When someone asked me on LinkedIn what tools I use to do SEO and in my day-to-day, I was just randomly throwing different tools around which didn’t make much sense. So I thought o curate a list of tools I do use and have used them in the past and found useful.
Site Audit, Keyword Research, Competitive Research
Both are true Swiss-army knives of SEO. I like specific things about both the tools so I often try to maintain access to both.
Keyword Research
I found KeywordChef’s keywords output more comprehensive than tools like Ahrefs & SEMRush. I often use the keywords from this tool for Keywords Clustering.
Keywords Clustering
After my keyword research, I used to use KeywordInsights to cluster the keywords based on SERP Similarity. However, since I started doing it at scale, I wrote my own SERP based clustering script since it’s a bit more affordable that way.
Creating Content Briefs, Writing Content, Managing Content Production Efforts
I have tried various tools like PageOptimizerPro, MarketMuse, SurferSEO and finally settled on Frase.io. I love Frase.io all the way. I have Life Time Deal with them, and it’s just fantastic. With all of my consulting arrangements where content production/development is needed I often recommend this tool. I haven’t used other tools lately, but satifsfied over all with he tool.
Analyzing GSC Data, Running Experiments
Ad-hoc Crawling, Technical SEO Issues
This is needed anytime during my day so I always keep it handy. Over the years the tool has gotten so much better with all different API integrations as well.
Chrome extensions like Detailed SEO are something I use multiple times a day. While Web Developer and View Rendered Source are used when I am trying to debug any rendering issues.
I use it daily to check Crawling/Indexing Issues, Daily Spot Checks, and Specific Research around a topic/page.
It was called DataStudio before. It offers integrations to GSC, GA and Google Ads. I love building reports, and tracking metrics in Looker Studio. For my consulting arrangements I do
I love using Merkle SEO Tools for debugging Technical SEO issues. Most notable tools i use often are Robots.txt Validator, Fetch & Render, hreflang Tag Tester.
It’s similar to Merkle but I love Desktop/Mobile Link Diff. I also use Fetch & Render if sometime Merkle is blocked on some servers.
When I design JSON-LD schema for any page, I often resort to using Schema.org Types Viewer and Schema.org Types Viewer to craft beautiful and clear schemas.
Google Colab is a very versatile tool I use to bring automation ideas to life and build a proof of concepts. I have built many workflows that I use pretty much everyday.
GSC API can be useful for Reporting as well as URL Inspection work. Most of my adventures in GSC has been with reporting.
For automation, you need a robust API that helps you scrape SERPs from Google with lot of parameters like Device, Location, Features, Types of Search etc. ValueSERP fits all the criteria for me. It has become integral part of my workflow.
At times, I gather keywords/search queries from multiple sources where volumes aren’t associated with it, such as Google Search Console or Google Auto suggest etc. At those times, KW API comes in handy to overlay Volume data.
I’ve written a script that helps me cluster keywords using SERP. It costs me $2.5 for 1000 keywords to get clustered. I’m in process of making it an API so everyone could use it.
I used to have MailChimp for my newsletter(which I don’t write often) but now I have moved to Substack for the same. It’s still WIP but my next letter will be from there.
I find Notion as a great place to structure my thoughts, keep sanity and maintain my work documentation. Especially useful when you have multiple versions of Python Scripts going on at the same time.
ExcaliDraw is my go-to whiteboarding tool for brainstorming or organizing my thoughts. But where I need to collaborate with another team member I choose Miro. Lately I have started using Miro for seeding ideas for Keyword Research as well.
Been a user of Calendly but lately moved to Cal.com because I found it to be offering multiple Meetings Link, and it’s opensource.
I use Visual Studio code to write code, Github to store my repositories and Github Desktop to manage it.
I’m a self-taught web developer so I found Heroku to be the easiest to deploy my Flask & FastAPI Application.
Initially I tried using MySQL with Flask but I was confused between multiple libraries. Then I stumbled on MongoDB. The guide from W3Schools was enough for me to get started, and MongoDB Atlas was free so there I adopted MongoDB.
When I launched SearchBlendAI, I felt the need to use background workers. Learn Celery and Redis at that time. I’m still not expert but that’s my go to for the background workers.
Flask is something I’m getting better at. I feel much more confident now, and I’m building ActionableSEO with it. I do have one project with FastAPI and I occasionally spinup Streamlit apps for smaller workflow for other teams.
Since I’m not a big Javascript fan, I discovered HTMX, and use it for simple interactivity that Flask lacks Out of Box. Bootstrap is not sexy looking like Tailwind but that’s what I stick to.
I render Plotly Charts on the server and send HTML to templates for Visualizations. Works well for me. For the tables with data, I really like DataTables for the same. Lot of out of box features.
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