SE Ranking and SpyFu are two of the most popular tools in the SEO marketplace. SpyFu has created a niche for itself in the competitor analysis space, while SE Ranking has quickly garnered a reputation for being a comprehensive SEO tool.

They are also two of the most economically priced tools on the market.

So which tool is better? Which tool should you buy? Let’s find out!

In this article, I’ll compare SE Ranking with SpyFu and help you decide which SEO tool you should go for.

I’ll be evaluating these tools on the following parameters:

• Keyword research
• Competitor analysis
• PPC analysis
• Pricing plans

Let’s get started.

Introduction to SE Ranking and SpyFu

If you’re already aware of these tools, you can skip this section and move over to the comparison of keyword research features. For those of you who are not, here’s a brief overview of SE Ranking and SpyFu.

SE Ranking: Overview

SE Ranking is a cloud-based SEO platform for entrepreneurs, agencies, and online marketing professionals. Launched in 2013, SE Ranking’s headquartered in London, UK, with offices in the US, Ukraine, and Belarus.

SE Ranking offers a complete set of tools for SEO audit, keyword research, rank tracking, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, and much more.

While it’s relatively new compared to other SEO tools on the market, SE Ranking has quickly gained a stellar reputation in the SEO community and is currently used by over 400,000 users across the world.

SE Ranking offers 3 pricing plans and its basic plan starts at $39/month (more on this in the pricing section.) You can sign up for a 2-week free trial on any of the three plans.

I’d encourage you to sign up for a free trial as it’ll allow you to implement some of the action items discussed in this article.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

Sign Up for SE Ranking

SpyFu: Overview

Founded in 2006, SpyFu is somewhat of a veteran in the marketplace of SEO tools. As you may have already guessed, SpyFu lets you spy on your competitors’ online strategies and analytics. You can use it to gather insights on your organic as well as paid competitors.

SpyFu collects its data from Google search results in the US and UK. As such, the tool won’t show you data outside of these countries, which is a major drawback of the tool.

SpyFu offers a free forever plan and two paid plans. There’s no free trial offered on any of their paid plans, but the free plan is useful in providing you with surface-level data on your competitors. So I’d urge you to sign up for their free plan to get a deeper understanding of some of the features discussed below.

SpyFu (Free Plan)

Sign up for SpyFu's free plan and get access to basic features.

Sign up for SpyFu

With that quick intro of the two tools out of the way, it’s now time to put these tools to the test.

Let’s start by reviewing their keyword research features.

Keyword Research: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Keyword research is the most fundamental aspect of SEO. In order to have a deeper understanding of what keywords your target audience is searching for, you need to develop a keyword research framework.

A strong keyword research framework allows you to align your goals with your strategy. This is where competent SEO tools step in and empower you with the necessary data and intelligence required to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

In this section, we’ll compare keyword research features offered by SE Ranking and SpyFu and find out which tool is more suited for this all-important SEO task.

SE Ranking: Keyword Research Features

When you enter your seed keywords in SE Ranking, you’ll get an overview of important keyword metrics for your keywords like search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC.

But the real value of this tool is in the keyword variations it provides for your seed keywords.

You’ll find these keyword variations grouped into 3 categories — similar keywords, related keywords, and low search volume keywords.

For a deeper analysis of the keywords, you can either click the “Keyword suggestions” tab in the sidebar or hit the “View Detailed Report” button under each column.

You’ll find a complete list of keyword variations for your seed keywords, alongside important keyword metrics.

You can apply filters to arrive at the most relevant keyword ideas for your site.

In the overview report, you’ll also find the top 5 organic search results for your seed keywords, alongside traffic stats and the total number of keywords they rank for.

These are the top 5 ranking pages for your target keywords on Google. These are the pages you’ll be competing against if you decide to target these keywords (and their variations) in your campaign.

To view more organic search results, simply click on the “View Detailed Report” button. This will open up the full report and you can analyze all the top pages that are ranking for your target keywords.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

Sign Up for SE Ranking

SpyFu: Keyword Research Features

There are two ways you can do keyword research on SpyFu: you can either perform traditional keyword research or do competitor-based keyword research. SpyFu is better at the latter than the former, and you’re more likely to find keywords with traffic potential by doing analysis of your competitors’ domains.

When you enter your competitor’s domain in SpyFu, you’ll get an overview report featuring your competitor’s top organic and paid keywords.

To get a complete list of keywords, hit the “View All Organic Keywords” link below the top keywords column.

Once you’ve generated a list of keywords your competitor currently ranks for, you can use the filters on top to narrow down the list and target keywords that you can realistically rank for.

You can also perform traditional keyword research by entering your seed keywords in the SpyFu search box.

SpyFu will then generate a keyword research overview report featuring keyword metrics like monthly volume and estimated clicks. You’ll also find similar keywords and question-based keywords for your seed keywords, alongside monthly search volume.

To view more keyword variations, click on the “View all” link below each of these columns. You can also hit the “Related Keywords” tab in the sidebar to land on the same report.

Which Tool is Better for Keyword Research?

SE Ranking is a far superior tool for keyword research. While SpyFu is helpful for churning out competitor-based keywords, SE Ranking provides better keyword variations and more thorough data for those keywords.

It’s also easier to do keyword research in SE Ranking and the slick UI ensures that you get the right keyword data in a quicker and more efficient manner.

Winner: SE Ranking

Competitor Analysis: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

If you’d like to stay ahead of the curve, you need to devote some time to competitor analysis. Why? Because you get to learn what keywords your main competitors are ranking for, what kind of ads they are running, and more importantly, the level of engagement their content receives.

Competitor analysis will help you uncover deep insights into what you’re doing right and what you could be doing to outrank your chief rivals in search results.

Both SE Ranking and SpyFu have nifty features when it comes to competitor analysis. Let’s quickly run through some of these features and determine which tool does it better.

SE Ranking: Competitor Analysis Features

SE Ranking has all the necessary features required to conduct competitor analysis.

Hit the “Competitor Research” tab and enter your main competitor’s domain in the search box.

SE Ranking will generate an overview report featuring data on your competitor’s organic traffic and paid traffic.

To deep dive into your competitor’s organic keywords, scroll down till you find the “Organic Keywords” column and hit “View Detailed Report.”

You’ll get a full list of keywords your competitor is currently ranking for.

Use the advanced filtering options here to get the data you’re looking for.

To see your competitor’s top-ranking pages, hit the “Pages” link in the sidebar.

This will show you pages on your competitor’s site that get the most search traffic.

You’ll see the traffic share and traffic estimations for each page. You can also view all the keywords each page ranks for.

The Top Pages report will reveal those pages and posts on your competitor’s site that receive the most search traffic. Spend some time in this report, visit these pages, analyze them in detail, and then decide for yourself whether you can reverse-engineer some of these pages, improve upon the content, and in the process, steal some of their organic traffic.

SpyFu: Competitor Analysis Features

SpyFu’s true strength resides in competitive analysis.

Enter your competitor’s domain in the search box to get a quick overview of the domain’s top organic keywords, estimated SEO clicks, paid keywords, estimated PPC clicks, and other metrics.

You’ll also see your competitor’s top pages:

These are the pages that are generating the most search traffic. Pay special attention to this section of the report as these are the pages you’d want to replicate and improve upon on your site.

You’ll also see “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” — these are keyword recommendations based on your competitor’s success in Google Ads.

And your competitor’s advertising history.

If you run ads on Google, then this data should really help you scale up your campaigns.

Which Tool is Better for Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis is easier to do in SE Ranking and the reports are more accurate and relevant.

If we were doing this comparison in 2019, then SpyFu would definitely emerge as the winner. But in 2020, SE Ranking has added a host of new features and data points to present a far more comprehensive picture of your competitors’ top organic keywords, backlink profile, and best-ranking pages.

Winner: SE Ranking

PPC Analysis: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Do you use Google Ads to drive traffic to your website? Then you probably need a reliable tool to arm you with data that can help you run effective campaigns on Google and create ads that resonate with your target audience.

Let’s take a deeper look at the PPC features offered by SE Ranking and SpyFu and find out which tool is more adept at PPC analysis.

SE Ranking: PPC Analysis

When you enter your target keywords in SE Ranking, you’ll see the estimated CPC for those keywords in the overview report.

You also get to see the paid results for your target keywords.

To view paid results for your seed keywords, hit the “Paid results” link in the sidebar.

The report will show you all the domains that are bidding for your target keywords on Google Ads.

To view the ad copies, just move your cursor over the “Ad” button against each site.

That’s the extent of SE Ranking’s PPC analysis capabilities. While you can get a decent amount of keywords to target for your PPC campaigns, the PPC intelligence that’s necessary to make informed advertising decisions is sadly lacking.

SpyFu: PPC Analysis

In contrast to SE Ranking, SpyFu has a lot more features for PPC analysis. In addition to providing you in-depth data on paid keywords and PPC ads, you also get access to features like AdWords Advisor and AdWords Templates.

To perform PPC research on SpyFu, hit the “PPC Research” tab from the top menu, and enter your competitor’s domain.

SpyFu will then generate a PPC overview report featuring that domain’s paid keywords, estimated monthly PPC clicks, monthly PPC budget, and other PPC metrics.

Below this data, you’ll find a wealth of PPC keyword data in the “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” and “Most Successful Advertisers and Their Best Ads” sections.

Hit “See All Recommendations” below the column to view more AdWords keyword recommendations.

The other useful PPC feature in SpyFu is the AdWords Templates. These are pre-written PPC ads handcrafted by the SpyFu team to get your Google Ads campaigns up and running.

To access these templates, head over to:

PPC Research > AdWords Templates > Select Industry from the drop-down list > Continue to download

This will start the download of all ad templates for that specific industry. You can then import these templates to your Google Ads account.

Note: To access AdWords Templates, you need to upgrade to SpyFu’s basic plan ($39/mo).

Which Tool is Better for PPC Analysis?

With features like AdWords Advisor and AdWords Templates, SpyFu provides a better bang for the buck if you’re evaluating this tool purely from a PPC perspective.

SE Ranking is good for surface-level PPC data, but for deeper insights and more actionable recommendations, you’re better off signing up for SpyFu.

Winner: SpyFu

Pricing Plans: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Both SE Ranking and SpyFu are two of the most economically priced tools in the SEO marketplace. They break away from the standard industry practice of charging close to $100 for the basic plan.

Let’s quickly examine the pricing plans offered by SE Ranking and SpyFu.

SE Ranking Pricing Plans

SE Ranking offers 3 pricing plans:

• Essential – $39/mo (250 keyword rankings, 10 websites)
• Pro – $89/mo (1000 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)
• Business – 189/mo (2500 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)

* The prices on the above plans change based on the number of keyword rankings you select. For instance, if you’d like to track 500 keyword rankings in the Optimum plan, the pricing changes to $54/mo. You can save 20% on any plan by switching to annual billing.

If you’re an SEO beginner or run a small business or blog, then the Essential plan ($39/mo) should do the trick. It includes all the features we’ve discussed above. As it’s the basic plan, there are certain limitations on the data you can access. For instance, you can only monitor up to 5,000 backlinks and run an audit for 25,000 pages.

If you’re an agency owner or part of a company that’s scaling up, then you should go with the Pro plan ($89/mo). This plan allows you to add unlimited websites, audit 100,000 pages, and monitor up to 25,000 backlinks. You also get access to advanced reporting features.

If you’re part of a large organization, then opt for the Business plan ($189/mo). With this plan, you can audit up to 250,000 pages, monitor 75,000 backlinks, and get access to SE Ranking’s API.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

Sign Up for SE Ranking

SpyFu Pricing Plans

The best part about SpyFu is that you can start using it for free and perform unlimited searches. But as with any free plan, there are several restrictions. To unlock more data and access advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the paid plans.

Here’s SpyFu’s current pricing structure:

• Free for Life – $0/mo (unlimited searches, 10 search results)
• Basic – $39/mo (unlimited search results, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings)
• Professional – $78/mo (15k weekly tracked keyword rankings, custom branded reports)

You can save $69 on the basic plan and $249 on the professional plan by opting for annual billing.

SpyFu (Free Plan)

Sign up for SpyFu's free plan and get access to basic features.

Sign up for SpyFu

Final Verdict: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Despite competing in the same space, SE Ranking and SpyFu are vastly different SEO tools. SpyFu is a decent competitor research and PPC analysis tool. On the other hand, SE Ranking is a powerful all-purpose SEO software that includes tools for website audit, competitor research, keyword research, PPC analysis, among other things.

If you’re looking for an SEO tool that has all the essential features to help you rank higher in SERPs, then you should definitely consider SE Ranking. As explained in detail above, SE Ranking beats SpyFu on keyword research and competitor research parameters. Plus, you also get access to must-have features like Site Audit, Backlink Checker, and On-Page SEO Checker.

That said, if you’re looking for a competitor research tool with advanced PPC analysis features, then SpyFu is a better choice. SE Ranking’s PPC analysis features are simply not up to scratch.

In the end, the choice between SE Ranking and SpyFu comes down to your priority at the moment. If PPC is a higher priority than SEO for you, then go with SpyFu. But if your need of the hour is SEO, then SE Ranking gives the best overall value. And with plans starting at $39/month, it’s easy on the pockets as well.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

Sign Up for SE Ranking

SpyFu (Free Plan)

Sign up for SpyFu's free plan and get access to basic features.

Sign up for SpyFu

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Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 17 September 2020 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance, freshness, and comprehensiveness. 

Related Articles

• 8 Best Competitor Research Tools to Spy on Your Competition
• SE Ranking vs Moz: Which SEO Software is Better?
• Ahrefs vs SE Ranking: Which SEO Tool Should You Buy?
• How to Get High-Quality Backlinks (25 Proven Techniques)

The post SE Ranking vs SpyFu: Which SEO Tool is Better? appeared first on 99signals.

Despite numerous algorithm updates, link building still remains one of the strongest ranking signals used by search engines.

Yet our link building efforts mostly extend to commenting on blogs in the same niche (“nofollow” backlinks with no link juice) or contributing guest posts to simply brag about where we’ve got our content published (under strict scrutiny by Google).

But if you’d like to increase your site’s authority and rank higher than your competitors in search engine result pages (SERPs), you need to build authority backlinks on a consistent basis. In other words, you need to follow effective link building strategies that deliver results.

In this article, we’ll reveal 25 proven techniques to get high-quality backlinks that will help you stay ahead of the competition and rank higher in SERPs.

No time to read this guide right now? No worries! Just click the link below to receive a free PDF copy of this guide, so you can read it at a more convenient time.

Download our Link Building Guide for free

Here’s what this link building guide will cover. Feel free to jump to any section of your preference:

25 Proven Tips to Get High-Quality Backlinks

1. Publish Evergreen Content

Natural links (also called editorial links) are the kind of links Google wants you to build.

This quote from Matt Cutts, former head of Google Web Spam, is from 2009 and it’s still as relevant as it was back then:

Want to know the best way to build links naturally? Publish evergreen content.

Evergreen content is content that stays relevant in the long run. Unlike news articles and posts on trending topics (posts on Fortnite, Pokemon Go, etc.), evergreen posts provide value to the readers a long time after the post was originally published.

Evergreen posts don’t just tend to rank higher on Google, but they also attract a high number of backlinks. In order words, evergreen content is link-worthy content. It’s the type of content that attracts editorial links.

Evergreen posts are also tough to outrank in SERPs.

Ahrefs published an in-depth post on “evergreen content” in which they explain how difficult it is to outrank Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO for beginner SEO queries because of the insane amount of backlinks the guide has acquired over a period of time.

So how do you create evergreen content? Follow these three steps:

• Find keywords with a decent search volume – Use Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool (or any other keyword research tool of your choice) to find keywords with a decent search volume. Make sure the shortlisted keywords are not seasonal and have maintained a good search volume consistently in the last few months.
• Create 10x content – Once you’ve identified the keywords you’d like to target in your post, you need to make sure your content is actually 10 times better than the highest ranking search result for the keywords. This type of content is referred to as 10x content in the SEO community. If your post is only slightly better (1x or 2x better) than the top-ranking post, the chances of it getting outranked are quite high. But when you publish content that is 10x better, like in the case of Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, it’s tough for your competition to beat you in the SERPs.
• Refresh and relaunch – Just because the post is evergreen and ranking in the top 3 search results, there’s no guarantee it will maintain that status in the long run. Over time, the organic traffic may drop and it may lose its ability to generate links naturally. This is when you need to audit your content and update it with fresh insights to stay relevant. I keep updating and relaunching top-ranking posts on my blog whenever I notice a declining trend in organic traffic. And you should do the same to your evergreen posts in order to maintain their top-ranking status in SERPs.

Bottom line? In order to attract high-quality natural links, publish evergreen blog posts that stay relevant long after you’ve published them.

Recommended reading: Content Upgrade Strategy: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts to Get More Traffic

2. Steal Your Competitors’ Backlinks

In some cases, your evergreen content may not be able to generate authoritative links naturally, or even if it does, it may take a long time to do so.

Without backlinks, you may be able to rank on page 1 for your target keywords, but you’ll find it tough to reach the coveted top 3 spots on Google. As a result, in order to beat your competitors in SERPs, you need to steal their best backlinks.

You can do this with a combination of competitor analysis and blogger outreach. Here’s a quick outline of how you should proceed:

First, check out the top 3 search results for your target keyword terms. You can do this by performing a quick Google search, but since Google rankings fluctuate often, I’d suggest you use an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs to see if these pages have been ranking on top consistently, at least for the last 4-6 months.

Second, you need to publish content that’s just as in-depth and comprehensive, if not more, than that of your organic competitors. As explained previously, create content that is 10 times better than the top-ranking post for your target keyword terms. Add your own unique insights and perspective to make it as link-worthy as possible. Aim at making the post a go-to resource for your audience for that specific topic.

Third, identify your competitors’ backlinks i.e., the backlinks that point to the top-3 ranking pages for your target keywords. You can get this data with Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool. Sign up for a 2-week free trial of Semrush Pro here to get full access to this tool.

Login to your Semrush dashboard, navigate to Backlink Analytics and enter the URL of one of your competitors:

You’ll view the total number of referring domains and backlinks that point to your competitor URL. Click on the number of backlinks to view the URLs that are linking to your competitor’s page. You can narrow this list down by selecting only “dofollow” and “text” links, and then sorting the domains based on Authority Score (Semrush’s version of domain authority score):

Prepare a spreadsheet of all the URLs that can be potential backlinks for your post. Ignore the URLs where the Authority Score is too low. Repeat the same process for the remaining two competitor URLs.

Once your spreadsheet of link prospects is ready, the final step is to perform an email outreach campaign by sending personalized emails to each publication/blogger who has linked to your competitors. You can find their email addresses by using a tool like FindThatLead or NinjaOutreach.

In your email, make sure you highlight the things that make your content unique and provide reasons as to why you believe your post deserves a link back.

For this specific task, you can use any of these blogger outreach tools.

Not all sites you’ve reached out to will respond positively to your email. But don’t be disheartened. As long as your content is link-worthy and you’ve provided compelling reasons in your email to link back to your content, you should soon be rewarded for your efforts with some high-quality backlinks.

This is an advanced link building tactic. To learn more about email outreach, check out this in-depth email outreach guide by Digital Olympus.

Need help with competitive analysis? Try any of these 7 best competitor research tools to analyze your competition.

3. Build Backlinks with Infographics

Infographics are not just popular on social media sites such as Pinterest and Reddit. They can also improve your SEO significantly and increase web traffic.

Case in point: Websites that publish infographics see their traffic grow an average of 12% more than sites that don’t.

Yet most people ignore infographics because they wrongly assume that it requires a lot of time and effort to design one or consider it to be an expensive task to outsource.

Here’s the truth: Infographics are remarkably effective in generating high-quality backlinks for free.

You don’t need to be a professional designer either. With free online design tools like Canva, Venngage, and Piktochart, you can create fancy infographics in a matter of minutes.

Another way to create beautiful infographics is to outsource it by hiring professional designers on sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, or if you have a bigger budget, Design Pickle.

Once your infographic is up and ready, it’s time to promote it. Follow these steps:

1. Submit your infographic to infographic submission sites

Here’s a list of sites that allow you to submit your infographics (both free and paid). I’ve also mentioned the domain authority of each of these sites to signify the value of each backlink that you’ll get, so you can prioritize your efforts accordingly:

• Graphs.net (DA – 54)
• Visual.ly (DA – 78)
• InfographicBee (DA – 27)
• Cool Infographics (DA – 60)
• Infographic Journal (DA – 55)
• Submit Infographics (DA – 46)

For more infographic submission sites, check out 40 Infographic Submission Sites to Promote Your Infographic (and Get Backlinks).

2. Reach out to bloggers in your niche and offer them the infographic for free as a guest post

The next step is to identify bloggers and influencers in your niche. You can do this by using a tool like BuzzSumo or any of the blogger outreach tools featured here. Once you’ve identified the bloggers, send them an email informing them about your new infographic and how it can add value to the content they have created on the same topic. If need be, offer to write a unique summary for the infographic.

Everyone loves well-designed, informative infographics and half of the sites you reach out to will gladly accept to include your infographic in one of their articles.

3. Use Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator to generate an embed code for your infographic

Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator allows you to generate embed codes for your infographic. Once the code is generated, all you need to do is copy and paste the code below your infographic.

By generating an embed code for your infographic, you make it easier for others to share and embed your infographic onto their own site. Here’s the best part: every time someone includes your infographic in their content, you get an attribution. Yet another easy way to fetch a contextual backlink.

Bonus Resource: For a more detailed description of link building with infographics, check out this article or download this free eBook.

4. Use Reverse Image Search to Build Backlinks

If you have a decent amount of visual content on your blog (infographics, screenshots, charts, etc.), there is a high possibility that someone on the Internet is using your images without giving proper link attribution.

Luckily, there is an easy way to resolve this issue and get a backlink in return. Just follow these steps:

Step 1: Open a new Google Sheet and list down the URLs of all the important visual assets on your site.

Step 2: Use Google Image Search to find websites that are using your images without attribution. Enter the Image URL in the Google search box and then click on ‘Search by Image’ to find all the websites which are using your image in the “Pages that include matching images” section of the search.

Find out which of these sites are not giving you credit for the image.

Step 3: Send an email to the site owner requesting a link attribution for using your image on their site. You can use the email template below:

Hi [Name],

I’m [Your Name] from [Your Blog].

I noticed that you’ve used one of my images in your post: [insert link to the article].

However, you haven’t included a link back to my website.

I’d really appreciate if you could add a link to my website below the image.

Here’s the link where the image is taken from: [insert your post URL]

Thanks,
[Your Name]

In most cases, you’ll get a quick positive response from the site owners. And just like that, you’ve earned yourself a contextual backlink.

5. Create Interactive Content

Interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and calculators generate a lot of buzz on the Internet these days. No other publication exemplifies this trend more than Buzzfeed. On average, the team at Buzzfeed creates 7.8 quizzes a day and 96% of users who start Buzzfeed quizzes finish them.

Quizzes are not just popular with users, but they also tend to generate a ton of authority backlinks. For example, Buzzfeed’s most popular quiz “What City Should You Actually Live In?” till date has generated over 1,500 backlinks, including links from publications such as Washington Post, TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company, and many more.

There are several tools on the web that can help you create your own quizzes and calculators. I’d recommend Outgrow since I’ve used them to create interactive content on my blog, but you can also try Uberflip and ion interactive.

Here are 3 pieces of interactive content I created using Outgrow:

• [Quiz] Are You An SEO Pro? Answer these 20 Questions to Find Out
• Facebook Ads Quiz: 15 Questions to Test Your Facebook Marketing Expertise
• How Often Should You Blog? Use Our Blogging Frequency Calculator to Find Out

Recommended reading: 20 Examples of Truly Engaging Interactive Content

6. Start Your Own Podcast

You can build your link profile by being invited as a special guest on any of the popular podcasts in your niche. That definitely works. But an even better link building strategy is to launch your very own podcast.

Think about it! By having your own podcast, you’ll have more creative control on your content, you don’t need to waste time sending outreach emails to podcasters in your niche and waiting for their response, and more important, podcasting is fun and provides you with an opportunity to build your own personal brand and showcase your expertise.

With free apps like Anchor, it’s now easier than ever to launch your own podcast. In fact, you can start recording an episode using just your smartphone. That said, I do recommend you invest in a good microphone if you’re serious about podcasting.

I started my own podcast, Marketing Mantra, back in August 2018 and here are some of the authority backlinks I’ve been able to build thus far:

Invariably, once your podcast gets popular, other influencers in your niche will reach out to you to be a part of your podcast. Not to mention the invites you’ll receive from other podcasters to feature in their podcasts.

Recommended reading: 38 Best Marketing Podcasts You Should Listen To

7. Get Active on Product Hunt

Image Courtesy: Product Hunt

Product Hunt is a place to discover the latest technology creations, websites, mobile apps, and tools that everyone is geeking about. I love spending time on Product Hunt not just to discover cool new products, but also because it’s a great place to have thoughtful discussions with product-loving enthusiasts.

To get a backlink from Product Hunt, you need to create an account on Product Hunt, link to your website, and then be active on the site. You can do this by writing reviews for products you’ve used, leaving your comments on newly launched products, and of course, by upvoting and downvoting products on a regular basis.

Product Hunt has a domain authority of 86 (and it keeps increasing), so it’s worth having an active account.

Click here to create your Product Hunt account

8. Submit Your Site to Startup Directories

If you’ve just launched your startup, there are tons of startup directories you could submit your site to. Perhaps the most popular startup directory is BetaList, a directory which is focused specifically on early-stage internet startups. The submission is free, but if you’d like to expedite the process and ensure that your startup is listed, then you’ll need to pay a small fee. You can check out their submission criteria here to see how they review the startups.

Even if your startup is not eligible for submission at BetaList, there are lots of other startup directories with high DA which will accept your submission. Here’s a list of 100 startup directories compiled by Ninja Outreach.

9. Build Profile Links

Profile link building is a process where users sign up on sites where they can create a public profile and provide a link to their website.

Several websites which thrive on having an active community allow you to create a public profile where you can feature links to your website and social channels. A few examples are websites such as Kickstarter, Moz, Semrush, and Triberr.

To get more tips and insights into this link building strategy, refer to this in-depth guide by Monitor Backlinks.

10. Find Backlinks from “Best of” Blog Posts

This particular method of getting backlinks is borrowed from Brian Dean at Backlinko and it’s insanely effective.

Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Use these following search strings on Google

• “Best (TOPIC) Blog Year”
• “(TOPIC) blogs to read”
• “My Favorite (TOPIC) blogs”

Any of these above searches will show you a list of “best of” blogs in your selected topic.

Step 2: Create a new Google Doc and add links to any quality blog that you’d like to get a backlink from. Also note down the email addresses of the bloggers you’d be reaching out to. In most cases, you can find them in the contact section. If not, use Ninja Outreach Chrome Extension to find their contact details.

Step 3: Reach out to these blogs via email and present them with a link to your article and ask them if they can include it in one of their weekly/monthly roundup posts.

You can use the below email template to reach out to the bloggers:

Hi [Name],

I’m a digital marketer and regular reader of your blog posts.

I also run the blog at [Your Blog] and today, we published a pretty massive guide on [Subject of Your Blog Post]. I think it might be a good fit for your roundup posts and thought I’d reach out.

Here’s the link to the guide: [Your Post URL]

No worries if it’s not a good fit – I’ll be a regular reader regardless!

Thanks,
[Your Name]

Many of these blogs will also allow you to post a comment along with a link to your website.

One of the easiest and quickest ways to get a backlink is to post thoughtful comments on any of the articles on these blogs that you deem worthy to get a link from. Make sure your comment is THOUGHTFUL. Instead of posting “Great article,” think of creative ways to appreciate the kind of information the author has provided in the article. You may even ask a question.

But you may be thinking that there are blogs which simply don’t allow you to provide a link to your website. They may be using the Facebook comment system or Disqus to manage and moderate their comments.

In such cases, the best way to get backlinks would be to use the email outreach method. Though it involves some work, the backlink you’ll eventually generate for your site would be worth the time and effort.

11. Submit Your Site to Blog Aggregators

Blog Aggregators are sites which list blogs from different industries. Examples include AllTop, Blogarama, and BlogEngage.

Though they don’t have the same amount of link juice they once had, you can still get a decent amount of referral traffic from these blogs.

You can get high-quality dofollow backlinks from most blog aggregators for free in three easy steps:

• Submit your site (in most cases, the RSS feed of your blog)
• Add a special HTML code to your site to confirm your ownership of the site
• Wait for the blog aggregator to review your site

When it’s approved, you will get your own page on the blog aggregator listing all your articles.

Here’s a complete list of blog directories/aggregators you can submit your site to.

12. Syndicate Your Content on Medium and LinkedIn

Yes, the links on Medium and LinkedIn are “nofollow”, but that doesn’t mean they are completely useless. Nofollow links can drive awareness, traffic, and can even lead to dofollow backlinks eventually. If you have a new website, the awareness and traffic boost can be really important.

This article by Nicole Kohler on Moz makes a fantastic case for using and attaching importance to nofollow backlinks. In her article titled “The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links”, Nicole explains the importance of nofollow backlinks as follows:

“At its very core, a link is designed to create awareness of something on a different page. Nofollow links still build awareness, as long as they are seen. They don’t have to be followed. They probably don’t even have to be clicked! They just have to be visible.”

With this in mind, start syndicating your content on Medium and LinkedIn (via LinkedIn Publishing) and expand the reach of your content to a whole new audience. If you can create native content on these platforms, that’s even more wonderful. But the very least you could do is replicate some of your top posts on to these two platforms and gain a wider reach and awareness for your content.

13. Link Roundups

There are lots of high quality blogs that do link roundups. Link roundups are weekly or monthly blog posts that link out to great content in their respective niche.

At my agency blog, we used to publish a weekly roundup of social media news and call the segment ‘This Week in Social Media’. These articles used to include headlines of all the top social media news stories in a given week with a link to the source below each headline to corroborate the news story.

You will find blogs that do similar roundups in your niche as well.

Here’s how it works:

1. Your first task is to find link roundups in your niche. Use the following search strings:

• “your keyword” + “link roundup”
• “your keyword” + roundup
• “best of” + “your keyword”
• “your keyword” + “this week”

2. Once you find a blog that you’d like to target for backlinks, pitch your content to the person who runs the blog. You can use the below script:

Hey [Name],

I’m [Your Name] from [Your Blog URL].

I know you like to make compilation articles about everything [TOPIC] – so I just wanted to send a few of my recent ones your way. I’d really appreciate it if you could include these articles in your monthly roundup.

[Link to Article 1]

[Link to Article 2]

Thanks,
[Your Name]

Just sit back and wait for the person to respond. If your content is the right fit for the blog’s roundup, then you’ll get a quality backlink for your site.

14. Create a Crunchbase Account

Crunchbase is a community of millions of users who like to stay on top of the latest industry trends, investments, and news about global companies – from startups to the Fortune 1000 companies.

While Crunchbase is a great place to connect with users with whom you share similar interests, it’s also a great resource to fetch a high-quality backlink for your website.

Just by creating a Crunchbase account and linking to your website, you’ll get a backlink from a website with a domain authority score of 91. If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, create a profile for your company as well.

It’s a simple way to generate a backlink from a high DA site and all it takes is two minutes of your time.

Click here to create your Crunchbase profile

15. Use Brian Dean’s Moving Man Method

This is yet another technique which I learned from one of Brian Dean’s articles and I’ve found it extremely useful.

Here’s how the Moving Man Method works:

Step 1: Find sites in your niche which have either shut down or changed their names and URLs.

Step 2: Find sites linking to the old URL.

Step 3: Reach out to these sites and let them know about their outdated link.

To explain this technique in a better way, let’s take the example of Moz, a popular SEO tool run by SEO Guru, Rand Fishkin. A while back though, Moz was operating as an SEO agency named SEOMoz. As a result, they had to change the URL from seomoz.org to Moz.com.

Sure, if you visit seomoz.org, it redirects to moz.com. So the links used by sites linking to seomoz.org aren’t broken, but they are outdated. This is because the link points to the old URL and the anchor text has the old brand name.

As you may realize, this is a huge opportunity for people running SEO/Marketing blogs to reach out to sites that are still using the seomoz.org link in their content. And there are plenty of sites doing just that.

In order to make this technique work for you, you need to keep an eye out for sites that are either rebranding or changing names. Use PRWeb to see whether there are any brands in your niche that have recently rebranded. Use this search string – “your keyword” + rebrands”. Do a similar check on Google News as well.

Once you’ve found a site which has rebranded or changed its URL, it’s time to reach out to sites which are still using the old URL in their content. Just copy the URL and paste into your backlink checking tool of choice (I recommend Semrush). You’ll find dozens of sites which are still linking to the old resource.

The last step in the Moving Man Method is to reach out to these sites and give them a heads up about the outdated link they are using in their content. And then give a subtle suggestion to add your link to their site.

To learn more about the Moving Man Method, click here.

16. Create and Optimize Your About.me Page

About.me allows you to create your free, one-page website in just a few minutes. An easy way to fetch a dofollow backlink for your site is to create an About.me profile, enter a link to your blog in the ‘Spotlight Button’ section, and also include additional links in your bio. Something like this:

With an About.me profile, you can get an authoritative backlink (About.me’s DA is 92) in under five minutes.

Click here to create your About.me profile

17. Build Authoritative Links with HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a sourcing service which connects journalists and bloggers with relevant expert sources to meet journalists’ demanding deadlines and enables brands to tell their stories. Subscribing to HARO provides you with an opportunity to fetch high quality backlinks from authority news sites.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for HARO as a source here.
2. You’ll receive three emails per day on weekdays from reporters looking for sources. Look out for source requests relevant to you and your niche
3. Respond with some helpful content and your credentials

With HARO, you can build backlinks from authority news sites such as WSJ, Mashable, Inc, FastCompany, Reuters, etc.

Recommended reading: How to Build Backlinks Using HARO [Case Study by Ahrefs]

18. Scoop.it Backlinks

Scoop.it is a site where people aggregate their favorite content around the web into a magazine format.

It’s also an excellent place to get high-quality “nofollow” backlinks and boost your referral traffic. So how do you go about fetching backlinks on Scoop.it? It’s quite simple really.

An active Scoop.it user usually has curated magazines which have hundreds of followers. This means that your content can get in front of hundreds of people. Follow these two simple steps to get people to share your content on their Scoop.it magazine:

Step 1: Give a search on the topic of your content. Ex: Social Media Marketing. Find users who have magazines with lots of followers and views.

Step 2: Pitch your content to these people by using Scoop.it’s ‘suggest’ feature. You can share the same content with 5 people in a day and chances are that about 50% of them will share it with their network.

19. Provide Testimonials

Consider giving a testimonial for a product that you really love using. All companies love showing off customer testimonials on their home page or have a dedicated page for them.

Once you’ve written the testimonial, make sure you let them know that they can include your testimonials on their home page or testimonials page.

Here’s my testimonial for Serpstat published on their testimonials page:

Here’s another example of a testimonial I wrote for AppSumo:

AppSumo has used the above testimonial on several of their promos.

20. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation is simple and works like magic.

Here’s how it works:

• First, you find mentions of your brand that don’t link back to your site
• Then you send an email to the person with a friendly reminder to add the link

Here’s an email I received from Canva a few weeks ago which serves as a fine example of link reclamation tactic:

It’s that simple and it works in most cases (like it did here in the example above ).

Here’s how you can go about reclaiming your link:

1. Find unlinked mentions using Buzzsumo

A tool like Buzzsumo can help you find unlinked mentions of your brand. Setup a content alert for your brand or domain on Buzzsumo, so that whenever someone mentions your brand, you get an email alert.

2. Check whether the site has linked back to your site

If they have linked back to your site, awesome! If not, then move on to step 3.

3. Reach out and get your link

Send them an email with a friendly reminder. You can use the script below (same that was used by Canva):

Hey NAME,

I just wanted to reach out and say “thanks” for mentioning (your brand) in your article: [link to the article]

We really, really appreciate it.

I’m reaching out today to ask if you could add a link back to our site. That way, people can easily find us while reading your article.

Either way, thanks for the shout out and keep up the great work!

Thanks,

(Your Name)

Link reclamation is an easy, yet effective way to get quality backlinks for your site.

21. Broken Link Building

A broken link is one that points to a page on a site that has since been moved or deleted. In other words, these are pages that return a 404 error.

Broken link building involves some bit of work, but it’s a safe way to generate fresh, high quality backlinks for your site.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Use tools such as Check My Links or Broken Link Checker to find broken links from a site you want to fetch a backlink from.
2. Once you’ve found the broken links, reach out to the site owner and let him know about them.
3. Share relevant links from your site that the site owner could use to replace the broken links with.

Voila! You’ve earned yourself a high quality backlink.

22. Submit Your Site to CSS Galleries

Proud of your site’s design? Then you can showcase them on CSS galleries and gain easy backlinks in return.

Here’s a list of CSS galleries where you can feature your website for free or for a nominal fee:

• Awwwards
• CSS Design Awards
• CSS Mania
• Design Inspiration
• CSSFox
• CSSWinner

23. Republish Your Content on Steemit

Steemit is a blockchain-based blogging and social media website which rewards its users with the cryptocurrency STEEM for publishing and curating content.

The website currently has over a million registered users. You can republish some of your articles here, reach a wider audience for your content, and even gain backlinks in return.

Click here to create your Steemit account 

24. Email Outreach to People Featured on Your Blog

This strategy may not get you a backlink each time, but it will definitely get you more social shares and help you build relationships with influencers in your niche.

Whenever you mention a specific tool or blog in your article, send the owner an email to let them know they were featured in your article.

I’ve done this several times and it works. Not only will your post receive a social boost, but it will also help nurture relationships with industry influencers and may even fetch you an authority backlink in the long run.

To do the outreach, I recommend you use an outreach tool like Mailshake. The tool also contains several customizable email templates to assist you in your outreach efforts.

25. Repurpose Your Articles on Quora Spaces

Quora is a platform where users can ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers. Quora also allows users to create their own blog and start publishing blog posts. More recently, Quora transitioned blogs to Spaces.

Just like you’d do on Medium or LinkedIn, you can repurpose some of your older content on Quora and gain high quality backlinks in return. Click here to activate Spaces on Quora and republish your old posts to reach a whole new audience for your content.

Recommended reading: How to Use Quora Marketing to Supercharge Your Content Strategy

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned these powerful link building strategies, it’s time to get started and test these techniques out.

I’d also urge you to use a reliable SEO tool to help you in your link building efforts. I recommend ​Semrush​, one of the most popular SEO and competitor analysis tools on the market. With Semrush’s Backlink Analytics feature, you can analyze the backlink profiles of your competitors, identify new link building opportunities, and even identify toxic backlinks and disavow them.

Click the link below to sign up for a free 14-day trial of Semrush Pro:

EXCLUSIVE OFFER

Semrush

Experience the full power of Semrush Pro with a 14-day free trial.

Sign Up for Semrush

Remember: The links you build should be natural, so they don’t hurt your online rankings. To make sure you don’t make a lot of common SEO mistakes, check out this step-by-step process on how to build backlinks the right way.

Which link building strategy gets you the best backlinks? Let me know in the comments section.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in July 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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The post How to Get High Quality Backlinks (25 Proven Techniques) appeared first on 99signals.

SEO metrics are critical data points or performance indicators that help you understand if your SEO efforts are working.

With a plethora of SEO metrics vying for your attention, it’s important to separate the wheat from the chaff.

But the question is: how do you differentiate between useful SEO metrics and vanity metrics?

We’ve got you covered.

In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at 10 SEO metrics that are worth tracking. By the time you’re done, you’ll know exactly which SEO metrics to focus on and which ones to ignore.

Side note: To track some of these metrics, you’ll need to subscribe to a premium SEO tool. Out of all the prominent SEO tools out there, Semrush is my personal favorite. In my decade-long experience in the SEO field, I’ve learned that Semrush provides the most accurate and comprehensive insights on critical SEO metrics.

Click here to sign up for a free 14-day trial of Semrush

Having said that, Semrush is not cheap.

With prices starting at $129.95/month, Semrush is not everyone’s cup of tea. Especially for entrepreneurs or bloggers who are just starting out.

If you’re looking for a budget-friendly alternative to Semrush, I’d highly recommend SE Ranking. Check out my full review of SE Ranking to learn more about this highly underrated SEO tool or sign up for a 14-day free trial to test it out for yourself.

10 Most Important SEO Metrics

1. Organic Traffic

Let’s start with the most obvious and perhaps the most important SEO metric you should be tracking — organic traffic.

Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your site from a search engine that doesn’t include traffic from paid results.

The easiest way to track your organic traffic is via Google Analytics.

Here’s how to do it:

From your Google Analytics dashboard, navigate to:

Acquisition > Overview

Here you can view the different traffic sources to your site, including organic search.

It’s that simple.

You can also track organic traffic in Google Search Console.

Login to your GSC account and visit the performance tab to view your organic traffic data.

In addition to these two free tools, you can use Semrush or Ahrefs to keep a tab on your site’s organic performance.

If you’re a Semrush user, you can track your site’s organic traffic by entering your domain in the search box.

The resulting overview report will have a column on the domain’s organic search traffic.

Click through the number to view the organic keywords that are bringing traffic to your site. We’ll cover organic keywords in greater depth next.

But here’s an important caveat: SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can only show the estimated traffic of a particular website. You may not always get an accurate representation of a site’s organic traffic.

But based on my personal experience, the organic traffic data in Semrush is pretty close to the actual figure that you see in Google Analytics.

Related: 7 Best Traffic Analysis Tools to Boost Your SEO

2. Keyword Rankings

Keyword rankings refer to a website’s organic ranking positions for different keywords.

It’s an SEO best practice to keep a tab on the performance of your most important keywords. Ideally, these are a set of keywords that are most relevant to your business and industry.

The best way to check your keyword rankings is to view the organic keywords report in premium SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking.

In my experience, Semrush gives the most comprehensive and accurate data on keyword rankings.

Semrush’s position tracking tool even lets you to add and track the most important keywords that you’d like to have on your radar.

Why is this important?

Because it lets you keep a track of the keywords that really matter to your business. This is especially important if you have a large site and rank for a boatload of keywords.

With a rank tracking software like Semrush‘s position tracking tool, you can narrow your focus down and zero-in on improving the rankings of priority keywords for your business.

To set up position tracking in Semrush, go through this sequence:

Keyword Research > Position Tracking > Set up 

Add the necessary details here, including a list of keywords that you’d like to track.

In a few minutes, Semrush will generate your position tracking report, where you’ll see data and graphs on your best performing keywords, search visibility metrics, rankings distribution graph, and more.

Scroll down to see your top 5 organic keywords, alongside columns for keywords with positive impact (improved rankings) and keywords with negative impact (decreased rankings).

Hit the “View all” button below each of these columns to open the detailed position tracking report.

You can check the position tracking report from time to time or choose to get regular email alerts on the progress of your tracked keywords.

There’s another, much faster way to check your rankings in Semrush. And that is to view your organic keywords report.

To view your rankings in Semrush, just plug your domain in the search box and click through the number in the Organic Search column.

You’ll then see a list of all the organic keywords your site is currently ranking for.

From here, you can use advanced filters and sorting options to arrive at the data you need.

3. Referring Domains

Referring domains are websites that are linking to your website.

Despite numerous algorithm updates over the years, backlinks still remain one of the top three Google ranking factors.

Recently, Backlinko conducted a Google SERP analysis of 11 million websites and found that there is a strong correlation between total number of backlinks and higher rankings.

No surprises there.

But what was interesting, though, is that websites with lots of referring domains tend to rank higher in SERPs.

What’s the significance of this finding?

Referring domains and backlinks are not the same. Referring domains are not the total number of backlinks pointing to your site. Referring domains are different websites that link to your domain.

Here’s the thing: Google values links from different websites a lot more than links from the same website.

Which is why it’s important that you focus more on referring domains than total backlinks.

Bottom line: The more authoritative referring domains you have pointing to your site, the more likely you are to rank higher in Google organic search.

You can check your referring domains in Semrush by plugging your domain into the search bar. In the overview report, check the number reflecting against “Referring Domains” in the “Backlinks” section.

Click through this number to open the Referring Domains report to check the quality of the domains pointing to your site.

You can use the sorting and advanced filtering options to skim through this data and deep dive into the referring domains that are pointing to your site.

Related: How to Get High Quality Backlinks (25 Proven Techniques)

4. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals (CWV) are a set of three important technical SEO metrics that measure your site’s speed and performance.

Here’s how Google explains Core Web Vitals in their own quirky way:

Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!).

Below are the three CWV metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measures when the largest content element in the viewport becomes visible.
• First Input Delay (FID) – measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site to the time when the browser is actually able to respond to that interaction.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – measures all layout shifts that aren’t caused by user interaction.

So why are core web vitals suddenly so important?

Because these three core web vitals are now ranking signals.

Google’s page experience algorithm update, which was rolled out in May 2021, combines existing user experience signals like mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, safe browsing, etc. with core web vitals.

How do you track your core web vitals?

There are several ways, but the easiest way is to access the core web vitals report in your Google Search Console account.

To access this report, login to your GSC account and navigate to:

Experience > Core Web Vitals

The CWV report will categorize your site’s URLs into three categories for both desktop and mobile:

• Good URLs
• Poor URLs
• URLs that need improvement

Needless to say, you need to pay special attention to poor URLs followed by URLs that need improvement.

Inside the report, you can find more details on the issues and a list of affected URLs.

As you can see, there are several URLs on my site that have an LCP issue on mobile devices.

In order to fix these CWV issues, it’s best to use PageSpeed Insights.

PageSpeed Insights performs a detailed analysis of your website and provides recommendations on fixing all the CWV issues.

You can find more information on LCP in the Diagnostics section of the report.

If you’re using Semrush, you can perform a side audit and refer to the Core Web Vitals column in the Site Audit overview report.

When you click through the number, you can see the errors that you need to fix to improve your CWV score.

You’ll also see recommendations and tips on the necessary steps you need to take to improve your overall CWV score.

5. Mobile Traffic

The “mobilegeddon” algorithm update in mid-2015 completely flipped the search landscape.

Websites that hadn’t embraced mobile-friendly design yet saw their rankings plummet overnight. Even renowned publications and companies couldn’t escape Google’s wrath.

Image Credit: Marketoonist

It is perhaps the single most important algorithm update from Google since the Panda algorithm update.

Fast forward to today, the importance of mobile traffic has only increased. In fact, as of May 2023, 51.52% of all web traffic comes through mobile devices.

Here’s how Google explains the importance of having a mobile-friendly website:

If not mobile-friendly, a site can be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. A non-mobile-friendly site requires users to pinch or zoom in order to read the content. Users find this a frustrating experience and are likely to abandon the site. Alternatively, the mobile-friendly version is readable and immediately usable.

This is why you should keep an eye on the mobile friendliness of your website design and make sure you’re providing an optimized user experience to the mobile visitors on your site.

If you operate in an industry where a large portion of your traffic comes from mobile devices, then this becomes an even more important metric to consider.

You can get accurate data on your site’s mobile traffic in Google Analytics.

Visit Audience > Mobile > Overview

Here you’ll be able to see the data on traffic from mobile, desktop, and tablet.

Once you’ve determined your mobile traffic, it’s important that you check the mobile usability of your site. You can easily check this report in your Google Search Console account.

Navigate to Experience > Mobile Usability

This report will show you the total number of mobile-friendly pages on your site.

If Google identifies issues with the mobile interface of your website, then this report will pinpoint those exact issues. For instance, you may find that the clickable elements on your website are too close together or your content is wider than a mobile screen.

Fix these issues as and when they appear in this report to improve the mobile experience on your site. Once you’ve fixed these errors, return to the mobile usability report and perform a validation check on each error and see if the error is well and truly fixed.

Another free tool you can use is Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. As the name suggests, this free tool by Google lets you test the mobile-friendliness of your website.

To use the tool, just enter your domain into the search box:

The resulting report will show whether or not your domain is mobile-friendly.

Use these free tools to ensure that your website performs well on all devices.

6. Indexed Pages

Indexed pages are pages that have been crawled by Googlebot and stored in the Google index.

According to Google:

A page is indexed by Google if it has been visited by the Google crawler, analyzed for content and meaning, and stored in the Google index. Indexed pages can be shown in Google Search results.

In other words, this SEO metric simply shows you the number of pages from your site that are indexed by Google.

Why is this important?

While the number of indexed pages for your site doesn’t necessarily mean higher search rankings, it is a great indicator of how well your site is doing from an SEO standpoint.

As a general rule, you’d want to make sure all the important pages on your site are indexed. At the same time, you’d want to leave a few pages out of the index.

Why?

Because having too many pages indexed can sometimes cause technical SEO issues like duplicate content, index coverage errors, and affect the overall website health score.

There are three ways you can determine how many indexed pages you’ve got.

The quickest way is to use a site search operator (site: yourdomain.com) in Google search like this:

The search results will help you get a rough estimate of how many pages Google has indexed from your site.

To get a more accurate summary of your indexed pages, check the coverage report in your GSC account.

To access this report, go to:

Index > Coverage

Here you’ll not just find the precise number of pages from your site that Google has indexed, but also the errors that are preventing certain pages from being indexed.

Simply click through on an error to view the URLs that have issues. Alongside the URL, you’ll also find a link that includes instructions on how to fix the error.

Check the coverage report in GSC every month to make sure your site has no index coverage issues.

You can also identify index coverage errors with SEO tools that have a site audit feature.

If you’re using Semrush, you can refer to the crawlability column under “Thematic Reports” in your site audit report.

If you don’t get a 100% score here, that means your site may have indexability issues. If that’s indeed the case, hit the “View details” button to view the site indexability graph and other crawlability data.

You can also check the Crawl Budget Waste column to identify all the pages on your site that are negatively affecting your website’s crawlability, and, as a result, reducing your crawl budget.

Finally, you can visit the “Issues” tab to see the exact indexability issues that are affecting your site.

To learn more about these issues, click on the “Why and how to fix it” link against each issue. You’ll also get recommendations on how you can go about fixing each issue.

7. Traffic Cost

On the surface, this may seem like a PPC metric, but I’d consider it an important SEO metric.

Why?

Because it’s a clear indication of whether your SEO efforts are working.

Traffic cost is the answer to the all-important, albeit annoying, question: What’s the ROI of SEO?

As an SEO professional, if you’ve ever had to tackle this question, you’d know the role it plays in you retaining your clients in the long run.

Traffic cost is the best SEO metric that can explain ROI in terms of dollars.

Traffic cost is an estimate of how much you’d spend on Google Ads to generate the same traffic you’re currently getting from organic search.

You can see your site’s traffic cost in Semrush.

From the SEO dashboard, navigate to:

Competitive Research > Organic Research

Just plug your domain in the search box and in the resulting overview report, you can see your site’s traffic cost alongside other key SEO data points.

You can also see your traffic cost in Ahrefs. They call it traffic value, but it’s the same metric.

Keep in mind that this number is just a rough estimate of how much your search traffic is worth. You can’t expect 100% accuracy.

8. Website Health Score

Your website’s health score is essentially the technical SEO score of your website. The higher the score, the less you need to worry about technical SEO.

SEO performance tools that have the site audit feature crawl your website and update your health score accordingly.

Semrush’s site audit tool is by far the best tool to measure the technical SEO health of your website.

Every time you run a site audit on this tool, Semrushbot crawls your website and runs checks for over 140 common website issues.

Essentially, Semrush calculates your site’s health score based on the issues it finds during the crawl.

These issues are classified into three main categories:

• Errors – these are the most critical issues that have the highest impact on your site’s health score. These errors include indexability issues (see #6), broken internal links, missing title tags, slow site speed, etc.
• Warnings – these issues are of medium impact. For example, low text-HTML ratio, unminified JavaScript and CSS files, and broken external links are classified as warnings.
• Notices – the least important issues that have very little impact on your site’s health score. These issues include orphaned pages in Google Analytics, lack of internal links, links with non-descriptive anchor text, etc.

Needless to say, you should first focus on fixing errors before moving on to issues found in warnings and notices.

Each issue that you find in your site audit report contains a “Why and how to fix it” explanation next to it so you can fetch more details on the issue and Semrush‘s recommendations on how to fix these issues.

Once you’ve fixed the most critical issues, you can re-run the site audit to check if your website’s health score has improved.

Learn more: Semrush Site Audit: 10 Most Overlooked Features

9. Average Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

Average clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who click through your site in Google SERPs. So naturally, the higher your CTR, the better your chances of consistently ranking on the first page of Google.

But when it comes to CTR, not all search results are created equal. Just because you rank at #1 for your target keywords doesn’t automatically translate to more traffic.

Some search results will have a higher average CTR than others.

Based on the keywords you’re targeting, some of your results may compete against featured snippets, Google ads, and more.

Take a look at the SERP for this query:

The SERP here is a combination of PPC ads, featured snippet, and more. As a result, your CTR may not be as high as the search volume suggests. Even if you rank at #1 for these keywords.

And now, take a look at the SERP for this query:

As you can see, for this search query, there’s not a lot of competition. So the site ranking at #1 for these keywords will have a higher average CTR than the top result for the earlier search query.

Now that you know the importance of this SEO metric, how do you go about measuring the average CTR of all your top-ranking pages?

As much as I love Semrush, Ahrefs has a better feature to measure CTR.

When you perform keyword research in Ahrefs, you get to see the average monthly number of clicks alongside search volume data for your keywords.

This is really helpful because you can then zero-in on keywords that have more traffic potential.

Next question: how do you improve the CTR of your pages?

You can start by optimizing the title tag and meta description of all your pages to make them as appealing as possible.

Pro Tip: Use a free tool like Headline Analyzer to improve the quality of your headlines.

The tool scores your overall headline quality and rates its ability to result in increased traffic and social shares.

Learn more: Meta Tags for SEO: The Definitive Guide

10. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the website after visiting just one page. It’s often confused with pogo-sticking, but there’s a subtle difference.

Pogo-sticking is a scenario where a user quickly navigates back to the SERPs to visit another page. Bounce rate, on the other hand, is when a user enters a site from any source and doesn’t perform any action. In other words, when a user visits a page and doesn’t click on any any of the links or put an item in their cart, it’s counted as a bounce.

This is how Google defines bounce rate:

A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.

Bounce rate has been getting a bad rap in recent years from the SEO community. In fact, Ahrefs published a post on SEO metrics in which they explained why bounce rate is not an important SEO metric.

In a way, Ahrefs is right. For years, SEOs used to obsesses over this metric, while ignoring other important SEO metrics already featured on this list.

This obsession would sometimes be at the cost of ignoring crucial SEO metrics like keyword rankings, referring domains, and technical SEO health.

In fact, I still work with SEO clients who are obsessed with this metric.

Having said that, bounce rate should not be completely ignored. It’s still a critical user experience signal. Ignoring it completely will most likely prevent you from making improvements to the content and user experience on your website.

When Backlinko conducted their analysis of 11.8 million Google search results, they found a strong correlation between low bounce rate and higher search rankings.

So how do you check your bounce rate?

It’s quite simple: Google Analytics to the rescue again.

Login to your Google Analytics account and navigate to:

Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

Here, you’ll get a breakdown of all the pages on your website alongside different analytics data points. The column you should pay attention to is “Bounce Rate.”

Obviously, the lower your bounce rate, the better.

The other column you should pay attention to is “Avg. Session Duration.” This metric is also called “Dwell Time” and it reveals the time spent by users once they land on your site.

While there are several ways to improve your bounce rate, the best way is to speed up your website.

Use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to test your site speed and to get specific recommendations on improving the speed and performance of your website.

Related: Pogo-Sticking in SEO: 9 Ways to Make Your Content More Engaging

Final Thoughts on SEO Metrics

If you’d like to understand the value of your SEO efforts, you need to make sure you’re tracking and reporting on the right SEO metrics. In this guide, I’ve made an attempt to provide insights on the most important metrics you should track and analyze to improve your overall SEO performance.

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Do you agree that these 10 SEO metrics are important? Which ones do you track on a regular basis? And which ones, in your opinion, are overrated? Let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 6 December 2021 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

Related Articles

• Google E-A-T: How to Create Content That Ranks Higher on Google
• Meta Tags for SEO: The Definitive Guide
• SEO Tools Showdown: Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz vs SpyFu
• 26 Best Google Chrome Extensions for SEO
• Semrush Site Audit: 10 Most Overlooked Features

The post 10 SEO Metrics That You Should Consider Tracking appeared first on 99signals.

All SEOs and marketers know the importance of advanced Google search operators. For the uninitiated, they are special commands that you type into the Google search box to broaden the scope of regular text searches.

The most common example of a Google search operator is the “site:” search operator, which essentially displays search results from a specified site.

For instance, if I were to enter “site:99signals.com” on Google, the search engine result pages (SERPs) will only display pages from my site. Like this:

Knowing all the essential Google search operators can level up your SEO skills and help you uncover content and SEO opportunities that you may have missed otherwise.

In this article, I’ll share a complete list of advanced Google search operators that will come handy in your SEO research. In addition, I’ll share 5 actionable tips to help you to make the best use of Google search operators and discover a goldmine of marketing opportunities.

Let’s get started.

Advanced Google Search Operators: The Ultimate List

Google’s search algorithm keeps evolving. Which is why many of the search operators that used to work in the past don’t work anymore. The advanced search operators featured below have been tried and tested. I’ll keep this post updated at all times, so if and when Google eventually retires a search operator, I’ll delete it from this list as well.

So here are all the Google search operators that still work:

“search term”

Use this operator to do an exact-match search.

Example: “sundar pichai”

OR

Use this when you want to search for this or that. This will return results related to the two terms or both. For this specific search, you can also use the operator “|” instead of “OR.”

Example: iphone OR android

AND

This is when you want to search for this and that. This will only generate results related to the two terms.

Example: iphone AND android

–

This operator is used when you want to exclude a specific term or phrase.

Example: “best smartphones” -iphone

*

This search operator acts as a wildcard that will match with any search term or phrase.

Example: iphone * android

( )

This operator groups multiple terms or search operators to control how the search results are displayed.

Example: (semrush OR ahrefs) seo tools

$

The dollar sign search operator is used when you want to search for prices. The only other currency sign that works as a search operator is euro (€).

Example: macbook pro $2499

define:

Use this operator when you want to know the meaning of a word. The meaning is displayed in a card-like result.

Example: define:preposterous

cache:

This search operator displays the most recent cached version of a page (provided the page is indexed).

Example: cache:semrush.com

filetype:

This search operator shows results of a certain filetype (PDF, TXT, PPT, etc.) The “ext:” operator can also be used and it displays the same results.

Example: semrush filetype:pdf

site:

This is the most common Google search operator. Use this operator to display pages from a specific site.

Example: site:techcrunch.com

related:

This search operator is used when you want to find sites related to a specific website.

Example: related:apple.com

intitle:

Use this operator to find pages that contain a specific word (or words) in the title.

Example: intitle:tesla

allintitle:

Similar to the previous search operator, this operator is used when you want to find pages containing all the specific words in the title.

Example: allintitle:tesla cars

inurl:

Use this search operator to find a specific word (or words) in the URL.

Example: inurl:semrush

allinurl:

Similar to the previous one, this operator is used to find pages containing all the specified words in the URL.

Example: allinurl:semrush pricing

intext:

Use this search operator to find pages containing a specific word or phrase in the content.

Example: intext:semrush

allintext:

This search operator finds pages with all the specified words in the content.

Example: allintext:semrush pricing

AROUND(X)

This proximity search operator finds pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other.

Example: content AROUND(5) marketing

weather:

Use this to find the weather of a specific location.

Example: weather:bangalore

stocks:

Use this search operator to find the stock information for a specific ticker.

Example: stock:meta

map:

This search operator shows you map results for a location search.

Example: map:bangalore

movie:

Use this search operator to find information about a specific movie. If the movie is new, the search results will display the movie showtimes if it’s playing close to your location.

Example: movie:goodfellas

in

This search operator helps you convert one unit to another. It works with currencies, weights, temperatures, etc.

Example: $200 in INR

source:

This operator helps you find news results from a specific source in Google News.

Example: source:nytimes

#..#

This search operator allows you to find results for a range of numbers.

Example: oscars 2015..2020

inanchor:

This search operator helps you find pages linked to the specified anchor text or phrase.

Example: inanchor:”link building techniques”

allinanchor:

Similar to the previous search operator, this operator helps you find pages with all individual terms in the anchor text.

Example: allinanchor:”link building techniques”

blogurl:

This operator helps you find blog URLs for specific domains.

Example: blogurl:hubspot.com

link:

This search operator helps you find pages linking to a specific domain or URL.

Example: link:huffingtonpost.com

inposttitle:

Use this Google search operator to find posts with specific words in their title.

Example: inposttitle:”meditation apps”

+

Use this search operator to force an exact-match search for a single term or phrase.

Example: amazon +india

phonebook:

Use this operator to find someone’s phone number.

Example: phonebook:oracle

#

Use this search operator to search for hashtags. It used to work for Google+, but after its shutdown, it works mostly for Twitter.

Example: #elonmusk

info:

This operator helps you find information about a specific page.

Example: info:semrush.com

id:

Same as the previous operator with identical search results.

Example: id:semrush.com

location:

Use this search operator to find news articles on Google News from a certain location.

Example: location:bangalore

loc:

Use this operator to find local search results from a certain location.

Example: loc:bangalore

5 Actionable Ways to Use Google Search Operators

Now that you’re familiar with most of the advanced Google search operators, let’s explore a few actionable techniques to make the best use of these search operators.

1. Fix Non-Secure Pages

With the “site:” search operator, you can find pages that are non-secure on your site. Since HTTPS is a critical ranking signal, it’s an SEO best practice to ensure all the pages on your site are secure.

Let’s use this search operator for my site and see if we can find non-secure pages.

Looks like I just have 1 non-secure page — it links to an old PDF that I’m no longer offering on the site.

Let’s now use this search operator for a large site like The New York Times (nytimes.com).

Surprisingly, The New York Times has several pages on their site that are unsecured.

Bottom line: With a “site:” search operator, you’ll be able to identify non-secure pages on your website and fix them accordingly.

2. Find and Evaluate Link Building Prospects

Here’s the deal: In order to rank your pages on Google, you’ve got to put effort into building authoritative and relevant backlinks.

Let’s say you’ve done enough leg work to find a site that you want a link from. You can then find related sites which can be potential link building prospects.

Using the “related:” search operator, you can find similar sites:

Similarly, you can use the “related:” operator to find similar pages. Let’s take Semrush‘s post on SEO audit as an example and see what we find:

As you can see, there are 14 results that are similar.

Now, here’s the catch with the “related:” search operator: Most of the sites you stumble upon will have a ton of posts and pages, and finding the most relevant page for link building purpose can be quite a challenge.

For instance, if Semrush is the site you want a link from, you’d have to sift through 190,000 pages. As you can imagine, that’s a waste of your time.

In such cases, you can use the “site:” operator to find only the most relevant results from the target website.

You can do a site:domain.com “your target keywords” search to identify the posts that are most relevant to your needs.

Let’s stick with Semrush and see what we find:

As you can see, there are currently only 4 results that contain the keywords “collaboration tools” on Semrush‘s website. This is how you can narrow down the list of relevant pages from a potential prospect’s website.

3. Optimize Your Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the best ways to pass on link authority from a top-ranking page on your site to a page that’s either new or struggling to climb the SERPs.

That said, it can be a time consuming task to find relevant internal links from your site. Your time is better spent on identifying link building prospects and chasing high-quality backlinks.

This is where you can use the “site:” search operator to its best effect.

Using the “site:” operator on Google, you can find internal linking opportunities on your site and add internal links where they are relevant and most useful.

When adding internal links to existing posts, you need to make sure the links are relevant and add value to the content. Otherwise, you’ll be doing more harm than good to your posts.

Let me share an example of the internal linking process I followed for one of my recent posts about SEO metrics.

In this scenario, I wanted to identify blog posts with keyword phrases similar to the topic discussed in the new post while excluding the post that I wanted to build internal links to.

This is the search operator I used:

I found over 50 results from my blog. It would have been time consuming to find these posts through a manual search.

Recommended reading: Internal Links for SEO: The Definitive Guide 

4. Find Indexing Errors

Indexing errors are more common than you may think.

When you use the “site:” search operator, you may find certain pages indexed that are better left unindexed. It can also be the other way round. Certain pages that should be indexed may remain non-indexed.

In each of these scenarios, you need to fix the issue as and when they occur.

Let’s take the example of my own blog once again.

Using the “site:” search operator, I found that Google has indexed over 500 pages from my site.

That number is way higher than the number of blog posts and pages I have on my site.

When I dug a little deeper, I found a few pages that definitely shouldn’t have been indexed. So I proceeded to delete or noindex these pages.

You can repeat a similar process for your blog and remove specific pages from SERPs by noindexing them.

In addition, if you use WordPress, you can also use these two Google search operators to identify category and tag pages that are better left nonindexed.

• site:yoursite.com/category – helps you find blog category pages;
• site:yoursite.com inurl:tag – helps you find tag pages.

5. Discover Resource Page Link Building Opportunities

Most professional bloggers have a “resource” page where they have a list of all their favorite tools, software, blog posts, books, and other resources that have helped them succeed in their blogging endeavors.

These resource pages are great link building prospects. My blog has a resource page too — a list of 75+ marketing tools which I consider essential for blogging success.

Once in a while, I get requests from other entrepreneurs and bloggers to feature their tool or software in the list. If I find the tool promising and useful, I add it to the list and the list keeps growing.

It’s a win-win for both parties involved: I get to expand my list and keep my post updated and fresh at all times, and they get an authoritative backlink in return (DR: 63).

Now, if you have a useful tool or resource at your disposal, you can reach out to sites in your niche and pitch your resource for inclusion in their lists.

Here’s the search operator you can use to find resource pages:

By using the “intitle:” operator, you can narrow down the results and make it easier to find potential link building prospects.

Final Thoughts

Google advanced search operators are extremely useful. When used the right way, they can save a lot of time and effort and guide you in your SEO and blogging journey.

What Google advanced search operators do you find the most useful? Are there any operator combinations that you’d like to recommend to other marketers out there? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June 8, 2022 and has been updated frequently since then for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Related Articles

• Pogo-Sticking in SEO: 9 Ways to Make Your Content More Engaging
• Content Upgrade Strategy: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts to Get More Traffic
• On-Page SEO Guide: 20 Actionable Tips to Boost Your Rankings

The post Google Search Operators: The Ultimate List (38 Essential Commands) appeared first on 99signals.

Despite stiff competition, Mozilla Firefox continues to be a popular web browser with a very loyal user base. As of December 2023, Firefox still commands a 6.66% browser market share, making it the third most popular web browser worldwide.

If you’re an SEO professional, a blogger, or an entrepreneur who’s looking for efficient and quick ways to improve your site’s SEO right in your web browser, then we have good news for you. There are several Firefox add-ons and extensions you can install on your browser to turn it into an SEO powerhouse.

In this article, we’ll reveal 10 of the best Firefox SEO extensions you can install right away to improve your search rankings and boost your traffic.

Are you a Chrome user? We’ve got you covered. Check out these 26 best SEO extensions for Google Chrome.

Top 10 SEO Extensions for Mozilla Firefox

1. SEOquake

SEOquake is a free SEO extension by Semrush which helps you accelerate your SEO efforts on the fly. SEOquake provides you with key SEO metrics for a specific page, along with other useful tools such as the SEO Audit tool, the Keyword Density report, Internal/External link analysis, and even social metrics.

With SEOquake installed on your Firefox, you can:

• Get an SEO overview of any page at a glance
• Discover your SERP competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
• Analyze a webpage’s external and internal links
• Get detailed information about your backlinks and much more.

Add SEOquake to Firefox

Further reading

• Semrush vs Moz: Which is the Best SEO Tool?
• Semrush vs Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool is Better?
• Semrush vs SpyFu: Which Competitor Analysis Tool is Better?
• Semrush Review: The SEO Tool Trusted by Experts

2. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar provides the most important SEO metrics right in your web browser.

This add-on gives you instant access to major page and keyword metrics, including domain rating (DR), URL rating (UR), estimated organic search traffic, number of referring domains, number of backlinks, and more.

The only problem? You need an active Ahrefs subscription in order to use this extension. We’ve covered Ahrefs extensively on this blog and it’s a phenomenal tool for link building and website analysis. Check out our in-depth review of Ahrefs to learn more.

Add Ahrefs SEO Extension to Firefox

3. Mangools SEO Extension

Mangools SEO extension allows you to speed up your SEO right in your browser.

With this free extension added to your Firefox, you can see all the key SEO metrics, popularity trends, backlinks, and on-page SEO insights of any domain or URL.

Add Mangools SEO Extension to Firefox

Related: Semrush vs Mangools: Which SEO Tool is Better?

4. SEO & Website Analysis by WooRank

SEO & Website Analysis is a free Firefox extension by WooRank which provides a review for any given website.

SEO & Website Analysis extension provides several tips for your website to improve your rankings in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It is a powerful extension for digital marketing professionals, SEOs, web developers, mobile developers, and bloggers.

Add WooRank Extension to Firefox

5. Foxy SEO Tool

Foxy SEO Tool is an exclusive add-on to Firefox which provides quick and easy access to a multitude of search engine functions and web traffic analysis sites such as Alexa, Compete, and Semrush.

With this tool, you can check your website’s listing in important directories, references in Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and find shortcuts to useful network functions and social media sites.

Add Foxy SEO Tool to Firefox

6. Majestic Backlink Analyzer

Majestic Backlink Analyzer gives you instant insights into the number of backlinks and domains linking to the URL and domain you are currently browsing.

With this Firefox add-on, you can see SEO metrics like link profile charts, link counts at the URL, subdomains and root level, and the two Flow Metrics scores (Majestic’s version of domain authority) from 0-100 for pages you visit.

While the above information can be viewed for free, you’ll need an active subscription to Majestic to unlock all the key features. Majestic users can get more in-depth data into backlinks, anchor text, and get access to backlink analysis tools from Majestic.

Add Majestic Backlink Analyzer to Firefox

7. Link Redirect Trace

Link Redirect Trace lets you perform advanced and comprehensive analysis of links, redirects, and canonical URLs.

Here are some of the things you can use this Firefox add-on for:

• Check for problems with your site’s on-page SEO
• Check for problems with your site’s off-page SEO (incoming links)
• Perform competitor research
• Check your affiliate links
• Understand the full redirect chain
• Check your links after a website migration or redesign
• Check if a shortened URL points to a dangerous website
• Trace a hacker website redirect
• Track links from advertising and affiliate networks.

Add Link Redirect Trace to Firefox

8. Search by Image

Link building through reverse image search is one of the most scalable ways to build quality backlinks.

Luckily there’s a Firefox extension that reduces the manual work associated with reverse image search. Search by Image is a browser extension that allows you to initiate a reverse image search from the right-click context menu or the browser toolbar.

This extension will find all images positioned in the clicked area, including those declared in CSS. It also supports uploading local images and searching for images from private sites.

Add Search by Image to Firefox

Further reading

• Image SEO: 7 Actionable Tips to Supercharge Your Organic Traffic
• How to Get High-Quality Backlinks with Infographics (and Boost Your SEO)

9. Link Research SEO Toolbar

Link Research SEO Toolbar lets you view all the advanced SEO metrics for every page you visit on Firefox.

Here are some of the things you can do with this extension:

• See the power and trust of a domain or page
• Discover great places to get links from
• See how successful a page is on social media
• Understand user engagement
• See the strongest pages by Keyword Ranking
• Spot drastic changes in the number of links
• See how many backlinks a page has.

Add Link Research SEO Tool to Firefox

10. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere add-on for Firefox is a free keyword research tool that shows you useful keyword search volume, CPC, and competition data on 15+ websites, including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ubersuggest, Majestic, Moz Open Site Explorer, AnswerthePublic, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Bing, Etsy and more.

This browser extension saves you the hassle of copying data from various websites and using the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads to see relevant search volume and CPC data.

Add Keywords Everywhere to Firefox

Summary

So these are the 10 best Firefox add-ons and extensions we’d suggest you install on your Firefox browser.

Did we miss out on any of your favorite Firefox add-ons for SEO? Let us know in the comments section.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below or share it on your preferred social channel using the social share bar on the left.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on November 7, 2018 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness. 

Related Articles

• 26 Best Google Chrome Extensions for SEO
• 19 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
• 35+ Best Free SEO Tools to Instantly Boost Your Rankings
• 5 Best Blogger Outreach Tools to Find and Connect with Top Influencers
• 8 Best Competitor Research Tools to Spy on Your Competition

The post 10 Best Firefox Add-ons and Extensions for SEO appeared first on 99signals.

Having trouble deciding between SE Ranking and Moz? Then this article is for you.

In this post, I’ll compare SE Ranking and Moz on their key features and help you decide which SEO software is worth investing in.

Both platforms have tools for keyword research, competitor research, and SEO audit. But which one is better? Let’s find out!

I’ll be comparing SE Ranking and Moz in terms of:

• Keyword research
• SEO audit
• Competitor research
• Pricing plans

Without further delay, let’s dive right in.

Editor’s note: Before we get started, make sure you sign up for free trials offered by both these tools so you can implement some of the action items discussed in this post. Since you’re on the verge of buying one of them, I’d encourage you to explore their key features before making the final call.

• Sign up for a 2-week free trial of SE Ranking
• Sign up for a 1-month free trial of Moz Pro

Introduction to SE Ranking and Moz

SE Ranking is a cloud-based SEO platform for entrepreneurs, agencies, and online marketing professionals. Launched in 2013, SE Ranking’s headquartered in London, UK, with offices in USA, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

SE Ranking comprises of a complete set of SEO tools for in-depth site audit, keyword research, keyword rank tracking, competitor analysis (both SEO and PPC), backlink checking, and much more.

While it’s relatively new compared to other cloud-based SEO tools on the market, including Moz, SE Ranking has created a niche for itself and is currently used by over 400,000 users across the world.

Moz, on the other hand, is an industry heavyweight. The company was founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004. Initially called SEOmoz, it was launched as an SEO blog and an online community where some of the world’s first SEO experts shared their research and ideas. It then transformed into an SEO consulting firm before finally being launched as a full-fledged SEO software. The company rebranded from SEOmoz to Moz in 2013.

Like SE Ranking, Moz is an all-in-one SEO platform that includes tools for keyword research, website audit, backlink analysis, rank tracking, and more.

Now that you’ve been introduced to both these tools, let’s kickstart the comparison, starting with keyword research.

Keyword Research: SE Ranking vs Moz

Keyword research is the most important aspect of SEO. If you’d like to create content that resonates with your audience and rank higher in search results, you need to choose the right keywords. To make this task easier, it’s always better to have a trusted SEO tool by your side.

Let’s compare SE Ranking and Moz on their keyword research features and find out which tool is better suited for keyword research.

SE Ranking: Keyword Research Features

Let’s quickly examine some of SE Ranking’s top keyword research features.

To get started with keyword research on SE Ranking, click on the “Keyword Research” tab and enter your seed keyword(s) in the search box. Select the search engine and country from the drop-down next to the search box and hit the “Analyze” button.

SE Ranking will then provide you with a quick overview report of important keyword metrics for your seed keywords, including search volume, difficulty, and CPC.

Below the keyword metrics, you’ll find different keyword ideas generated from your seed keywords, grouped into 3 categories — similar keywords, related keywords, and low search volume keywords.

While this keyword data is great for a quick analysis of your target keywords, the real value of the keyword research tool lies with the complete list of keywords.

To see the complete keyword list, click on “View Detailed Report” under any of the sections or simply click on the “Keyword Suggestions” tab on the left side menu.

Click on any of the keywords here to get information regarding search volume and difficulty on the right side of the report. You can also view the top ranking pages for the selected keywords, so you have data on who you’re competing against in organic SERPs.

If you’d like to see PPC campaign data for your target keywords, simply click the “Paid results” tab on the left side menu.

Here you’ll find a list of websites that are bidding for your target keywords on Google Ads.

You can view the ad copies by clicking on the “Ad” button against each website.

Moz: Keyword Research Features

To get started with keyword research on Moz, navigate to:

Moz Pro > Research Tools > Keyword Explorer

Type in your seed keywords in the search box, select the location, and hit “Analyze.”

Moz will then generate a Keyword Overview report with keyword metrics for your seed keywords, including monthly search volume, difficulty, organic CTR, and priority.

Below the keyword metrics, you’ll find the panels for Keyword Suggestions, SERP Analysis (top 3 pages for your target keywords), and Mentions.

To view more keyword suggestions for your target keywords, click on “See all suggestions” at the bottom of the panel.

Use the advanced filters in this report to get the most relevant keyword data for your website.

Which SEO Tool is Better for Keyword Research?

I personally find SE Ranking’s keyword research reports to be better structured and easier to understand. My only gripe with SE Ranking’s Keyword Research tool is that you can’t generate a list of question-based keywords for your seed keywords.

Moz’s Keyword Explorer, on the other hand, is a cluttered mess. Once the overview report is generated, you’ll have to sift through the keyword data manually or use the advanced filtering options to get what you’re looking for. In other words, it takes too many clicks to identify the right keywords for your campaign.

The other thing about Moz is that it provides a monthly search volume range for your keywords, as opposed to the exact monthly search volume.

While this is acceptable for high-volume keywords like “social media marketing”, the data gets really vague when you type in low-volume and long-tail keywords.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to see the exact search volume for the keywords I’m targeting.

And finally, SE Ranking’s keyword research tools have more PPC features than Moz’s Keyword Explorer. If you run PPC campaigns for your business or clients, Moz’s keyword research reports don’t have anything of substance.

Winner: SE Ranking

SEO Audit: SE Ranking vs Moz

If you’d like to rank on page 1 of Google consistently, you need to perform routine SEO audits on your site to identify and fix all the critical SEO errors that show up. To that end, most SEO tools have site audit features to help you fix all the common SEO issues that prevent your site from ranking higher in SERPs.

Both SE Ranking and Moz have site audit features to help you with this critical SEO task.

Let’s put these SEO audit features to the test and find out which tool is more adept in identifying, and fixing, the most troubling SEO errors.

SE Ranking: SEO Audit Features

Your site is automatically audited as soon as you add a new project on SE Ranking.

To run a fresh audit, go to:

Projects > Website Audit > Restart Site Audit

The audit will take a few seconds, or if your site has many pages, a few minutes.

You’ll then receive a sneak preview of your SEO audit report with your site’s SEO health score, important fixes, and semi-important fixes.

Below the site audit preview, you’ll find information concerning domain characteristics, SEO metrics, and index status.

Scroll down to see your complete site audit report. Important fixes are highlighted in red and semi-important fixes in yellow.

Navigate to each section of the report — Health check, Pages analysis, Meta analysis, and so on — to view important and semi-important fixes along with recommendations. Click on the link icon against each error to view all the pages with that specific error.

Pay special attention to important fixes as these are the most critical SEO errors on your site that require prompt fixes.

Moz: SEO Audit Features

To run a fresh site audit on Moz, visit your existing Site Crawl Overview report and click on the “Recrawl my site” button.

You’ll then be presented with the Site Crawl overview report. First, you’ll see a breakdown of the total pages crawled, the number of new issues, issues grouped into five categories, and the total number of issues.

Below the graphs, you’ll find the top 5 new issues discovered in the latest site crawl.

Click on any of the issues to see all the pages associated with that issue type. If you’d like to view more issues, click on “See all new issues” at the bottom of the panel.

Next, you’ll find the “All Issues” graph. Pay attention to critical issues (highlighted in red) and warnings (highlighted in yellow).

Fix all the critical issues before moving on to warnings and other issues.

And finally, you’ll find a neat little section called “Moz Recommends Fixing” where SEO experts from Moz guide you towards the best way to fix 3 key issues on your site.

Click on “Review issues of this type” under each recommendation to review all the pages that have the specific error.

Which SEO Tool is Better for SEO Audit?

As much as I like the “Moz Recommends Fixing” section of Moz’s site crawl report and have SEO expert Dr. Peter J. Meyers provide a few actionable recommendations, Moz’s site audit reports simply lack the nuance and depth that SE Ranking provides with its site audit reports.

Moz provides a very basic summary of errors on your site while SE Ranking digs deeper to find errors that you never even thought existed.

For instance, I was not aware that my site was plagued with URLs without trailing slashes:

And performance issues like these:

Furthermore, the information presented on SE Ranking is meticulously arranged as compared to the hodgepodge of data on Moz.

UI is a super critical factor for me, especially when I’m scanning through the site audit report, and SE Ranking makes it easier to identify, and fix, the critical SEO issues on your site.

So when it comes to SEO audit features, SE Ranking is much better.

Winner: SE Ranking

Competitor Research: SE Ranking vs Moz

Regardless of your industry or niche, there are bound to be other businesses that offer similar products, services, or content to yours.

So any insight you can gather on your competitors helps you gain an edge over them in SERPs. A complex task like competitor research is made easier by using the right SEO tool.

Let’s find out which tool offers better competitor research features.

SE Ranking: Competitor Research Features

To get started with competitor research on SE Ranking, click on the “Competitor Research” tab and type in your competitor’s domain in the search box. Select the country and hit the “Analyze” button.

The overview report contains a top-level view of your competitor’s organic traffic and paid traffic.

Scroll down to see your competitor’s top organic keywords and distribution of organic keyword rankings.

To view more organic keywords, hit “View Detailed Report” at the bottom of the panel to see a complete list of organic keywords.

This will open up the organic research report, which shows the estimated organic traffic, organic keywords, and a breakdown of all the keywords your competitor’s site is currently ranking for. Play around with the filters to get the most relevant data for your research.

The overview report also shows pages that get the largest volume of search traffic from Google. Click on “View Detailed Report” to view all the top organic pages.

Take note of the pages driving the highest organic traffic as you can reverse-engineer these pages to create content on topics with massive traffic potential.

Next, the overview report shows your competitor’s top 5 paid keywords. Hit “View Detailed Report” for more details.

This will open up the paid research report. Here you’ll find information on your competitor’s estimated paid traffic and the number of paid keywords, along with a complete list of paid keywords. Adjust the filters to get the information you’re looking for.

Alternatively, if you’re not sure who you’re competing with in organic search results, you can simply type in your domain in the competitor research search bar and navigate to the “Organic Competitors” section of the report.

Here you’ll find your top 5 organic competitors. These are the websites that are competing for the same keywords as your site in search result pages.

Click on the “View Detailed Report” button to see more organic competitors for your domain. Click on any of these competitors’ domains to get a thorough organic research report for their website.

You can also leverage SE Ranking’s Backlink Checker tool to check your competitors’ backlinks and replicate the best ones.

To do this, Visit the “Backlink Checker” tab and type in your competitor’s domain in the search box.

This will open up the backlink overview report containing information on the number of referring domains, backlinks, dofollow/nofollow ratio, and so on.

Click on the Referring Domains number to see a list of domains that are linking to your competitor’s site.

Play around with the advanced filtering options to get the most relevant backlink data. These are the backlinks you’d want to replicate for your own site.

Moz: Competitor Research Features

There’s no separate tool/section within the Moz toolkit for competitor research. So you’d have to use a combination of keyword research and link research features to obtain the data you need.

I’ve already explored Keyword Explorer while comparing these tools’ keyword research features. While doing competitor analysis, focus on the SERP features of the keyword overview report to view all the pages that are ranking for your target keywords. To view all the organic results on Google page 1, hit “See full analytics” at the bottom of the panel.

These are the pages your site will be competing against in organic results.

To view your competitors’ link profile, click on “Link Research” and type in your competitor’s domain in the search box.

Click on the Linking Domains number to view all the domains that are linking to your competitor’s site.

Select the arrow under Top Links to view all the top pages from that domain to your competitor’s site.

This data is extremely crucial if you’re looking to steal your competitors’ best backlinks through link building outreach campaigns.

Which Tool is Better for Competitor Research?

When it comes to competitor research, I like to look at three things:

1. The accuracy of the data.
2. The presentation of the data.
3. The ease with which you can obtain the data.

SE Ranking checks all 3 options, whereas Moz checks only 1 — the first one.

For the most part, the link research data obtained from Moz is highly accurate. But it’s just the way the data is presented and there are a whole lot of steps involved in getting the data you need. If you’re a novice SEO user, you’d be confused as to where to begin.

On the other hand, SE Ranking’s competitor analysis features are great, but I wish there was an option to analyze your competitors’ social media performance as well. I’d also have loved to see my competitor’s referring domains included in the competitor research report itself.

These minor issues aside, SE Ranking is better suited for competitor research than Moz.

Pricing Plans: SE Ranking vs Moz

Now let’s compare the pricing plans offered by both these tools.

SE Ranking: Pricing Plans

SE Ranking currently offers 3 pricing plans:

• Optimum – $39/mo (250 keyword rankings, 10 websites)
• Plus – $89/mo (1000 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)
• Enterprise – 189/mo (2500 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)

* The prices on the above plans change based on the number of keyword rankings you select. For instance, if you’d like to track 500 keyword rankings in the Optimum plan, the pricing changes to $54/mo.

The standard pricing practice in the SEO industry is to charge $99/mo for the basic plan. I’m glad SE Ranking deviates from that.

If you’re a solopreneur or run a blog-based business, the Optimum plan ($39/mo) should be sufficient for your requirements. You’ll get access to most of the features, albeit with a few limitations.

If you run an agency or have more websites and data to analyze, you should probably opt for the Plus plan ($89/mo).

You can save 20% on any plan by switching to annual billing.

If you’re not sure which SE Ranking plan is more suited for your needs, use the pricing plan calculator on their pricing page.

Moz: Pricing Plans

Here’s the pricing structure followed by Moz:

• Standard – $99/mo (3 campaigns, 300 keyword rankings)
• Medium – $179/mo (10 campaigns, 800 keyword rankings)
• Large – $249/mo (25 campaigns, 1900 keyword rankings)
• Premium – $999/mo (50 campaigns, 4500 keyword rankings)

Moz’s pricing plans start at $99/mo. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial on any of their plans.

So which tool provides more bang for your buck?

I’d have to go with SE Ranking.

SE Ranking’s basic plan is $60 cheaper than Moz’s basic plan, when billed monthly.

SE Ranking lets you add 10 projects versus 3 projects on Moz. Which means you can perform deep analysis of more websites on SE Ranking than Moz.

Furthermore, if you run an agency and need to prepare branded reports for your clients, you can get access to these features at a much lesser cost at SE Ranking.

Final Verdict: SE Ranking vs Moz

From keyword research to SEO audit to competitive analysis, SE Ranking is a far superior tool. SE Ranking’s revamped UI makes it easier to use and find the data you’re looking for. I also found SE Ranking to be more beginner-friendly.

Moz’s free tools (MozBar Chrome extension, Check My Presence Online, etc.) are incredibly useful and their blog content is outstanding. Dr Pete’s blog posts and Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday videos contain super actionable stuff and can really help you expand your SEO knowledge.

Ever since Google retired its PageRank metric to indicate a site’s importance, Moz’s domain authority metric has taken its place. The ranking score is widely accepted in the SEO community as the next best thing, used even by SE Ranking in their reports.

But as an SEO platform, Moz leaves a lot to be desired. The clunky and cluttered interface and the lack of depth in many of their reports make you wonder why you’re paying a premium price for a tool that’s simply not worth that much.

Bottom line: SE Ranking provides more bang for your buck and includes several features and reports that are lacking in Moz.

To summarize, here’s a visual breakdown of how SE Ranking compares with Moz on key parameters:

Here are the free trial links to both these tools to help you get started:

Sign up for a 2-week free trial of SE Ranking

Sign up for a 1-month free trial of Moz Pro

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 9 July 2020 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness. 

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The post SE Ranking vs Moz: Which SEO Software is Better? appeared first on 99signals.

I’ve already extensively covered the key aspects of off-page and on-page SEO.

Among the most common SEO mistakes hindering site performance, Semrush recently found that over 50% of sites still get the metadata wrong. A whopping 67% of sites are missing any meta tags whatsoever.

Image source: Semrush

So I’ve decided to cover the basics of meta tags to help you build a solid foundation for any future success with your SEO efforts.

In this comprehensive guide, I’ll cover:

• What are meta tags
• The four key types of meta tags – title tag, meta description, robots meta tag, and viewport tag
• Tips and tricks that can help you maximize the impact from meta tags.

Without any further ado, let’s dive right into the world of metadata.

What are Meta Tags?

Metadata is, well, data about your data, featured in the HTML code of your pages.

Meta tags are used to inform the search engines about what each page of your site stands for. Googlebot and other web crawlers use this metadata to “read” the content of your page and to understand if it fits the users’ search intent.

While meta tags placed on the page are invisible to users, they actually appear within the SERPs.

For instance, check how this search results page reflects each page’s meta title and meta description:

This means that while, by design, meta tags should tackle what kind of information you want to show to the search engines, they should also be human-eye-friendly.

Now that you know what meta tags are, let’s unwrap the main types of meta tags and see how you can optimize each page’s metadata to get the most of each feature.

Meta Tags for SEO: Creating a Compelling Meta Title

While Google (or Bing) can sometimes make their own snippet decisions, in most cases, the title tag shapes which page title will be displayed on the SERPs.

Taking the SERP example from above, the code of the meta title of the first result would look like this:

<title>Best Gyms in Los Angeles for a Next-level Workout 
- Time Out</title>

As Google says, the title is the first thing users see when they assess the search results, so a well-crafted title tag can:

• Help web crawlers read and rank your page
• Show users your page is the perfect fit for addressing their query
• Prompt users to choose your page over competitors.

Meta Title Best Practices

As with other SEO-related content recommendations, things like keyword stuffing are a big no-no.

With Google guidelines in mind, here are the key ways to fine-tune your meta titles:

• Make sure a title tag is present across all webpages
• Keep your title tags compelling yet concise (try to go under 60 characters)
• Don’t use vague titles (Ex: Home page for your home page)
• Use title case or sentence case
• Add a target keyword in each title tag
• Create a compelling title that would encourage users to click, but don’t go clickbait about it.

The Most Common Meta Title Mistakes to Avoid

With title tags, Semrush’s study highlights 3 key issues that you should stay away from:

• Missing title tag (65%): it’s unnecessary to even mention why each page of your site should include a title tag.
• Too long (66%) or too short (25%): if your title tag is too concise, users will likely fail to understand what your page is about and whether it’s relevant to their query. If you use a title that’s too lengthy, Google will likely cut it (there are space limits, after all) or simply pick another title by itself.
• Duplicate title tags (37%): if two or more pages across your site have the same title tag (that includes your target keyword), Google will have a hard time deciding which page is more relevant to users’ search queries. In turn, this can hinder your search rankings.

Meta Tags for SEO: Perfecting Meta Description Tags

The second key metadata element is meta descriptions.

Essentially, a meta description is a summary of your page that appears right under the title tag.

The code of this page’s meta description would look like this:

<meta name="description" 
content="Find top apartments in Los Angeles, CA with less hassle! 
Apartment List’s personalized search, up-to-date prices, 
and photos make your apartment search easy."/>

You can already see how such a description would encourage both users and the search engines to show this page at the top of the SERPs.

Google admits that it doesn’t use meta descriptions in its ranking algorithm. But as you can see, being a part of your snippet, they can be a powerful way to boost your click-through rates (CTR) and get more traffic.

Meta Description Best Practices

Now, since we should think of meta descriptions as an effective technique to make your page more click-worthy, make sure they follow these guidelines:

• Keep meta descriptions under 160 characters.
• Write distinct descriptions for each page – this will help Google understand which page best matches the user intent.
• Make sure your summary best reflects what the page is all about. If you create a misleading description, this will discourage users from staying on the page, sending negative user behavior signals to Google.
• Use sentence case.
• Use keywords to tackle user intent, but don’t overdo it – relevancy and accuracy are the key.

Related: 5 Simple Meta Description Tips to Increase Organic Traffic

The Most Common Meta Description Mistakes to Avoid

When it comes to meta descriptions, site owners make similar mistakes to the ones we mentioned across the title tags section:

• A whopping 67% of sites have missing meta descriptions. As per Google’s advice, make sure you add a distinct compelling description for each page of your site. Otherwise, you might see your click-throughs drop.
• Duplicate meta descriptions (50%): as with any other duplicate content, this is a big no. If you are using the same meta description across multiple pages, this will affect the way Google assesses your pages’ relevance and might hinder your rankings.
• Writing too long or short summaries: while Google sets no limit to the number of characters you can use in meta descriptions, stay within 160 characters. If too long, Google will truncate them and leave your message and summary halfway.
• Using multiple descriptions: if one page features few meta descriptions, this might mislead Google as to which one to use for your snippet. So your page might end up showing the “wrong” description, which, in turn, will affect your click-throughs.

Meta Tags for SEO: Going Right About the Robots Meta Tag

If your meta titles and meta descriptions are snippet-related and, thus, visible to users, the robots meta tag is something you add for web crawlers only.

Placed within an HTML tag, robots meta tags are designed to guide the web crawlers in regards to which pages and parts of your website should be indexed.

Keep in mind that you should only use robots meta tags for pages you want to restrict.

So if you don’t want Google to index a certain page, you should add the following code:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>

Some of the most common parameters are:

• Index: This indicates that the page should be indexed. This is the default parameter for any page, which means you don’t have to add anything if you are okay with Google crawling the page.
• Noindex: This parameter tells the search engines not to index your page. This way, it won’t be displayed on the SERPs.
• Follow: This lets the search engines follow links across your webpages and direct users to other pages. Once again, this is the default option so you don’t have to make any changes to the page’s code.
• Nofollow: The nofollow parameter doesn’t allow the search engines to follow your links. This parameter is often used if you want to avoid any issues with link placement. Make sure to go through my extensive guide on internal links for SEO to optimize your internal links.
• Noarchive: This parameter is used to tell the search engines not to cache or display the page.

How to Add a Robots Meta Tag

By default, the web crawlers will index and follow any webpage. So if you want to add some limitations, make sure to place the robots meta tag in the <head> part of your page:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html><head>

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

(…)

</head>

<body>(…)</body>

</html>

Many website builders have in-built plugins and advanced settings that help you to add meta tags without deep-diving into the technical nitty-gritty. For instance, you can easily add meta tags in WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix.

Robots Meta Tag Best Practices

The most common use case of a robots meta tag is if you want to avoid any duplicate content issues.

However, there are some other instances when you might want to consider adding this tag:

• If you have a blog and have a comments section. In this case, you’d want to add nofollow tags on these pages to discourage commenters from adding spammy links.
• Place nofollow tags to all kinds of widgets, links, and infographics if they are related to sites you don’t want to endorse.

The Most Common Robots Meta Tag Mistakes to Avoid

Essentially, all the issues related to robots meta tags come down to these three:

• Incorrectly placed meta noindex: double-check all pages that have a noindex tag, as adding them to the wrong page will take it out of the organic page results and lead to receiving no traffic.
• Incorrectly placed meta nofollow: this tag tells Google not to crawl the links present on the page. This way, if you add a nofollow tag to an important link that’s supposed to guide readers (and crawlers) through your website, you might be hindering the discovery and rankings of some crucial content.
• Blocking noindexed pages in robots.txt: if you do this, Google won’t see the noindex robots tag and end up indexing the page.

If you want to learn more about robots.txt and how it impacts your site’s performance, make sure to go through this extensive guide on robots.txt.

Meta Tags for SEO: Navigating the Mobile-First Era With a Meta Viewport Tag

This element of meta tags has become invaluable ever since we entered the times when 66% of all traffic comes from mobile devices.

A meta viewport tag sets which visible area of a webpage should be displayed. This is important as users now come from both mobile and desktop web.

Image source: Ahrefs

So, in this case, a viewport tag indicates that the page is mobile-friendly. This implies that the presence of this meta tag can actually affect your rankings, ever since 2015 when Google started ranking mobile pages higher than desktop ones.

Viewport Meta Tag Best Practices

Adding this code in the <head> section of each page will help you tell Google that all your pages are mobile-optimized as well as to make sure your pages are displayed in a way that perfectly fits your users’ screen size:

<meta name="viewport" 
content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

While you can make your own settings, the code above is the golden standard used in most cases.

If you don’t add this tag, users might end up seeing your content in the wrong format. This will affect their user experience and your rankings, as you will potentially get a higher bounce rate and send negative user engagement signals to Google.

You can read more about how to optimize your site for better mobile experience in this post on mobile SEO.

Over to You

Meta tags aren’t all that complicated. You simply have to make sure you know the basics and add them throughout your pages, one by one.

If you have a relatively small site, you can do this manually by simply following my guidance from this post. If you have tens and hundreds of pages to optimize, you may have to use site audit tools from the likes of Semrush or Ahrefs before getting to meta tag optimization.

In this post, I’ve only covered the most crucial elements of meta tags. There are alt text attributes (I already gave in-depth coverage of alt text in this post on image SEO), canonical tags (help you avoid duplicate content issues), as well as header (H1, H2, H3, etc.) tags. If you want me to cover these as well, make sure to give a shoutout in the comments section below.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on June 17, 2019 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness. 

Related Articles

• Semrush Site Audit: 10 Most Overlooked Features
• 10 Technical SEO Tips To Instantly Boost Your Site’s Rankings
• SEO Case Study: How I Boosted Organic Traffic to an Old Article by 146% in 30 Days

The post Meta Tags for SEO: The Definitive Guide appeared first on 99signals.

Ahrefs and SE Ranking are two of the most widely respected tools in the SEO community.

As such, it’s not easy to decide which SEO tool is worth investing in. Both tools have their strengths and unique features.

In this article, I’ll put Ahrefs and SE Ranking to the test and help you decide which SEO tool is better suited for your business.

I’ll be evaluating these tools on the following parameters:

• Keyword research
• Backlink analysis
• Technical SEO audit
• Pricing plans

Let’s get started.

Editor’s note: If you’d like to implement some of the action items in this post, I’d encourage you to sign up for free trials or plans offered by both these tools. SE Ranking is currently offering a 2-week free trial on any of their plans, while Ahrefs lets you can sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to get free limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit.

Introduction to Ahrefs and SE Ranking

Headquartered in Singapore, Ahrefs was founded in 2011 by Dmitry Gerasimenko. For the first few years, Ahrefs was purely a backlink analysis tool.

Within a short period of time, Ahrefs built a sterling reputation in the SEO community and became widely regarded as one of the most accurate backlink analysis tools on the market. Since then, Ahrefs has added a plethora of features to its toolkit.

Fast forward to today, Ahrefs is a multi-purpose SEO tool that includes keyword research, site audit, rank tracker, and other essential SEO capabilities.

SE Ranking was launched in 2013 as a cloud-based SEO platform for entrepreneurs, agencies, and online marketing professionals. SE Ranking is based in London, UK, with offices in USA, Ukraine, and Belarus.

SE Ranking’s toolkit features SEO tools for keyword research, technical SEO audit, backlink analysis, competitor analysis, and more.

In just a few years, SE Ranking has established itself as a serious player in the competitive market space of cloud-based SEO tools. It’s used by over 400,000 users across the world and trusted by small and large businesses alike.

Now that you have a brief overview of both tools, let’s dive in to the comparison, starting with keyword research.

Keyword Research: Ahrefs vs SE Ranking

While most people have a broad sense of the keywords they’d like to rank for, it’s impossible to determine every search query under the sun for your topic. That’s why it pays to invest some time in keyword research to identify the exact keywords that people are using to search for your business, products, or content.

In this section, we’ll be comparing keyword research features offered by Ahrefs and SE Ranking and determine which tool is better than the other.

Ahrefs: Keyword Research Features

There was a time when Keywords Explorer was one of the least used tools in the Ahrefs toolkit. That changed in 2018 with the launch of Keywords Explorer 2.0. Ahrefs added a host of cool new features to their flagship keyword research tool and expanded their keyword database.

While Keywords Explorer is still a distant second to Site Explorer, Ahrefs’ backlink analysis tool, in terms of usage and popularity, it can still churn out a decent amount of keyword ideas with accurate data on search volume, keyword difficulty, clicks, and other SEO metrics.

To get started, head over to the “Keywords explorer” tab from your Ahrefs dashboard and enter your seed keywords in the search box.

Ahrefs will generate an overview report that’ll contain crucial keyword metrics to help you make quick, yet informed decisions about your target keywords.

There are two things that are unique about this report:

First, you get to see your target keyword’s Return Rate (RR). This metric indicates how often the same user searches for a given keyword over a 30-day period.

Second, you get to see the average number of monthly clicks on search results that users make for your target keyword. This metric should not be overlooked as high search volume does not necessarily equate to high search traffic.

For instance, the search query “new york population” has a monthly search volume of 51k searches, but fetches only 4k clicks per month (just over 7% of all searches).

It’s because search queries like “new york population” are typically answered by Google in the featured snippet section.

Which is why few users feel the need to go beyond the featured snippet to explore other search results.

Lots of platforms have since incorporated the “clicks” metric in their keyword research reports, but Ahrefs was the first one to highlight this useful metric.

While you’re still in the overview report, scroll down a bit to find keyword ideas for your seed keywords.

To expand the list of keywords, click on the “View all” button under each section to view a complete list of potential ideas for your seed keywords, alongside important SEO metrics.

You can play around with the filters in this report to obtain the most relevant keywords for your campaign.

The overview report also contains SERP overview for your seed keywords, allowing you to see all the pages that are ranking on page 1 for your parent topic.

Super useful data to learn who you’re competing against in organic SERPs.

To view this data, scroll all the way down till you find the “SERP Overview” section.

In addition to search results, you’ll also see all the high-level SEO metrics for each result that currently ranks on page 1 for your target keywords.

As you can see, Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is remarkably effective for SEO analysis. But what about PPC analysis?

Sadly, Ahrefs provides little to no PPC data. You can find basic PPC information for your seed keywords in the “Ads history” report, but that’s the extent to which Ahrefs helps you in terms of PPC analysis.

SE Ranking: Keyword Research Features

SE Ranking has a massive keyword database with over 2 billion unique search queries and search engine suggestions from Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo. This database is updated on a monthly basis.

To perform keyword research on SE Ranking, visit the “Keyword Research” tab and enter your seed keyword(s) in the search box.

SE Ranking will then generate an overview report for your seed keywords. Here you’ll find important keyword metrics for your keywords, including search volume, difficulty, and CPC.

You’ll then see a list of keyword ideas for your seed keywords, grouped into 3 categories — similar keywords, related keywords, and low search volume keywords.

You can click on any of the keyword terms here to generate a keyword research overview report for those specific keywords.

Expand the list by clicking on the “View Detailed Report” button below each column to see different keyword variations for your target keywords.

If your seed keyword is too broad, this list is particularly useful to niche down and identify keywords with the right mix of search volume and difficulty.

If you’d like more data on any of the keywords in the list, simply select the specific keyword and you’ll be able to see the top organic search results for the selected keyword on the right side of the report.

In addition to SEO keyword metrics, SE Ranking’s keyword research reports can be used to unpack a ton of PPC insights for your target keywords.

While you’re in the overview report, scroll down till you find the “Advertisers” section of the report. You’ll see the top 5 websites that are bidding for your target keywords on Google Ads.

To expand this list, click on “View Detailed Report” or simply visit the “Paid results” tab from the left side menu.

Here you’ll find all the websites that are bidding for your target keywords on Google Ads. You’ll also see the ads they are currently running or have run in the past.

To view the ad copies, click on the “Expand all” button or simply move your cursor over the ad that you’d like to see.

The paid results report will give you a fair indication of the optimal campaign budget you’ll need to overcome your PPC competition and also highlight the kind of ad copies that are performing well on Google Ads.

Ahrefs vs SE Ranking: Which Tool is Better for Keyword Research?

Both tools have excellent keyword research features. You can generate countless keyword ideas for your website and get accurate information on search volume, competition, and keyword difficulty for each keyword.

But SE Ranking has a slight edge over Ahrefs because it offers better PPC insights. PPC analysis has always been a chink in Ahrefs’ armour. I’m hoping the company introduces new features to address this issue in the near future. Until then, if you run PPC ads on Google and Bing, you’ll be disappointed with the lack of PPC features in Ahrefs.

For that reason, I’d definitely place SE Ranking higher than Ahrefs in terms of keyword research.

Winner: SE Ranking

Backlink Analysis: Ahrefs vs SE Ranking

Google considers backlinks as votes of confidence. As a result, there’s a strong correlation between authoritative backlinks and higher search traffic.

As I mentioned earlier, Ahrefs was originally launched as a backlink checker and it has built quite a reputation among SEO experts as the most reliable backlink analysis tool. Despite adding multiple new features and tools to its platform, people still buy Ahrefs for backlink analysis.

So how does SE Ranking’s backlink checker measure up against a tool that’s highly regarded for its backlink analysis capabilities?

Let’s find out.

Ahrefs: Backlink Analysis

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool is best known for providing an in-depth sneak peak at the backlink profile of any website.

You can use Site Explorer for not just auditing your site’s backlink profile, but also to spy on your competitors’ backlinks.

With this tool, you can get a deeper understanding of your competitors’ link building strategies and reverse-engineer backlinks for some of their top-performing pages. In other words, you can identify link building opportunities for your website and outperform your organic competitors in search results.

To get started, click on the “Site explorer” tab from your Ahrefs dashboard and enter the domain you’d like to analyze.

The Overview report will provide a quick glimpse of how well the website is performing in organic and paid search, alongside high-level SEO and backlink metrics.

Pay special attention to the referring domains number as this is the number of unique domains linking to your target website.

In this example, I plugged in “Buffer.com” into Site Explorer and found that it has 77.6k referring domains pointing to their website.

While this number may seem large at first glance, it’s always better to take a deeper look at the pace of link acquisition.

To that end, you can check out the interactive referring domains graph in the overview report to see the rate at which the website has acquired links over a period of time. This graph will clearly show how consistent the target website has been in terms of acquiring links.

To further contextualize this data, you can enter your competitors’ domain into Site Explorer and get insights into their link profile and the pace at which they’ve been acquiring new links.

To get deeper insights into the website’s backlink profile, click on the referring domains number. This report will contain all the unique websites pointing to your target website.

Add a “dofollow” filter to this list and sort by DR (domain rating) from high to low to view the most authoritative websites linking to your target website.

If you’d like to reverse-engineer your competitors’ best backlinks, this is a good place to start.

SE Ranking: Backlink Analysis

Now it’s time to explore SE Ranking’s backlink analysis features.

To analyze backlinks on SE Ranking, head over to the “Backlink Checker” tab and enter the domain you’d like to analyze.

The overview report will provide a sneak peek into the target website’s backlink profile. You’ll find the website’s trust score, anchors, dofollow/nofollow ratio, referring domains, and backlinks.

In the “Referring Domains” column, you’ll see the total number of links that point to the homepage vs. links to other pages.

Scroll down to find interactive graphs for referring domains, backlinks, new & lost referring domains, and new & lost backlinks.

Like with Ahrefs, clicking on the referring domains number will open the referring domains report. Here you’ll find all the unique domains that are linking to your target website.

You can add filters to the report to get the most relevant data and sort by DT (domain trust) from high to low to view all the top-authority websites linking to your target website. But there’s no option or filter to view only “dofollow” backlinks in the report.

While the overview report does show the dofollow/nofollow ratio of any website you enter, you won’t be able to view a filtered list of “dofollow” backlinks.

SE Ranking also appears to have a smaller link index than Ahrefs. Remember how I found 77.6k referring domains for “Buffer.com” on Ahrefs? With SE Ranking, the report showed only 38.1k referring domains pointing to Buffer.

Ahrefs vs SE Ranking: Which Tool is Better for Backlink Analysis

When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is better than SE Ranking.

Backlink analysis continues to be Ahrefs’ strongest feature. They have a larger link index than SE Ranking, but more importantly, it takes fewer clicks from the overview report to arrive at the data you’re looking for.

Winner: Ahrefs

Technical SEO Audit: Ahrefs vs SE Ranking

While technical SEO may not be as interesting or rewarding as keyword research and link building, it’s just as important. In the grand scheme of things, technical SEO errors pertaining to site structure, XML sitemap, SSL certificate, robots.txt, etc. can hold your site back from ranking higher on Google.

You can prevent these issues by performing regular site audits to make sure your site’s SEO health is up to speed. Luckily, most major SEO tools have built-in site audit features to help you identify and fix technical SEO issues as and when they occur on your website. Ahrefs and SE Ranking are no exception.

Let’s explore the SEO audit features offered by both these tools and find out which tool does a better job at identifying technical SEO errors on your website.

Technical SEO Audit: Ahrefs

Right off the bat, I’d like to make it clear that SEO audit is not one of Ahrefs’ strengths. While the company has made significant strides in improving this tool since its launch, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

For starters, the audit tool takes a long time to crawl your website and return with an audit report. It took well over 2 hours to crawl my site and generate a report. My site has less than 1,000 pages to crawl, so if your site has more pages, it may take even longer.

Secondly, the audit report is not comprehensive enough to make it worth the wait.

Recently, I plugged in a client’s website into Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool. This site was riddled with numerous critical SEO errors. Broken internal links, duplicate title tags, and uncompressed JavaScript and CSS files were just a few of the errors on this site.

So you can imagine my surprise when Ahrefs generated an audit report with a health score of 90%!

When I dug deeper into the report, I found that Ahrefs was able to identify just a handful of errors on my client’s website. According to Ahrefs’ analysis, this site had no broken links and zero duplicate title tags.

I got a much more accurate picture of the site’s technical SEO health on SE Ranking and a few other tools, all of which returned a much more comprehensive audit report and in each case, the SEO health score of this site was below 50%. I was surprised to see the sheer amount of SEO errors Ahrefs allowed to slip through the net.

For that reason, it’s best to use Ahrefs’ site audit tool to identify and fix only the most basic on-page SEO and indexability issues on your site.

To run a fresh site audit on Ahrefs, visit the “Site audit” tab from your dashboard, select the project, and then hit “Run crawl.”

The Overview report will show the site’s SEO health score, alongside issues and error distribution.

In the same report, scroll down to find all the top issues on your website.

These are the errors you’d have to fix in order to improve your SEO health score.

Technical SEO Audit: SE Ranking

The best part about SE Ranking’s site audit tool is that you don’t have to manually set up the audit feature. Your site gets automatically audited as soon as you add a new project on SE Ranking.

Once the audit is complete, SE Ranking will update your site’s SEO health score in the Website Audit column of your Projects section.

Just click on this score to view your full SEO audit report.

In addition to your site’s SEO health score, you’ll also see the number of important as well as semi-important fixes that you need to make in order to improve your site’s health score.

Scroll down till you find the full site audit report to get a complete picture of the errors on your website.

The site audit report is split into 5 sections:

• Health check
• Pages analysis
• Meta analysis
• Content analysis
• Links analysis

Visit each section of the report to view important and semi-important errors that are affecting your site’s SEO health. Click on the link icon next to each error to view all the pages with that specific error.

Once you’ve taken the necessary steps to fix all the important errors, run a fresh audit by clicking on “Restart audit” and see if the fixed errors reappear in the latest audit report.

Which SEO Tool is Better for SEO Audit?

SE Ranking clearly has a better site audit tool than Ahrefs.

As explained earlier, Ahrefs’ Site Audit is best used only for identifying and fixing basic SEO issues on your site. If you rely too much on Ahrefs’ audit reports, you may be misled to believe there are no technical SEO problems on your website.

On the other hand, SE Ranking does a thorough job of auditing your website and gives you a complete picture of your website’s technical SEO health. It identifies errors and warnings that you didn’t even know existed.

SE Ranking also does a better job of prioritizing the technical SEO issues, so you know exactly which errors you should focus on fixing first.

Winner: SE Ranking

Pricing Plans: Ahrefs vs SE Ranking

Now let’s compare the pricing plans offered by both these tools.

Ahrefs: Pricing Plans

Ahrefs offers 4 monthly pricing plans:

• Lite – $99/mo (5 projects, 500 tracked keywords)
• Standard – $179/mo (10 projects, 1500 tracked keywords)
• Advanced – $399/mo (25 projects, 5000 tracked keywords)
• Agency – $999/mo (100 projects, 10000 tracked keywords)

As mentioned earlier, Ahrefs doesn’t offer a free trial. But you can sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which offers free limited access to features like Site Audit and Site Explorer.

If you own a small business or run a blog-based business, then the Lite plan ($99/mo) should be sufficient for your needs. With the Lite plan, you can track 500 keywords in Rank Tracker and analyze 175 domains per week in Site Explorer.

If you run an agency, then you’d probably have to upgrade to the Advanced plan ($399/mo), which allows you to add 3 users and has higher limits for Rank Tracker and Site Explorer.

SE Ranking: Pricing Plans

SE Ranking currently offers 3 pricing plans:

• Optimum – $39/mo (250 keyword rankings, 10 websites)
• Plus – $89/mo (1000 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)
• Enterprise – 189/mo (2500 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)

* The prices on the above plans change based on the number of keyword rankings you select. For instance, if you’d like to track 500 keyword rankings in the Optimum plan, the pricing changes to $54/mo.

The best part about SE Ranking’s pricing structure is that it deviates from the standard pricing practice in the SEO industry. Most SEO tools charge $99/mo for their basic plan (including Ahrefs). With SE Ranking, you can get started for just $39/mo.

If you’re a small business owner or blogger, the Optimum plan ($39/mo) is probably the right fit your requirements and budget. If you run an agency, you should probably go with the Plus plan ($89/mo).

If you’re not sure which SE Ranking plan is best suited for your requirements, use the pricing plan calculator on their pricing page.

In terms of overall value, SE Ranking gets the crown. You get access to a full-fledged SEO and PPC software for less than half the price you’d pay for Ahrefs’ most basic plan.

Final Verdict: Ahrefs vs SE Ranking

Both Ahrefs and SE Ranking are formidable tools with a stellar reputation in the SEO community. But if we were to judge these tools individually on SEO and PPC features, then SE Ranking is the clear winner here because it provides you more PPC insights in your keyword research reports. Furthermore, SE Ranking’s site audit tool is better at identifying technical SEO issues on your site and providing actionable advice on how to fix them.

The other factor in SE Ranking’s favor is the price. As explained in the pricing section of this post, SE Ranking is far more affordable than Ahrefs and provides more bang for your buck.

If you’re an existing Ahrefs user who’s been rattled by the recently introduced usage-based pricing plans by Ahrefs, then SE Ranking is the one of the best Ahrefs alternatives you can opt for.

When all said and done, the decision between Ahrefs and SE Ranking comes down to your priority. If your priority is link building and price is not a concern, then Ahrefs is inarguably the best in terms of data and accuracy. On the other hand, if you value keyword research (both SEO and PPC) and site audit features over backlink analysis, and if budget is a major concern, then SE Ranking is better suited for your needs.

To summarize this post, here’s a visual representation of how Ahrefs compares with SE Ranking on key parameters:

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 5 August 2020 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness. 

Related Articles

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• SE Ranking vs Moz: Which SEO Software is Better?
• SE Ranking vs SpyFu: Which SEO Tool is Better?
• On-Page SEO Guide: 20 Actionable Tips to Boost Your Rankings
• 26 Best Google Chrome Extensions for SEO

The post Ahrefs vs SE Ranking: Which SEO Tool Should You Buy? appeared first on 99signals.

If you’re having trouble deciding between Semrush and SpyFu, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, I’ll put Semrush and SpyFu to the test and help you decide which SEO tool is better suited for competitor analysis.

If you’ve landed here, you’re probably already aware that Semrush and SpyFu are amongst the most popular competitor research tools on the market, alongside Ahrefs, Serpstat, and Mangools.

While Semrush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit with competitive intelligence capabilities, SpyFu focuses purely on competitor analysis.

So to maintain a level playing field for this comparison, I’ll be evaluating Semrush and SpyFu solely on features linked with competitor research.

I’ll be taking the following four parameters into account:

• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research
• Ease of use and accessibility
• Pricing plans

Now without further delay, let’s compare Semrush and SpyFu, and find out which SEO tool is the best in terms of competitive analysis.

Note: To get the most out of this comparison guide, I’d encourage you to create an account on Semrush and SpyFu. You can find the relevant links below. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Semrush Pro (worth $65) and sign up for SpyFu’s free plan. At this point in time, SpyFu is not offering a trial on any of their paid plans. But their free plan is pretty good, albeit with a few limitations. 

Key Takeaways

• Semrush excels in comprehensive SEO and competitor analysis with a vast range of tools, including social media tracking and brand monitoring.
• SpyFu specializes in competitor-based keyword research and offers valuable insights for those on a tight budget, with a focus on the US and UK markets.
• Semrush provides deeper and more accurate competitive data, making it superior for competitor analysis.
• Both platforms offer unique strengths, but Semrush‘s broader capabilities make it the preferable option for most SEO and PPC needs.

Overview of Semrush and SpyFu

Before we pit Semrush and SpyFu against each other, let’s quickly unpack what makes each tool a heavyweight contender in the SEO arena.

Semrush: A Comprehensive SEO and Marketing Toolkit

Semrush’s predecessor, SEOquake company, was first launched by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov as an SEO browser extension in 2007 before being rebranded as Semrush in 2008. It has since gone on to become one of the leading cloud-based SEO services on the market with over 5 million users across the world.

The Semrush platform features a comprehensive set of tools for site audit, keyword research, position tracking, SEO and PPC competitor analysis, on-page SEO checker, backlink analytics, and much more.

Semrush currently manages close to 20 billion keywords and 818 million domains in 142 geo databases.

SpyFu: Specialized in Competitor-Based Keyword Research

SpyFu was founded by Mike Roberts in 2006 to help businesses craft their SEO and PPC strategies. Mike’s business philosophy is to turn your rivals into your best advisors and that philosophy is at the core of SpyFu.

As the name suggests, SpyFu lets you spy on your competitors’ online strategies and analytics. You can use it to gather insights on your organic as well as paid competitors.

SpyFu’s data is collected from Google search results in the US and UK. The tool won’t show you full results outside of these countries, which just might be SpyFu’s biggest drawback.

With that introduction of the two tools out of the way, it’s now time to put these tools to the test.

Let’s start by reviewing their competitor analysis features.

Competitor Analysis Face-Off: Semrush vs SpyFu

If you want to develop a fool-proof marketing strategy for your business, you need to run a competitor analysis. By analyzing your competitors’ marketing efforts, you can evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify gaps and opportunities for your brand in the market.

Both Semrush and SpyFu are capable of providing a comprehensive report of your competitors’ SEO and PPC strategies. But which SEO platform is more feature-rich and gives the most accurate data? Let’s find out!

Semrush: Competitor Analysis Tools

With Semrush’s Competitive Research Toolkit, you can identify your organic and paid competitors, and reverse-engineer their most successful SEO and PPC practices.

The Competitive Research Toolkit is divided into five different categories:

• SEO (includes Organic Research, Keyword Gap, Backlink Analytics, Backlink Gap)
• Advertising (includes Advertising Research, Display Advertising, PLA Research)
• Content and PR (includes Brand Monitoring, Topic Research, Post Tracking)
• Social Media (includes Social Media Tracker)
• Big Picture (4 add-on tools, including Traffic Analytics and Market Explorer)

Traffic Analytics and Market Explorer are part of Semrush .Trends, Semrush‘s competitive intelligence add-on toolkit, that costs an additional $200/month. To learn more about Semrush .Trends, check out this in-depth post on how to use .Trends for competitor analysis.

To keep things simple, we’ll just be examining the main tools in the first four categories in the Semrush Competitive Research Toolkit.

To get started with competitor analysis on Semrush, navigate to the “Competitive Research” section from the left-side menu.

Next, click on “Organic Research” and enter your competitor’s domain in the search box.

Alternatively, if you’d like Semrush to identify your organic competitors for you, you can type your own domain in the search box.

The Organic Research overview report provides a top-level view of your website’s organic keywords, organic traffic, top pages, and main organic competitors.

Visit the “Competitors” tab to see a list of all the sites that are competing with your site in search results for the same keywords.

Click on any of the organic competitors to get a detailed report on that domain’s top organic keywords, top-ranking pages, position changes, and so on.

To view your competitor’s top organic keywords, visit the “Top Organic Keywords” section in the report and click on the “View all organic keywords” button.

The list of keywords will probably be too long, so feel free to play with the filters until you get the most relevant data.

Click on any of the keywords in the report to get data on important keyword metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, competition level, and more.

You can use this data to fine-tune your content strategy.

Next, click on “Backlink Analytics” to get an overview report of your competitor’s backlinks.

Visit the “Referring Domains” tab to get a complete picture of your competitor’s backlink profile. Leverage this data in your link building outreach efforts.

Similarly, you can unravel your paid competitors’ data by navigating to:

Competitive Research > Advertising Research > Enter your competitor’s domain

The Advertising Research overview report provides details on the domain’s paid keywords, average monthly paid traffic, and traffic cost.

To view your competitors’ PPC ad copies, visit the “Ad Copies” tab.

If your competitor invests a lot in advertising, then you may find ad copies in this report too imposing. Make sure you use the advanced filters to get the most relevant information for your PPC campaigns.

In addition to the aforementioned SEO and PPC tools, Semrush also has specific competitor analysis tools for content marketing and social media marketing.

The Brand Monitoring tool is especially useful for tracking online mentions of your brand, your competitors’ brands, or any word or phrase that you wish to monitor.

To set up brand monitoring on Semrush, go to:

Competitive Research > Content and PR > Brand Monitoring > Project > Set up

You can include up to three competitor brands here and up to five keyword terms. Select the country and hit the “Start Tracking” button.

You’ll now be able to track the online brand mentions of your competitors and the main keywords in your niche.

And finally, you have the Social Media Tracker, which lets you track the social media pages of your competitors and monitor their growth and engagement levels.

To set up social media tracking, go to:

Competitive Research > Social Media > Project > Set up > Social Media Tracker > Add competitor

On the next page, enter your competitor’s brand name or domain in the search box and hit “Find Profiles.” Semrush will automatically find your competitor’s social media pages for you.

If you’ve enabled social media posting on Semrush, your social media pages will be automatically included in the Social Media Tracker. If you haven’t enabled it, you can type your domain in the search box and click “Set as your company” next to your brand name.

You can add up to 20 competitor brands and track performance of up to 100 social media pages.

Once you’ve added your competitors’ social media pages, hit the “Start tracking companies” button to get an overview report of your competitions’ social media analytics, including social audience, posts, engagement, and top content.

Scroll down to see the comparison of your social media performance against your competitors.

In addition to tracking audience growth, activity, and engagement, Semrush‘s Social Media Tracker is an invaluable tool to identify content trends and the different types of content that resonate the most with your target audience.

SpyFu: Competitor Analysis Tools

To get started with competitor analysis on SpyFu, enter your competitor’s domain in the search box and hit the search icon.

You’ll get a quick summary of the domain’s top organic keywords, estimated monthly SEO clicks, top paid keywords, estimated monthly PPC clicks, backlinks, top pages, and so on.

If you’d like SpyFu to identify your competitors, enter your domain and navigate to the “Competition” section of the report to view your organic and paid competitors.

Click on any of your organic competitors’ domains to generate an SEO overview report of that domain, containing data on that site’s organic keywords, estimated monthly SEO clicks, page 1 keywords, inbound links, and so on.

On the left side of the overview report, you’ll find links to different sections within the report. Pay special attention to the “Top Pages” section as these are your competitor’s top-ranking pages in organic search.

You can reverse-engineer these pages to find keyword ideas with traffic potential.

Similarly, you can click on any of your paid competitors’ sites to get a PPC overview report of that domain’s paid keywords, estimated monthly PPC clicks, monthly PPC budget, and other PPC metrics.

Navigate to the “AdWords Advisor” section of the report to view “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” for your competitor’s domain.

Click on “See all recommendations” at the bottom of the report or simply visit the “AdWords Advisor” tab to get a complete list of keyword recommendations. Use these recommendations to get the most out of your PPC campaigns.

Visit the “AdWords History” section of the report to browse your competitor’s complete Google Ads campaign history, including their most trusted keywords, estimated clicks/month for those keywords, and their cost/click.

Beside each ad copy, you’ll find keywords that trigger the specific ad.

Super helpful data if you’re planning on replicating your competitors’ ad strategies.

Which Tool is Better for Competitor Analysis?

SpyFu is undeniably a great competitor analysis tool. But Semrush is better.

For starters, SpyFu lacks brand monitoring and social media tracking features which are vital components of competitor research. Your competitive analysis would have a blind spot if you didn’t analyze your competitors’ social media presence and didn’t monitor their online brand mentions.

Besides that, I also found the competitor research reports in Semrush to be much more accurate and helpful than SpyFu.

Bottom line: SpyFu’s competitive data pales in comparison to the sheer volume and depth of competitive data that you can unveil on Semrush.

Winner: Semrush

Keyword Research Features Compared: Semrush vs SpyFu

Despite countless Google algorithm updates over the years, the importance of keyword research has remained constant. While outdated keyword research practices get penalized by Google, a more nuanced approach to keyword research is often rewarded with higher Google rankings.

As a result, keyword research is at the core of any SEO or PPC campaign. It helps you get a deeper understanding of your target audience and what they are searching for online.

Both Semrush and SpyFu uncover a ton of keyword data to help you in your quest to craft the kind of content that satisfies both users and search engines.

Read on to find out which of these tools is more effective in terms of keyword research.

Semrush: Keyword Research

Semrush is predominantly known for its keyword research capabilities.

Let’s quickly examine some of its main keyword research features.

To get started with keyword research on Semrush, just type your target keyword(s) in the search box.

This will open up the Keyword Overview report, which will provide a quick summary of all major keyword metrics, including monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, and competition, along with relevant keyword variations and related keywords.

Note: You can change the geo database in your Keyword Overview report and see results and keyword variations for your target keywords in your location.

For in-depth keyword analysis and to find semantically-related long-tail keyword ideas in your niche, you need to try the Keyword Magic Tool.

To use the Keyword Magic tool, head over to:

Keyword Research > Keyword Magic Tool

Enter your seed keywords in the search bar and hit the “Search” button. From your seed keywords, the tool will generate a list of keyword suggestions.

You can then sort the keywords by using keyword groups located on the left side of the table. You can either sort the groups by volume or by the number of keywords. You can even exclude a group of keywords by clicking on the eye icon next to the group.

You can also use the match modifiers on top of the table to narrow down the list of keywords.

Also pay attention to the “Questions” filter to generate a list of question-based keywords that contain your seed keywords.

Once you’ve identified all the keywords you’d like to use in your SEO or PPC campaigns, save your findings by adding the keywords to Keyword Manager.

In addition to saving your work, the Keyword Manager will gather real-time metrics for your target keywords, so that you have fresh insights when you revisit the tool.

Besides traditional keyword research tools, you can also use the Topic Research tool in Semrush’s Content Marketing toolkit. With the Topic Research tool, you can generate relevant topics, subtopics, questions, and headlines to include in your content.

To use this tool, navigate to:

Content Marketing Toolkit > Topic Research

Type in your target keywords, select your location, and hit “Get Content Ideas.”

You’ll then be presented with a list of subtopics for your target keywords.

You can switch the view from Cards to Explorer (tables), Overview (condensed version), or MindMap (visual presentation). I prefer the Overview report as it lists down the top 10 headlines by backlinks and top 10 interesting questions surrounding your target keywords.

Add any of these headlines and questions to your list of “Favorite Ideas” and use them to create new blog posts or optimize existing posts.

SpyFu: Keyword Research

SpyFu’s strength lies in competitor-based keyword research.

That’s not to say SpyFu doesn’t have good traditional keyword research options. It’s just that you’re much more likely to find the data that’s important to you by performing competitor-based keyword research.

To perform competitor-based keyword research on SpyFu, simply type in your competitor’s domain in the search box, and once you get the overview report, navigate to the “Top Keywords” section of the report and click on “View all organic keywords” at the bottom of the table.

Play with the filters on top of the table to get the most relevant competitive keyword data for your campaign.

To get started with traditional keyword research on SpyFu, visit the “Keyword Research” tab and enter your seed keyword(s).

You’ll get a quick summary of all major keyword metrics (monthly volume, estimated clicks, etc.) and a list of similar keywords and question-based keywords.

Below this data, you’ll find a wealth of PPC keyword data in the “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” and “Most Successful Advertisers and Their Best Ads” sections.

To see the full list of SEO or PPC keywords, you can either click on the “View all” button under each section or visit the “Related Keywords” tab and select the right filters to get the most relevant data.

And finally, you have the AdWords Templates, which are pre-written PPC ads handcrafted by the SpyFu team to get your Google Ads campaigns up and running.

To access these templates, head over to:

PPC Research > AdWords Templates > Select Industry from the drop-down list > Continue to download

This will start the download of all ad templates for that specific industry. You can then import these templates to your Google Ads account.

Note: To access AdWords Templates, you need to upgrade to SpyFu’s basic plan ($39/mo).

Which Tool is Better for Keyword Research?

In terms of keyword research, Semrush absolutely crushes it. The Keyword Magic tool helps you find the most relevant keywords in your niche and provides in-depth analytics for a wide range of keyword ideas, including semantically-related long-tail keywords.

The Topic Research tool helps you identify topics and subtopics that resonate the most with your target audience, which you can then use in your blog posts, product pages, or PPC ads to increase their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs).

On the other hand, SpyFu is great for discovering surface-level data for keywords, but if you’re an advanced SEO user, you’ll be disappointed with the lack of depth in SpyFu’s keyword reports.

The biggest downside of SpyFu is that its keyword data is restricted to the US and UK. If your business or target audience is based outside these countries, then SpyFu may not fetch you the most accurate keyword data.

Winner: Semrush

Related: How to Use Semrush for Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide

Ease of Use: Semrush vs SpyFu Showdown

The user interface (UI) is more than just a pretty face for software; it’s the backbone of user engagement. Consider why some users lean towards WhatsApp instead of Facebook Messenger, or why Headspace often gets the nod over other meditation apps like Calm and Buddhify. It boils down to how intuitive and user-friendly the interface is.

Similarly, some users may prefer one SEO tool over the other because of how comfortable they are with their UI. I’m not saying UI is the only factor, but it’s certainly a key factor in getting us hooked to spend more time with the tool.

When it comes to Semrush and SpyFu, each has its own UI ups and downs. Despite undergoing various redesigns over time, both have stayed true to their original color schemes, showcasing a blend of consistency and evolution in their user experience.

I’ve grown quite fond of Semrush‘s UI, finding it more organized and user-friendly, likely due to my daily interactions with it since early 2015. However, for those new to SEO, the vast array of features might seem daunting at first, possibly making navigation through the tool a bit of a challenge.

On the other hand, SpyFu’s interface strikes me as straightforward yet somewhat lackluster and dated. Its simplicity does lend itself well to ease of use, especially for beginners venturing into the world of SEO tools. However, after exploring its various features and settings for a while, there’s a lingering feeling that the tool hasn’t quite kept pace with the times, as if it’s a relic from an earlier era of SEO tools.

Sections such as “AdWords Advisor” and “AdWords Templates” simply reinforce the feeling that you’re using a product that’s not been updated in quite a while (Google retired the AdWords brand in 2018.)

Winner: Semrush

Comparing Pricing Plans: Semrush vs SpyFu

Now it’s time to examine the pricing plans offered by each tool.

Let’s start with Semrush.

Semrush Pricing Plans

Semrush’s pricing plans start at $129.95/month. You can save up to 17% by switching to annual billing.

Here’s the current pricing structure:

• Pro – $129.95/mo (ideal for startups)
• Guru – $249.95/mo (ideal for SMBs and marketing agencies)
• Business – $499.95/mo (ideal for large businesses)

Semrush’s Pro plan includes access to all 45+ tools and features within the platform, except historical data (included in Guru) and product listing ads (included in Business).

I personally use Semrush’s Guru plan ($249.95/mo) because of the higher limits.

If you’re just starting out or have a blog-based business, it’s better to get started with Semrush’s Pro plan ($129.95/mo) and then upgrade to a higher level.

If you run a marketing agency or simply have more projects and data to manage, it’s better to go with Semrush‘s Guru plan ($249.95/mo).

SpyFu Pricing Plans

Unlike most major SEO tools on the market, SpyFu has a free plan and it’s actually quite good. The best part about the free plan is that you can perform unlimited searches.

Here are SpyFu’s monthly pricing plans:

• Free for Life – $0/mo (unlimited searches, 10 search results)
• Basic – $39/mo (unlimited search results, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings)
• Professional – $78/mo (15k weekly tracked keyword rankings, custom branded reports)

If you switch to annual billing, you can save $69 on the basic plan and save $249 on the professional plan.

I’ve been using both tools since 2015. As mentioned above, I’ve been on Semrush‘s Guru plan ($249.95/mo) since early 2016. I’ve upgraded to SpyFu’s paid plan only twice in all those years.

The Ultimate Choice: Semrush or SpyFu?

At the start of the post, I made a point about how this comparison is not a battle among equals. Semrush is an all-purpose SEO tool while SpyFu is more focused on competitor analysis.

But based on my analysis, even from a competitive intelligence perspective, Semrush is a far superior tool. As highlighted above, your competitive analysis would be incomplete without tracking your competition’s performance on social media. And that’s something SpyFu currently lacks.

The other major drawback with SpyFu is that it has just two geo databases (US and UK), as compared to Semrush‘s 142 geo databases. If you’d like to stave off your local competition and rank higher in the local SERPs, you’re better off going with Semrush.

That said, if you’re on a shoestring budget, but still need to use a decent competitive intelligence tool for your business or blog, then SpyFu is perhaps your best bet. The free plan offered by SpyFu is the best in the industry.

If your need of the hour is competitor analysis, then sign up for SpyFu’s free plan. If the data is insufficient for your needs, upgrade to the Basic plan ($39/mo).

Otherwise, Semrush is the best solution for all your SEO and PPC problems.

To summarize, here’s a visual breakdown of how Semrush compares with SpyFu on key parameters:

Here are the links to help you get started with both these tools:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is the main difference between Semrush and Spyfu?

The main difference lies in their core functionalities: Semrush offers a broader all-in-one marketing toolkit covering SEO, PPC, social media, and content marketing, whereas Spyfu focuses specifically on competitor analysis for SEO and PPC.

2. Can Semrush and Spyfu track competitors’ keyword strategies?

Yes, both Semrush and Spyfu are designed to track and analyze competitors’ keyword strategies, providing insights into organic and paid search performance.

3. Which tool is better for SEO: Semrush or Spyfu?

For comprehensive SEO analysis, including keyword research, site audit, and backlink analysis, Semrush tends to be more robust. Spyfu is highly effective for detailed competitor keyword and PPC strategy analysis.

4. Are Semrush and Spyfu suitable for small businesses?

Yes, both tools offer features that can benefit small businesses. Spyfu, with its competitive pricing and focused features, can be particularly appealing for small businesses on a tight budget.

5. How accurate is the data provided by Semrush and Spyfu?

Both Semrush and Spyfu are known for providing reliable and accurate data. However, Semrush’s larger database and frequent updates may offer a slight edge in data accuracy, especially on a global scale.

6. Do Semrush and Spyfu offer free trials?

Semrush offers a 14-day free trial for new users to experience its Pro version. Spyfu offers a free version with limited features and unlimited searches, but no free trial for its paid plans.

7. Which tool offers better keyword research capabilities?

Semrush is often preferred for its comprehensive Keyword Magic Tool and extensive database, making it highly valuable for in-depth keyword research and strategy planning.

8. Can I use Semrush or Spyfu for free?

Spyfu provides a free plan with basic features and unlimited searches. Semrush offers a free plan with limited features, but also lets you sign up for a 14-day free trial of the Pro plan.

9. Which tool is more user-friendly for beginners?

Both tools have user-friendly interfaces, but Spyfu’s simpler design and focused features might be slightly more accessible for beginners compared to Semrush’s extensive and feature-rich platform.

10. How do Semrush and Spyfu help with PPC campaigns?

Both tools offer PPC analysis, with Semrush providing detailed ad strategy insights across various channels and Spyfu specializing in in-depth competitor PPC strategy tracking and analysis.

11. Is SpyFu data accurate?

SpyFu is known for delivering accurate data on SEO and PPC, making it a credible tool for marketing professionals. While it offers valuable insights, it’s important to note that the precision and comprehensiveness of its data may not quite match that of top-tier tools like Semrush or Ahrefs. Nonetheless, SpyFu remains a reliable choice for those looking to inform their digital marketing strategies.

12. Where does Semrush get its data?

Semrush acquires its data through a multifaceted approach that includes its own massive web crawlers, which scan the internet to collect information directly from websites and search engine results pages (SERPs). Additionally, Semrush integrates data from third-party providers and uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and expand its datasets.

The combination of proprietary technology and external data sources ensures that Semrush can provide users with extensive and up-to-date information for SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media analytics.

13. Where does SpyFu get its data?

SpyFu sources its data through a combination of public web searches, its own proprietary web crawlers, and various data partnerships. It meticulously analyzes search engine results pages (SERPs) to gather insights on keywords, PPC campaigns, and SEO strategies employed by websites. This approach allows SpyFu to compile a comprehensive database of digital marketing insights, including historical data, competitor analysis, and keyword research findings.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on June 29, 2020 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance, freshness, and comprehensiveness. 

Related Articles

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• 8 Best Competitor Research Tools to Spy on Your Competition
• Semrush vs Mangools: Which SEO Tool is Better?
• 26 Best Google Chrome Extensions for SEO
• Search Intent and SEO: The Ultimate Guide

The post Semrush vs SpyFu: The Ultimate Showdown of SEO Competitor Analysis Tools appeared first on 99signals.

Have you ever created an awesome infographic and waited for weeks for authority sites to link back to your content?

I know I have!

In this scenario, there are two things you could do.

First, wait patiently for an influencer to notice your infographic and include a contextual link to your article. (Which may never happen!)

Or…

Go out of your way to promote your infographic proactively and fetch the backlinks that your infographic deserves.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably lean towards the latter option.

The best way to promote your infographic is, of course, through influencer marketing and blogger outreach. Using a top-notch influencer marketing tool like BuzzSumo and an outreach tool like Mailshake, you can reach out to tons of like-minded bloggers and convince them to include your infographic in their articles.

Side note: Need help with blogger outreach? Check out this in-depth guide on how to create infographics and generate high-quality backlinks.

Aside from blogger outreach, the next best option to promote your infographic and gain contextual backlinks would be to leverage infographic submission sites.

To help you further in the endeavor of promoting your infographic, I’ve decided to compile a list of sites where you can submit your infographic.

Aside from a short description and submission process, I’ve also mentioned the site’s domain authority, so you can prioritize your efforts accordingly.

So without further ado, here are the top infographic submission sites you can leverage to promote your infographic.

Key Takeaways

• Infographic submission sites are crucial for promoting infographics and earning backlinks.
• Utilizing tools like BuzzSumo and Mailshake enhances outreach efforts.
• The list includes 40 top infographic submission sites, each with its domain authority as of April 2024, offering both free and paid submission options.

Top 40 Infographic Submission Sites

#1 Infographics Archive

Domain Authority: 53

Infographics Archive was started by a group of designers, programmers, and enthusiasts with a deep passion for infographics.

How to Submit: There is no free submission. Standard submission is priced at $20. Standard listings will be published within 5 business days. If you’d like social promotion or feature your infographic on the home page, you’ll need to pay extra.

Price: $20 for standard submission

#2 Cool Infographics

Domain Authority: 59

Owned by Randy Krum, Cool Infographics highlights some of the best examples of data visualizations and infographics found in magazines, newspapers, and on the web.

The site gets over 7000 visitors per day and 300,000 page views per month.

How to Submit: To submit an infographic to the site, you’ll need to fill the contact form with a link to your infographic. If your infographic is approved, you’ll get an email. Cool Infographics gets tons of requests daily, so make sure your entry is a little different from the others.

Price: Free

#3 Infographics Showcase

Domain Authority: 50

Infographics Showcase collects the best infographics on the web with exciting graphic design.

How to Submit: Infographics Showcase no longer allows free submissions. Standard submission fee is $25 and you can expect your infographic to be live on the site within 7 business days. For more details, check out their submission page.

Price: $25

#4 Infographic Bee

Domain Authority: 25

Infographic Bee is obsessed with scouting the web for the best and most exciting infographics to share with their audience.

How to Submit: While you can submit your infographic for free, it can take several days to get it approved. If you’d like your infographic to be reviewed quickly, then you’ll have to pay $9.95. Click here to submit your infographic.

Price: Free; $9.95 for express review

#5 Infographics Journal

Domain Authority: 54

Infographics Journal is an infographic archive that focuses solely on showcasing the best infographics all in one place.

How to Submit: Infographic Journal gives you three options for submission – basic, express, and featured. Basic submission is free and your infographic will be reviewed by one of their editors, and if approved, you can expect your infographic to be live in 2-3 weeks. Express submission costs $25 wherein your infographic is submitted on the same day. Featured submission costs $75 wherein your infographic will appear in the scrolling “Featured” section on the site’s home page for 7 days.

Click here to submit your infographic.

Price: Free for Basic Submission; $25 for Express Submission

#6 Visual.ly

Domain Authority: 80

Visual.ly is a platform that seamlessly connects designers, journalists, animators, and developers with clients.

It is perhaps one of the most popular infographic submission sites on this list. You can submit your infographics on Visual.ly for free.

How to submit: Create an account with Visual.ly and submit your infographic.

Price: Free

#7 Infographic Reviews

Domain Authority: 23

Infographics Reviews is a site where you can submit infographics and also get them reviewed. The infographics are rated on a scale of 0 (your infographic sucks and will never get any tweets) to 5 (Dynamite Infographic – the best infographic on the block and going viral soon).

How to Submit: You can get your infographic reviewed here. You’ll get an email if it’s approved.

Price: Free

#8 Submit Infographics

Domain Authority: 45

Submit Infographics is one of the longest-running infographic submission sites online. The site provides a platform for designers and companies alike, to get their hard work seen as well as critiqued.

How to Submit: You can submit your infographic by filling this form. A fee of $15 is charged for regular submission and your infographic is published in a month’s time. There are other pricing options available if you’d like your infographic to be published sooner.

Price: $15 for regular submission

#9 Behance

Domain Authority: 92

Behance is used by designers all over the world to showcase their latest work. If you’ve designed infographics that you’re really proud of, you can showcase them here and earn a high-quality backlink.

How to Submit: Create an account, click on ‘Add Work’, and upload your infographic.

Price: Free

#10 Revuwire

Domain Authority: 43

Previously called Infographics Online, Revuwire ranks the best websites, apps, and internet solutions by quality and popular vote. The site also has a great collection of infographics on a variety of topics and has started accepting infographics again.

How to Submit: To learn more about the infographic submission process on Revuwire, visit their page.

Price: Free

#11 Infographic Post

Domain Authority: 29

Infographic Post is a place to find the most interesting and informative infographics on the web. Infographics need to be creatively designed and visually stimulating to be featured on the site.

How to Submit: There is free submission allowed, but there is no guarantee that your infographic will be approved and published. The site offers 2 payment options – $10 for infographic published within 5 days and $20 for infographic published within 2 days. For more details, check out their submission page.

Price: $10 (published within 5 days) and $20 (published within 2 days); Free option available but no guarantee that your infographic will be published.

#12 Infographic Plaza

Domain Authority: 30

Infographic Plaza is an infographic blog that showcases great infographics, cool infographic ideas, and infographic inspiration.

How to Submit: You can submit your infographic for free, but the review process can take well over a month. For express review and publication, you’ll need to pay $10. For more details, check out their submission page.

Price: Free; $10 for express publication

#13 Daily Infographic

Domain Authority: 79

Daily Infographic curates some of the most interesting infographics on the web on a plethora of subjects.

How to Submit: The best way to submit your infographic is through their contact page. If your infographic is approved, you’ll get an email from the Daily Infographic team. This is one of the most popular infographic submission sites, so make sure your infographic is creative and filled with interesting data.

Price: Free

#14 Directory of Infographics

Domain Authority: 14

Directory of Infographics, as the name suggests, has a huge database of infographics from different categories and niches.

How to Submit: You can submit your infographic for free, but there’s no guarantee it will be published. For instant publishing of your infographic, the site charges you $10. Click here to submit your infographic.

Price: Free; $10 for instant publishing

#15 Visulattic 

Domain Authority: 18

Visulattic is a project with an aim to curate the best information graphics or visual data.

How to Submit: You can submit your infographic for free by filling this form here.

Price: Free

#16 Shit Hot Infographics

Domain Authority: 20

Owned by David Eaves, Shit Hot Infographics was launched to feature the very best infographics from the internet.

How to Submit: To submit your infographic, you’ll need to get in touch with David Eaves. If your infographic meets their quality standards, it will be published in a couple of days. Check out their submission page for more details.

Price: Free

#17 Infographic Database

Domain Authority: 24

Infographic Database has a huge collection of infographics which is frequently updated.

How to Submit: The site charges $20 for submission. For more details, check out their submission page.

Price: $20

#18 Galleryr

Domain Authority: 16

Galleryr is a premium infographic gallery site. The site publishes only high-quality infographics that add value and provide valuable and trusted information.

How to Submit: Galleryr allows you to submit your infographic for free. You need to provide a unique description of a minimum of 100 words for your infographic to be reviewed and published on the site. If you’d like to get your infographic instantly reviewed and published, you need to pay $10.

Click here to submit your infographic.

Price: Free; $10 for instant publication

#19 Media Caffeine

Domain Authority: 32

Media Caffeine is a team of digital marketing experts who specialize in SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and content creation. They also have an extensive infographic gallery where you’ll find infographics on a wide range of topics.

How to submit: You can submit your infographic by filling the form here. Only the most high-quality infographics get approved and it may take up to several business days.

Price: Free

#20 The Infographics

Domain Authority: 29

Started by Tom Cumpsty, The Infographics contains some really cool infographics.

How to Submit: The best way to submit infographics to this site is connect with Tom Cumpsty on Twitter.

Price: Free

#21 Graphs.net

Domain Authority: 50

Graphs.net is the leading resource for data visualization and creative infographics. The site aims at providing you the latest infographics on various topics from sports to environment, travel to technology and other niches.

Based on the theme, infographics are classified into different categories and the latest charts, graphs or infographics will get displayed at the top of each category.

To date, Graphs.net has published over 6000 infographics and they receive over 300 submissions on a monthly basis.

How to Submit: Free submission is allowed, but it can take several weeks to get your infographic published. You can opt for their express service which is priced at $25/submission wherein your infographic is published in 1-3 days. To learn more, check out their submission page.

Price: Free; $25 for express publication

#22 All Infographics

Domain Authority: 31

All Infographics tends to save your time from reading long and lengthy articles with their collection of top-quality infographics.

How to Submit: Submission is free, but your infographic may take weeks to get reviewed and published. For more details, check out their submission page.

Price: Free

#23 Best Infographics

Domain Authority: 30

Best Infographics showcases infographics that are some of the best, which may simply mean they are more creative, experimental or even vintage and rarely seen. They also include infographics that were created for print media, both now and from the past, as well as digital infographics created for today.

How to Submit: Submissions to this site are free. You need to send an email to the editors with details of your infographic. For more details, check out their submission page.

Price: Free

#24 Visual Kiwi

Domain Authority: 20

Visual Kiwi is a leading visual content community that allows you to feature your infographics on their website for free. Once your infographic is approved, it will be featured in the Visual Community section of the website.

How to Submit: Visual Kiwi allows free submission. For more details on how to submit your infographic, visit their submission page.

Price: Free

#25 Infographic Portal

Domain Authority: 36

Infographic Portal has a collection of infographics that contain high-quality information and data.

How to Submit: There is a $10 fee for express infographic submission. If your infographic meets their quality guidelines, it will be published within 24 hours. Click here to submit your infographic.

Price: $10

#26 I Love Charts

Domain Authority: 49

I Love Charts is a Tumblr blog that specializes in highlighting and portraying the best data visualization charts in the internet.

How to Submit: Visit their submission page, and attach your infographic in .png file with a fun caption.

Price: Free

#27 Infographic Website

Domain Authority: 27

Infographic Website was created with an aim to help infographic creators get more visibility for their infographics.

How to Submit: You can submit your infographic for free. Check out their submission page for more details.

Price: Free

#28 Reddit

Domain Authority: 91

Reddit has several subreddits dedicated to infographics. The most popular infographic subreddit is /r/infographics which has over 160,000 members. Submitting your infographic here can easily make it go viral.

How To Submit: Before submitting your infographic to /r/infographics or any other subreddit for that matter, read the guidelines carefully.

Price: Free

#29 Flickr

Domain Authority: 92

Flickr is a Yahoo-owned site that combines picture galleries with a community of millions of amateur and professional photographers and designers.

While Flickr is mainly used for photos, you can also use the platform to showcase your infographics.

How to Submit: Create an account, create an album, and submit your infographic.

Price: Free

#30 SlideShare

Domain Authority: 95

SlideShare is the largest professional content sharing community owned by LinkedIn where you can discover, share, and present presentations and infographics.

How to Submit: Create an account with SlideShare and upload your infographic in PDF format.

Price: Free

#31 Infographics Zone

Domain Authority: 42

Infographics Zone has a decent collection of infographics and data visualization.

How to Submit: If you have an infographic to submit, please send us an email with all the info unique introduction of 200 – 250 words and a “Unique Title” of the infographic. Visit their contact page to submit your infographic.

Price: Free

#32 News I Like

Domain Authority: 37

News I Like was started in 2010 with an intention to feature stories from around the world displayed visually.

How to Submit: Visit their contact page to submit your infographic. All submissions are free.

Price: Free

#33 Submit Visuals

Domain Authority: 16

Submit Visuals is not just an infographic website, it’s a visual website, that features user-friendly graphics, videos, infographics, memes, presentations, screenshots, animated GIFs, and more.

How to Submit: The site accepts quality infographic submissions along with short descriptions for free. Click here to submit your infographic.

Price: Free

#34 Amazing Infographics

Domain Authority: 33

Amazing Infographics has a good collection of high-quality infographics.

How to Submit: Visit their submission page and send a short description of your infographic. If your infographic is approved, you’ll get an email from them.

Price: Free

#35 uCollect Infographics

Domain Authority: 9

uCollect Infographics is a site that showcases some of the best infographics or data visualizations around the globe.

How to Submit: You’ll need to create an account before submitting your infographic. You can submit your infographic for free, but they have certain guidelines which your infographic should meet before it’s accepted. Visit their submission page for more details.

Price: $19

#36 Infographics Posters

Domain Authority: 30

Infographics Posters provides a platform for infographic fans to come together and share their work. Here, you will find infographics on diverse topics from food to travel, web designing to technology, and fashion to gaming that are submitted by infographic creators.

How to Submit: The price of submission is $20. Visit their submission page for guidelines and more details.

Price: $20

#37 LKRLLC

Domain Authority: 14

LKRLLC is a paid infographic submission site. One of the key benefits of having your infographic displayed here is that you’ll be publishing on a 12-year old domain.

How to Submit: The site charges $10 for infographic submission. Visit this page to submit your infographic.

Price: $10

#38 Only Infographic

Domain Authority: 34

Only Infographic showcases some of the best infographics on the web.

How to Submit: Only Infographic allows free submission. Visit their submission page to read their quality guidelines and to submit your infographic.

Price: Free

#39 Infographic List

Domain Authority: 49

Infographic List compiles high-quality infographics and articles on their website. They are very picky and publish only the best infographics.

How to Submit: You can submit your infographic for free. If your infographic is accepted, you’ll receive an email with more information. Visit their submission page for more details.

Price: Free

#40 Mashable Infographics

Domain Authority: 93

Founded by Pete Cashmore, Mashable is one of the most popular tech blogs on the internet. You can also submit infographics to Mashable as long as it’s covered as a news story.

How to Submit: Mashable generally accepts infographics that are related to social media, technology, marketing, current events, and entertainment.

Before you submit your infographic to Mashable, visit the resources below:

• 12 Tips for Getting Your Startup Featured on Mashable
• 12 Things Not to Do When Pitching a Story to Mashable

Visit Mashable’s submission page to learn more about their submission process.

Final Thoughts

So these are the infographic submission sites I recommend you start engaging with.

Did I miss out on any of your favorite infographic submission sites? Let us know in the comments section.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What are the best sites for submitting infographics to promote your content and gain backlinks?

The best sites for submitting infographics include Infographics Archive, Cool Infographics, and Visual.ly among others, offering a mix of free and paid submission options. These platforms are designed to enhance your infographic’s visibility, attract traffic, and facilitate the acquisition of quality backlinks, thereby amplifying your content’s reach and effectiveness in your digital marketing strategy.

2. How can I maximize the visibility of my infographic?

To maximize visibility, consider the following strategies:

• Social Media Promotion: Share your infographic on platforms like Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Reddit. Tailor the presentation and message for each platform to engage different audiences.
• Email Marketing: Include your infographic in newsletters or dedicated email blasts to your subscribers, offering them valuable insights in a visually appealing format.
• Blog Posts: Incorporate your infographic into relevant blog posts on your website to add value to your textual content and improve SEO.
• Collaborations: Partner with other bloggers or websites in your niche to share your infographic with their audience.

3. How can I track the performance of my infographic?

To track the performance, use the following methods:

• Analytics Tools: Utilize tools like Google Analytics to track website traffic, engagement, and conversions resulting from your infographic.
• Social Media Metrics: Monitor likes, shares, comments, and reach on social media platforms to gauge engagement.
• Backlink Tools: Use SEO tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to track the backlinks and mentions your infographic earns across the web.
• Feedback and Surveys: Solicit feedback directly from your audience through comments or surveys to understand their perceptions and suggestions for improvement.

4. What makes an infographic successful and shareable?

A successful and shareable infographic:

• Tells a Compelling Story: It should present information in a way that narrates a clear, engaging story or provides insightful data.
• High-Quality Design: Professional and aesthetically pleasing design with a coherent color scheme and readable typography enhances shareability.
• Relevant and Accurate Data: Ensure the information is current, relevant to your audience, and backed by credible sources.
• Optimized for Sharing: Include social sharing buttons and make sure the infographic is easily embeddable for bloggers and media outlets.
• Calls to Action: Encourage viewers to share the infographic, sign up for more information, or check out related content.

5. Can infographics improve SEO?

Yes, infographics can significantly improve SEO by:

• Generating Backlinks: High-quality, informative infographics are likely to be shared and linked back to from other sites, enhancing your backlink profile.
• Boosting Engagement: Engaging content reduces bounce rates and increases time spent on your site, which are positive signals to search engines.
• Enhancing Content Variety: Infographics add variety to your content, making your website more appealing to visitors and search engines alike.
• Social Signals: Shares on social media can indirectly impact your site’s search rankings by increasing visibility and traffic.

6. What are the common mistakes to avoid when creating infographics?

Avoid these common pitfalls:

• Overloading with Information: Too much information can overwhelm viewers. Keep it focused and straightforward.
• Poor Design: Avoid cluttered design and hard-to-read fonts. Professionalism in design is key.
• Ignoring the Target Audience: The infographic should be tailored to the interests and needs of your target audience.
• Lack of Promotion: Creating the infographic is just the first step. Actively promoting it is essential for success.
• Neglecting Mobile Optimization: Ensure your infographic is viewable and legible on mobile devices, where a significant portion of your audience may engage with it.

7. What are some of the best tools to create infographics?

Here are some of the best tools you can use to create infographics:

• Canva: Known for its user-friendly interface, Canva offers a wide array of templates and design elements that make creating professional-looking infographics accessible for users with any level of design experience.
• Adobe Spark: Adobe Spark provides users with a variety of templates and design options, making it easy to create custom infographics with a professional finish.
• Piktochart: Piktochart specializes in infographic design with an intuitive interface and a library of templates, making it a popular choice for those looking to create infographics quickly and efficiently.
• Venngage: Venngage offers a wide range of templates tailored to different types of infographics, making it a versatile tool for creating detailed and visually appealing infographics.
• Infogram: Infogram is designed for creating infographics that incorporate data visualization, with robust tools for integrating charts, maps, and graphs into designs.
• Visme: Visme is a versatile design tool that allows users to create not only infographics but also presentations and other visual content, featuring a broad range of templates and design elements.
• Design Pickle: Design Pickle offers graphic design services on a subscription basis. With Design Pickle, you get access to a dedicated professional designer who can understand your brand and create custom infographics that align with your marketing goals and visual identity.
• Fiverr: Fiverr is a freelance marketplace where you can find a wide range of designers with various skill sets and price points. It’s suitable for one-off projects or finding a designer with a unique style that matches what you’re looking for.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness, based on new research and findings into the topic.

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The post 40 Infographic Submission Sites to Promote Your Infographic (and Get Backlinks) appeared first on 99signals.