30 Mac SEO tools to boost your website’s traffic

By

Ready to solve your SEO woes?
Ready to solve your SEO woes?

This post is brought to you by SEO PowerSuite.

Search engine optimization can make or break your website. And Google and other search engines’ constant tweaking of their algorithms means a “set it and forget it” policy can lead to disaster for your site’s SEO.

Luckily, there are plenty of DIY tools to help you boost and maintain your site’s search engine ranking. Some are free, while others come in a variety of paid versions to accommodate businesses of all sizes. All offer different tool sets to help you achieve various goals. The roundup below shows the key features and pricing info for 30 top Mac SEO tools so you can quickly and easily decide which one works best for you.

All-in-one SEO tools

SEO PowerSuite bundles powerful SEO tools into an easy-to-use package. Photo: SEO PowerSuite
SEO PowerSuite bundles powerful search engine optimization tools into an easy-to-use package. Photo: SEO PowerSuite

1) SEO PowerSuite

Features:

Pricing and editions: Professional: $299; Enterprise: $699. Both paid versions include six months of search algorithm updates. After a six-month period, a subscription (which starts at $8.33 per month) is needed to continue receiving updates. A free version is available with limited features.

2) Advanced Web Ranking Desktop

Features:

  • Unlimited keywords, websites, projects
  • Keyword ranking results, including local rankings
  • Integrated Google Analytics
  • Keyword research
  • SEO audit
  • Competition and link analysis
  • Social monitoring
  • SEO reports

Pricing and editions: Standard: $199; Professional: $399; Enterprise: $799; Server: $2,999. All commercial licenses include a 12-month maintenance plan. Extending maintenance for 12 months costs 30 percent of the license price. A 30-day free trial with all features enabled is available.

3) Market Samurai

Features:

  • Tracks search engine rankings
  • Finds relevant keywords and analyzes them in depth
  • Analyzes 10 top-ranked competitors for specific keywords
  • Locates keyword-optimized domain names
  • Suggests ways to monetize your site
  • Researches articles that are relevant to your keyword
  • Publishes content to the web
  • Finds backlink opportunities

Pricing and editions: A license costs $149. A free version is available with limited features (keyword research and domains modules only).

4.) WebCEO Desktop

Features:

  • Keyword research and analysis
  • SEO web page optimization
  • Submission to search engines
  • Managing PPC campaigns
  • Keyword ranking checks
  • Website audit
  • SEO reports

Pricing and editions: WebCEO Desktop suite costs $499, which includes three months of free knowledge base updates. Extension costs start at $8.83 per month. 30-day free trial.

5.) SEO Extract

Features:

  • Google ranking
  • Keyword and competition analysis, keyword strategy
  • Webpage analysis: structure, content, relevance
  • SEO Domain Analytics
  • Data import from free analytics tool Piwik; several domains can be analyzed to get bulk traffic data

Pricing and editions: Standard: $65; Professional: $169. A free version is available with limited features.

On-page SEO

Photo: WebSite Auditor
WebSite Auditor lets you check your site’s vitals. Photo: WebSite Auditor

6) WebSite Auditor

Features:

Pricing and editions: Professional: $124.75; Enterprise: $299.75. Both paid versions include six months of search algorithm updates. After a six-month period, a subscription (which starts at $3.05 per month) is needed to continue receiving updates. A free version is available with limited features.

7) Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Features:

  • Crawls, analyzes and audits a site from an onsite SEO perspective
  • Connects load of data, including page status codes, duplicate pages and URL issues, internal links (to a page, and from a page), canonical tags, page titles and descriptions, and more.
  • Generates XML sitemaps

Pricing and editions: A Screaming Frog SEO Spider license costs 99 pounds per year (app. $150). A free version is available with limited features.

8) iWeb SEO Tool

Features:

  • An on-page SEO tool for iWeb-based websites.
  • Adds Google Analytics or other analytical code to an iWeb site
  • Edits iWeb title tags
  • Adds important meta tags and ALT tags to iWeb websites

Pricing and editions: Free

9) SEOSpyder

Features:

  • Checks your site for broken links
  • Validates its HTML, RSS, CSS and JavaScripts
  • Tests the site’s speed
  • Sees your site’s metadata
  • Sees your page’s status codes (2xx, 3xx, 4xx, etc.)

Pricing and editions: A license costs $99.99. A free version is available with limited features.

10) Integrity

Features:

  • Checks sites for broken links
  • Checks images as well as internal and external links
  • Highlights problems
  • Provides support for soft 404s

Pricing and editions: Free (donationware)

11) RapidBot

Features:

Pricing and editions: A license costs 4.95 pounds (approximately $5.60). A free version is available with limited features.

12) Beam Us Up

Features:

  • Finds errors, e.g. signals if a title or meta description is too long, duplicate or missing
  • Exports crawl data to CSV
  • Sorts out duplicate site pages

Pricing and editions: Free

13) SEO Master Express

Features:

  • Provides recommendations on how to optimize your web pages for specific keywords
  • Displays scores for web pages
  • Suggests areas of improvement for your on-page SEO

Pricing and editions: A license costs $139.95. A free version is available with limited features.

14) GlyphViewer

Features:

  • Image-based SEO improvement tool
  • Recognizes, translates and exports image content
  • Optimizes images for search engines through translations

Pricing and editions: A license costs $49. A free version is available with limited features.

15) Reactivity

Features:

  • Tests your web page load speed and size
  • Sees a breakdown of each element with response time, load time and file size
  • Easily spot bottlenecks
  • See uncompressed and compressed size of files and so easily see the benefit of the server’s gzip service
  • See total page weight
  • Have multiple tests open at the same time

Pricing and editions: Free

16) WebCrusher

Features:

  • Optimizes HTML pages and image files up to 60%.
  • Compares your original webpage and optimized webpage side by side. Same works for pictures.
  • Chooses from over 40 website optimization techniques.
  • Publishes your updated website to your web server.

Pricing and editions: Free

17) Link Inspector

Features:

  • Checks Rapidweaver sites for broken links or unreachable links that are contained in standard HTML anchor tags.
  • Exclusions list, so you can exclude URLs from testing.

Pricing and editions: A license costs 15.99 pounds (approximately $25). A free version is available with limited features.

18) SiteOrbiter

Features:

  • Creates a graphical report on broken links, shows link relations on a visual map
  • Helps instantly understand website complexity and depth
  • Searches for particular web characteristics, such as number of links or HTTP data
  • Builds site reports

Pricing and editions: A license costs $9.99. A free version is available with limited features.

19) Smaller

Features:

  • Compresses your HTML, CSS, and JavaScriptfiles and make your website load faster.

Pricing and editions: A license costs $20. 30-day fully functional free trial.

20) Robotize

Features:

Pricing and editions: A license costs $5. A free version is available with limited features.

Keyword research and rank tracking

Photo: Rank Tracker
Rank Tracker performs an in-depth analysis of your site’s keyword ranking. Photo: Rank Tracker

21) Rank Tracker

Features:

Pricing and editions: Professional: $124.75; Enterprise: $299.75. Both paid versions include six months of search algorithm updates. After a six-month period, a subscription (which starts at $3.05 per month) is needed to continue receiving updates. A free version is available with limited features.

22) SERank

Features:

  • Checks keyword rankings in 100+ search engines
  • Finds out who outranks you for target keywords
  • Tracks ranking history, shows how you ranked at any point of time
  • Creates PDF reports
  • Google Analytics integration

Pricing and editions: Standard: $49.95 per year; Professional: $99.95 per year; Multi-platform: $29.95 per year. A free version is available with limited features.

23) RankGuru SEO

Features:

  • Tracks rankings in Google, Yahoo! and Bing (specification by language and country is provided)
  • Stores daily progress for keyword rankings
  • Exports rankings database to CSV

Pricing and editions: A license costs $4.99. No free version or trial.

24) Cute Rank

Features:

  • Checks rankings in 300-plus search engines (specification by language and country is provided)
  • Stores ranking history
  • Generates keyword ranking reports

Pricing and editions: A license costs $149. A free version is available with limited features.

25) SEOggestor

Features:

  • A keyword research tool that gets search-box suggestions from search engines (Google Autocomplete, Yahoo! Search Assist and such )

Pricing and editions: Free

26) SEOAuditor

Features:

  • Provides quick SEO stats for domain, including Google PR, Alexa Rank, Moz PA/DA and social metrics

Pricing and editions: Free

Link research and analysis

Photo: SEO Spyglass
SEO SpyGlass delivers key insights into your competitors’ linking strategies. Photo: SEO Spyglass

27) SEO SpyGlass

Features:

Pricing and editions: Professional: $124.75; Enterprise: $299.75. Both paid versions include six months of search algorithm updates. After a six-month period, a subscription (which starts at $3.05 per month) is needed to continue receiving updates. A free version is available with limited features.

28) Scrutiny

Features:

  • Performs link research
  • Generates XML / HTML / .csv / .dot sitemaps
  • Tests page load speed
  • Validates HTML
  • Checks spelling and grammar

Pricing and editions: A license costs $95. 30 days of free and unrestricted use.

Finding and managing link-building prospects

Photo: LinkAssistant
LinkAssistant helps you identify and manage link-building prospects. Photo: LinkAssistant

29) LinkAssistant

Features:

  • Search of link opportunities
  • Link management
  • Multiple SEO metrics for each link
  • In-built email client

Pricing and editions: Professional: $124.75; Enterprise: $299.75. Both paid versions include 6 months of search algo updates. After a 6-month period, a subscription (which starts at $3.05/mo) is needed to continue receiving updates. A free version is available with limited features.

Miscellaneous

30) SEIntelligence

Features:

  • Compares sites with competition, showing which areas in particular need to be improved to get higher search engine rankings
  • Provides off-page optimization reports, which include link analyses and insights on social media strategies used.

Pricing and editions: Free. The tool is no longer being developed, so support is not provided, but SEIntelligence is still available for download and use.

Conclusion: Good SEO starts today

Some people consider SEO a black art. It is complicated, and the search engines do change their algorithms maddeningly often, but it’s not so difficult that you must hire a professional to help your website rise to the top of search results.

Any of these DIY tools can help you boost your website’s ranking and increase the traffic you receive from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!

The most important thing is that you start addressing your website’s SEO needs now. Choose one of these Mac SEO tools that seems suited to the type of content your site contains, or the particular problem your site is facing, and get things squared away sooner rather than later.

The health of your website depends on it.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.