, to ensure your website is easily accessible to search engines.

Pros

• Free to use: Like Google Analytics, Google Search Console offers valuable insights and tools at no cost, making it a must-have for businesses looking to optimise their websites without breaking the bank. This enables even small businesses to monitor their search performance and make data-driven improvements.

• Helps you identify and fix technical issues: By identifying crawl errors and other technical issues, GSC ensures your website remains accessible and indexable by search engines, maintaining your website’s search performance. This helps B2B businesses maintain visibility and attract potential clients through search engines.

Cons

• Limited to Google: Google Search Console’s data and insights are specific to Google Search, potentially leaving you with less information about your performance on other search engines like Bing or Yahoo. For businesses looking to optimise for multiple search engines, this limitation may lead to incomplete insights.

• Can be confusing for beginners: Much like Google Analytics, the interface and terminology used in Search Console may be challenging for users with limited SEO experience. This may hinder their ability to fully utilise the tool’s capabilities. This could result in missed opportunities for optimisation or reliance on external expertise.

Cost of GSC

Possibly the best thing about Google Search Console is that you can utilise all its powerful features without spending a single penny. That’s right, GSC is completely free to use!

Screaming Frog

This essential B2B SEO tool is a desktop-based website crawler that helps marketers analyse and audit their websites for technical SEO issues. It can crawl your website quickly and efficiently, providing valuable data on broken links, duplicate content, metadata, and more.

Screaming Frog is an essential tool for B2B marketers who want to conduct thorough technical audits of their websites. By identifying and fixing technical SEO issues, you can improve your site’s overall search performance and ensure a better user experience for your visitors. It’s particularly helpful for large websites with numerous pages, where manual audits would be time-consuming and inefficient.

Main features of Screaming Frog

This essential B2B SEO tool is much more than its eye-catching name. Here are some of its main features:

• On-page SEO analysis: Assess your website’s metadata, headings, and internal links to identify areas for improvement.

• Broken link detection: Find and fix broken links to improve user experience and search engine rankings.

• Duplicate content: Discover duplicate content and resolve issues to avoid search engine penalties.

Pros

• In-depth website analysis: Screaming Frog provides a comprehensive analysis of your website’s on-page SEO elements, helping you optimise your content for better search engine performance and attract potential clients in the B2B space. This detailed information enables businesses to fine-tune their websites for optimal search visibility.

• Can analyse large websites quickly: The tool’s powerful crawling capabilities enable it to analyse large websites efficiently, making it suitable for businesses with extensive online presences, saving time and effort. This allows businesses to audit and optimise their websites regularly, keeping up with industry changes and maintaining competitive rankings.

Cons

• Primarily desktop-based: Screaming Frog is a desktop application, which means it needs to be installed on a computer to be used. This may limit the tool’s accessibility, as users cannot access it from any device without installing the software first. Additionally, the performance of the tool may be affected by the computer’s hardware capabilities, potentially causing slow crawl speeds or crashes on less powerful machines.

• Steep learning curve: Screaming Frog’s interface and advanced features may require a greater degree of SEO knowledge and experience to navigate effectively, which could make it less accessible for beginners or less experienced users. As a result, businesses may need to invest in additional training or consulting to fully leverage the tool’s capabilities.

Screaming Frog cost

If you’re only looking to utilise Screaming Frog’s crawler for up to 500 pages, then this tool is completely free to use. However, to use this powerful B2B SEO tool’s more advanced features — like those we described earlier — you’ll need to purchase an annual licence at $259 per year.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset that provides data and insights on backlinks, keyword research, competitor analysis, and more. With an extensive database of over 16 trillion backlinks and comprehensive keyword data, Ahrefs is an invaluable resource for B2B marketers looking to improve their SEO performance.

This allows you to analyse your backlink profile, research high-performing keywords, and investigate competitor strategies. With its robust keyword research capabilities, you can uncover new opportunities for growth and target keywords with high search volume and low competition. Ahrefs also offers a site audit feature to help you identify and fix on-page and technical SEO issues.

Main features of Ahrefs

This robust SEO tool provides comprehensive data on backlinks, keywords, and content analysis. But what does that mean?

• Backlink analysis: Monitor your website’s backlink profile, helping you identify high-quality links and potential toxic ones.

• Keyword research: Discover new keyword opportunities and optimise your content for better search engine performance.

• Competitor analysis: Analyse your competitors’ strategies to identify gaps in the market and capitalise on opportunities for growth.

Pros

• Comprehensive SEO analysis: Ahrefs provides a wide array of tools and data to analyse your website’s SEO performance, backlink profile, and keyword opportunities, giving you the information you need to make informed decisions for your B2B SEO strategy. The extensive data provided by Ahrefs allows businesses to identify strengths and weaknesses, fine-tune their approach, and stay ahead of competitors in search engine rankings.

• Competitive research capabilities: Ahrefs enables you to analyse your competitors’ websites, backlink profiles, and content strategies, helping you identify gaps and opportunities to outperform them in search results. By understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, you can develop targeted strategies to surpass them and capture a larger share of the market.

Cons

• Limited local SEO features: While Ahrefs excels in providing insights and tools for global and national SEO efforts, it does not offer robust local SEO features that some businesses may require to optimise their online presence for a specific geographic area. B2B companies focusing on local markets may need to supplement Ahrefs with other tools specifically designed for local SEO to ensure a comprehensive strategy.

• Steeper learning curve compared to other tools: Ahrefs’ advanced features and data analysis capabilities may be difficult for users with limited SEO experience to understand and use effectively, potentially reducing the tool’s overall value for some businesses. Users may need to spend more time learning the platform or seek assistance from experienced professionals to unlock the full potential of Ahrefs.

How much does Ahrefs cost?

Unfortunately, none of these amazing features come for free. Anyone looking to utilise Ahrefs’ indispensable B2B SEO tools needs to pick up a subscription, starting at $99 a month for their Lite tier, $199 for their Standard tier, and $399 for their Advanced tier. If you decide to pick up an annual subscription, you’ll essentially get two months free!

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is a content optimisation tool that uses data-driven insights to help marketers create high-quality, SEO-optimised content that ranks well in search results. It analyses the top-ranking content for your target keywords and provides actionable recommendations for improving your own content.

This is an excellent tool for B2B marketers looking to optimise their content for better search performance. By providing data-driven insights and recommendations, Surfer SEO takes the guesswork out of content optimisation and helps you produce more targeted, high-performing content. It’s particularly useful for targeting specific keywords and staying competitive within your niche.

Main features of Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is particularly beneficial as it helps you make it easier for potential clients to find and engage with your website. Here’s how:

• Content optimisation: Analyse your content against your competitors and receive actionable improvement suggestions.

• SERP analysis: Evaluate the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keywords to identify ranking factors and trends.

• Keyword density: Optimise your content’s keyword density to ensure it aligns with your competitors and search engine best practices.

Pros

• Data-driven content optimisation: Surfer SEO analyses your content and compares it to top-ranking pages, providing actionable recommendations for improving your on-page SEO. This helps businesses create content that aligns with search engine expectations and stands out in the competitive B2B landscape.

• User-friendly interface: Surfer SEO’s intuitive interface makes it easy for users of all skill levels to understand and implement the tool’s recommendations, reducing the time and effort required to optimise content for search engines.

Cons

• Limited to content optimisation: While Surfer SEO excels in providing content optimisation recommendations, it lacks the comprehensive SEO analysis offered by other tools. Businesses seeking an all-in-one solution may need to supplement Surfer SEO with additional tools.

• Lacks backlink analysis capabilities: Surfer SEO focuses primarily on content optimisation and does not provide tools for analysing and managing backlinks. As backlinks play a crucial role in SEO, businesses using Surfer SEO may need to rely on additional tools to gain insights into their backlink profile and develop a comprehensive off-page SEO strategy.

Price of Surfer SEO

In order to enjoy all that Surfer SEO has to offer, you’ll have to pick up a subscription. A monthly subscription starts at $59 for the Basic tier, $119 for the Pro tier and $239 for the Business tier. If you pick up an annual subscription, you’ll be treated to a nice 17% discount!

AnswerThePublic

Now this here is a keyword research and content ideation tool that helps marketers discover the questions and topics their target audience is searching for online. AnswerThePublic works by aggregating data from search engines and presenting it in an easily digestible format, providing a wealth of content ideas for your B2B SEO efforts.

AnswerThePublic helps B2B marketers uncover valuable insights into the needs and interests of their target audience, informing content creation efforts and driving more targeted traffic. By understanding the questions and topics your audience is searching for, you can create content that addresses their pain points and positions your company as a thought leader in your industry. This can increase organic traffic, better user engagement, and higher conversion rates.

Main features of AnswerThePublic

Since AnswerThePublic is a keyword research tool that uncovers the questions and phrases people search for around a particular topic, its features are keyword-centric. Here are some of its main features:

• Question-based keyword research: Discover the questions your audience is asking, providing you with valuable content ideas.

• Search intent analysis: Understand the intent behind search queries to tailor your content to meet user needs and drive organic traffic.

• Visual data representation: Easily interpret keyword data through intuitive visualisations.

Pros

• Reveals popular search queries: AnswerThePublic provides insights into the questions and topics people are searching for, helping businesses create content that addresses their target audience’s needs and interests. This can lead to improved search rankings and increased visibility in the B2B space.

• Effective for content ideation and keyword research: By uncovering the most commonly asked questions and topics in your niche, AnswerThePublic helps businesses identify new content opportunities and target keywords that can drive organic traffic. This enables businesses to create content that resonates with their audience and addresses their pain points, improving user engagement and conversions.

Cons

• Limited data compared to other tools: While AnswerThePublic is excellent for generating content ideas and researching popular search queries, it lacks the more in-depth SEO analysis features offered by other tools. Businesses may need to use AnswerThePublic alongside other SEO tools to gain a comprehensive understanding of their website’s performance and optimisation needs.

• No integration with other SEO tools: AnswerThePublic does not offer built-in integrations with popular SEO tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, or SEMrush, which could make it more challenging for businesses to combine data from multiple sources and develop a comprehensive SEO strategy. Users may need to manually export and combine data from AnswerThePublic and other tools, which can be time-consuming and less efficient.

Cost of using AnswerThePublic

To meet basic B2B SEO needs, then AnswerThePublic is absolutely free of charge. However, if you’d like to utilise this brilliant B2B SEO tool’s more advanced features, look to pay $9 a month for their Individual tier, $99 for their Pro tier, and $199 for their Expert tier.

If you’ve tried out their Individual tier and know that’s the right tool for you, you could purchase a lifetime membership for just $99!

Rank Math (for WordPress users)

If your company’s website is a WordPress site, then this B2B SEO tool might just be right for you! Rank Math is a WordPress SEO plugin that helps users optimise their website content, metadata, and other on-page factors for improved search performance.

Essentially, Rank Math simplifies the SEO process for B2B marketers, providing an easy-to-use interface for optimising content, metadata, and other on-page factors. It also offers advanced features like schema markup, XML sitemaps, and redirection management.

Main features of Rank Math

For B2B SEO, Rank Math simplifies the optimisation process, making it easier to improve your website’s search engine performance and attract potential clients. Its main features include:

• Keyword tracking: Monitor your website’s keyword rankings to gauge the success of your SEO efforts.

• Schema markup: Add structured data to your website, improving its visibility in search engines and increasing the likelihood of appearing in rich snippets.

• XML sitemap generation: Create and submit XML sitemaps to search engines, ensuring your website’s pages are indexed and easily discoverable.

Pros

• Comprehensive SEO plugin for WordPress: Rank Math offers a wide range of SEO features, including on-page optimisation, schema markup, and XML sitemap generation, making it a powerful tool for businesses using WordPress to manage their websites. This all-in-one solution streamlines the SEO process for B2B businesses, saving time and resources.

• User-friendly interface and guided setup: Rank Math’s intuitive interface and step-by-step setup process make it easy for users of all skill levels to configure and use the plugin. This ensures that even those with limited SEO experience can benefit from the tool’s capabilities.

Cons

• Limited to WordPress websites: Rank Math is specifically designed for WordPress websites, meaning businesses using other content management systems (CMS) cannot utilise the plugin. This restricts its applicability and may require non-WordPress users to seek alternative SEO solutions.

• Compatibility issues with some themes and plugins: Some users may experience compatibility issues between Rank Math and other WordPress themes or plugins, potentially causing conflicts or reduced functionality. This may require additional troubleshooting or customisation to resolve such issues.

What does Rank Math cost?

Great news, there is a free version of Rank Math available. If you’re keen on utilising the tool’s more advanced features, Rank Math’s Pro version starts at $59 per year, and its Business version costs $199 per year. Not too shabby, right?

We’ve explored seven essential B2B SEO tools that every marketer should use to track their success and optimise their online marketing efforts. By leveraging these tools, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of search engine optimisation and ensure your B2B business reaches its full organic potential.

But remember, SEO is a long-term commitment, and it requires constant attention, refinement, and adaptation. While these tools can provide valuable insights and help you make data-driven decisions, nothing beats the expertise and experience of a professional SEO agency. They can help you craft a customised SEO strategy tailored to your B2B business’s unique needs and goals, ensuring you stay ahead of the competition and achieve sustainable, long-term growth.

So, if you’re ready to take your B2B SEO efforts to the next level and unlock the true potential of your business’s online presence, don’t hesitate to reach out to an experienced, ROI-focused SEO agency — like ours! We’ll be more than happy to guide you through the process and set you on the path to success. After all, your success is our success, and we’re here to help you every step of the way.

Sound like a plan? Then book your free discovery call with us today!