This article’ll walk you through 14 of the best SaaS SEO tools to plan, measure and track your online success. Whether you’re an SEO novice looking for guidance or a seasoned pro seeking to streamline your efforts, these tools can help optimise your strategy, giving your SaaS business the digital visibility it deserves.
The mantra ‘if you build it, they will come’ no longer holds water in this increasingly digital age. With millions of websites vying for attention, it’s imperative not just to build but to build optimally, making your site stand out in the bustling crowd. This is especially true for SaaS companies, where competition is as fierce as it gets. That’s where Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, comes into play.
SEO, in essence, is the art and science of making your website attractive to search engines. It’s about understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they seek, the words they’re using and the type of content they wish to consume. Catering to these needs can help your website connect with prospective customers, ultimately driving traffic and conversions.
But SEO isn’t a walk in the park. It’s a complex, ever-evolving discipline that requires a deep understanding of numerous factors that search engines use to rank websites. This is where SaaS SEO tools can provide a much-needed helping hand, making the process more manageable and effective.
Now let’s begin! Be sure to grab a cuppa!
What Is the Purpose of SaaS SEO Tools?
When it comes to SEO, there’s an awful lot of moving parts. You’ve got your keywords, meta tags, backlinks, website speed, content quality, and then there’s the small matter of algorithm updates that can turn everything on its head. It’s a bit like trying to juggle whilst riding a unicycle – not impossible, but certainly tricky!
That’s where SaaS SEO tools come into the picture. These digital helpers offer a suite of features designed to make your SEO efforts more streamlined and efficient. They’re the trusty sidekicks every SEO superhero needs, helping you navigate the complex world of search engine algorithms and best practices.
But what are some of the specific tasks that these tools can help with? Let’s break it down:
1. Keyword Research
SEO starts with understanding what your potential customers are searching for. Utilising SaaS SEO tools can help you uncover these keywords and phrases, providing insights into search volumes, competition, and even seasonal trends!
2. Site Auditing
Ever wish you could have a ‘health check’ for your website? That’s essentially what an SEO technical audit does. It analyses your website for any issues that could be impacting your search engine ranking, such as broken links, slow-loading pages, and duplicate content.
3. Rank Tracking
Knowing where you stand in search engine results for specific keywords is important. This might seem like a given, but you’d be surprised just how many people ignore this key aspect of SEO! These SaaS SEO tools can track your website’s ranking over time, giving you a clear picture of your SEO performance and areas for improvement.
4. Competitor Analysis
Want to know what your competitors are up to? SaaS SEO tools can give you a peek into their SEO strategies, helping you understand what’s working for them and areas where you could gain an edge.
5. Content Optimisation
These tools can help you create SEO-friendly content by providing suggestions for keyword usage, meta descriptions, heading tags, and more.
6. Backlink Analysis
Backlinks are a critical part of SEO. SaaS SEO tools can analyse your backlink profile, helping you understand which websites are linking to yours, the quality of these links, and areas where you could potentially build more.
Top SaaS SEO Planning and Auditing Tools
When it comes to planning and auditing your SEO strategy, you need tools that can provide actionable insights and reliable data. SaaS SEO tools are all about giving you the data and insights you need to optimise your website, improve your search engine ranking, and connect with your target audience. They’re not just tools; they’re your strategic allies in the digital marketing battlefield.
So, let’s dive in and take a closer look at some of the best in the business, shall we?
1. Screaming Frog
First up on our list is Screaming Frog, an SEO tool that’s as unique as its name. This UK-based tool offers a robust SEO Spider that’s designed to crawl websites just like a search engine would.
It’s a favourite among SEO professionals and provides a wealth of features to help with your SaaS SEO planning and auditing needs!
Key features
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SEO Auditing: Screaming Frog is known for its ability to quickly crawl a website and identify any potential SEO issues. This includes broken links, duplicate content, problematic meta tags, and more. It’s like having an SEO doctor at your disposal, diagnosing issues that may be keeping your website from achieving top search engine rankings.
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XML Sitemap Generation: An XML sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your website and find new pages. Screaming Frog can generate these sitemaps with a click of a button, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site.
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Visualisation Features: Screaming Frog offers unique visualisations of your website’s architecture, allowing you to see your site from a search engine’s perspective. This can help identify areas where the site structure could be improved.
Price
Screaming Frog offers a free version of their SEO Spider with a crawl limit of 500 URLs — which essentially means 500 pages. That’s great to get started, but if you work for a SaaS company with multiple offerings across many websites, it might not be enough!
For unlimited crawling and additional features, they offer a paid version at £199 per year. This makes it a flexible option, suitable for both smaller businesses just starting with SEO and larger companies with more complex needs.
2. Ahrefs
Next on our list is Ahrefs, a comprehensive SEO tool suite that’s loved by many in the industry — including us! And it’s no wonder, too. Ahrefs is like the Swiss Army knife of SEO tools, offering a range of features to help with everything from keyword research to competitor analysis.
Key features
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Keyword Explorer: Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer provides extensive data on the keywords relevant to your business. It not only gives you search volume but also keyword difficulty, click data and even global volume for over 170 countries.
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Site Audit: The Site Audit feature is a powerful crawler that checks your website for over 100 pre-defined SEO issues. It’s a great way to identify potential areas for improvement, helping you prioritise your SEO efforts.
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Content Explorer: This feature allows you to discover the most popular content for any topic, sorted by backlinks, organic traffic, and social shares. It’s a great tool for content creators and marketers looking to understand what kind of content performs well in their niche.
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Rank Tracker: Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker lets you monitor your rankings over time for any keyword or set of keywords. It also allows you to track your competitors’ rankings, giving you insights into how your SEO efforts compare.
Price
Ahrefs offers four pricing tiers, starting from $99/month for the Lite version and going up to $999/month for the Enterprise package. Naturally, each tier offers significantly more features the higher up the totem pole you go!
3. Moz
Onwards we go to Moz, another heavy-hitter in the SEO tool landscape. Developed by some of the most respected minds in the SEO community, Moz is a full-service toolkit that aims to simplify SEO, social media management, and content marketing.
It’s a tool that’s been making SEO accessible for years, whether you’re just getting started or you’re an experienced marketer looking to up your game.
Key features
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Keyword Research: Moz offers a robust keyword research tool known as Keyword Explorer. This tool provides keyword suggestions, SERP analysis, and detailed performance metrics.
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SEO Audit & Crawling: Moz’s Site Crawl tool can audit your website and highlight critical issues that could affect your website’s performance. It also offers suggestions on how you can fix these problems.
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Rank Tracking: With Moz, you can track your site’s ranking on search engines for specific keywords. It allows you to see how your SEO efforts are paying off over time.
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Backlink Analysis: Moz’s Link Explorer allows you to research your backlinks and the backlinks of your competitors. It provides metrics like domain authority and spam score, which can help you develop a successful backlink strategy.
Price
The price for Moz Pro starts at $99 per month for the Standard plan, with multiple tiers available up to the Premium plan at $599 per month. The best thing is that they also offer a free 30-day trial for their Medium plan, providing a risk-free opportunity to test out the tool’s capabilities.
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
Now, let’s turn our attention to a tool that’s not just powerful but also completely free to use – Google Search Console. Designed by Google itself, this tool is a must-have for anyone serious about SEO. It provides insights straight from the search engine your website is most likely trying to please, making it an invaluable resource in your SEO toolkit.
Key features
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Performance Reports: Google Search Console provides reports that show how your site performs in Google Search results. This includes data on organic search traffic, impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and the average position of your website in search results.
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Index Coverage Reports: This feature lets you see which pages on your site are being indexed by Google, as well as any pages that aren’t being indexed because of errors. It’s a helpful way to spot issues that could be impacting your site’s visibility in search results.
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URL Inspection: This tool allows you to check a specific URL on your site to see its status: how Google sees the page, whether there are any issues, and how to fix them.
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Mobile Usability Reports: With mobile search becoming more prevalent, it’s crucial to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Google Search Console has a feature that identifies pages that could have potential usability issues on mobile devices.
Price
One of the best things about Google Search Console is that it’s entirely free. You don’t need a large budget to gain these insights – all you need is a website to track and a Google account to get started.
5. Google Analytics (GA4)
Next up is Google Analytics 4, the latest version of the world’s most popular web analytics service. Google Analytics has long been the go-to tool for understanding the behaviour of website visitors, and this new version brings a host of updated features and an improved focus on user-centric analytics. It’s a powerful tool that can help you understand your audience better and make data-driven decisions for your business.
Key features
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User-centric Measurement: Unlike previous versions of Google Analytics, GA4 takes a more user-centric approach to data. It measures users across their lifecycle, from acquisition to conversion and retention. This gives you a more comprehensive view of how users interact with your website over time.
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Improved Reporting: GA4 offers flexible and comprehensive reporting options. You can customise your reports to focus on the metrics that matter most to your business.
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Advanced Segmentation: This feature lets you isolate and analyse groups of users based on specific criteria, such as demographics, behaviour, or acquisition source.
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Integration with Google Ads: If you’re running Google Ads, GA4 can provide valuable insights into how your ads are driving user behaviour and conversions on your website.
Price
Like Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4 is free to use.
There is a premium version, Google Analytics 360, available for businesses with more extensive needs, but the free version provides a comprehensive suite of tools that will be more than sufficient for most businesses.
6. Google Trends
Our next stop is Google Trends, another free tool from the search engine giant. While it may not be the first tool that comes to mind when you think of SEO, Google Trends can offer valuable insights into the popularity of specific search terms over time. It’s a fantastic way to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s trending in your industry.
Key features
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Trending Searches: Google Trends allows you to see the top trending searches in real-time or over the past 24 hours. This can be a great way to discover popular topics and emerging trends.
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Interest Over Time: This feature shows how the popularity of a search term has changed over time. It can help you identify seasonal trends or the rise and fall of certain topics.
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Interest by Region: Google Trends can also show where a search term is most popular, helping you understand geographical trends.
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Related Queries: This feature shows you queries that users also search for when searching for your chosen term. It’s a great way to discover related topics and expand your keyword research.
Price
Google Trends is a free tool, so you can start exploring trending topics and search interest without any investment. What a win!
7. Keywords Everywhere
As we journey further into the world of SEO tools, it’s time to introduce Keywords Everywhere. This handy browser extension is a time-saving tool that shows you keyword data directly in search results. It’s a favourite amongst many SEO professionals and content creators due to its simplicity and efficiency.
Key features
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Keyword Data in Search Results: With Keywords Everywhere, you can see important keyword data like search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), and competition data right in your search results on Google, YouTube, Amazon, and more.
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Related Keywords: The tool also provides a list of related keywords and their respective data, giving you more options for your SEO strategy.
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Historical Search Volume: Keywords Everywhere shows you a 12-month historical search volume for any keyword, helping you identify seasonal trends and the best times to target specific keywords.
Price
Unfortunately, Keywords Everywhere switched from a free to a paid model in 2019. It now uses a credit-based system, where $10 gets you 100,000 credits. Each credit equals one keyword, so you can think of it as paying $0.0001 per keyword!
8. AnswerThePublic
Now let’s have a quick look at another great SaaS SEO tool: AnswerThePublic. This is a unique SEO tool that visualises real-time search questions and topics asked by internet users. It’s a content marketer’s dream, providing insights into what your target audience is currently curious about, helping you create more engaging and relevant content.
Key features
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Visual Representation of Data: AnswerThePublic displays search data in an easy-to-understand visual format, helping you quickly identify popular questions, prepositions, comparisons, and related searches for your chosen keyword.
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Multiple Languages and Locations: The tool supports data from various countries and languages, allowing you to tailor your content strategy to different markets.
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Data Export: You can export the data in CSV format for further analysis and presentation.
Price
AnswerThePublic has phased out its free plan and now offers monthly plans starting from $5 per month for their “Individual” tier, going up to $99 per month for their “Expert” plan. All paid subscriptions come with a 7-day free trial, giving you the opportunity to test out the platform before committing!
For those looking for a long-term solution, they have a lifetime plan for $50.
9. SEO Minion
SEO Minion is yet another versatile and user-friendly browser extension. This tool assists with daily SEO tasks such as on-page SEO analysis, broken link checking, and SERP preview. It’s a fantastic addition to your SEO arsenal, providing valuable insights without leaving your browser.
Key features
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On-Page SEO Analysis: SEO Minion examines the structure of your web pages, helping you identify potential improvements to your site’s SEO.
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Broken Link Checker: Broken links can harm your SEO and frustrate users. This feature allows you to quickly find and fix broken links on your site.
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SERP Preview: This feature allows you to see how your site appears in search results, helping you optimise your site’s title and meta description for maximum click-through rate.
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Hreflang Checker: If your website serves multiple languages, SEO Minion can verify if your Hreflang tags are implemented correctly!
Price
One of the best things about SEO Minion is that it’s entirely free! This makes it a great tool for those starting out with SEO or for small businesses on a tight budget.
10. Rank Math
Now let’s take a look at Rank Math, a robust WordPress SEO plugin. If your SaaS website runs on WordPress, Rank Math is a tool you don’t want to overlook. It’s yet another Swiss army knife for SEO, helping you easily optimise your site for both search engines and social media.
Key features
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Automated Image SEO: Optimising images can be time-consuming, but not with Rank Math. This tool automatically adds alt and title tags to your images, a crucial aspect of SEO often overlooked. This not only helps search engines understand the context of your images but also improves the accessibility of your site.
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Redirection Manager and 404 Monitor: Broken links and 404 errors can hurt your site’s SEO and user experience. Rank Math’s Redirection Manager helps you set up and manage redirects, preventing visitors from landing on broken or dead-end pages. The 404 Monitor alerts you when your visitors encounter a 404 error, so you can fix the issue promptly.
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Schema Markup: Schema markup is a form of microdata that helps search engines better understand your content. Rank Math simplifies the process of adding schema markup to your site, enhancing your site’s visibility in SERPs and increasing the chances of rich result features.
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Integrated LSI Keyword Tool and Multiple Keyword Analysis: Rank Math has a built-in Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keyword tool that helps you find synonyms and related keywords, contributing to a more comprehensive keyword strategy. The Multiple Keyword Analysis feature lets you optimise your content for more than one keyword, increasing your content’s reach.
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Internal Linking Suggestions: Internal links play a crucial role in SEO, improving site navigability and helping search engines understand the structure and context of your content. Rank Math can suggest potential internal links based on your content, making the process of internal linking easier and more efficient.
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Role Manager: Rank Math’s Role Manager allows you to manage user roles and permissions, ensuring only the right people have access to your SEO settings. This feature is particularly useful for teams, as it allows for better control and management of your SEO efforts.
Price
Rank Math offers a free version that’s quite comprehensive, making it a great option for those just starting out in the world of SaaS SEO. But suppose you’re looking for more advanced capabilities, such as a keyword tracker or a custom schema builder. In that case, they have a Pro plan at $59 per user per year, a Business plan at $159 for 100 customer sites per year, and an Agency plan at $499 for 500 customer sites per year.
11. Keyword Cupid
Whether you’re looking to boost your website’s ranking or better understand your competition, Keyword Cupid has got you covered. This SEO tool uses machine learning to cluster keywords together, providing insights into how search engines interpret various queries.
The result? You’re able to align your content strategy with search engine algorithms, enhancing your site’s organic reach.
Key features
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Keyword Clustering: This tool’s main feature is its ability to cluster keywords based on user intent and relevancy. This allows you to understand which keywords are related and how they’re interpreted by search engines.
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SERP Spy: This feature enables you to spy on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for any keyword, helping you understand the competition landscape.
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URL Analyzer: This feature allows you to analyse specific URLs for their keyword clusters, helping you understand how a specific page is performing and which keywords are driving traffic.
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Content Briefs: Keyword Cupid also helps you create content briefs, providing suggestions on how to optimise your content for better SEO performance.
Price
There are essentially four plans offered by Keyword Cupid, starting with their “Starter” tier at just $9.99 per month. However, if you’d like to enjoy the tool’s signature SERP Spy and URL Analyzer tools, their “Freelancer” tier is $49.99 per month, while their “Agency” and “Enterprice” plans are $149.99 and $499.99 per month, respectively.
All plans come with extra credits that you can purchase on demand. These credits do not expire and can be used whenever you need to. The more credits you buy, the more you can earn — with discounts up to 20%!
12. Jasper AI
Jasper AI, formerly Jarvis AI, is an AI-driven writing assistant that can help supercharge your content production and SEO efforts. It’s designed to aid content creators, marketers, and SEO specialists in crafting keyword-rich, engaging copy that both readers and search engines love.
With its advanced machine-learning capabilities, it can generate high-quality text that’s contextually relevant, engaging, and human-like, making your SaaS SEO content creation a breeze!
Key features
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AI-Powered Writing: Jasper AI can generate SEO-friendly content in minutes, helping you optimise your webpages, write engaging meta descriptions, and create keyword-rich articles.
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Command Prompt: Direct Jasper AI to generate specific pieces of content, such as SEO-optimised blog post introductions, meta descriptions, or even brainstorm keyword-focused content ideas.
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Templates: Jasper AI offers pre-made content templates for SEO articles, product descriptions, ad copies, and more, allowing you to streamline your content creation process.
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Content Improver: Enhance your existing content to make it more engaging and SEO-friendly. Jasper AI can help rewrite and improve your content while maintaining its original meaning.
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Language Translation: Expand your global reach by translating your content into multiple languages, potentially boosting your international SEO efforts.
Price
Jasper AI has three pricing plans and offers a 20% discount when you opt for annual billing:
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Creator Plan: Designed for individual content creators and SEO specialists, it’s priced at $49 per month.
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Teams Plan: Aimed at small teams, this plan is available at $125 per month. It accommodates up to three users with the option to add up to 10 users for an additional $62 per month per user, offering unlimited word generation.
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Business Plan: Customised for larger teams and organisations, this plan offers tailored pricing based on your business’s specific requirements. It grants access to unlimited words and allows a customisable number of users.
13. SurferSEO
Designed for SEO enthusiasts who aren’t afraid to dig deep, SurferSEO offers in-depth analyses of your website and content, helping you identify areas for improvement and make changes that can truly impact your rankings. Whether you’re a solo SEO consultant, part of an agency, or a business owner, SurferSEO is a tool that can help you navigate the sometimes turbulent waters of search engine optimisation.
Key features
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Keyword Research and Analysis: SurferSEO provides an in-depth keyword analysis tool that helps you understand what keywords drive traffic to your site, your competitors’ sites, and how to optimise your content for these keywords.
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SERP Analyzer: This feature helps you understand how your pages perform in search results, what factors might influence their ranking, and how you can optimise them to perform better.
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Content Editor: SurferSEO’s Content Editor is an SEO game-changer. It provides real-time SEO suggestions as you write or edit content, helping you optimise for keywords, readability, and other SEO factors.
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SEO Audit: SurferSEO offers a comprehensive SEO audit tool that can help you identify website technical issues that could impact your search engine ranking. From broken links to missing meta descriptions, SurferSEO’s SEO audit tool can help you identify and fix issues that could be holding your site back from achieving its full SEO potential.
Price
Essentially, SurferSEO offers four subscription tiers — “Lite” ($29 per month), “Essential” ($89 per month), “Advanced” ($179 per month), and “Max” ($299 per month). There’s a 20% discount for those who decide to go the annual subscription route, too! For companies that need a more tailored experience, the tool offers an “Enterprise” plan to match your needs.
14. PageSpeed Insights
Rounding out our list is PageSpeed Insights (sometimes referred to as “PSI”), a free tool provided by Google that analyses the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. In the world of SEO, page speed is a critical factor.
Slow-loading pages can deter visitors, leading to high bounce rates and negatively impacting your search engine rankings. PSI helps you address these issues, ensuring your site delivers a quick and smooth user experience.
Key features
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Speed Score: PSI provides a speed score — a general representation of your page’s performance. The score is based on lab data, which is a simulation of how your page loads in different conditions.
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Optimisation Suggestions: After scanning your page, PSI offers specific suggestions to improve its speed and performance. These can range from compressing images to reducing JavaScript.
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Field Data: This tool uses real-world user experience data for its performance score, accurately reflecting how your page performs for actual users.
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Lab Data: PSI also provides lab data which is useful for debugging performance issues and can give insight into the user experience.
Price
Here’s some great news: PageSpeed Insights is absolutely free! As a Google product, it is accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a webpage to analyse. This makes it a great asset for businesses of all sizes, from small start-ups to large corporations.
How to Choose the Right SEO Tool for Your SaaS Business
Remember, the right SEO tool for your SaaS business is the one that best fits your specific needs and circumstances. It’s not about choosing the most popular or expensive tool but the one that will help you achieve your SEO goals.
Here are a bunch of things to consider when picking the right SaaS SEO tool for your business needs:
1. Understand your specific needs
Every SaaS business is unique, and so are its SEO needs. Before you start searching for an SEO tool, identify your specific needs. Are you looking to improve your on-page SEO, off-page SEO, or both? Do you need help with keyword research, link building, or competitor analysis? Once you have a clear idea of what you need, it’ll be easier to pick a tool that suits your needs.
2. Evaluate your budget
SEO tools come at different price points. While some offer free versions with limited features, others may be quite expensive. Understand your budget limitations before you start exploring your options. Remember that investing in a more expensive tool can be worthwhile if it provides the features and benefits you need.
3. Check the tool’s compatibility with your website
It’s crucial to check if the SEO tool you’re considering is compatible with your website’s platform. Some tools work better with certain platforms or have features specifically designed for them.
4. Consider ease of use
The best SEO tool is one that you and your team can use easily and effectively. Check out the tool’s interface and usability before making a decision. A complicated tool could slow you down, even if it’s packed with useful features.
5. Read reviews and get recommendations
Doing your due diligence is ultimately a rewarding task. Reading reviews from other users can give you a good idea of a tool’s strengths and weaknesses. You can also ask for recommendations from other SaaS businesses in your network. They might have valuable insights to share based on their experiences.
6. Try before you buy
Many SEO tools offer free trials or demo versions. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of these offers! This is a great way to test the tool’s functionality and see if it’s a good fit for your business.
If they don’t offer a trial period, consider testing it out for a month. Then, if you believe it’s the right tool for you, perhaps opt for the tool’s annual subscription and save some money!
Ready to Boost Your Organic Growth?
Choosing the right SEO tools for your SaaS business is critical to achieving your marketing objectives. As we’ve discussed in this blog post, a wide range of SEO tools are available today, each with unique features and benefits. It’s all about finding the best fit for your SaaS company’s needs and circumstances.
However, even the most sophisticated tools can’t replace the experience and expertise of a professional SEO agency for SaaS companies. Using an SEO tool effectively requires a deep understanding of SEO best practices, technical know-how, and a strategic mindset. And that’s where we can help you!
So, while you consider investing in SEO tools, also consider entrusting your organic growth to a team that knows how to use these tools to deliver results. Feel free to reach out to us and find out how we can help you improve your SEO and grow your SaaS business.