As a business owner, investing in the right search engine optimization (SEO) strategies can make a real difference between a successful business and one that is trying to keep afloat.

SEO is critical skill in the modern business world. Hiring SEO personnel, or bringing in companies offering integrated digital marketing solutions, can be costly. Thankfully, there are some great tools out there to help you to kick start your SEO tasks.

If you know nothing about the subject, it may be better to outsource it to a company offering search engine marketing services in Dubai.

If you have some understanding and are keen on learning more about it, we have highlighted a few online resources that can help you gain a better understanding of how to take advantage of SEO to maximise profit.

1. Google Ads Keyword Planner (free)

Keyword plays a major role in every SEO effort. By identifying potential keyword and tactically using them in your pages you can capture the attention of search engines. Keyword planner can also be used to find topics related to your industry and those that are not being currently addressed by your website and create content related to those topics.

Google’s free tool does a basic keyword analysis with dashboards for monthly traffic for various keywords, along with the competition faced by each. It also tells you the keyword your website is ranking for.

Advantages

• Provides a wide range of keywords related to your business
• Can uncover keywords omitted by you but are used by your competitors
• Provides a refined search with respect to location, language, country etc.
• Can link web pages to correctly identify the corresponding keywords the pages are ranking for

Disadvantages

• No provision to find unique or untargeted keywords.
• Keywords are limited to the ones used in Google search engine and not others like Yahoo or Bing.

To find other profitable keywords, should resort to other keyword research tools like KWFinder.

2. SEMrush  

For small businesses that want a tool that can do all keyword related processes, including keyword research, on-page auditing and rank tracking to link building and pay-per-click (PPC) SEMrush is an excellent choice.   

A major advantage offered by SEMrush is that you can find the keywords that your competitors use to increase traffic to your website. You can this to choose your industry related low competition keywords for your own website. 

Advantages

• Excellent choice for on-site SEO services in the Dubai region, as well as idea generation and keyword research
• Identify your competitors site traffic and rankings
• Provides PPC keyword recommendations if you plan to use advertising on search engines
• Includes position monitoring, backlink tracking, data visualization and many more

Disadvantages

• Backlink reporting should be enhanced as not all links are registered
• Does not have keyword list management features

3. Moz Pro

Moz Pro is a complete set of tools for SEO. It provides a set of functionalities including keyword research and management, search engine ranking and visibility, site error analysis, SEO opportunities identification, reporting and optimization.

Advantages

• Ideal for keyword research, generating reports and visualization
• Easy to follow the ranking of your website as well as your competitors
• Conducts website crawls and audits
• Customized reports and automated reporting
• Maximizes existing link building assets and also finds new opportunities

Disadvantages

• Features like keyword explorer needs improvement
• Website audit capabilities are not resilient
• Low and sluggish crawl test limit

4. Google Search Console (Free)

This free tool from Google helps you analyze your website, make your web pages Google-friendly and attain higher page rankings.

Google Search Console is a comprehensive tool that helps you to index your website, provides accurate information about the search traffic, updates for technical status, finds errors and URL parameters. 

Advantage

• An excellent choice for basic site auditing
• Aids Google in understanding the site structure
• Displays your website’s current metrics and suggest ways of improvement
• Conducts a webpage index auditing and suggest ways to improve it
• Remarkable page speed insights feature

Disadvantage

• The HTML error list is erroneous
• Grouping keywords and pages and tracking performance not feasible
• Useful for only Google search engine
• Crawl errors requires better guides/explanation on ways to resolve

Thus, according to your needs and budget, you can always resort to one or more of these SEO tools to get the best result.

You might want to play around with these tools. Find out what suits you or not. You may want to use a single or more than one. The tools offered by Google are free, and other tools offer a free trial.