Working as a freelancer is an exciting career choice that allows you to have freedom, build passive income, and work in a field that is truly exciting and innovative.
For freelance writers and digital marketers, developing a website and optimized content can be done successfully using the right tools.
To do so, they need to focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
So keep reading to find out the best SEO tools for freelancers!
Before we get into the tools, let’s talk a little bit about SEO.
Search Engine Optimization practices allow freelancers to develop content for websites that are perfectly optimized and can rank on Google search engine pages.
By using search engine optimization tools, you can be assured your page contains the keywords, information, and relevant content that people on the internet are looking for.
The benefits of an SEO-optimized page include:
- Better awareness for a business.
- More organic search traffic.
- Increase in sales, with an average 14.6% conversion rate for sales leads.
- Longevity so long as you continue to update your content to be perfectly optimized.
- Increase in trust for your pages.
- Better ROI since many SEO tools are relatively affordable compared to other digital marketing tools.
Using the right tools can help you develop content that is engaging, gets clicks, and helps you rank high on Google’s search engine results page by following its algorithm.
Below is a list of the best SEO tools for freelancers that can help you understand what content to produce to lead to better awareness for your clients or business, better sales, and an increase in traffic.
1. Semrush
Semrush is a comprehensive SEO tool that can help people conduct keyword research, as well as measure online ranking data such as:
- Volume metrics to understand how many people are actively researching your niche keyword.
- Cost per click to understand how popular a keyword is and if it’s worth the investment.
- Position tracking from rival sites so you can better understand your competition.
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is also one of the best SEO tools for freelancers.
It helps freelancers do keyword research, as well as develop backlinks for websites. Backlinks are one of the most important tools for developing your website into a successful marketing tool with organic traffic.
Backlinks can be thought of as the blue checkmarks on Twitter. When another website links to your blog, this means that this website has concluded your blog or informational article is:
- Remarkable
- Useful
- Well-sourced
- Authoritative
In doing so, Google has also concluded that your website is authoritative and therefore can be trusted enough to rank higher on its search engine results page (SERP).
Ahrefs has a feature that allows users to check on the backlinks in your niche. For instance, if a certain blog is being backlinked due to its content on adopting dogs, you can use this information to check on these backlinks and reach out to websites to create your own backlinks.
This can help grow your website and is an essential component of your digital marketing plan.
Ahrefs can also be seen as expensive, but it is a great tool for new website developers and freelancers that want to help grow their website and consistently update it to continue to rank.
3. Google Search Console
Google Search Console helps freelancers monitor their metrics by knowing where their website (to keep your portfolio, for example) stands in terms of SERPs.
It has features including a search analytics tool to measure key performance indicators, or KPIs, including:
- Total clicks to your website.
- Total impressions.
- Average CTR or click-through rate, which measures people that click on a specific link as opposed to emails or other websites.
- Average position in your niche.
Another good feature is the data highlighter tool, which can help organize data on your website and add tags to your website.
These tags can help make it easier for users to view your website and get an immediate snapshot of what they want on their Google search results page.
You can also view the data highlights and tags of other websites, which can help you make a decision to understand which tags to use to help your website also rank as well.
4. Moz
Moz is another comprehensive SEO tool that has recently emerged as one of the best platforms to help improve rankings.
Moz has a plethora of features to help freelancers improve their content continuously, as well as help newer freelancers understand how to make blogs and articles more competitive.
Moz does this through a tool called the “page optimization feature.”
This feature can give freelancers useful information, such as changing the content within an article to include more keywords in its article description, actual post, or even the headlines.
All of these are important factors that can determine whether or not a blog or article ranks, and changing these can help freelancers beat out other niche articles.
In addition, Moz also includes data that is up-to-date in regards to Google Algorithms. Google has stated that it changes its algorithms almost on a daily basis, around 500 to 600 times a year to be exact.
This can make it extremely difficult for freelancers to understand how to get their articles to rank, leading to wasted time and energy.
Moz can help by providing updated data according to Google’s latest trends.
5. Clearscope
Around 60% of marketers are committed to producing content for their business, and for good reason.
When people shop online, chances are they’re looking online for help and advice in choosing the best product for their unique needs.
As a business owner, it’s important you understand the buyer’s journey, meaning the journey from the time they think about purchasing a product, to the time they spend online looking for advice online, and finally to the time they decide to finally purchase a product and go through with the sale.
During this buyer’s journey, one of the most important components for a company to be successful will be producing content that is useful and helpful to a customer finding a product.
By producing content that is both useful and helpful (and that ranks high on Google’s SERP) your customer is more likely to:
- Trust your website.
- Use your company to complete their purchase.
- Go back to your website in case they need more information.
- Refer to your website for future purchases.
All of this is to say that content creation is a pillar of digital marketing.
Clearscope is an easy-to-use platform that aids in content creation and can help you:
- Choose the best keywords in your content.
- Know how many times to include your keyword.
- Know how long your content should be.
- Give you a grade that alerts you to how well-optimized your piece is (the higher the letter grade, such as A+, the better chance of your piece appearing on the SERP).
6. Answer the Public
All of these SEO tools are able to provide you with information on keywords to help you understand what content to produce, as well as understand what customers are searching for when they’re researching online.
However, all of these SEO tools, though powerful, do cost a bit of money in order to purchase and use during the month or throughout the year.
If you’re strapped on cash but still want to know what the public wants, Answer the Public provides keywords around your specific niche.
For instance, if you want to develop content related to cooking, veganism, or green energy, simply input that information into Answer the Public to look at related questions and brainstorm on producing related content.
7. Google Trends
When creating content, it’s not enough to simply create content that ranks, but also to understand how the content that you produce is trending among the public.
According to Business Wire, understanding trends can help your client or your own business understand:
- How it stands up to other companies that are ranking.
- Measure financial performance so you can understand whether the content you produce is being sought after by online customers or not.
- Measure whether or not your business will be profitable in the coming months.
Trends are always changing among consumers. For instance, some people might have been researching “charity organizations” and “Kony 2012” in the year 2012, but steam from this has dwindled in recent years.
This is just one example of how trends among online users can die down, making it important for freelancers to keep up with trends and create content that continues to be useful and benefits from organic traffic.
Google Trends will help immensely with this.
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Using these best SEO tools for freelancers is just one aspect of running a successful business to help create content that is perfectly optimized, experiences a good flow of organic traffic, and leads to high sales and increased revenue.
For more vital information, check out the top freelance apps that can help you stay organized and help you in your daily work!
When these apps and tools are used in conjunction, they can help accelerate your freelance writing business.
