By increasing the number of people who see your site, you can grow your audience and increase sales. In June, some 16 billion explicit core searches were conducted on desktops alone, according to ComScore.
But SEO is about more than just traffic. It helps you find the people who are actively looking for the products or services that you provide.
Web analytics firm Kissmetrics provides a great example of what that means: Let's say a site that sells custom-knitted sweaters includes a lot of content about the types of yarn used to make the sweaters. As a result, the site mistakenly uses “yarn" as a keyword.
However, people who are looking to buy yarn probably do their own knitting, which means they aren't the right customers to attract. Instead, the site needs to be visible to customers who want to buy sweaters.
So how do you find the right keywords for your business? Think about the products and services you sell, the related content on your site, the problems you solve for customers, and the reasons people search for your business. What search keywords or phrases would you use?
And don't worry – you don't have to navigate these waters on your own. Below is a video that covers five great SEO tools to help you choose the best keywords and content to make your site a beacon for anyone searching for the products or services your business provides.
Moz is a tool to help you improve rankings and search engine visibility for your site or store. It offers a fully stocked toolbox to help you master SEO.
Moz can audit a site's content to reveal best-performing topics, authors and page types (such as videos, blog posts or lists). It also features tools to help diagnose technical SEO issues and research keywords to see how valuable they are.
Price: $99/month + Free 30-day trial
2. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is the official connection from your site to Google. Best of all, it's free and easy to use.
The tool can audit sites for errors, rate keyword performances, and test how well Google can understand your content. It can also provide alerts for critical errors and help you deal with security issues for your site.
Price: Free
3. Google AdWords Keyword Planner
Here's another freebie from Google that is one of the best tools for researching keywords. Need inspiration? The Keyword Planner can help search for keyword ideas, tell you how competitive they are, and suggest other related keywords for your site.
The tool can also provide historical statistics on keywords as well as traffic forecasts for how they might perform in the future. However, recent changes to the tool may obfuscate some of the keyword data for low spending accounts. If you run into this it may useful to try other solutions like Moz Keyword Explorer or Ubersuggest.
Price: Free
4. Site Booster
Site Booster puts your site or store on the map, publishing your business information in multiple search engines, review sites like Yelp, mobile apps and location sites like Google Maps and FourSquare to help your site show up in local searches.
This tool also integrates with Weebly — and you can easily find it in the Weebly App Center.
Price: $0 to $59 /year
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo helps analyze what content performs best across different topics and among different competitors.
You can also find top influencers who are talking about your industry and get alerts on topics that are important to your site.
Price: Free to $99/month and up
By using SEO tools, you can help users find your website more easily. Its an effective way to increase your business and attract potential customers.
Still have questions? Find everything you need to know about SEO here. Signup or log in to get started.