Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

Many posts on this forum mention tools but some are self promoting. I just want to compile a list of sites where one can use to obtain SEO/competitive intelligence insights? (Better if there are free ones out there).
For starters, I like using Google's AdWords and Google's Trends.
What do you use?

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Dani AI

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Good set of starter suggestions — the thread already shows the two right moves: decide what you want to measure and balance free vs paid tools. As recommends, pick the analytic category first (search visibility, technical, content performance, backlinks, conversions). For free/self-hosted thinking, and flagged the control trade-off; commercial solutions mentioned by and make sense once you need automation at scale.

A compact, repeatable workflow to apply right away:

  • Define 2–3 business KPIs and 3 leading SEO indicators (e.g., impressions for target queries, CTR, goal conversions).
  • Run a baseline: search visibility export, a full site crawl, and a short log-file sample to see what bots actually request.
  • Prioritize quick wins: pages with high impressions but low CTR; thin pages that rank; pages failing page‑experience thresholds.
  • Fix technical blockers (indexation, redirects, status codes) and validate with a second crawl/log check.
  • Track changes for 30/90/365 days and A/B title/snippet changes where applicable.

Key metrics and how to interpret them: impressions, clicks, CTR and average position are the core search‑visibility signals and belong in the starting report. () Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) are measured on field data and judged at the 75th percentile — use those thresholds as triage gates for page‑experience work. () Server log analysis reveals exactly which URLs bots crawl, how often, and which responses they see — invaluable for crawl‑budget and migration debugging. (screamingfrog.co.uk)

A note on link metrics and markup: domain‑level authority scores are proprietary and computed differently by providers, so use them comparatively (not as absolute targets). (help.ahrefs.com) Structured data follows the Schema.org guidelines and should be added where it meaningfully improves how results are shown. (developers.google.com)

Quick triage checklist for drops: check recent site changes, inspect performance in the search visibility report, scan server logs for spikes in errors, and prioritize pages with big impressions but falling CTR.

Recommended Answers

All 11 Replies

Member Avatar for ArvindSharma

First you let us know which kind of analytic you want to do, like related to keywords, on page, traffic, and general coding

i am mentioning here soe tools which i used :

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal (for keywords)

(for coding and design analysis)

www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ (for coding and design analysis)

www.google.com/analytics/ (for traffic)

(for seo analysis)

Member Avatar for textbox

Both SEO Elite and Keyword Elite from Brad Callen are very good.

Member Avatar for kzvikzvi1

piwik.org is a open source PHP based web analytics tool. If you want your data to be NOT hosted with external host then it can be really worth ...

Member Avatar for KristineCage

piwik.org is a open source PHP based web analytics tool. If you want your data to be NOT hosted with external host then it can be really worth ...

Hmmmmmm This sounds good.. :)

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

Wow, that is a good list. Thanks. I will also add using quantcast to get a glimpse of behavioral demographics and keywords that drive traffic to other sites.

Member Avatar for mrandrei

To analyze my competition, I rely on SEO Elite. For keyword research, I use the free Google keyword suggestion tool. When it comes to analyzing stats, Google Analytics is the best tool out there.

Member Avatar for probryan

Its really critical that you do SEO Analytics correctly so you get google juice & more traffic...

I recommend that you buy Market Samurai or Keyword Elite to do SEO Analytics, this tools would really help with complete this task easily & effectively...

Member Avatar for begamo

I am using Google analytics, WebCEO, Compete, Quancast and different Firefox Addons.

Member Avatar for Angela12

I have used piwik.org and it is little bit confusing to me.

Member Avatar for Techie08

I've used quantcast before as well, but I didn't really care too much for it. I like analytics, but I really like , it gives you tons of information you can use for sales leads and such.

Member Avatar for snapshot

All of the tools are excellent but at the end of the day, you would be launching your browser and then manually check your rankings in the search engines.

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