Table of Contents
This month's Searchlite intro was written by SEO Manager, Abby Reimer.
This month, we wanted to mix the newsletter up a bit. We’re data-heads (naturally), so we were curious to uncover the most commonly clicked content from our past editions of Searchlite.
And guess what? Y’all like learning about tools! I mean, it makes sense. A solid app or extension can save you oodles of time, money and needless headaches scouring the source code for info.
We asked our team of SEO and paid search aficionados for the go-to tools they couldn’t imagine doing their job without. Read on for Uproer’s Great Big List of awesome SEO + SEM tools.
P.S. We’re always looking for more! Reply to this email and let us know what your favorite tools are, and we’ll give you a shoutout on social!
Our Favorite Crawlers
Screaming Frog is one of our go-to site crawlers for audits. It’s downloadable for free, or you can buy a license for extra features. We’ve found Screaming Frog to be the best for crawling large sites. Technical features allow you to extract any data from the HTML of a webpage using XPath or Regex. Cool stuff!
When we aren’t using Screaming Frog for crawls, we’re using Sitebulb. Sitebulb is a crawler made with SEO professionals in mind. After completing a crawl, Sitebulb will give your site a score, and organize issues by priority. It also gives helpful advice for each opportunity, to help you gain an understanding for why it’s important.
SERP Scrapers
Thruuu is one of our favorite tools for content outlining, copywriting, competitive analysis, and beyond. This tool allows you to easily scrape the SERPs for any target keyword, and provides an in-depth review of each top ranking page. Choose from a variety of subscription plans to receive credits, or sign up for 10 free credits to try it out.
Frase is another killer, *free,* SERP scraper that we love. Directly construct a content outline in the tool, and review titles, headings, hot topics, word counts and more for your target keyword. This tool helps save time in the content production process, while also maintaining the highest quality possible.
Want to extract a list of URLs ranking for a specific query or domain? Look no further. This tool allows you to do just that, in seconds. This is completely free, and is especially helpful during audits and competitive analysis projects.
Keyword Research
Keywords Everywhere is our favorite “on-the-go” keyword research tool. This slick extension shows you keyword volume, CPC, trend data, competition insights, and more for any given search. You can buy 100,000 credits for $10, which we’ve found can last for months!
When it comes to tapping into a target audience, Reddit is one of the best places to go. We use Reddit to discover customer pain points. This is especially helpful for content outlining and building content strategies. Plus, it’s completely free!
Surface internet trends before they take-off with these free tools! We use these tools in our own keyword research to get new ideas for topics that our audiences are searching. These tools are able to filter by industry, which is especially helpful for niche clients.
Competitive Analysis
We’ve found that Ahref’s competitive analysis and keyword research features make it a great tool for SEO. Meanwhile, SEMrush offers a keyword gap tool, advertising research features, and more that make it a leading paid search tool. While Ahrefs and SEMrush have their individual strengths, we recommend using both to cross-reference your data.
Spyfu is a helpful tool to see where your competitors are allocating their budgets online. It provides an overview of competitor keywords, estimated budgets, and creative. While you hit a paywall pretty quickly, and budget estimates can be hit or miss, Spyfu provides a good gut check and context as you plan your paid strategy.
Fun Google Features
Google search operators are special characters and commands (sometimes called “advanced operators”) that extend the capabilities of regular text searches. Search operators can be useful for everything from content research to technical SEO audits.
The Google Keyword Planner inside Google Ads is an easy (and free) way to find keywords related to our clients businesses. The Planner also provides data on estimated traffic and cost for keywords. It’s a super handy way to find different keyword variations, organize them, and get to building a campaign, all within one platform.
If a keyword is low-volume, but auto-fills in Google, that means people are searching for it. We use this logic to add low-volume, auto-fill keywords to our client’s content strategies. Some of our favorite topics have come from typing “how to wear ____” into the search bar and seeing what autocompletes!
- People Also Ask (Use Also Asked + Askey)
Google’s People Also Ask questions offer additional insight into the search intent of a keyword. We use People Also Ask questions to build content outlines, brainstorm topic ideas, and get a better idea for what customers are looking for. Free tools like Also Asked and Askey can help scrape all of the possible People Also Ask questions for any keyword.
Data Studio is a free tool we use to turn our client’s Analytics data into easily consumable reports. From interactive filters to colorful themes, date controls to pivot tables, the options are endless when it comes to creating an enhanced report that anyone can use.
Tech Tools
This extension allows you to see what any site is built with. Want to check a site’s CMS? Quickly see what Analytics or Tag Managers are being used? This free extension will tell you everything you need to know in one click.
View a page’s meta data, heading structure, canonical tag, status code, and more with this free extension. From content outlining to tech audits, quick spot-checks to competitive analysis, this is another “on-the-go” tool we use daily.
Wondering why your website is loading slowly or ranking poorly for Core Web Vitals? Then webpagetest.org is the resource you need for diagnosing your site's performance on real browsers, devices and locations scattered around the world. We utilize the handy visuals this tool can produce to help explain highly technical issues/opportunities in a more digestible manner for non-technical stakeholders.
No SEOs toolchest is complete without technicalseo.com’s portfolio of useful tools designed to improve any website's technical configuration. Technical SEO work has either a direct or indirect impact on search engine crawling, indexing and ultimately rankings.
This free and handy extension allows you to quickly check to see if critical content on a web page is rendered with JavaScript. This is a great way to spot-check pages during audits, or to monitor changes on a client website.
The UserAgent Switcher allows you to easily change between different agents to see what your site looks like. We use this quite frequently during audits to monitor mobile vs. desktop appearance and performance.
Quickly disable and enable JavaScript on any page with this free extension. This is another great way to easily see if critical content is rendered on a client's web pages.
Rank Trackers
SEOmonitor is a keyword tracking tool, featuring performance insights on visibility, traffic and competition for groups of keywords. This tool also has a monthly forecasting feature which provides precise and easy to understand visuals and predictions for the keywords you track. We use this tool to monitor non-brand keyword performance for all clients, track rankings post-algorithm updates, and more.
STAT is a keyword tracking tool that tracks performance at scale. With integrations for data studio and search console, STAT is perfect to track incremental changes across your site. Our favorite features are the local and mobile SERP trackers, enabling you to see how your listing looks across the country, even the globe.
Algorithm Update Tracker
While Rank Ranger has a whole suite of useful SEO tools, we specifically use this tool to monitor broad Google search engine results page ranking fluctuations to help determine the impact of algorithm updates on our client sites. Google makes “broad core updates” to their search algorithm multiple times per year, which can cause volatility in site rankings. Rank Ranger helps us determine if volatility on any given site is being caused by an algorithm update or a separate factor.
