Meta descriptions, content marketing, link building, analytics; there are dozens of factors that go into building successful SEO strategies for your clients that get results. 

Luckily, gone are the days of handling all of these many, many factors manually. There are a ton of tools on the market designed to help your agency create effective SEO strategies that get search engines to notice your client’s website — and rank it higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

As you might imagine, SEO tools are among the most valuable instruments for digital marketing agencies wanting to improve website rankings — for themselves and for their clients.

But with so many SEO tools on the market, choosing the right one to meet your agency’s needs can be confusing. Which have the features you need for your SEO projects? In this article, we’ll cover eight of the best SEO tools for agencies to get you started.

Your guide to SEO project management

Your guide to SEO project management

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Ahrefs is a robust SEO solution packed with functionality that handles many of an agency’s tasks. Some companies use this app as their only tool for managing their overarching SEO strategy while increasing search volume. With several tools under the Ahrefs umbrella, it’s like getting a handful of tools in one.

Credit: Backlinko

Credit: Backlinko

  • Site Audit tool to audit and optimize website SEO

  • Explorer tool to perform competitive analysis

  • Keywords Explorer tool to identify keyword ideas driven by prospect searches

  • Rank Tracker tool to track your company’s search engine placement

  • Access solutions that address multiple areas of your SEO efforts with this broad-scope tool. 

  • Review everything quickly and accurately with the SEO dashboard.

  • Research content ideas and target link-building opportunities.

  • Monitor your search engine ranking performance (SERP) metrics with the robust reporting offered.

  • Sheer breadth of the software (with its many moving parts) results in a significant learning curve

  • Keyword feature can become pricey for companies tracking 5,000+ keywords

  • On-page SEO features aren't intuitive.

Ahrefs offers a 14-day plan for their AgencyAnalytics portion. Pricing starts at $12 per month per client campaign with the Freelancer package. The most popular package, the Agency package, costs $18 per month per client campaign. The top tier, the Enterprise package, is priced on a client-by-client basis, depending on your specific needs. 

Companies wanting to double down on content marketing success need Clearscope in their arsenal. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to use Clearscope: Much more than a keyword research tool, this SEO service guides content creation with much less time and manual effort required on your team’s part. After all, spending valuable time creating content should result in the highest return on investment possible. By capitalizing on AI-powered technology, the software offers intuitive keyword recommendations that make every piece of content more relevant.

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  • Grading system shows where your piece ranks compared to top-ranked content

  • Easy access to the best, most relevant keywords, with the keyword tool prioritizing them in a list

  • Seamless integration with common content creation tools like Google Docs and Wordpress

  • Reading level score for tailoring content to your specific audience

  • Tap into keyword suggestions that help you write content that ranks.

  • Increase organic traffic to your website.

  • Understand which short and long-tail keywords you should use to compete with top-ranked content.

  • Make finding your content easier for your audience by ranking it higher in search engine results.

  • Pricing may hinder access for small companies with limited budgets

  • No system in place for flagging poor SEO practices, like keyword stuffing

Clearscope simply lays out its pricing. The lowest package available, Essentials, costs $170 per month and includes one user, 10 content reports, and 20 content inventory pages. The mid-range and enterprise packages, Business and Enterprise, are custom-priced based on individual company needs.  

Born from the Google we all know (and most of us love), no list of the market’s best SEO tools would be complete without Google Search Console (GSC). Chock full of functions, one of the biggest ways it can help agencies is by improving technical SEO. Using GSC offers numerous ways to increase your website performance.

Credit: Search Engine Land

  • Allows users to submit website sitemaps and individual web page URLs to GSC so they can get the attention of the Google crawler

  • Shows which queries are driving traffic to your website with Search Analytics

  • Gives users alerts about website issues (like broken links) that Google identifies

  • Provides access to detailed crawl, index, and serving data about your web pages with the URL Inspection tool

  • Makes sure Google has the most recent version of your website by reviewing your index coverage

  • Maintains your website’s health and promptly addresses issues that could affect your website tracking and your organic search ranking

  • Improves your site’s mobile friendliness by using the customized reporting tool

  • Gives users a clear understanding of how Google views their websites

  • The keyword search protocol can be confusing.

  • Some features only work well with other Google tools like Google Analytics.

Luckily, a low budget won't be an issue with this marketing tool; GSC is a free tool offered by Google. To have access, all you need is a Google account.

Auditing your website has never been as easy as it is with Sitebulb. This is another website-crawling tool that offers tons of benefits to your SEO strategy. Its thorough SEO audits are easily absorbed because of data visualization features.

  • Audit Comparison lets users track trends and changes over time.

  • Intuitive design helps you understand the “why” of the reporting.

  • State-of-the-art crawling technology enables you to crawl any website

  • Communication feature allows agencies to communicate clearly with clients using visual tools, spreadsheets, and PDFs.

  • Makes it easy to understand the data you collect and how it impacts your website and SEO

  • Provides recommendations with detailed, client-friendly explanations

  • Focuses on the most critical SEO issues first with the tool’s built-in prioritization

  • Uses reports to pinpoint website issues like duplicate content, check readability scores, identify vulnerabilities, and identify traffic gaps and orphan pages

  • Lacking filters that could be used on the structured data 

  • Insufficient in-depth explanations for complicated recommendations

Sitebulb’s Lite package is $135 per year, which includes one user and 10,000 URLs per audit. The other, most popular plan is the Pro, which is $378 a year. The Pro starting price includes one user, 500,000 URLs per audit, and many more features available than the Lite plan. Additional users are $65 per year.

Link Whisper earned its spot on our list because of its incredible usability and feature-rich platform. An internal linking tool that helps users reach their SEO campaign goals, Link Whisper saves companies time and money while improving the SEO rankings, increasing organic traffic, and elevating the visitor experience.

  • Artificial intelligence that shares recommendations as content is created

  • Autolinking that builds links from input keywords, letting you automatically link to them in past and future content

  • Link reporting to control your site structure by keeping track of your internal and external links and identifying any broken links or errors

  • Helpful internal link suggestions to rank for target SEO keywords

  • Speeds up the process of internal link building, so you can start enjoying the ROI

  • Quickly identifies orphan web pages and offers recommendations for internal links

  • Easily fixes broken links that may harm your website health and stump crawlers

  • Avoids duplicate work by pulling keywords you already use in other plugins

  • Requires a bit of time to learn how to use it

  • Link suggestions can be confusing

Link Whisper starts its pricing at a one-site license for $77, then moves to a three-site license for $117, and then a 10-site license for $167. The software offers additional prices for enterprise accounts.

Yoast is an SEO plugin (and the most-used WordPress plugin) that marries usability with spot-on effectiveness. Companies serious about increasing search engine rankings want this tool as part of their SEO campaign plan. In addition, several helpful add-ons improve local SEO, video SEO, and more.

Credit: WP Support Desk

  • Automated technical improvements that decrease time-consuming, manual work

  • Templates for titles and meta descriptions that encourage consistency

  • Readability analysis reviews content for human and bot consumption and understanding

  • Dedicated SEO roles help more efficiently manage your team

  • Produces a superior user experience and improves bounce rate 

  • Optimizes content for different forms of targeted keywords and key phrases

  • Sends automated internal link suggestions for linking to new content

  • Decreases website load times with data management in WordPress

  • Needs more tutorials to help users get the most out of the plugin's features

  • Lacking an automatic boilerplate generator

  • Insufficient social media previews

Yoast offers a free plugin that has an impressive array of features at no charge. The next pricing level is Premium, which is $99 a year. The top pricing tier, the Plugin Subscription, is $229 per year.

Trusted by brands like Apple, Amazon, and IBM, Semrush is a popular SEO tool with several functions, from keyword research and competitor analysis to content marketing, link building and backlinking, and beyond. It’s an all-in-one platform that delivers valuable, actionable insights into how your client’s content stacks up to the competition via analytics and reporting features.

Credit: Backlinko 

  • Content optimization based on competitor analysis

  • PPC keyword research to better reach target audience intent

  • Competitor PR monitoring to give insights into audience sentiments and your client’s competitive landscape

  • Market analysis to stay ahead of shifting or changing trends

  • Local SEO optimization to better target customers for local services

  • All-in-one SEO platform

  • In-depth insights via auditing tools

  • Easy to set up

  • Free trial available

  • Expensive; free trial functionality is very limited

  • Too many front-loaded features; overwhelming for beginners

Semrush has three plans, with a limited seven-day trial period for all three: Pro for $119.95 per month; Guru for $229.95 per month; and Business for $449.95 per month. If none of those options fit the bill, they also offer a custom, quote-based plan.

Effectively managing your SEO strategy is a big job with lots of moving parts. It’s worthwhile to invest in SEO tools that follow search engine algorithms and work with them to help you create high-ranking content. With the right tools, you can ensure that your clients’ websites are well-optimized and set up for success — from competitor analysis to SEO reporting and beyond.

Leaning on a comprehensive, intuitive project management software solution like Teamwork makes your SEO projects more streamlined while helping your clients achieve faster, better results. 

Trust the platform created by agency owners to keep your company on track, communicating, planning, and measuring the results of your SEO plan: Contact Teamwork to get started today.