The reality is that having even a basic knowledge of SEO, and the tools that SEO specialists use, can help your business become more efficient.
Using search volume to evaluate the demand for a product, understanding what questions your customers are asking, and identifying the weaknesses in your online presence can all contribute to a better understanding of your industry and ultimately better business performance.
This week we've compiled a list of our favourite free SEO tools that can help you gain an edge over your competition.
Keywords Everywhere
The first tool that we recommend is a saving grace for anyone that relies on Google's keyword planner: the Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension. This tool really does work like magic and is useful to just about any marketer or business owner interested in keyword research and SEO.
Keywords Everywhere is a simple browser add-on that provides a live readout of search volume, cost-per-click, and competition directly in your search bar, every time you search. The tool works across some of the biggest search engines around including Google, Amazon, YouTube, and several more.
It particularly shines when you're looking for new keyword opportunities, but it can also prove surprisingly fun when just browsing for enjoyment.
Screaming Frog
If you've spent time in the world of ecommerce and online business you've probably heard the term 'web crawler'. This term is often thrown around when talking about Google or other search engines and how they read your site, but there are actually a wide range of crawlers that can tell you a wealth of information about your website.
One such tool is Screaming Frog, one of the best ways to scan your site for errors and get useful insights on what needs to be changed.
As your site grows, there's no shortage of things that can go wrong. Broken links, duplicate pages, and thin content can all impact your site’s performance and even lead to a negative user experience.
Luckily, Screaming Frog lets you do a top-to-bottom audit on your site and the best part is it's completely free for the first 500 pages.
The tool will also let you know if any critical errors need to be addressed and will even let you export the data to a spreadsheet if you want to dive a little deeper.
Google Trends
Correctly predicting the future moves of your consumers can mean the difference between a failed business and a successful one.
Knowing where your market is heading gives you and your marketing team a huge advantage over competitors that are complacent in this area. Here is where Google Trends can lend you a helping hand.
Google Trends is a tool maintained by Google that shows how the search volume for different topics and search terms change over time. By mastering this tool, you can help ensure that your content is always current and able to capitalise on trends as they happen, rather than afterwards.
Everyone from company owners and leaders of large business to hobbyist bloggers can improve their content by understanding the topics that are currently trending across the web.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a very useful keyword research tool that provides a visual representation of frequent search phrases for a particular topic, all in the form of questions.
By scraping data from Google's Autosuggest algorithm, Answer the Public quickly generates hundreds of useful key phrases and gives you an amazing insight into what your potential customers are searching for.
This tool does not provide search volume or competition data but instead focuses on visually representing popular search phrases. However, when combined with a tool like Keywords Everywhere, it can become a very powerful tool for making key marketing decisions and finding content opportunities.
if you're looking for more great content on ecommerce, read more on the Amazon Payment Services blog!
Sources:
- https://keywordseverywhere.com/
- https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/
- https://trends.google.com/trends/
- https://answerthepublic.com/
