If you run a small business, then you already know how important it is to establish a strong brand presence in your community. When customers are looking for services like plumbing, HVAC, electricians, or other home services, they search the internet to find them. Having a website that ranks well on search engines like Google ensures that it's your services they turn to. But to get your website to show up at the top of search engine results, you will need to develop a strategy that uses appropriate content, backlinks, and more. That's where do it yourself search engine optimization tools come into play - they can help you find successful keywords and monitor your progress, even if you aren’t an SEO expert.
Like any software or tools, the hard part is finding the right tool for your business needs. That’s why we’ve reviewed some of the top tools out there. Check them out below and see which one makes the most sense for your business.
Housecall Pro Seo Grader
Cost: Free
Housecall Pro is known for helping field service professionals go from good to great. That’s why we built our SEO grader specifically for small service businesses to help customers easily find them when searching for a home service.
Key Features:
Instant score for:
Keywords
SEO
Mobile
Social
Comprehensive report
Actionable recommendations
Competitive comparison
Industry specific Keyword analysis
Learn how Housecall Pro can help your home services business grow 30% within the first year. Start your 14 day free trial today.
Moz Pro
Cost: Free 30-Day Trial | $99/mo
Moz Pro is a software product that allows you to manage most aspects of your site's SEO. This tool isn’t too technical and allows small to large businesses to boost their organic website traffic. They have a pretty user friendly interface that’s nice for those new to SEO.
Key features:
Tracks your ranking efficiently
Keyword research and analysis
On-page optimization
Visualizes your data
Search engine results page (SERP) analysis
On-page grader
Compares links and competitors
Overall this software has features that are user friendly, with easy to read metric charts letting you know how you rank, how your competitors rank, what SEO techniques are working and where you can improve.
Ahrefs
Cost: 7-day trial for $7 | $99/mo
If you’re serious about improving your SEO and out-ranking your competition, Ahrefs might be the tool for you. With a website check for over 100 pre-defined SEO issues, their comprehensive competitive tools, and visual SEO progress reports, you can stop guessing and find out exactly what’s holding your website back from ranking.
Key features:
Site Explorer
Gives an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL
See what keywords your competitors are ranking & which pages bring in the most traffic
See which website are linking to your competitors and gauge the quality of their backlink profile
Keywords Explorer
Discover thousands of great keywords to rank for, analyse their ranking difficulty, calculate traffic potential
Accurate “search volume”
Keyword difficulty score
Content Explorer
Discover the most popular content for any topic (by backlinks, organic traffic and social shares)
Research top content and discover new content opportunities
Filter by: Language, social shares, domain rating, backlinks, traffic, word count
Rank Tracker
Monitor your rankings over time and chart your performance against your competitors’.
Site audit to see under the hood of your website's on-page SEO performance.
Alerts for new & lost backlinks, web mentions, and new keywords.
Overall, Ahrefs has the tools that will give you an extensive look at your SEO standings and what keywords you can use to improve.
SEMRush
Cost: $99.95/mo
SEMRush is another comprehensive SEO monitoring tool that really stands out for bloggers and businesses. In addition to the expected SEO guidance, this tool also helps you manage your social media, PR, and paid ad strategies with a hub where you can schedule posts, analyze your traffic, and identify the best opportunities to reach your target market.
Key features:
Site Audit Tool
Check your site’s SEO health
Domain vs. Domain comparisons
Analyze Google ranking factors affecting your website’s performance
Track SEO optimization progress
Ensure the security of your website with HTTPS checks
Keyword research
Find the right keywords for your SEO campaign
Find keywords with less competition
Use keyword grouping to segment your keywords by topic
Keywords position tracking
Backlink Audit Tools
Find all your backlinks using SEMRush’s search console integration
Check backlinks’ types
Spot your links’ geolocation
Organic Traffic Insights
Unlock the ‘not provided‘ keywords
Merge analytics and search console data
Analyze keyword potential
You can use these tools together and take a holistic look at the results of each report to create an complete digital marketing plan that helps form your SEO strategy.
Screaming Frog
Cost: Free (With Limitations) / £149.00 per-year
Screaming Frog developed the SEO Spider Tool, which is one of the most popular SEO tools on the market today. The free version is a great option for technical SEO audits. When you’re ready to dive into your websites’ SEO health you can opt for the paid version that includes features like unlimited crawling, integration with other SEO tools, and much more.
Key features:
Crawl your full site and lists
Audit redirects
Crawl path reports
Plug into APIs
Custom extractions and configurations
Analyze internal linking
Find orphaned and broken pages
Identify missing & duplicate titles
Identify missing & duplicate meta descriptions
Find images missing alt text
BuzzSumo
Cost: Free 7-Day Trial | $79/mo
If you are looking for a tool that is easy to use and gives you a visual look at your site's SEO progress, BuzzSumo is a good option. The program gives you intuitive content insights that you can use to determine what content is working and what isn't by seeing which keywords are showing up in search engines. It also gives you an inside look into the performance of successful influencers and companies in your field.
Key features:
Discover the most shared content across social networks
Find influencers for any topic
Setup keyword mention alerts
Track your competitor’s content performance
Get up to 12 months of data
Discover interesting and trending content
Export data
Overall, this software has tools that look at influencers and competitors in your industry to find the keywords that are drawing in visitors for them, so you can find new strategies that are going to work for you as well.
Google Analytics
Cost: Free
If you are familiar with SEO then you’ve probably heard of Google Analytics. While Google offers an entire suite of SEO tools, Google Analytics is their original one, and it's one of the most popular because of everything it analyzes.
Key features:
Measure traffic by device type
Sitespeed by page
Setup conversions / goals
Identify your user’s demographics
Look at new & returning visitors
Real-time reporting
Group traffic by channels
Campaign tracking
Add custom alerts
Add annotations
Automate reporting
Build conversion funnels
Use regular expressions (REGEX)
Calculated metrics
Site search
Google Analytics has a lot of tools to help drive your SEO strategy. It can be overwhelming in the beginning so If you’re new to digital marketing you’ll want to start off by prioritizing the key metrics that are important to your business.
This SEO tools list features just a few of the many programs that are available to help you track your site's visibility online. As a home service professional, you can leverage your website to gain new customers and build brand recognition in your area. With the help of these DIY tools, you can start managing your site’s SEO presence on your own.
Housecall Pro is rated the #1 software to run your HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Carpet Cleaning and other home service businesses. Our features allow you to schedule and dispatch jobs, get booked online, send invoice and receive payment within minutes whether if you are in the office or out in the field. This comprehensive software can help you grow revenue by 30% in one year and save up to 500 hours a year. Join all the other successful home service businesses who have already started and try Housecall Pro for 14 days free today.