I started working in SEO around 2009-2010, and over the past 12 years, I’ve encountered a lot of SEO tools. One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed is how there are fewer one-off tools. In the old days, you would use one tool to find all the broken links on a site, a second tool to find all of the images missing alt attributes, and a third tool to check the length of title and meta description tags. Now, Screaming Frog does all those things and more for only $209 per year, and it rocks!<\/p>\n
While updating this blog post from its 2014 version, I checked every link to see if the tool still existed, and surprisingly, not many were still around. Tons of the tools were long retired, broken, or just plain not needed anymore.<\/p>\n
The industry has matured a lot, and so have its tools. Instead of keeping long bookmark lists of free tools, gadgets, and browser bookmarklets, we now use a handful of go-to paid tools for most tasks. I think that’s a good thing. There are a lot of tools worth paying for these days.<\/p>\n
So here’s our updated list of digital marketing tools for 2022. It’s based on the original list, what we use internally at Portent, and my experience with tools that have proven reliable over the years.<\/p>\n
You’ll see some of the tools listed in multiple categories, and that’s because they do a lot. A couple of the tools included are direct competitors and basically do the same thing. For these instances, we don’t recommend using both. It’s best to look at each tool and see which one fits into your workflow or has a subjectively better interface.<\/p>\n
The best marketing tool you have is in your head. No amount of software, no matter how all-in-one it is, will perform the most important marketing task: thinking.<\/p>\n
If you don’t understand what to do with the output of any of these tools, they won’t be very useful. The real strategy of SEO comes into play when you use the information from these tools to find the root cause of a problem and figure out a solution. This principle also holds when you’re communicating with other teams.<\/p>\n
For example, SEO isn’t about asking a developer to fix lists of busted URLs. It’s about figuring out why there was a list of busted URLs in the first place and how you can work with a developer to prevent that from happening again in the future. If used properly, these tools will help you get to that stage of critically thinking a lot faster, which is all they can really do – save us time.<\/p>\n
Ahrefs<\/a><\/strong> BuzzSumo<\/a><\/strong> Meltwater<\/a><\/strong> Mozbar<\/a><\/strong> Domain Authority Checker<\/a><\/strong> Open Link Profiler<\/a><\/strong> Moz Link Explorer<\/a><\/strong> Moz SEO Competitive Analysis Tool<\/a><\/strong> SEMrush<\/a><\/strong> Similar Sites<\/a><\/strong> Similar Web<\/a><\/strong> Visualping<\/a><\/strong> Majestic<\/a><\/strong> back to categories<\/a><\/p>\n Sparktoro<\/a><\/strong> Content Gems<\/a><\/strong> MarketMuse<\/a><\/strong> Contently<\/a><\/strong> Content Harmony<\/a><\/strong> Copyscape<\/a><\/strong> Siteliner<\/a><\/strong> Google Public Data<\/a><\/strong> Headline Analyzer<\/a><\/strong> Similar Page Checker<\/a><\/strong> Speechpad<\/a><\/strong> Triberr<\/a><\/strong> Content & Headline Idea Generator<\/a><\/strong> Grammarly<\/a><\/strong> Polish<\/a><\/strong> Fonts Ninja<\/a><\/strong> Word Counter Plus<\/a><\/strong> back to categories<\/a><\/p>\n FullStory<\/a><\/strong> Hotjar<\/a><\/strong> Contentsquare<\/a><\/strong> Zoku<\/a><\/strong> Inspectlet<\/a><\/strong> Mouseflow<\/a><\/strong> Optimizely<\/a><\/strong> Google Optimize<\/a><\/strong> Survey Monkey<\/a><\/strong> VWO Testing Calculator<\/a><\/strong> CXL AB+ Test Calculator<\/a><\/strong> AB Testguide Significance Calculator<\/a><\/strong> back to categories<\/a><\/p>\n Canva<\/a><\/strong> HTML Color Picker<\/a><\/strong> WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool<\/a><\/strong> back to categories<\/a><\/p>\n Flang<\/a><\/strong> Hfreflang Tag Generator<\/a><\/strong> Location Guard<\/a><\/strong> I Search From<\/a><\/strong> Word Reference<\/a><\/strong> Google Translate<\/a><\/strong> back to categories<\/a><\/p>\n Google Search Console<\/a><\/strong> Google Ads Keyword Planner<\/a><\/strong> Google Search<\/a><\/strong> Google Trends<\/a><\/strong> Ahrefs Keyword Explorer<\/a><\/strong> SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool<\/a><\/strong> Moz<\/a><\/strong> Keywords Everywhere<\/a><\/strong> Keyword Shitter<\/a><\/strong> Keyword Tool<\/a><\/strong> Lexipedia<\/a><\/strong> AnswerThePublic<\/a><\/strong> Merge Words<\/a><\/strong> Meta Glossary<\/a><\/strong> Moz On-page Grader<\/a><\/strong> Wordtracker<\/a><\/strong>
\nBatch Analysis: very fast overview of backlinks for any list of URLs you enter.<\/p>\n
\nReceive alerts about where your competitors receive links from their public relations and outreach efforts<\/p>\n
\nAnother outreach and public relations platform for monitoring where your competitors are receiving visibility<\/p>\n
\nBrowser toolbar – provides a wealth of metrics & data on web pages and SERP listings<\/p>\n
\nBulk URL checker to grab Moz stats on multiple URLs via SERPs scrape\/download. Lists Domain Authority, Page Authority for a particular URL, MozRank for the URL, and the number of external links pointing to the URL<\/p>\n
\nProvides a summary of backlink information for a domain and lists the externally links pages, sorted by link quality. Free!<\/p>\n
\n“The world’s best backlink checker with over 40 trillion links.” Has a limited free account option<\/p>\n
\n“On-page report card” – grade a page for a Keyword<\/p>\n
\nUse the domain vs. domain tool to see what keywords competitors rank for with associated metrics. View Competitor keywords, ad copy, organic or paid<\/p>\n
\nEasily find similar websites<\/p>\n
\nSee estimates of annual revenue, monthly traffic, popular demographics, and top traffic channels of your competitors<\/p>\n
\nMonitor changes for specific parts or your competitors’ pages with email and text message alerts. Has a free tier<\/p>\n
\nBacklink profile reports with an extensive historical index. Also makes it easy to see where backlinks get their backlinks from<\/p>\n<\/a>Content Strategy<\/h2>\n
\nAudience research platform that combines anonymized data from 12 social networks. Know more about the audience you’re writing for by going beyond demographics<\/p>\n
\nQuickly find and share the most valuable content in one easy-to-use platform. Has a free plan<\/p>\n
\nHave an “AI” write your content briefs<\/p>\n
\nSaaS platform that helps with content ideation, planning, writing, analytics, and distribution<\/p>\n
\nWeb-based tool for generating content briefs that relies on machine learning to suggest topics and find search intent<\/p>\n
\nServes both as a plagiarism checker and a duplicate-content checker. Great to use if your content has been distributed across the web<\/p>\n
\nA duplicate content finder made by the same people as Copyscape, but looks for instances of duplicated content within a single website<\/p>\n
\nDrawing on vast public databases, Google public data offers a great starting point for content research, infographics, and more<\/p>\n
\nEmotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer<\/p>\n
\nUse this tool to check for duplicate content issues. The Similar Page Checker will give you a score of how closely the content of two pages resembles each other<\/p>\n
\nTranscription service. Handy for generating transcriptions of video and audio content<\/p>\n
\nA community of bloggers and influencers come together to read and share great content<\/p>\n
\nEnter a subject (or topic or keywords) and get all kinds of titles and ideas<\/p>\n
\nEliminate typographical and grammatical errors on Gmail, Google Docs, and in desktop applications<\/p>\n
\nRewrite text in your browser to generate mockups and evaluate potential changes. Easier than using the developer console<\/p>\n
\nGet font information from any web page including the name, size, and other CSS properties<\/p>\n
\nRight-click text on a page to get the word count in a simple menu<\/p>\n<\/a>Conversion Rate Optimization<\/h2>\n
\nAnonymized and complete user data capture. Get analytics of user interactions on any element in addition to funnel and conversion analytics, user journey mapping, and session replays<\/p>\n
\nHeatmaps, session recordings, user feedback forms, and surveys<\/p>\n
\nMore than heatmaps: user journeys, session replays, mobile app analytics, and friction analysis<\/p>\n
\nForm analytics<\/p>\n
\nSession recording, heatmaps, A\/B testing, surveys, form analytics, and error logging<\/p>\n
\nEnterprise-grade data handling for the most strictly regulated websites. Session replays, heatmaps, funnel analytics, form analytics, user feedback, with app integrations and an API<\/p>\n
\nMore than A\/B testing. A SaaS platform with marketing management features and an enterprise CMS that also manages feature releases and eCommerce<\/p>\n
\nA\/B testing platform that’s free and easy to integrate with analytics platforms<\/p>\n
\nGet visitor feedback in a variety of forms for multiple marketing purposes<\/p>\n
\nDetermine the appropriate length of an A\/B test<\/p>\n
\nPre-test and post-test analysis for A\/B\/n tests<\/p>\n
\nUser-friendly calculator for statistical power, p values, and Z-scores<\/p>\n<\/a>Design<\/h2>\n
\n“Amazingly simple graphic design for blogs, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers and so much more”<\/p>\n
\nUpload an image to receive a color palette and hex values of individual pixels<\/p>\n
\nIdentify accessibility and WCAG errors, with a focus on end-user impact<\/p>\n<\/a>International SEO<\/h2>\n
\nHreflang testing tool. See if a page’s hreflang alternates point back to it<\/p>\n
\nHreflang tag generator from Aleyda Solis<\/p>\n
\nChange your browser’s reported location to a specific spot on a map. Handy for emulating local and international search results<\/p>\n
\nSimulate using Google Search from different locations or devices or perform a search with custom search settings – useful for one-off SERP checks<\/p>\n
\nOnline translating dictionary for single words and phrases<\/p>\n
\nTranslate passages of text<\/p>\n<\/a>Keyword Research<\/h2>\n
\nLook for striking distance keywords. Export for further analysis in Excel or other tools. Find keywords with search volume other tools will report as zero volume<\/p>\n
\nGenerate keywords from a seed keyword or enter a list to obtain search volume and other data points<\/p>\n
\nLook at related and suggested queries. Look at search results to determine user intent<\/p>\n
\nGet idea of up or down trend & also look at hot trends for new ideas<\/p>\n
\nGet keyword suggestions and search volume from multiple search engines and countries<\/p>\n
\nGet organized and filterable keyword suggestions. Requires an account<\/p>\n
\nGet keyword suggestions and search volume from multiple language-country combinations. Groups keywords by lexical similarity<\/p>\n
\nBrowser plugin that displays search suggestions and search volume right in the SERP<\/p>\n
\nContinuously scraped search suggestions. Lives up to the name<\/p>\n
\nPaid tool. Provides keyword suggestions for Google, Bing, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, and Instagram<\/p>\n
\nDisplays a handy little chart with every definition of a word and synonyms. It’s a lexicon builder’s dream<\/p>\n
\nGet keywords formed as questions<\/p>\n
\nCreate keyword lists through concatenation. Great for keywords based on location lists, synonyms, or need to follow similar structures<\/p>\n
\nGet definitions of words that frequently appear in the same documents as your keyword<\/p>\n
\nGrade a page for a keyword<\/p>\n
\nGenerate keywords – paid tool<\/p>\n