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13 SEO Tools for Beginners and Newbies, Start your Website with these SEO Tools

WebMeTools Team

January 2, 2024

There are a lot of online tools available on the internet that can be used by SEO personnel for different purposes. These tools can be used for conducting keyword research, content research, content optimization, and so on.

In this post, we are going to list 15 different tools that you can use for your various SEO endeavors. And since we are going to be discussing a diverse range of the same, we will talk about what purpose they fulfill in SEO before talking about things like features, etc.

Let’s get into it.

Hemingway Editor is, in simple terms, a text editor and a readability checker. You can use it to write some text out from scratch and then check its readability.

Since we are going to be discussing all these tools in the context of SEO, we should explain what exactly Hemingway Editor can do here.

Basically, when you are an SEO expert, you have to write a lot of stuff. You may have to write meta descriptions for webpages, the texts for the webpages, blog posts, outreach emails, and so on.

For all these types of content, you need to have a place where you can write it out and also check whether it is easily readable or not.

And that is where Hemingway can help you.

As you can see in the image above, there are a number of different options provided at the top of the input box. There is an option to bold the text, italicize it, and so on.

Thanks to these options, you can easily write out your content right in the editor itself rather than doing it on word processing software. If you have to, for example, write a meta description or something of the sort, you won’t have to worry about signing in and then opening the software, and then copying everything from there. You can do everything right there in Hemingway.

But of course, the formatting and styling options provided by this tool are very limited, so if you ever have to write something bigger, you will need to use proper software like MS Word or Google Docs.

Here are some of the main features that you can get with Hemingway:

Main Features

1. Multiple formatting and styling options
2. Points out readability issues like passive voice and long sentences
3. Points out content length statistics
4. Gives the content a readability grade from 1 to post-Graduate

As an SEO expert, you need to have a sound knowledge of popular trending keywords and topics. This can help you create content according to the trending topics of the time, thus maximizing your marketing efforts.

Take an example.

If you are going to write on a particular topic, you can first search it up using Google Trends and see how popular it is. You can also find detailed information about the topic in question, such as the region-wise breakdown and time-based stats, etc.

A useful feature of Google Trends is that it lets you compare different terms to determine which one is more popular.

Mind you, there are a lot of other features that you can get with Google Trends. We’ve briefly mentioned one of the main use that makes it suitable for SEO experts.

Main Features

1. Can be used for free
2. Provides data based on demographic areas
3. Provides relevant topics according to the given keyword
4. Allows users to save the provided data to their device

Yoast is essentially a plug-in for WordPress, but that’s not what we are going to be talking about here.

We want to single out the real-time content analyzer tool that Yoast provides, i.e., on its website, not as the WP plugin. The content analyzer can be highly useful for beginner SEOs.

Essentially, with the real-time content analyzer, you can analyze your content for readability issues and SEO content issues. For example, in readability issues, the tool will point out things like overly long sentences in your content and lack of transition words, etc. On the other hand, in the SEO content issues, will highlight things like the lack of focus keywords, images, links, and so on.

The benefit of using this tool as an SEO beginner is that you will be able to improve the quality of your content before finalizing it for use. And other than that, you will also be able to learn the best practices to stick to when writing content in the future.

Main features:

1. Is available for free
2. Doesn’t require registration
3. Provides an in-built rich text editor for entering text
4. Highlights all the issues one by one if you click on the eye icon in front of each

Just as Yoast exists in the form of an online tool and a WP plugin, Surfer SEO also exists as an online tool and in the form of different add-ons.

There are a couple of different things that you can do with Surfer SEO. In a nutshell, you can do the following:

1. Generate articles based on provided prompts
2. Create content briefs
3. Do keyword research
4. Optimize existing articles

Surfer SEO is a paid-only service as far as the online tool goes. However, the keyword surfer Chrome extension can be used for free.

So, how does this tool help SEO beginners?

SEO beginners often need to create and optimize content for different purposes. For example, they can be tasked with creating blog posts or with creating content for a particular webpage. In situations like these, they can take help from SurferSEO.

Main features:

1. Comes with a keyword research tool
2. Provides a SERP analyzer
3. Has an extensive content analysis routine (it measures content against 500+ on-page content factors)

Whether it’s short-form content like meta descriptions or longer stuff like blog posts, finding and removing grammar errors from it is vital. Even though it is conceded that Google doesn’t penalize grammar and spelling errors in content, there are a lot of other reasons that make their removal necessary.

Grammar Check is, in this regard, a very helpful tool for beginner SEOs. They can use this tool to get rid of grammar and spelling-related issues.

One of the best things about Grammar Check is that it is free to use, and it doesn’t require any signing up. Compared to other similar online tools, this is a welcome perk. Instead of remembering your sign-in details and using them every time you want to check for grammar errors can be a bit bothersome. But with Grammar Check, you can simply open the tool, add your content, check and fix it, and then download it back.

Another awesome thing about Grammar Check is that it can help beginner SEOs to improve their grammar while also actively enhancing the quality of their immediate write-ups. When pointing out the mistakes, the tool also provides a brief explanation for them.  This can be helpful for beginners in that they can learn to avoid those mistakes later on.

Main Features:

1. Free to use
2. Quick working
3. Gives options to collectively resolve or dismiss all errors
4. Color-codes the outputs to show different types of errors

There are different reasons why we’re mentioning Paraphraser (reachable with the domain suffix of “.io”). Once we introduce this tool a little, we’ll elaborate on those reasons as well.

The name Paraphraser aptly describes the nature and purpose of this tool. The tool rephrases the provided content using AI-driven algorithms. The AI integration in the functioning of this tool is one of the reasons that it has a special distinction amongst other tools of its ilk.

Paraphraser can be largely used for free without any type of registration. While there are some restrictions, they’re not that restrictive…at least in terms of the input capacity. The other restriction, i.e., the unavailability of specific modes, is much more hampering.

And while we are at it, the modes offered by Paraphraser are also one of its more remarkable features. While the availability of multiple modes is pretty ubiquitous in online paraphrasers, it is still a handy feature.

Now let’s talk about why this tool can be great for beginner SEOs.

If you are in SEO, you are probably are of plagiarism and what sort of havoc it can wreak on a website’s ranking. When a website is caught to be plagiarizing content, it can be de-ranked or removed from the index altogether. Although this development does require plagiarism to be substantial, it can occur even if the same is committed unintentionally.

This is the first instance in which Paraphraser can be useful. If you, as a beginner SEO, spot some plagiarism in your site’s content, you can fix it using this tool. Once the content is reworded, the exact replication will get eliminated, and the plagiarism will no longer remain.

Another way in which Paraphraser can be helpful for beginner SEOs is that it can help them make their written content better flowing and more readable. While this is often subjective to the quality of the tool and the type of content entered, it is something that you can achieve if the tool you’re using is smart and intelligent…which Paraphraser happens to be.

Main Features:

1. Smart AI-driven working
2. Free to start
3. Multiple modes
4. Easy-to-use

In the tool above, we discussed plagiarism and how it can be harmful to the SEO progress of a website. Plagiarized content is penalized by search engines, and it can bring about different issues for SEO.

Whenever any content is created for publishing on a website, one of the main processes that it has to go through is a plagiarism check.

A plagiarism check can determine whether the content contains enough amount of plagiarism to be penalized in the SERPs or not. If there does happen to be an alarming amount of plagiarism in there, there are different steps that can be taken for its elimination (one of which we’ve described above, i.e., paraphrasing).

This is where Check-Plagiarism comes in.

As is the case with Paraphraser, the name of this tool is eloquent about what it is and what it does. It’s a plagiarism checker, and it comes with a host of useful features. We’ll list the main ones below. However, above all, the best thing about Check-Plagiarism is that it provides accurate results, and you can rely on it to catch plagiarism in your content.

It works fairly quickly too, which can be a welcome perk for beginner SEOs considering they have to do a lot of different stuff in a short span of time.

Main Features:

1. User-friendly interface
2. Accurate results
3. Build-in citation generator
4. Provides URLs for matched sources

What you may have gleaned from the tools that we’ve discussed above is that content is used in SEO quite liberally, and writing tools make up a significant part of a beginner SEO’s tool arsenal.

Just as we have discussed Paraphraser and Check-Plagiarism above, we’re also going to talk about a particular tool called Summarizer.

But first, we’d like to talk about why a summarizing tool is important and helpful for SEO beginners in the first place.

A summarizing tool basically shortens the text it is given. It can be used by writers to create things like introductions, conclusions, snippets, and abstracts. It can also be used by SEO experts when they have to create short-form content like meta descriptions.

In any type of situation where a long piece of content has to be shortened, a summarizing tool can come in handy. And such situations can arise aplenty in SEO.

Now let’s come back to the tool itself.

Summarizer is an online AI-based summarizer. It works by analyzing the given text, choosing the most descriptive lines, and then putting them together. This is, in other words, an extractive summarization process.

There are different handy features that you can enjoy with this tool. For one, it allows you to upload document files directly from your local storage. It also allows you to set the percentage of the generated summary.

Main Features:

1. Quickly summarizes the text
2. Allows percentage selection of the summarized text
3. Let’s users view the summary in passage form, bullets, or the best line
4. Provides word count for both the input and output text

Frase is an online tool that shares some of its main features with Surfer SEO. You can use it to get content briefs and outlines. You can also use it to optimize your content and generate some from scratch.

This tool can be useful for beginner SEOs since it can help them create high-quality content. As we’ve mentioned above, beginner SEOs can often find themselves needing to write content for their blogs, site pages, products, and so on.

Frase advertises itself as a one-in-all content creation solution. There are typically four steps involved in writing content, which include research, creating outlines, writing, and optimizing.

This tool covers all four of these steps.

During the research phase, Frase provides information from the search engines. It shows your competitor’s content along with various SERP metrics. This can basically help you decide which data and information you want to use in your own content.

After that comes the outline creation. For this, Frase offers a feature where you can import headings and sub-headings from ranking content and use them as a base for your own write-up.

For the actual writing phase, you can use the AI generation feature and create content for your outline. And lastly, you can optimize said content for proper keyword adjustments.

This tool can generally be very helpful for researching, creating, and optimizing content. However, from our personal experience and even from the features/process adumbrated by the tool itself, we have to say that you shouldn’t totally rely on it. In other words, you should use this tool in tandem with other content generation and optimization tools.

Main Features:

1. Provides helpful metrics and stats from SERPs
2. Provides helpful insights about competitor content
3. Helps in adjusting a range of long-tail and short-tail keywords in the content

Answer the Public is one genuinely impressive tool that is not only useful for beginner SEOs but for SEO experts and content writers in general as well.

As far as the stuff you can do with Answer the Public goes, it’s not really diverse. But as far as the value of the stuff you can do with it goes, it’s immense.

To describe it in a nutshell, Answer the Public garners data from Google auto-completes and presents it along with various useful metrics. For example, if you look up the term “potatoes,” Answer the Public will give you different search queries related to it, such as questions, comparisons, prepositions, etc. (By “prepositions,” we mean queries that aren’t direct questions but are written using a preposition, e.g., “potatoes for babies” or “potatoes in Ireland.”)

The tool also provides useful information about the questions, queries, etc., such as the CPC, search volume, and the like.

Now, let’s talk about why this tool is useful for beginner SEOs.

For one, this tool can be a great help in keyword research. Using all the information provided by the tool for various search terms, beginner SEOs can garner a lot of LSI and secondary keywords.

Other than this, Answer the Public can also be a good tool for beginner SEOs since it can help them get insights about the particular needs and questions of online users. Beginner SEOs can create highly relevant and helpful content for their readers if they know what sort of questions they (the readers) are searching for on the Internet. 

Main Features:

1. Provides a large range of search ideas for the provided query
2. Provides different metrics and statistics for the queries
3. Free to start

Just as creating written content is necessary for beginner SEOs, the same goes for “visual” content like images, graphs, icons, logos, and so on.

These types of content can be necessary for website optimization, i.e., for making a website visually appealing. They also have to be added in write-ups like blog posts.

As a beginner SEO, the ideal solution for you to create such visuals and use them for your needs is to use a tool like Canva.

Canva is basically a design tool that allows users to use a large range of existing templates, visual elements, fonts, effects, etc., to create designs of their choice. Although there is a large number of elements and options that are available only to paid users, there is equally a lot of stuff that is available to free users as well.

One of the main things that make Canva ideal for beginners is its easy-to-use interface. You don’t need to have specific know-how about design tools if you want to create something using Canva. The functions and options are all intuitive – you can figure them out without any issues.

Main Features:

1. Hundreds of pre-made templates
2. Thousands of visual elements to choose from
3. Allows file importing and exporting
4. Allows file sharing and collaboration

There is a lot that you can do with Buzzsumo. Since we want to stick to the same brief pattern with which we have mentioned the other tools, we’ll limit our discussion to some of the main features that can be helpful to beginner SEOs.

Those main features include:

1. Exploring content ideas
2. Finding out user questions
3. Analyzing web content metrics
4. Analyzing backlinks of websites

For starters, getting content ideas can be a great help for beginner SEOs. As we’ve mentioned above, creating blogs is something that SEO experts often have to do. And during this process, creating ideas can often be time-consuming. This is something you can get help with using Buzzsumo.

You can also find out the questions that users typically ask about the product/service/topic, etc., that you want to work on. Answering these questions in your content can make it valuable and more rank-worthy.

Buzzsumo also allows you to see the metrics of content previously published on the Internet. For example, you can see how many shares a particular post/article on a website has gotten and how many links it has, as well as its total number of engagements. This can help beginner SEOs in determining what sort of things are likely to get content more shared, liked, and interacted with.

Acquiring backlink data can also be quite useful for beginner SEOs. Finding this type of data can help them plan their own backlinking strategy and also find out the standing of their competitors.

Main Features: 

1. Helps users find the most shared content
2. Helps users run content analysis on the topic of their choice
3. Helps users find trending topics
4. Helps users set up real-time monitoring

Writing blogs regularly can be tough – not on the actual writing part, but on the topic-finding part.

Coming up with new topics can be tricky. The more topics you cover, the fewer choices you are left with for the future.

To get some help in this process, i.e., choosing topics, you can use the Hubspot Blog Idea Generator.

The Hubspot Blog Idea Generator is a tool that generates blog ideas based on the nouns/keywords entered by the user. The standard list of five topics that it generates are somewhat generic and nonsensical, but the list of 200 ideas (which is unlocked after signing up) can be very useful.

To give it a try, we entered the keyword “potato,” and here are some of the titles that it gave us:

Granted, some of them don’t make sense, but they can give you some ideas and get your creative juices flowing.

Main Features:

1. Is available for free
2. Provides an option to download the blog ideas as a spreadsheet
3. It Also provides some free blogging tips

As a beginner SEO, you need to understand that your success lies in utilizing the right online tools. Even experts use them, but as a beginner, your need is even more emphasized.

There are many different tasks that you have to do as a beginner SEO. When mentioning the tools above, we have tried to cover different ones that you will need for things like keyword analysis, research, writing content, optimizing said content, acquiring insights about SERPs and searches, etc.

Also check the:

SEO Tools Free Trials: 8 Best SEO Software Trial

It can be a bit overwhelming as a beginner SEO to understand all these tools and bring them into your workflow. In the beginning, you can simply start with one analytics tool, one writing tool, one optimization tool, and one graphics tool. From our list above, that would mean starting off with Google Trends, Hemingway Editor, Paraphraser, and Canva.

Using tools like these will help you get your workflow straight. They will also give you an idea of how you can ease in the other tools in your arsenal as well.