*This post was updated on August 6, 2024.
If your e-commerce site isn’t getting the organic traffic that you had hoped for, an SEO audit might be in order.Â
Of course, you could attempt to do the analysis for each part of the SEO audit manually, but be prepared to not have access to key data points. It’s recommended that you get yourself a suite of SEO analysis tools to help you with each area of the audit.Â
The right SEO analysis tools can help you see the full picture of how your customers behave on your website and what leads them there. You can also use them to track your progress and find out how your competitors use SEO to respond to consumer patterns. Ultimately, they are well worth the investment.Â
We have compiled a list of our favorite SEO analysis tools that can help you detect all hosts of issues with your Ecommerce site and find ways to rectify those for better SEO performance.Â
Best SEO Tools for Different Areas of the Audit
Some SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs are designed to facilitate all parts of the audit, although you will still need additional data points from Google Search Console and Google Analytics to see the most accurate picture. Others like Screaming Frog are best for a specific function such as auditing internal links.Â
Ones that are designed for a specific function often do a much better job at that than generic full-suite SEO tools.Â
Which ones you ultimately choose will depend on factors like:Â
- What area of your website needs to be addressed most urgently
- Your budget
- What you are hoping to achieve from the audit.Â
Here are 6 dependable SEO analysis tools you can use for your e-commerce site:
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an excellent comprehensive SEO analysis toolset you can use to check backlinks, competitors, keyword rankings, and more.
Some of its key features include:
- Site Explorer: A tool to assess your website and those of competitors. It helps you identify their top-performing pages to discover potential topics to cover. You can also analyze traffic, backlinks, keywords, and ads.
- Keyword Explorer: A tool to analyze the difficulty of ranking for your preferred keywords. It helps you refine your keyword research.
- Site Audit: A free tool to check your technical and on-page SEO issues. It also provides details on how to fix your problems.
- Rank Tracker: A tool for tracking your keywords. It also tells you how many times you appear in featured snippets. Additionally, you can check the pages that are ranking for different keywords.
- Batch Analysis: You can use this tool to assess up to 200 backlinks at once. Bulk analysis saves you time when vetting your competitors. You can also use it to identify the best guest posting sites.
You can use Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools for free to access features like Site Audit and Site Explorer. However, for comprehensive analysis, you’ll need to choose from its four paid plans.
Save for the relatively pricey offers, Ahrefs is an excellent toolkit for most SEO analysis needs. Plus, it offers many detailed reports even with the entry-level plan.
2. Semrush
Semrush is another all-in-one toolkit for SEO analysis. You can use it for keyword rank tracking, on-page, local, link building, and competitor analysis. It also supports social media, ad, and content management.
While this tool is similar to Ahrefs, Semrush shines in various areas like:
- Keyword analysis: Semrush provides details like count in SERPs and keyword search intent. You can also see keyword clusters and the number of ads for a given keyword. Moreover, Semrush offers comprehensive rank tracking and daily position updates.
- On-page and technical SEO analysis: Semrush offers comprehensive technical analysis, including identifying robots.txt format errors. Its internal link distribution report is excellent for analyzing your website authority. Also, you’ll see recommendations about your strategy, backlinks, SERP features, semantics, and content.
- Off-page SEO: You can use Semrush to analyze your off-page SEO and get reports like backlink toxicity. Backlink toxicity indicates backlinks that may be hurting your site’s reputation.
- Local SEO: An excellent feature of Semrush’s local SEO is keyword assessment. Semrush shows you keyword metrics like difficulty, volume, and search intent for your preferred location.
Semrush has three pricing tiers for its SEO toolset, starting at $139.95 for one month.
You can also try Semrush’s one-week free trial.
Overall, Semrush is a user-friendly advanced toolkit that shines especially in technical SEO analysis. However, the free plan doesn’t provide a detailed analysis, and paid options are pricey.
3. Moz
Moz is another tool for comprehensive analysis. It allows you to assess your keywords and link-building efforts and perform site audits to improve SERP visibility.
Some of Moz’s top features include:
- Link Explorer checks your backlinks, linking domains, top pages, and anchor texts. You can also use it to analyze where your competitors are sourcing their links.
- Keyword Explorer: This feature includes three tools: SERP analysis, Keyword Overview, and Keyword Suggestions. It helps you analyze keyword search volume. Predictive keyword metrics like CTRs and difficulty help you find suitable keywords.
- Rank tracking: Moz keyword tracking varies by pricing. The entry-level pro plan allows you to check positions for up to 300 keywords.
- Site crawler and audit: You can use Moz to identify technical issues like missing title tags and broken redirects.
- MozBar: This is an excellent Chrome extension for checking real-time metrics for any page on the go. It offers insights into on-page elements, keyword difficulty scores, and link metrics. You can also see snippets of features like page speed and meta tags.
Moz offers free and paid (Moz Pro) options starting at $99 monthly. Its medium and standard paid plans also include a full-month free trial.
In sum, Moz is a great choice, especially if you want to assess keywords. Additionally, its MozBar feature allows you to analyze your competition quickly.
However, it would be better if they provided more in-depth site crawling reports and higher rank-tracking limits.
4. Google Search Console
You can set up Google Search Console to measure your site’s search traffic and performance. This free tool can help you analyze keywords, server errors, security, and site loading issues.
Some of its top features include:
- Search Analytics: These reports help you assess your site’s performance and traffic changes over time. You can see the keywords that attract the most traffic to your site. You can also check the pages with the most and least click-through rates.
- HTML Improvements: This tool highlights site issues and how to improve them. It uncovers problems with your title, meta descriptions, and non-indexable content.
- Fetch as Google: This feature can show how Google renders your pages. Comparing how a customer sees your page and how Google does is crucial. It can help you identify why a page you think is perfect is ranking poorly.
Overall, Google Search Console is a must-have for any website that does SEO. Not only do you need it for submitting sitemaps, it’s the only tool that can give you the most accurate overview of your own site in the SERPs. You can also figure out why some of your pages are slow to be indexed and what other issues Google bot faces while rendering your website.Â
Its key shortcomings include a 16-month limit for historical data and limited backlink information.
5. Google Analytics
You can use both free (GA4) and paid (Google Analytics 360) versions of this tool for SEO analysis. Google Analytics is suitable for analyzing user demographics, groups, URLs, links, and conversions, among other reports.
Some of its key features include:
- Audience analysis: This feature tells you about visitor interests, demographics, and more. It can help you vet your SEO efforts to see whether they meet your visitor needs. You can also gauge whether you’re attracting the right people.
- Path Exploration report: This feature can help you identify the pages users visit before encountering a bad URL. You can use it to identify broken links.
- Exploration: This feature can help you identify browser compatibility issues. This may be the case if you notice a high bounce rate and low engagement for a given browser. Likewise, a significantly lower conversion rate in one browser could indicate a broken cart for that particular browser.
- Tech details report: This report can tell whether your site is not working on some devices. For example, you may notice low conversions and engagement from mobile users. This may imply that your site isn’t mobile-friendly.
The only key shortcomings are a steep learning curve and Google Analytics 360’s insane price (from $50,000 annually). Luckily, the free version is adequate for most small and medium businesses. You’ll be fine with GA4 if you have 500,000 sessions monthly or less.Â
6. Google PageSpeed Insights
Page speed is one of the key things a technical SEO audit focuses on. Google PageSpeed Insights is an excellent free tool for this assessment.Â
It analyzes your site’s performance on both mobile and desktop devices. It also suggests how to improve load times and enhance your user experience.
Google PageSpeed Insights rates your page speed on a scale of 0 to 100. According to Google, a page speed of 90+ is good, 50-89 could be better, and under 50 is poor.
You can also see a breakdown of how Google PageSpeed Insights arrived at this score through recommendations.
Google PageSpeed Insights shows your website’s speed performance across metrics like:
- Time to First Byte
- Largest Contentful Paint
- First Input Delay
- Interaction to Next Paint
- First Contentful Paint
- Cumulative Layout Shift
Pagespeed Insights shines for its quick and free processing and nicely outlined reports. However, some suggestions are difficult for non-developers to understand.
Best SEO Tools for Different Use Cases
The most affordable tools:
The best tools for technical SEO:
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Google Rich Results Test
- Google Search Console
- Screaming Frog
- Semrush
- Yoast SEO
The best tools for keyword tracking:
The best tools for link-building efforts:
The best tools for competitor analysis:
At Vizion Interactive, we have the expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to get results and keep clients happy! Learn more about how our SEO Audits, Local Listing Management, Website Redesign Consulting, and B2B digital marketing services can increase sales and boost your ROI. But don’t just take our word for it, check out what our clients have to say, along with our case studies.