Search engine optimization for 2019 is looking exciting, as was discussed in our recent roundup for the most anticipated SEO trends in 2019. But the only reason we can reflect on the year ahead is that of the things that happened in 2018. A lot of SEO changes, including new structured markup properties, but also improvements to RankBrain. Google seems to be pushing hard to make its search engine as human-smart as possible.
Another topic that’s getting a lot of discussions is personalization and brand image. According to data, search engines like Google want to push towards understanding brand voice, and how that voice communicates with the searc audience. Of course, if you have been doing due diligence then most of these concerns are out of your way.
Despite what’s happening on a deeper level, the market for SEO tools has not stopped growing. There’s a lot of new players in the game, and old ones are updating their software fast to meet the modern requirements. There hasn’t been a better time to start using tools in your daily workflow than now. But, how do you pick the best ones out of the 1000’s that are available? This is where we come in.
We’ve gathered up some of the best performing SEO tools from the last year, and combined them with other exciting tools and apps that complement the fast-paced SEO changes we’re experiencing. There’s a lot of great products being built, and without question, many of these are going to dominate the SEO tooling space in 2019.
SEOquake
SEOquake is a browser-based (extension) SEO tool built by SEMRush. It integrates several unique tools and features to help you better understand how a certain website is ranking. Also, SEOquake provides a toolbar which can quickly provide critical marketing details for any given page.
And one of the more prominent features is the SERP Overlay. This overlay amplifies the default Google search results with detailed statistics for each link. This way, you can make swift analysis for whatever SEO research that you’re doing.
It has 500,000 active users, so it’s definitely helping people achieve something with their SEO efforts! Available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari browser.
LongTailPro
As the push for intent-based content strengthens, so does the need for detailed and in-depth keywords. While your favorite SEO tool might already provide keyword data, the LongTailPro software takes it a step further. The premise of this tool is that you can find less saturated keyword phrases so that you can convert those phrases in real sales.
Once you add a ‘seed keyword’, you can get hundreds of long-tail recommendations instantly. Further, you can filter things out based on custom strings; how many people search for, ranking value, cost, etc.
Also, LongTailPro is happy to search for long-tail keywords based on any competitors you might have. All you need to do is provide a website URL and the software will meta-analyse the site to pick up any juicy keywords. Not only do you get good keywords, but also get to see the content that was built for them.
Ubersuggest
Neil’s digital success is hardly a secret. The guy has worked on multiple multi-million projects and runs two extremely successful blogs: QuickSprout and NeilPatel. Best known for his SEO expertise, Neil has invested his resources to build a tool called Ubersuggest.
This handy web-based tool is ideal to perform quick keyword research without any cost to you. The tool can perform basic keyword analysis to identify popularity, provide additional keyword ideas, and also showcase the SERP pages for the given keyword.
The SERP feature is nice because you can also monitor the number of social shares that a particular link has got. And the keyword ideas feature is wonderful to get yourself some fresh new concepts for your content posts.
Ahrefs
Complete SEO suites like Ahrefs have existed for many years. But Ahrefs seems to be stepping up the game and investing some serious time into making their product feel like a true companion in your endeavors for great SEO optimization.
The product is best known for links backlink research capabilities, but also tools like competitive analysis, rank tracking, and keyword research. From one unified dashboard, you can perform pretty much all of the SEO research you would ever need.
Ahrefs is well-known for delivering extremely promising features. For example, you can generate keyword ideas based on almost all the countries in the world. Unlike similar tools that generalize keyword research, Ahrefs goes out of its way to give the absolute maximum of keyword ideas for every phrase you’re looking up.
Also, the database for keywords is constantly kept up to date, so each week or month you can preview any new keywords that have been added to the database. This gives you the edge you need to stay on top of trends and other latest happenings.
Other nifty SEO tools include the ability to monitor which of your pages are getting the most backlinks. With this feature, you can see how well your peers are responding to your content by linking to it, and as a result, you can create new content that is within the bounds of a similar subject.
Last but not least, Ahrefs runs a fairly successful blog talking about all things digital marketing. Combined this with their core toolset, and you’re going to rock your way to the top of the ranking charts for years to come.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo started out as this new and exciting tool for monitoring social media performance. What many didn’t expect was for BuzzSumo to grow and flourish in the behemoth that it is today. These days, users can perform tasks like competition research, content research, analyze questions, and perform in-depth brand monitoring.
In the context of SEO, BuzzSumo provides exceptional features to conclude actions like content insight analysis. Content Insight is a feature that takes your keywords and analyzes their performance based on different content types.
E.g. Generate analytical graphs on whether a ‘how to’ article was more popular than an ‘infographic’. Fortunately, BuzzSumo takes into consideration a large number of content types, letting you know which ones get the most shares.
As you collect this insightful data, you can start building new content ideas that are in-line with SEO aspects such as ‘user intent’ and ‘personalization’.
Linkminer
Links are still heavily dominant on getting your rankings higher up on the SERPs, but finding link opportunities isn’t always as straightforward. Linkminer is a purposeful platform built to help marketing experts find new links and link opportunities through an algorithmic process.
Not to mention, it’s unproductive to scour for links one by one when you have a database of thousands. With Linkminer you can enter a website URL — preferably your competitor — and analyze it for all its backlinks. From thereon, use filters to make concise and distinct lists of only the highest quality backlinks.
ContentKing
You are probably tired of reading all the recommendations on straightening out your content markup. But, it’s a fairly major ranking factor, and search robots love it when they can analyze pages in an as seamless way as possible.
If you spend a lot of time writing or perhaps manage an entire team of writers, you might get caught up with all the management and overlook potential content presentation issues.
ContentKing is an all-in-one powerhouse suite that takes care of things like content formatting, SEO monitoring, and providing a dedicated alerting system.
ContentKing collects a tremendous amount of data on your websites. Whether we’re talking about the latest revisions or historical snapshots, its various Insights & Reporting features put this wealth of information readily at your fingertips.
To start from the top, how does content formatting help your strategy? First and foremost, the auditing feature analyzes every aspect of your website include. E.g. Not just things like Sitemaps or Broken Links, but also content structure itself. Are you using enough heading-elements? Are your paragraphs easy to read? A lot goes into formatting your content properly. And ContentKing can help to automate a good portion of that process.
Additionally, you have SEO monitoring. This feature constantly checks your site for any changes. E.g. A post title was changed, or several URLs became broken. Once you get access to this level of monitoring at your immediate disposal, it becomes enjoyable to optimize your site only when necessary.
SERPWatcher
You are never guaranteed to hold a keyword position for life, which is why analyzing your keyword performance on a regular basis is critical. SERPWatcher is one such tool that takes care of the streneous process of having to check SERP results for keywords manually.
Instead, you can provide SERPWatcher with your website address and a list of keywords, and simply let the platform automate all the hard work on your behalf.
Structured Data Testing Tool
One can only imagine what the Google-robot looked like on the inside a decade ago. In the early days of SEO it was so easy to ‘game & play’ the system and its many faults. And a lot of people made fortunes by taking advantage of the systematic flaws. Without surprise, Google took note and began to roll out major algorithmic changes, the likes of Panda, Penguin, and others.
These days, Google is very much intro structured data, its own specifications and those of the Schema organization. Going into 2019, it’s pivotal to ensure that your pages and other content are optimized with structured markup.
And the reason is quite simple, structured data helps search engines like Google (and others) to understand what your content is about.
You can literally explain your entire business details using nothing but structured data. And the same goes for content articles. With this tool right here, you can check where your websites and pages stand in terms of being optimized for structured markup.
StoryChief
As funny as it sounds, it’s becoming increasingly harder to simply write content. Take for example WordPress, which recently upgraded its content editor to Gutenberg; a short of a visual content editor based on modern tech. The response for this change hasn’t been the most uplifting, and millions have flocked to using the old editor through a plugin.
So, there’s no reason to question the popularity rise for startups like StoryChief. This content marketing oriented app helps you to write your content and also publish it across dozens of digital mediums, including social networks. Best of all, your entire team can collaborate on new pieces in real-time.
StoryChief will also analyze your content in real-time, providing actionable SEO improvements and other suggestions. And once you’re done writing, simply select the publish option and the platform sends your newly written post to all major social and publication networks. Which also includes CMS solutions like WordPress.
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking is a full-bodied SEO suite with highly optimized keyword management features. Should you want to move most of your SEO efforts into one singular tool — AWR is worth the consideration.
You can centralize tasks like link management, analysis, performance, and optimization in one single dashboard. That means you can do a keyword search and find new backlinks without having to rely on two different tools.
Rank Tracker by Nightwatch
Nightwatch is a cutting-edge SEO software integrated with modern tooling systems. This brand is known for performing exceptionally well in backlink analysis and reports, but also in-depth rank monitoring.
Nightwatch provides custom data filters, graphs, Search Console integration, state of the start data visualization, and other unique features.
It’s a modern platform for modern SEO experts. The Rank Tracker, in particular, is all about understanding how your pages go from one ranking to another. And what you can do to improve the situation.
URL Profiler
URL Profiler is a desktop-based (Win & Mac) software which provides full-on profiling for digital sites. As a decked out tool, URL Profiler provides numerous SEO-based features:
Auditing content,
Analyzing backlinks,
Researching competition,
Social analysis,
and in-depth domain analysis.
It’s one of those rare tools that has managed to maintain a steady customer base despite being a desktop product. But this also comes at an advantage.
You see, URL Profiler can perform a lot of the SEO actions a lot faster because it can sort through database data quicker using your computer resources, and not bandwidth which is often the case when using third-party software.
Dareboost
Are you doing your best to ensure that your pages are performing with optimal performance? When you work on the site multiple times a year, it’s not hard to forget about the implementation of performance tweaks. But, a platform like Dareboost can take out at least some of the pain from having to do it all manually.
Dareboost takes your website URL, analyzes it, and reports back a concise and structured outline of your site performance. You can watch a replay video that shows the precise structure of how your site loaded. Also, Dareboost checks for more than 100+ different variables, which are built to help you optimize your individual pages.
In addition, you can set custom thresholds for which to get notifications. So, if you push out some major changes to your site, Dareboost will immediately pick up whether that change is having a strong impact on performance.
As always, Google itself advises that webmasters take great care of their website performance. And with this tool, you can get your performance results straightened out for the whole of 2019 and beyond!
Zapier
Zapier is a phenomenal platform which lets its users to combine different cloud-based products into singular integrations. As a result, you can automate a good portion of your daily tasks that you would otherwise have to do manually.
Just to illustrate how Zapier works — you can use the Trello integration to create a new Trello post whenever you save a new WordPress draft. This lets you and your team to know that there’s a new post that has to be produced. And you can do many other similar integrations with 1000’s of available applications.
The interface for building these automated connections is absolutely marvelous. It’s all based on drag & drop and you spend only a few minutes to get some exceptional automated tasks going.
Another example would be that you can create a flow for receiving a text message whenever someone makes a comment on something you have published. Many, many unique integrations — all possible thanks to the amazing apps that get published on the web.
Zapier provides support for countless marketing tools, so don’t be surprised to see a tool you use on a daily basis as a possibility for integration.
Final statement
There are a lot of great SEO tools and apps to look forward to in 2019. Keep reiterating your strategy and look for tools that help to streamline your entire SEO process.
As always, your feedback is most valuable to us. So, let us know what kind of tools are you going to be using throughout 2019 the most? Have you found something unique and reliable that’s delivering great results? We would love to hear about it in the comments below.