Running a blog is serious business. Gone are the days when you can log in and write about whatever topic pops into your head. Today, a successful blog requires deep analysis and ongoing strategy refinements to keep you competitive.
Fortunately, you’re not alone. There are countless tools you could use and the SHERO Team has pulled some of those together to assist you in developing and growing a successful Book or Business Blog.
Here’s our list of the 6 best SEO tools for bloggers.
#1-Google Analytics by MonsterInsights
Sometimes the simplest tools are the most useful. If you’ve ever tried manually inserting or updating the Google Analytics code into your site, you know how frustrating it can get over time. Every change or addition requires a new copy-paste, and if something goes wrong, you lose a tremendous amount of data, including traffic and search phrase tracking.
The Google Analytics WordPress plug-in by MonsterInsights can solve this for you. It does one thing and it does it well; it instantly populates every page on your publication with your custom Google Analytics code. There’s no need to configure anything, just slide it into the settings page and you’re set!
MonsterInsights also lets you leverage Google Analytics’ more powerful features, including engagement tracking, file downloads, affiliate links, and RSS feed clicks. You can even view most of these reports directly in your WordPress dashboard with an upgraded MonsterInsights plan.
#2 – Readability Test Tool
In the SEO world, things like keyword density and backlinks tend to get the lion’s share of attention. But at the end of the day, what really matters is whether or not people find your content interesting and informative. The best way to reach a wider audience, in this arena, is to focus on readability. It is important to make your content as digestible as possible so that visitors, both young and old, native or foreign will want to spend more time on your site.
The Readability Test Tool is a quick and simple service that analyzes the content of your site and spits out a results score that shows the youngest age of reader who could read and comprehend the content. A grade level of 4, for example, could be easily understood by 9-10-year-olds. Ideally, you’ll want to aim for grade levels between 6 and 8, but as long as you don’t creep too high, you’ll do just fine.
The Readability Test Tool is a final stage service that lets you put the finishing touches on any piece of written content. By drawing in a wider audience with less technical jargon, shorter sentences, and more direct language, you’ll increase the engagement rate and encourage visitors to stick around and read a few more pieces of content before clicking away.
#3 – KWFinder
It doesn’t matter what type of content you create or how far your social media reach extends, one thing all bloggers obsess over is SEO difficulty. Should you go after the long tails with a low impact but less competition? How about aiming for the high end and duking it out with the big publications? There’s no single answer for this quandary, which is why services like KWFinder are so crucial to your success.
KWFinder is an easy-to-use SEO research tool that aims to deliver the perfect keywords straight to your screen. It analyzes backlink quantity (among other things) for any given phrase to help determine the overall difficulty of those keywords, giving you an idea of how much time and effort you’ll need to spend to capture a piece of that SEO pie.
#4 – Cognitive SEO
If you are a SEO professional, and experienced webmaster or a digital marketer, then it’s very likely you know about Cognitive SEO and that it offers an advanced all-inclusive SEO toolkit, made in Europe. It does have indeed a steep learning curve, but the promised results are worth the effort.
It provides you with advanced analysis and tracking features, as well as suggestions for improvements and fixes, all packed in a neat interface with interactive charts and descriptions. The tool creators promise that you’ll get top rankings in 3 easy steps: Keyword Research, Ranking Analysis and Content Optimization.
#5 – Google Search Console
Google’s Search Console should be the first site every pro blogger visits when starting their day. The console provides insights into how Google views your website, everything from clicks to impressions to CTR percentages. It also reports on crawling errors and notifies you if potential problems arise that might negatively affect your SEO rating. Think of it like a safety net, the last line of defense against you and a costly drop in Page rank. Google Search Console helps your site to be found on the web.
If developing your blog is overwhelming, our team has you covered! Let the SHERO Developer team support you in the development of your book or business blog.
