15 Best SEO Reporting Software Tools in 2021

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a webmaster looking for the best SEO reporting software tools to give you a competitive advantage. Around the web, there are numerous software tools paid and free that help reduces your time on task, takes out much of the manual work, and allows you to determine metrics that are otherwise impossible.

Whether you’re a local business trying to generate more leads or a digital agency looking for various KPIs of clients’ websites, there are numerous tools to help get your SEO campaign on track.

Having good SEO tools is imperative for extracting any information helping you create a more efficient, effective SEO campaign.

There are literally thousands of tools at your disposal, but this guide details the 15 Best SEO Reporting Software Tools in 2020 broken down by free and premium tools that every website should be considering right now.

Why Every Business Should Be Using SEO Reporting Software Tools

Unless you live in the stone age, every business should be using SEO reporting software tools to simplify and scale a business. Sure, much of the hard work you can have someone doing manually, but you’ll find that using tools will save your team about 90% of their time while delivering results that are accurate.

You’ll find that using tools will:

Save Time and Money on SEO Audits Manually

Whether you’re an agency or business owner, conducting regular SEO audits is a must if you’re looking to improve your current progress. Conducting these white label audits manually is a time-consuming, pain-stacking, and extremely laborious task. Sure, you can do it, but when you take into consideration that time is money, you’ll find that conducting these audits is not only expensive but more times than not, inaccurate.

Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and SEM Rush all provide comprehensive SEO audit that is extremely accurate. You can conduct one-off audits or schedule this to be done automatically, weekly or monthly on an ongoing basis. Some tools even automate the process of emailing out the audit to a client if you’re an agency.

These website audits will provide a wealth of information giving you plenty of data to improve upon including:

• Missing or duplicate page titles
• Missing or duplicate meta descriptions
• Page titles or meta descriptions that are too short or long
• 404 pages
• Backlink information
• Poor content length
• Page server errors

Reveal Competitor Strategies

One of the best ways of improving one’s SEO is understanding what your competitors are doing right and look for opportunities you’re missing out on. Many of these SEO software tools give you the chance to conduct a comprehensive competitor analysis providing data in backlinks, keywords, PPC, and much more.

For instance, looking at a site’s backlinks may reveal link-building opportunities and other key metrics like anchor text, where the links are coming from, the age of the links, and their authority. You can also find 404 backlinks, create content and reach out to the business and provide your content in hopes of getting a backlink.

You can also gain numerous keyword ideas you may not have thought of. By spying on your competitor’s keywords and their ranking position, you can create content around these keywords that you may be missing out on helping you increase organic traffic.

Improve Content Marketing

Content marketing is and always will be the #1 SEO strategy that should be highlighted in every SEO plan. Understanding the searcher’s intent is key in improving content marketing and creating and distributing that content in a manner that gets noticed either through organic, paid, or social media.

When creating content, always ask yourself if your target market is:

• Looking for free information
• Looking for a solution to a problem
• Looking to buy a product

You can help meet the needs of searchers by understanding their intent and improve upon existing content or creating new content. Always look for low-hanging fruit and keyword variations for lower competition and higher search volume terms.

Premium tools like Ahrefs and SEM Rush are the best at keyword analysis while looking at your own or analyzing keywords from your competitors.

Track Key Performance Indicators

What good is introducing great content and reformulating your entire SEO plan if you’re not tracking your current progress? Creating key performance indicators (KPI’s) and tracking your current progress to show what is and what is not working.

I know, I know, sounds trivial, but you’ll be amazed how many businesses have not identified their KPI’s and are not tracking their own metrics to understand where they’re at. KPI’s are business specific and depends on goals which may include:

• Keyword rankings
• Backlinks
• Domain authority
• Social media engagement
• Sales
• Downloads
• Signups
• Traffic

When looking at improving KPIs, it is important to look at all factors and across all relevant platforms. Just because you’re converting well using Facebook ads doesn’t mean you’re converting the same using Instagram ads.

Visualize and Better Understand Data

We’ve all been there and looked at tens, hundreds, or thousands of reports only to be confused and not understand what we’re looking at. This type of data can be the same way, but fortunately for all of us, there are several SEO reporting software tools that can better visualize and conceptualize data making it easier to understand.

Many of the premium SEO tools below will automatically turn your data into easy-to-understand, engaging, and visually appealing graphs and charts. While it’s easy to overlook as being something to consider when choosing an SEO reporting software tool, it’s something you should always consider if you’re wanting to better understand the software’s data.

We recommend trying out the free tools below first if you’re just starting out with SEO before moving on to premium tools.

Best Free SEO Reporting Software Tools

When it comes to running a business, there is no better word than the word FREE. For most, the following free SEO software tools will be more than enough to get started and all should be integrated into every SEO plan.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to make a few tweaks here and there, consider these if you’re looking to improve your SEO, netting you more organic traffic, without spending a dime.

Google Analytics

It’s no wonder the biggest name online has its own SEO reporting software, and because of this alone, you know it works.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are the first two free SEO tools that every website should add. Some of the many benefits of Google’s analytics platform include:

• 100 % FREE
• Easy to set up, even for beginners
• Analytics API for advanced users
• Integrates with Google Webmaster tools and many 3^rd party software’s
• Extendable with Google Analytics Add-one
• Data can be exported
• Create customizable reports
• See how site visitors are finding your website
• See where site visitors are coming from
• Analyze, track and improve bounce rate
• Market segmentation
• Create and track goals
• Competitive analysis
• Track keywords
• Monitor social media channels

…and the list goes on and on.

Bottom line is, if you’re not learning and taking advantage of what this free SEO software has to offer, you’re leaving a wealth of information on the table.

You’ll need a Google account to create a free account which only takes a few minutes.

Visit Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools

Another must-have if you’re looking to improve your organic SEO is Google Webmaster Tools. Another free tool that provides a whole lot of data for absolutely nothing to include:

• Improving HTML like title tags and meta descriptions. Creates an automated report that shows duplicate meta descriptions and titles or descriptions and titles that are too long, too short, or missing
• Fixing indexation issues
• Noting keywords, keyword variations, and significance of those keywords currently found on the site through the eyes of Google
• Submitting and updating the sitemap
• Permanently remove URL’s from Google’s index
• Set your preferred domain – www., http., https
• Check manual actions imposed by Google
• Check internal links and links to your site

Most people rely on this free SEO tool to improve the technical aspects of their website and improving many on-page factors to increase organic traffic.

Visit Google Webmaster Tools

Ubbersuggest

Ubbersuggest was purchased by one of the biggest names in the SEO world, Neil Patel. Since Neil purchased this tool his team significantly expanded it helping it become one of the best free SEO software tools on the market.

It’s a free keyword finder tool allowing you to uncover keywords and better understand the search intent behind them.

It’s as simple as typing in a domain name or keyword and you’ll instantly get key metrics like search volume, organic SEO difficulty, paid SEO difficulty, and CPC. Breaking the data down a bit more you’ll also find out the average amount of backlinks and domain score for web pages ranked on the 1^st page.

Visit Ubbersuggest

Answer the Public

With most free SEO tools getting their data from the Google Keyword Planner, it’s nice to see an SEO tool that gets data from elsewhere, as long the data is good. This is where Answer the Public comes in fetching real data in the form of questions that are being asked by real people.

This robust, yet simple SEO software scours the net finding relevant, real questions from various forms, discussions, social media, and blogs. You can use these questions to answer pain points by real people on the internet and structure your content accordingly by turning these questions into keyword-rich content.

The best part about this free tool, besides being free, is through vs keywords. You may be surprised how many people are searching for “X vs. Y” keywords in Google like:

• Samsung Galaxy S9 vs Samsung Galaxy S10
• SEM Rush vs Ahrefs
• WordPress vs Shopify

Not only do you get popular questions, but you can be directed to specific pages in Google that answer these questions. From there, you can create beautiful FAQ pages, only better, or create engaging and well-written content and rank higher in SERPS.

Visit Answer the Public

Best Premium SEO Reporting Software Tools

Premium SEO Reporting Software Tools extend on features of many of the free tools and are best suited for more experienced users. The free tools are great, but many have limitations and don’t let you get down to the nitty-gritty of what it takes to take a business to the next level.

The following premium SEO tools are perfect for agencies and small businesses alike and all provide the best, most efficient means of improving your site’s SEO structure to improve organic traffic.

Ahrefs

With Ahrefs being the 2^nd largest crawler second only to Google, it’s no wonder why it makes this list. Being one of the biggest names in digital marketing, Ahrefs is always mentioned among the top SEO software tools of the year.

There is numerous feature that makes this complete marketing suite of software tools standout including:

• Keyword research
• Rank tracking
• Competitor analysis
• Backlink analysis
• Viral content research
• Analyze top-performing content

Ahrefs is a must-have if you’re running a digital agency and highly recommended even if you’re not. Where this tool standouts out from the rest are the ability to find amazing backlink opportunities. Its competitive analysis tool is the best out there.

Visit Ahrefs

SEM Rush

SEM Rush is one of the most robust SEO reporting tools on the market today and is reflected in its full suite of features. With plans starting as low as $99/month to custom pricing on their Enterprise plan, SEM Rush can accommodate any SEO business, large or small.

SEM Rush is dubbed as the all-in-one marketing kit, and when you look at their features it’s easy to see why. Accommodating everything from e-commerce to enterprise businesses, they have a list full of features to enhance everything from social media to market research.

Some of the best features make it easier to:

• Analyze your market
• Monetize your target audience
• Conduct keyword research
• Keyword tracking
• Analyze social performance
• Improve content marketing

Unfortunately, there is no free plan, but SEM Rush does offer a 7-day free trial.

Visit SEM Rush

MOZ

MOZ is an SEO toolset that’s all-in-one intended to help users boost their search engine ranking. There’s a free version which is more than enough for small businesses with features for:

• Keyword research
• Finding backlink opportunities
• Analyze searches and site metrics using the MOZ bar
• See how your local business appears in local search
• Analyze domains and see metrics instantly

MOZ Pro is a paid version and is best suited for businesses looking to take their business to the next level. The Pro version specializes in measuring site and competitor traffic helping you improve SERP rankings generating more traffic.

MOZ Pro is also one of the best SEO software tools for agencies with its robust custom reporting option. There’s a drag and drop editor which makes creating custom white-label reports simple and you can schedule reports to be automatically sent to clients.

Visit MOZ

Sprout Social

Social media marketing may not be directly linked to optimizing a business for search engines, but it has a huge indirect link. Sprout Social helps businesses build and grow stronger relationships through social media making it easier to connect and engage while building a bigger brand.

Some of the best solutions you can achieve using Sprout Social include:

• Making it easier to understand your audience
• Scheduling content publishing across multiple networks
• Monitor and respond to multiple social accounts through one inbox
• Monitor trends and make informed brand decisions
• Robust social analytics helping drive strategic decisions

Visit Sprout Social

Mangools

Mangools offers five different SEO software tools helping business owners with keyword research, analyze websites, analyze ranks, analyze SERPs, and keyword tracking.

I especially love using this tool for the ability to find long-tail keywords with ease. From a single seed keyword, you can find hundreds of long-tail keywords along with a competitive score that’s accurate when compared with other tools. There are numerous filters that make it simple to turn thousands of long-tail keywords into a refined list ready to target.

Highlight features include:

• Local search results
• Analyze various SEO metrics of competitors
• Keyword tracking
• Keyword difficulty score
• Preview backlink placement
• Domain authority checker
• Check backlink quality
• Calculate the impact of rich snippets
• Advanced filters

Their prices are very competitive to other SEO tools in this list with prices ranging from $29 – $79/month and cheaper for annual plans.

Visit Mangools

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is one of the best free SEO software tools and is a must-have for anyone looking to cash in on missing opportunities. This advanced tool crawls the internet and analyzes websites for various SEO elements. It’s also become one of the most popular free tools for link building.

Most analysts say that The Spider Tool allows you to find 99% of any SEO issues. Once identified, these issues can easily be fixed to improve your rankings and overall performance.

Some of the highlight features include:

• Create an XML Sitemap
• Audit backlinks
• Find 404’s
• Find missing or duplicate meta tags
• Find redirect chains
• Identify trailing slash issues
• JavaScript mobile SEO audit

It connects seamlessly to other SEO tools including many in this review like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Majestic, Moz, and Ahrefs.

The free version of the Spider Tool allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs for free which will be enough for most. There’s also paid version with an annual fee of $149 if you’re needing more.

Visit Screaming Frog

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is another great SEO tool that takes reporting to a whole new level. The platform is a must-have for digital agencies looking to increase conversions and customer engagement and specializes in lead nurturing and truly understanding the customer’s journey.

For webmasters looking to home in what they’re doing best and better optimize what they’re missing out on. The analytical prowess of Kissmetrics is hard to replicate with other tools and the built-in tracking features help provide some of the best insights with customer sessions compared to other SEO reporting software tools.

Most who have used this tool will say it’s not easy to set up and has a steep learning curve. In the beginning, this has been a huge deterrent for some, but businesses who have been willing to put in the time have been able to create more engaging customer campaigns based on data-driven insights.

Visit Kissmetrics

Whitespark

If you’re running a local business website, then you must have heard of Whitespark. If not, then it’s no wonder why your website isn’t getting the attention it deserves.

Whitespark is easily the #1 SEO service with a full suite of tools and fully managed services built to take your local rankings in Google to a whole new level. Their service was created to help local businesses get more customers from Google and according to the thousands including some of the biggest brands out there like Expedia, Marriott, IHG, Staples, and more, it really works.

They offer a wide range of services including:

• Finding and building citations
• Tracking local SEO rankings
• Increasing reviews
• Reputation management
• Google My Business Management

Whitespark has numerous uses for those looking to step up their local SEO game, but their fully managed services are where they really stand out. This helps business owners concentrate on running their business while letting a reputable, experience and one of the most prominent local SEO services handle their online success.

Their fully managed services include:

• GMB Management – improve listing quality, enhance engagement, increase leads
• Citation Audit and Cleanup – Fix, improve and assure that citations meet quality guidelines including consistent NAP across business directories
• Citation Creation – create industry-specific, geo-targeted citations manually
• Aggregate and Correct Data Inconsistencies – make sure all data online is consistent

Visit Whitespark

SpyFu

Just as their name suggests, SpyFu allows you to spy on competitors.

SpyFu not only allows you to check out your competitors. It offers a great keyword research tool allowing you to see searches per month, ranking difficulty, and much more.

Some of the most notable tools allow you to easily:

• SEO and rank tracking
• PPC competitor analysis
• Keyword research
• Backlink outreach

For most people starting out, there’s a free version that has plenty to offer allowing you to save hours of manual keyword research. Once you grow out of the free plan, there’s a paid plan

Visit SpyFu

Majestic

Majestic is a great option if you’re looking to improve the amount and quality of backlinks. There’s no denying that backlinks have a huge impact on search engine rankings and their proprietary suite of software tools gives them an edge over other software tools when it comes to crawling and analyzing backlinks.

According to this review from PCMag:

“The company has systematically built a number of tools to help sort, analyze, and transform that data into usable SEO metrics for businesses, along with publishing a number of its own custom “flow metrics” to gauge URL influence and trust.”

While not a full suite of SEO tools in one like others mentioned on this page, Majestic does have numerous resources intended to help with:

• Submit URL’s to search engines for indexing
• Site metrics including trust flow, citation flow, inbound links, anchor text, internal links, referring domains, referring IP’s, backlink history and breaks down backlinks by external, supplemental, and inbound
• Bulk analyze backlinks up to 400 URLs at a time
• OpenApps allows you to connect to numerous 3^rd party applications
• Group websites into campaigns

There are numerous pricing plans starting out at $49/month up to $399/month API plans intended for developers and agencies.

Visit Majestic

Tubics

With YouTube being the 2^nd largest search engine and owned by Google if you don’t have video marketing in your SEO plan you’re missing out on valuable customers.

Tubics takes all the guesswork out of video SEO. Thousands of marketers, agencies, and businesses alike capitalize on their ability to improve rankings in Google and on YouTube with some seeing a 25x improvement.

Tubics allows you to easily create branded videos, improve description and title, SEO optimization tips, track keywords, tag suggestions, and has an intuitive dashboard with real-time SEO and analytics reporting.

Its ease of use and setup make it popular for newbies with advanced reporting options perfect for agencies and professional marketers.

They have a range of monthly plans to choose from from $39 to custom plans for Enterprise clients.

Visit Tubics

Conclusion

When it comes to tools for SEO reporting, there are numerous free and paid software options out there to choose from. If you’re looking to improve your content marketing, social media marketing, or video marketing, any combination of the above should be included in any SEO strategy.

Whether you’re an agency, business owner, or freelancer, using the right tools will save you time, money and generate more prospects helping you grow your business online.