50+ Online SEO Tools for Audits, Backlink Monitoring, Keyword Research, and Rank Tracking

We’re always on the lookout for great tools and with a $5 billion industry, search engine optimization (SEO) is one market that has a ton of tools to help you. Whether you’re researching your competitors’ backlinks, trying to identify keywords and co-occurrence terms, or simply trying to monitor how your site is ranking, here are the most popular SEO tools and platforms on the market.

Key Features of Search Engine Optimization Tools and Tracking Platforms

• Audits – SEO audits crawl your site and notify you of issues that may impact your rankings.
• Backlink Analysis – if your site is linked to on sites with poor search engine authority, you can have a terrible time ranking. Being able to analyze the volume and quality of the links that are pointing to your domains is imperative for advanced troubleshooting of ranking issues and competitive analysis.
• Competitive Research – the ability to enter or find your competitors, their rankings, and what differentiates their domain and pages from yours so you can identify gaps to fill.
• Data Mining – Strangely missing from many of these platforms is the ability to tag, categorize, aggregate, data mine, and develop reports across very large sets of keywords.
• Keyword Discovery – while many of the monitoring platforms provide you with accurate rankings, they don’t allow you to discover what keywords you might be ranking on that you’re unaware of.
• Keyword Grouping – monitoring a few keywords may not give as accurate a picture as grouping similar keyword combinations and reporting on how you’re doing overall on a topic. Keyword grouping is a great feature of SEO rank monitoring tools.
• Keyword Research – understanding keywords related to the products and services you provide is critical to your content marketing efforts. Keyword research tools often offer co-occurrence keywords, question-related keyword combinations, long-tail keyword combinations, and the competitiveness of the keyword (so you don’t waste your time trying to rank on terms you don’t stand a chance of gaining traction on.
• Keyword Ranking Monitoring – the ability to enter keywords and then monitor their ranking over time is a core feature of most of the platforms. Given that search results are mostly personalized, this ability is largely used for overall trending analysis to see whether the efforts you’re making are improving your ranking on keywords or not.
• Local Keyword Rank Monitoring – since the location of the search user and your business can play a huge role, many of the keyword monitoring platforms provide a means to track your ranking by geographic location.
• Scraping & Internal Analysis – Tools that analyze your site hierarchy, page construction, page speed, and other associated issues are fantastic for correcting issues that might be less obvious but that could be causing you plenty of problems when ranking.
• Share of Voice – competitive intelligence reports that provide your brand with an overall tracking mechanism to show your share of the search and social conversations online ca show you if you’re making headway. After all, you might be increasing your search visibility, but perhaps your competitor is doing an even better job.
• Social Influence – It’s only natural that the attention you attract across social media is a great indicator of the authority you’ve built with search engines. Newer SEO platforms are providing insight into the correlation between search and social and it’s paying off!
• Youtube Research – often ignored, Youtube is the #2 search engine in the world as more and more businesses and consumers research topics looking for video explanations, product profiles, and how-tos.

List of Search Engine Webmaster Tools

• Bing Webmaster Tools – improve your site’s performance in search. Get access to free reports, tools, and resources.
• Google Webmaster Tools – provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google.

Our Choice For The Most Comprehensive SEO Platform

I’ve used virtually every platform on this list and many of them are incredible. I definitely don’t want to disparage or state that Semrush is the best tool, but I have found that its innovative solution continues to grow its offerings over the year and build more and more value for my clients.

Semrush was created by search engine optimization and search engine marketing professionals for SEO and SEM. They collect massive amounts of data – over 21 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domains, and 140 different geographic databases.

The full platform provides tools for monitoring your site’s ranking, crawling for errors, backlink audits, international results, keyword research, content ideas, local directory updating, competitive reporting, brand monitoring, social media analysis, and much, much more.

My firm has also assisted several clients in setting up their instance of Semrush and training their marketing teams on how to prioritize their efforts and fully utilize the platform. Start researching your domain, keyword, or URL now:

Start Using Semrush Now! Agency Partner: Highbridge

List of SEO Tools for Audits Links, Keywords, and Rank Tracking

• AccuRanker – Automate the process of looking up how your keywords rank on Google and Bing search engines with up-to-the-second updates.
• Advanced Web Ranking – Fresh rankings daily, weekly, and on-demand. For desktop, mobile and local searches. Packed nicely into white-label reports. Accessible from any device.
• Ahrefs Site Explorer – The largest and the freshest index of live links updated every 15 min.
• AuthorityLabs – Use our search engine ranking and keyword data to automate your SEO monitoring, track local and mobile rankings, and recover not-provided keywords.
• BrightEdge SEO is the first SEO platform to deliver proven ROI – enabling marketers to increase revenue from organic search in a measurable and predictable way.
• Cognitive SEO Unique SEO features that will boost your link analysis and link-building results.
• Conductor Searchlight is a widely used SEO platform that empowers enterprise marketers to take control of their search performance.
• Cuutio Inbound Marketing Platform – Know your exact positions and competitive situation on Google, keep track of the results of search engine optimization and analyze the overall performance of your important keywords
• Dragon Metrics provides the analysis and insights you need to rank above competitors and turn monthly reporting into a breeze.
• Explore Keywords is a free keyword research tool including a keyword volume checker, keyword generator, question keywords generator, and Youtube keyword generator.
• Linkody – easy-to-use and affordable backlink tracker
• Majestic SEO – Link intelligence tools for SEO and Internet PR and Marketing. Site Explorer shows inbound link and site summary data.
• Meta Forensics – Meta Forensics is a website architecture, internal link analysis, and SEO tool that helps identify unseen website problems that may be affecting your visitors, search engine crawlers, and ultimately, hampering your site.
• Monitor Backlinks – Keep all of your link data under one roof with our management tools.
• Moz – best-in-class SEO software for every situation, from our all-in-one SEO platform to tools for local SEO, enterprise SERP analytics, and a powerful API.
• Netpeak Checker – is a multifunctional research tool for mass SEO analysis. The tool has a unique feature that allows analyzing competitors’ promotion strategies and researching their backlink profile.
• Nightwatch – SEO performance tracker and analytics tool
• Ontolo – Our Link Building Toolset has become one of the most often recommended internet marketing and link-building tools by the top SEO and link-building experts for its automation and link prospecting abilities.
• Posirank – Our wholesale platform not only centralizes every imaginable SEO service into a single dashboard – it also supports total automation.
• Pro Rank Tracker – Get the most up-to-date, easy to analyze ranking information on all your websites, so you can stay one step ahead of the competition and maximize your profits.
• RankAbove’s Drive SEO Platform and business intelligence software enables you to dig deeper into SEO information already at your fingertips.
• Rankinity – Check your website positions and analyze your competitors in popular search engines in real-time.
• Rank Tracker by SpySERP – provides SEO beginners and experts alike the inside track on their web page performance across multiple search engines. 
• RankWatch – Rank analysis, backlink watch, keyword suggestions, white labeling, reporting and website analyzer.
• Raven has 30+ tools to help you get results in all of these online marketing tasks.
• Rio SEO is the best SEO platform to deliver global search success across Organic, Local Search, Mobile and Social Media for Top Brands & Agencies.
• Searchmetrics – Our search and social analytics software Searchmetrics Suite with data-based analysis and intelligent solutions enables marketers and SEOs to monitor and optimize national or international SEO actions and thus increase market share, revenue and profits.
• SEOReseller – a complete white-label solution for agencies and search consultants to provide both the platform, reporting, and even the services to their clients.
• Serpple – a tool to track keyword performance in SERPs. Includes competitive tracking and reporting.
• Serpstat – an all-in-one SEO platform with SEO Audits, Competitor Research, Backlink Analysis, Search Analytics, and Rank Tracking.
• SERPtimizer – SEO tool for link building, website audit, and keyword monitoring.
• SerpYou – clean and easy-to-use interface and is both fast and accurate.
• SE Ranking – a universal search engine monitoring system offering both hosted and self-hosted solutions.
• SEO Rank Monitor – Boost your rankings, Track your competitors, and monitor SEO performance with the most comprehensive rank tracking in the industry.
• Seo Site Checkup – Search Engine Optimization Made Easy. User-friendly analysis and monitoring of your site’s SEO.
• SEO VENDOR – A white label AI SEO for agencies with 10X better results. 
• SERPWoo – Monitor ALL Top 20+ Results For Your Keywords and get alerts when competitors increase their backlinks, social signals, rankings, and more.
• Shortlist – a simple tool to scale your link building faster.
• Sitechecker – Get a detailed SEO audit report with a personalized checklist and track your site’s ranking, visibility, and indexing progress.
• Siteoscope – keyword ranking, competitor tracking, social media analysis,, and automated reporting.
• SerpStat Keyword Suggestion Tool — popular keywords and their various forms used by people who are looking for interesting products, services, or information.
• SpyFu exposes the search marketing secret formula of your most successful competitors. Search for any domain and see every place they’ve shown up on Google: every keyword they’ve bought on Adwords, every organic rank, and every ad variation in the last 6 years.
• Tiny Ranker – Keep track of your rankings and on-page SEO efforts.
• Topvisor – Digital Marketing Products & Website Analytics Software. Try it out by tracking up to 200 keyword rankings for free.
• Unamo – Gain more traffic, improve your rankings and leave the competition behind.
• WebCEO – Search engine optimization and digital marketing tools for agency-level analysis, reporting, and lead generation.
• WebMeUp SEO tools combine the convenience of online SEO software with the data-richness only desktop apps could provide.
• What’s My SERP – WhatsMySerp’s free SERP checker allows you to check the top 100 Google search results for multiple keywords. You can use it to Analyze SERPs and to check your website position. 
• WooRank is a dynamic grade on a 100-point scale that represents your internet marketing effectiveness at a given time.
• Wordtracker offers Keyword Research tools for SEO and PPC, Rank Tracking, and Site Analysis tools.

Note: We do have affiliate accounts with some of these platforms and are using them in this article.