A sudden Google algorithm update often leaves marketers equally confused and concerned. It seems as if they wait for you to get your ducks in a row and then come up with an update that makes your efforts obsolete.
Indeed, they are very open about the fact that they are doing this for everyone’s good- each algorithm brings social marketers one step closer to more relevant search results. But, there are still some secrets behind how Google evaluates a website and conclusively determines which sites to show for which search queries.
That means, there are plenty of tools- some free, some paid- that help you look at your site the way Google sees it.
These tools may prove crucial to your organic search strategy because they enable you to focus on the elements of your website that Google deems vital. In this blog, we will talk about six such tools that assist you in running a site analysis like a marketer and a Google bot!
Google’s Webmaster Tools
The best method to know the way Google takes your site is to ask Google. Google’s Webmaster Tools are excellent resources that explain the basics of Google search.
For instance, Fetch as Google tool lets you see a specific URL as Google sees it, which is vital when troubleshooting for poor SEO performance. That information that you get in return can help you isolate problematic code when you think your site has been hacked.
Another excellent feature of these Google tools is PageSpeed Insights. This SEO tool is designed to measure the performance of your desktop as well as mobile site regarding the speed. With mobile search queries overcoming desktop searches, page speed has become increasingly essential to businesses that want to hold onto their visitors.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an advanced elaborate dashboard which is responsible for reporting on the performance of domains as a whole and their specific pages. The website provides several toolkits, SEO toolkit is one of them.
The rest of the SEO toolkit helps you compare the page performance to competition, analyse backlinks from other sites to your website, research the right keywords, and take full advantage of similar on-page SEO opportunities.
Check My Links
To make sure that your links on a website – whether internal or external- actually work, use Check My Links.
The tool makes it easy to create corrections before a page is live. Consider a site like Wikipedia, for instance. The Wikipedia page contains a whopping 711 links for the term “marketing”. The Check My Links was not only able to detect this particular number in a matter of seconds but also found seven broken links.
The tool highlighted the excellent links in green, and the broken ones in red, making it easy to find the ones that don’t work or are no more active.
BuzzStream
BuzzStream might be the most cost-effective way to manage your outreach to the individuals who can provide inbound links to your site. Though backlinks are crucial for your website to rank well on Google, the outreach you do when link building can feel a lot like cold calling. The tool makes it easy to research appropriate people, produce useful messages, and spot who has accepted each link request.
BuzzStream assists you in identifying candidates for outreach based more on their industry and how engaged they are across many different social networks- so that you could know who will be the most receptive to your backlink request and boost the ranking on Google.
Moz’s Pro Tools
The Moz Pro subscription works as an all-in-one tool for extending your business’ search ranking. Moz’s collection of research tools offers subscribers with the resources that need to track and identify SEO opportunities, build reports, monitor growth, and optimise their overall efforts.
For instance, the Crawl Test tool uses Moz’s own web crawler called RogerBot to analyse up to three thousand links on a given URL. Once completed, users receive an email report that encompasses the details of the data for each page the website links to.
This is exceptionally helpful as you are looking to identify “crawlability” factors, like duplicate content and redirects that may influence your SEO performance.
UpCity’s SEO Report Card
SEO Report Card provided by UpCity allows you to analyse your website to determine how it works against your competitors.
In exchange for a little contact information, SEO Report Card provides you with a report that covers many things, such as:
- Rank Analysis: A portrayal of where your site ranks on Yahoo!, Google, and Bing. The ranking depends on the main keywords you choose when putting information to build the report.
- Link Building: A detailed account of the sites that link back to your website.
- On-Site Analysis: A method to know how successful you were in adding your keywords to your website.
- Website Accessibility: An area focused primarily on your website’s load time and ease of accessibility for crawlers.
- Trust Metrics: A format or overview of your website’s level of authority and trust.
- Current Indexing: It indicates how many of your website pages have been indexed.
Getting Started
You will never get a look behind Google’s curtain to learn everything they know about your website. However, by leveraging SEO practices and getting the most out of the tools such as those listed here, you can enhance the chances that your site will show up in response to the right search queries.