Essential SEO reporting tools digital experts can’t live without

A basic introduction to best free SEO analytics tools

A high-quality SEO reporting tool can make all the difference to the effectiveness of SEO. It can help you to measure progress, refine a strategy, and maintain an edge over your rivals.

Some tools come with a substantial price tag, and are aimed at agencies or bigger companies who have an elevated number of customers. Others are more competitively priced, while some are completely free.

With a wealth of reporting software to choose from, how do you choose the right one for your needs?

If you do not have a huge budget to spend on SEO, then finding a free or low-cost SEO reporting tool that delivers for you is vital.

Let’s take a look at some of the best, and most used, options available:

Google Analytics

Everyone who is serious about SEO should be using Google Analytics. This free Google resource collects information on how people use a website. At the most simple level it compiles data on the following:

Time of website visit
Pages visited and time spent on each page
Referring site details
Type of browser used
Operating system used
Technical information such as Flash version, JavaScript support, screen resolution/processing ability
IP address and location

There is no other source of data that can compete when it comes to quality and detail.

Because Google dominates search engines, and much SEO work is geared toward satisfying Google’s criteria, the information Google Analytics supplies is crucial. In fact, nearly all the important and actionable data about website traffic and visitors will come from there.

Anyone who wants to make their SEO more effective, and to keep track of their site’s performance, can’t manage without Google Analytics.

Google Search Console

SEO is the key focus of the Google Search Console. It provides some of the same information as Google Analytics but in a simple, and easy-to-understand way.

It offers less in terms of user input, but makes the data easy to access and make sense of.

Google Search Console includes a range of different datasets, with one of the most important and useful being the link data. This can assist you to identify any broken or spam backlinks that can see your site being penalised by Google.

Used in tandem with Google Analytics, you have a comprehensive set of tools with which to analyse and improve your SEO performance.

MozBar

MozBar is a widely used, and free, extension for Chrome that gives you easy access to link metrics and allows you to dig into a range of helpful information about your site. It shows the link metrics for pages and domains as you search, which can be helpful when seeing how you’re performing against your competitors.

You can also explore page elements, view search results from a different search engine, region, city or country, and view meta tags. A subscription option offers a range of extra features including unlimited page optimisation reports.

If you’re at the start-up stage, however, and can’t afford a subscription, the free version of MozBar offers a robust package of tools that can help you fine tune your SEO.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a powerful set of tools that can deepen your insight into your website’s SEO performance.

Although primarily a subscription service, some of its tools are available for free. It is a website crawler that gathers SEO elements from web pages for analysis, and then allows for their exportation to other programs such as Microsoft Excel. Once there, you can use the information to formulate a database of SEO recommendations.

Screaming Frog works well when it comes to analysing larger websites because it reduces the amount of time you have to spend undertaking manual website tasks. It can help you find broken links in sites, analyse meta data and page titles, find duplicate content, and then collect data from the HTML of web pages using CSS path.

Crucially, it facilitates integration with Google Analytics among its many useful and varied capabilities.

Bing Webmaster

With so much SEO attention focused on Google, it’s often forgotten that other search engines not only exist but are also prospering. Microsoft’s Bing, for instance, currently processes 12 billion searches a month worldwide!

Bing is Google’s main competitor, and Bing Webmaster is to Bing what Google Analytics is to Google. It offers a similar range of analytical tools, and can help you improve your SEO performance across a range of search engines, not just Bing.

Aqueous Digital is the SEO company of choice for ambitious businesses

Aqueous Digital is an award-winning, family-run digital marketing agency based in Cheshire.

We specialise in organic and paid internet search, website content strategy and reputation management for high and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

Trust, loyalty and collaboration are at the heart of everything we do — these are values we strongly stand by and never compromise.

Despite recent global economic and social challenges, our business is continuing to go from strength-to-strength and in July 2021, we won Best Small Integrated Search Agency at the prestigious Global Search Awards.

At Aqueous, we create comprehensive SEO strategies for our customers based on creativity and ethically sound industry best practice.

Call us on 0800 285 1424 or email us at hello@aqueous-digital.co.uk for a free audit of your website and to have a chat about how we can support the success of your business with our award-winning search engine optimisation.

Find out more about the SEO services we offer.