The Best SEO Software for Small Business
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What is SEO?
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What do SEO software tools do?
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The benefits of SEO software for small business
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Drawbacks of SEO software
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Final thoughts
We use affiliate links and may collect a share of sales or other types of compensation from the links on this page. However, we would never recommend products that we wouldn’t use ourselves.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is everything that digital marketers do to get their website at the top of Google search results. Expert SEO professionals can charge a lot of money for their services since they dramatically increase revenue for the companies they work with.
Taking the time to learn basic SEO best practices will be an invaluable skill. You’ll be able to rank your own websites on Google as well as charge clients a high hourly rate to do the same for them. And all the information you need to learn about SEO is available for free on YouTube and Google.
In fact, some SEO professionals make over $100 per hour working with clients. Some people, like Adam Enfroy, make over $300,000 per month using SEO for their business–that’s right… I said per month! That’s what’s possible with SEO.
Are you looking to do SEO for yourself or for future clients? Or maybe you want to start a copywriting business this year. You’ll need to know the best SEO software for small business and how you can use these tools to your advantage.
Continue reading to discover the most useful SEO tools available to digital marketers today and how to get started using the tools that the pros use.
What is SEO?
When we talk about SEO, we’re talking about ranking on Google search. While there are several other search engines on the market, Google has a 93% market share and many of the principles for ranking on Google also apply to other search engines.
The best (and easiest) way to do SEO for yourself or your clients is by creating articles and blog posts for your website to rank on the first page of Google–which is what this article is about.
You’ll need to publish at least 30 articles on a website if you want to see any results with SEO. Otherwise, there isn’t enough content on your site for Google to index, and no one will ever see your content.
You should also expect to work every day for at least 6 months before you start to see any type of traction with SEO. You’ll need to produce as much content as possible, and perfection is the enemy of progress.
Every article doesn’t need to mimic Hemingway or Emerson. As long as you include relevant keywords and your articles have a natural flow and no grammar mistakes, Google will index your content and start ranking your website on their search engine results pages (also known as SERPs).
This means you need to constantly produce articles for your website on a regular basis. Writing a few articles each month just isn’t going to cut it. You’ll need at least 3 full-length articles published on your website each week to see results with SEO.
SEO is also used in affiliate marketing and is one of the best ways you can make money by selling other people’s products. Check out this helpful article about how to get started with affiliate marketing and choose the best niche to make over $10,000 per month.
The best SEO software for small business
If you want to do SEO for yourself or future clients, you’ll need to know the reasons why SEO software tools are useful for small business. Below you’ll find the main areas of SEO and the software tools that you can use to be an SEO professional and charge for your services.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the backbone of SEO, and you’ll need to do plenty of it if you want to see any results with your SEO efforts.
Keyword research is the process of using data and SEO tools to discover search terms that are easy to rank for on Google and have high enough search volume to get traffic to your website. Without keyword research, you won’t know what your target audience is searching for and whether or not it’s possible to get on the first page of Google.
The best keyword research tools typically cost at least $179 per month and also come with other features like tracking your website and its backlinks over time.
While the monthly cost of keyword research tools is high, we recommend doing all your keyword research over the course of one month and then canceling your subscription so you don’t have to continue to pay the monthly subscription fees.
It’s important to understand that there are many different types of keyword research you can do. We’re talking about keyword research for Google, but there are also tools that you can do keyword research for YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Fiverr, Upwork, and many other services that use search engines to filter their content.
We highly recommend Moz or Ahrefs for your keyword research and you’ll find that these two often compete for the top spot of the best SEO software for small business.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO deals with everything that’s on the actual pages of your website.
On-page SEO primarily refers to the physical content of words on the page and how these words are optimized for search engines. Before you start using SEO software for your small business, you should know the key components of on-page SEO and how to do it yourself. Here is a great YouTube video that explains what on-page SEO is and how you can learn more about it.
On-page SEO also deals with the structure and formatting of your content. Believe it or not, Google can analyze articles and penalize you if your articles don’t read well or have poor formatting.
With on-page SEO tools, you’ll be able to find out which keywords to target and how often you should use them within your text. Tools like Surfer SEO recommend semantic keywords and can show you the optimal keyword density for the keywords you want to rank for.
Backlinks and off-page SEO
Backlinks are the links from other websites that point back to your domain.
For example, say you decide to write an article on the top 10 business schools in the United States. If someone from Harvard University sees your article and drops a link pointing back to your site, this is a perfect example of a backlink that shows Google you have high-quality content on your website.
Backlinks are essentially a form of currency in the SEO world. They are highly valuable and people will pay a lot of money for high-authority websites to include links to their sites.
In fact, I recently made $60 for including just one link pointing back to my client's website.
The article I wrote was about investing in silver, and my client has a website discussing different forms of currency. Since quarters were composed of 90% silver throughout the 1800s, I included a link to my client's website about silver coins and their history. My client happily paid me $60 for something that took me all of 2 minutes to do.
That’s the power of backlinks, and they’re one of the most important parts of SEO. The best tools to track backlinks and website authority are:
Moz
Ahrefs
Semrush
AI writing tools
AI writing tools are very new and take advantage of artificial intelligence to help with writing content for your website. These tools are starting to change the game for content writers since they help generate new ideas and can help format your content for search engines.
You’ll provide the AI with some target keywords and who your target audience is, and then the tools help you create new ideas and content you can use for your blog posts, social media accounts, email newsletters, and much more.
Say goodbye to writer’s block by using the following AI writing tools for your business:
AI writing tools help with coming up with new ideas and assisting those that want some extra help with writing. However, these tools aren’t able to write full articles on autopilot and the technology is still being developed.
Grammar, spelling, and plagiarism
Google’s algorithm is so advanced that it can detect spelling errors and grammar mistakes and will penalize your website if there are too many errors. They can also tell how well the article reads and if there is proper flow that makes your article easy to consume for readers.
So, you’ll need to make sure your writing is free of grammar mistakes by using a tool like Grammarly.
This free tool analyzes your writing and recommends changes to make your writing clear, concise, and the best it can be. Grammarly points out small errors that you may never catch, while also recommending ways to restructure your sentences so they are clear and easy to understand.
You can get Grammarly as a free tool, but serious SEO professionals will need to upgrade to a paid plan to take advantage of all the features that Grammarly has to offer.
Grammarly also has a built-in plagiarism checker to ensure you don’t get flagged for plagiarism before you turn in your work to your clients or publish it on your website.
Google’s algorithm can also detect duplicate content, so if you try to get away with copying someone else’s work, you should expect to get penalized by Google. Not to mention plagiarizing someone else’s writing is grounds for legal action and you can be forced to pay a hefty fine for trying to steal someone else’s content.
We also highly recommend using Copyscape to check your work for plagiarism as well. While plenty of writers use the ideas of others for inspiration in their own work, copying parts of someone else’s article verbatim is not accepted in this industry and can ruin your career if you get caught.
Graphic design
Google wants to see that you include pictures in your articles to keep users engaged and add some creativity to an otherwise plain page of text. Because of this, you’ll need to have a graphic design program that makes it easy to create visually stunning images that enhance the user experience of your articles.
We recommend using Canva for graphic design since it’s an intuitive tool that is easy to use for many people who aren’t technologically savvy enough to use tools like Photoshop.
Canva has tons of templates for images as well as tools to help you create eBooks, YouTube thumbnails, resumes, cover letters, flyers, and much more. You can also upload your own images and let your creative spirit shine.
What do SEO software tools do?
Without SEO, no one would be able to find you or your clients online. But what separates the pros from those that don’t know how to get started?
The pros use the best SEO software on the market today when working for themselves or with their clients on a regular basis. These tools allow them to perform keyword research and discover new and emerging topics that can get more organic traffic to their website.
SEO software like Surfer SEO can also analyze your on-page SEO and recommend different semantic keywords for you to include to get a better SEO score and rank higher on Google. It can also give you tips on how to structure your articles and use H1, H2, and H3 headings.
We mentioned that some of the SEO tools we went over also track the number of backlinks to your site and give you a domain rating (or domain authority) that shows the strength of your domain and how you can optimize your website for better SEO results.
The benefits of SEO software for small business
If you haven’t already noticed, there are plenty of benefits that you’ll get from using the best SEO software tools as a small business owner. Aside from the benefits we’ve already discussed, below are some additional benefits you’ll get if you decide to use the SEO tools we’ve recommended:
You’ll save time and money
You’ll get results with SEO much faster
You can work for multiple clients who need your SEO services
You can prove that you’re an SEO expert by using these tools
You’ll generate much more revenue with SEO tools
You can hire other people to write for you and scale your business
You can sell your services on freelancing websites like Fiverr and Upwork
Drawbacks of SEO software
While SEO software tools are an essential part of any digital marketer's business, there are some drawbacks that come with using these tools.
SEO software tools are expensive. Most SEO tools have a free version that doesn’t include many of the tools you need. You should expect to budget $300 per month for SEO tools if you want to do SEO for other clients.
The best SEO software for small business has a learning curve. Some tools like Ahrefs and Jasper.ai may be confusing for someone who doesn’t have experience with SEO tools. However, all the information you need to know to use these tools is available on their websites as well as on YouTube.
SEO still takes a long time to see results. You should still expect to spend at least 6 months on SEO for you or your clients to see results. Even with the help of the tools we’ve mentioned, results with SEO don’t happen overnight, and many people tend to quit before they see any real success.
Results are not guaranteed. Depending on your niche, you may be competing with big websites with high domain authority. Even the best SEO tools may not be able to help you rank for competitive keywords against established websites.
Final thoughts
Using the best SEO software for small business is the best way to see results with SEO and charge more for your services. If you can prove to companies that you can get them on the first page of Google and increase their sales, they will be more than willing to pay you for your services.
However, learning SEO best practices as a beginner can be time-consuming and difficult for someone who isn’t familiar with how SEO works and why it’s important.
Do you need help doing SEO for your business or want some additional resources?
Find out why Interphase Marketing is the go-to choice for people who want to see real results with SEO. We will work with you one-on-one to come up with a content marketing strategy to move the needle for you or your client's business.
Contact us today or send us an email at info@interphasemkt.com to get started.
Interested in learning more about partnering with us to grow your business? Contact us today to find out how to advertise with us and grow your business organically with the power of SEO.
-
What is SEO?
-
What do SEO software tools do?
-
The benefits of SEO software for small business
-
Drawbacks of SEO software
-
Final thoughts