Helping Hand SEO

Did you know that Google itself offers website owners free SEO tools to help their sites rank better? It’s true and I’ll show you 5 of the best ones.

I personally use these same 5 on all my sites and while there are a bunch of other ones available from both Google itself and other services out there (here’s some examples), we’re going to keep it simple and make sure the ones on this list stick to the following checklist:

• They need to be free.
• They need to be provided by Google officially.
• They need to actually help with SEO.

And with that checklist…

Here is the list of 5 SEO tools (free) from Google:

Now before I breakdown each one and explain how they help, I know there will be some of you who understand this topic and know about other options, that will wonder why I’m not including them (The Keyword Planner is one example). Here is why:

• I’m a minimalist when it comes to SEO tools and the following 5 I picked are essential in my experience.
• Second, some of the other options available, aren’t really that good (the keyword planner is bad).
• With the other options, also from Google, I feel like there’s other companies that provide better options.

Details on each one (And why they help with rankings):

I’ve got some additional good news about this list before I give you the explanations and that is some of these options need only be used once, but that one time you install or use them plays a vital role in SEO, and all of will be explained. Let’s get started.

1) Webmaster Tools (AKA Search Console).

One of the first things I do when I start a new website is that I head over to Webmaster Tools and verify that site with them. This service is incredibly important for many reasons:

• It helps Google see and understand your site more intimately.
• It helps you see exact keywords that your page ranks for on Google (see 4 other options too).
• It helps you see how much traffic your pages get from those keywords that are ranking.
• It offers you services such as warnings and updates on how your site is doing organically.
• It allows you to manually get Google to crawl your page faster (the second option on this list).
• Just having the search console connected with your site already offers your site more trust from them.
• Having it also provides you with a lot of amazing information and progress reports on organic rankings.

2) Fetch. 

This feature is a special part of the search console that deserves it’s own mention on this list and the reason why is that it actually improves the speed of ranking by letting you manually tell Google to crawl your page when it’s published (or updated and it needs to be analyzed more quickly for ranking).

I have explained here why using fetch helps cut down on ranking time and the main point is that for most people with new websites, crawling happens very slowly and when you implement the fetch tool, you can cut down on what takes days and weeks from Google to do, to about a few hours. 

One thing to note is that your page, when new will be stuck in a specific “trust stage” known as the sandbox which can last up to 6 months. But never the less, even when it’s in it, make sure to always fetch new content you publish to save on the crawling time, it may actually cut down on that 6 month time when you post more content and fetch it every single time.

When the site gets out of the sandbox (you will know because your organic traffic will basically start going up and you will see that through the search console), then you will start seeing Google crawl your site faster, but never the less, I would still advice using the fetch method. I have a number of authority sites and to this day, I still use the fetch option when new content is published. 

3) Analytics.

This is one of the options on the list which indirectly will help improve your organic rankings. The analytics program is also free, and is set up by first getting an account with it, getting a code from it, and putting that code in the proper place in your website.

If you have plugins like the All in One SEO, it makes putting in that code very simple.

But regardless, what this program does is that it carefully analyzes people who visit your website and how they interact on it (time on pages, which pages they visit, and so much more). The data you get from all of this will help you make more intelligent SEO decisions.

For example, if I see that a certain page I wish to see rank higher organically is:

• Not getting a lot of people to it.
• Or the people aren’t staying on it for longer.

Then I can use that data and do the following things:

• I can interlink other pages on my site to the specific page I want to see more traffic on.
• I can improve the content on the page to make it more attractive (quality improvements), causing the users to stay on it more.

Both of these changes would have positive effects on the page’s SEO and ranking and it would be thanks to the analytics program that I’d be able to see the faults and make the changes.

And on the note of changes and improvements to pages, I have a 15 point guide on this, where if you follow these points, you can basically optimize any page on your site to help it rank as best as it can organically, on every search engine (Bing for example).

4) Running a mobile friendly test.

There are many website platforms, all of which have their own list and choices of templates. But many of them aren’t updated and certainly not mobile friendly, which is an important piece of SEO.

Most sites these days will get close to or even more than 50% of all their organic traffic from mobile devices and if your site’s template is not optimized to show effectively on mobile devices, it can actually cause Google to lower the ranking of that page on the mobile devices. 

This is why Google released a free site known as the mobile friendly test, where all you need to do is visit the site, plug in the site’s URL, hit “test” and see if it comes up green or not. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to change it and that is actually simple. Here’s is how mine looks when using this test (and how yours should look too):

Should you find yourself in a spot where your page is not mobile friendly, simple do the following things:

-If you don’t already have it, use the WordPress platform, as it is considered the best for SEO and most sites that place high on Google carry this. 

-And second, WordPress carries 1,000’s of templates, and most of them are already mobile friendly. If you install a template which isn’t, simply change it to one that is by running it through the mobile friendly test.

The great news is that this service needs to only be used once (unless you decide to change to another theme and don’t know if it’s mobile friendly or not).

5) Site speed test.

This tool is important as it helps test the speed at which your website loads. Faster loading means better organic positioning, shortly put.

Test your site’s speed here. If you find that it’s slow and in need of speed improvements, consider improving your site’s hosting plan. Here is how mine currently looks:

An 86 score isn’t bad at all, but it could be better. You should note that site speeds fluctuate also. Sometimes your hosting could be going through a change or lag, during which time, the speed your page loads may be decreased. But if you have a decent hosting account, this is usually not going to be an issue.

But do note that hosting does impact SEO (here is why).

This is also a tool you can use again and again freely to make sure your site is optimized and running quickly.

Have options of your own you’d like to share?

While I personally use these 5 tools on my sites, there are others I also have, which are not made by Google, which is why I did not include them on this list. But if you have your own single or list of tools you use for your sites that you know helps with rankings, do share them below!

Having SEO success on Bing isn’t all that different than having it on Google. If you follow the 10 techniques I will be giving you, you should get ranked high.

In fact, before we begin, allow me to prove that these SEO techniques work. What I am about to show you is a ranking report I ran through a keyword tool that tracks my site’s rankings on Google, Bing & Yahoo. Here is the report:

There’s a few things I want you to notice:

1) First, if you don’t understand these numbers, it’s actually pretty simple to…

All I did was that I entered my website URL into the tracking tool, and also entered the keyword so I could see where my site is ranked on each search engine. If my results show numbers under 10, that means my website is ranked on the first page. By the way, if you’d like to get info on how I track rankings, here you go. In that post, I will detail which particular tool I used to show me that above report.

2) As you can see from these reports, every number is under 10 (except 1), which means there’s a bunch of 1st page rankings, AND they are all on each search engine too, which means each of them is bringing my site it’s own traffic numbers.

And there are many more examples I can show you to further prove it, but if this is enough for you, allow me to move on and explain a few things about Bing and achieving SEO success with it…

2 things you need to know about SEO success with Bing:

1) From what I have seen, Bing pretty much tries to mimic it’s ranking algorithm to look like Google’s which is why the results you see above, while not identical, are close together. 

2) It’s pretty safe to say that if you can get high rankings on Google, you will also probably get them (or close to) on the other search engines as well and the 10 techniques I’ll give you will help that happen. In other words, there’s no need to worry about readjusting your ranking strategies. 

The 10 Bing SEO techniques: Make sure to optimize each page on your site this way.

So let me explain that these 10 techniques are set up from this following point of reference: 

• You have a site and you’re publishing blogs or pages.
• Whatever new blog or page you publish (including existing ones, if they are in need of optimization), make sure to use these 10 things:

Now if you look at these 10 techniques and for instance, cross reference them with the 10 optimization tips I give for Google on the same topic, you will notice that it is basically…identical.

And this all goes back to what I was saying about how optimizing for Google SEO (the biggest one that is) will automatically put you ahead to already be optimized for the other search engines, basically on autopilot. 

The only major differences in this particular list of tips are numbers 9 and 10.

For number 9, your goal is to verify your site with Bing, through it’s own Webmaster Tools program (it’s free). Once you complete that, step #9 does not need to be completed again, for the site that is.

For number 10, each time you publish new content, you should be submitting it through the Bing Webmaster Tools program so it can index it faster. Oh and for the record, you should also be doing the same thing, on Google each time new content is published. 

Here is how to do that:

Truth be told, both numbers 9 and 10 are optional, but highly advised for SEO:

Before I accumulated this list of 10 techniques for Google, and subsequently for Bing, I used to only worry about my site’s SEO on Google. My thought process was that if I optimized my pages for Google, then the other search engines would automatically rank me high as well.

The truth is, they still will, even if you neglect doing numbers 9 and 10 (Bing’s spiders will still find your site on their own and rank the content, just like Google does), but I would not recommend this lazy course of action and here’s a few good reasons as to why:

Firstly, it takes very little effort to verify your site with Bing. I’ll add a video to this post to help you see that (and do it too).

Secondly, submitting new content you publish will only take you 10 seconds to do.

Third, because your site will be verified with Bing’s Webmaster Tools and you’ll be able to tell it to fetch and index your new content through this tool, will help making ranking FASTER. This is the same thing I tell people about Google’s fetch tool and that is to use it because it helps you tell these search engines, in a much faster fashion to crawl your content as soon as you publish it, to index it faster.

And fourth, having access to Bing’s Webmaster Tools and vice versa, having this tool connected to and having access to your site will tell you how the site is doing (how many clicks the site gets from only this search engine, how many impressions there are, what keywords it’s ranking for, ect…). And if you’re serious about SEO (not just on Google), you need to complete these 2 steps.

Here is a tutorial on how to verify your website on Bing Webmaster Tools:

I’ll make my own video on this soon as use it instead of the current one. I’ll also be showing you how to submit the new content you create there as well. I know verifying the site can look a bit intimidating, but it’s not a difficult thing and it only needs to be done once (and it’s worth it).

How much traffic will your site get from Bing when you do these techniques?

It really depends, but usually a good rule of thumb is that 5% or more of the organic traffic your site gets will come from this search engine (it can go up to 20% or more depending on the subject of the site). And that number should never be underestimated because if you get a 10,000 clicks from Google and a fraction of that from Bing every month, that is still major traffic and considering how effortless it is to rank there (Again mainly focus on ranking well in Google and the rest is basically taken care of), why wouldn’t you want to also take advantage of this?

While your website’s numbers will obviously vary (set these tools up on your sites to get the details), allow me to showcase 3 websites that I own and the kind of traffic they get from this search engine and from Google. The information I will be providing you now comes from both the webmaster tools these 2 search engines offer.

The following numbers I am showing are for a 3 month period.

Site 1: 

• Clicks from Google: 17,900.
• Clicks from Bing: 1,603.

Site 2:

• Clicks from Google: 6,090.
• Clicks from Bing: 164.

Site 3: 

• Clicks from Google: 3,680.
• Clicks from Bing: 264.

Obviously, the traffic these sites get is substantially higher from Google, and that is no surprise, but it doesn’t take away from the importance of also trying to rank on the other search engine and the 10 tips I gave you will work universally.

Let me show you how I used these 10 strategies for this post:

In case you need a reference or exercise on how to properly use these techniques, allow me to use this specific post and explain how I applied them:

1) For the title of this post, I was targeting a low competition keyword which is Bing SEO Techniques. Notice how it’s used in the title and how the title is under 60 characters. 

2) The next technique is to use the same keyword in the first paragraph, which you can also see that I did. 

These 2 techniques are important as they help search engines see your metadata and when it’s set up this way, it optimizes the SEO benefits.

3) The next tip was using images. I added one at the very top. If you right click it and see what the alt text is, you will notice that it is the very same keyword. Now I only do this for one image. For the others, I’ll just provide a different with other keywords that are relevant if need be.

4) Next is internal linking, which I explain the benefits of here. This post has plenty of them.

5) External linking is also a good technique and it is used in this post. Whenever I am linking to an external site, it is relevant so when I talk about the webmaster tools programs, I link to the site where you can sign up to them. When search engines see this type of info provided, they equate that to me showing my readers value, which is the case here.

6) This post will be crossing the word quota I set (1,500), but I make sure that there’s actual substance to the content I write so that people actually get value out of it, which means that the quality is of high value. This is a VERY serious SEO metric and trend (here is why).

7) So this tip may confuse people, which is why this exercise I’m doing now is perfect to explain it. Notice all the large fonts I am using throughout this post. These are known as header 3 fonts, or H3 (large words basically).

They all have some sort of attractive title and I use them because it ensures that readers will see them and be curious to keep reading my content further. I am also at times using the same keyword in these H3 tags.

8) As you can also see, every paragraph in this post is pretty short. I have found that this helps keep readers, reading my content. In fact, most successful bloggers and SEO people I know also implement this technique.

9) I have registered this site with Bing’s Webmaster Tools program (as well as Google’s).

10) Once I published this article, I did “order” both search engines to fetch and index it.

So now that you saw how I personally used these techniques…

Your goal is to mimic that on your site for any new post you create.

If you have existing posts that are not optimized this way, make sure to first check if the rankings are good on Google for the site. If they are not, then go through the existing posts and optimize them based on these techniques.

There is one quick thing I need to tell you before you make any changes to existing posts:

Remember, focus mainly on ranking well in Google, which can absolutely be done if you follow the same techniques I listed above (here are some additional tips) and in doing so, the other search engines will also rank the same content favorably on theirs.

Google’s E-A-T update is one of many that has site owners worried about it’s affect on their rankings and SEO. However, let me help explain why it’s a good update.

The truth is, every single one of these things Google puts out is nothing really new, and it’s all aimed at trying to filter out and push better content to the top rankings (like mine), whilst pushing down bad content and/or those people who try to cheat their way through SEO, down in the rankings.

This has ALWAYS been the case (I’ve followed SEO trends for over a decade and I can tell you, the goal has always been what I just said), but because each time a “new” update comes out and it’s always labeled under a different name or abbreviation (such as E-A-T in this case), there’s masses of people who think it’s something totally new and flipping the rules of SEO.

It’s not, it’s just continuing along the same line of evolving the current SEO model and as long as you do white hat related things (I’ll go over them), there’s 2 things you can expect:

• You won’t have to worry about E-A-T or any update for that matter.
• You’ll probably rejoice each time these things get released, because it’ll only help your site rank better.

That has been the case with me and anyone I know who follows the white hat rules of SEO. And the truth is, as an SEO person, each time a new update comes out from Google, I either scoff at it or don’t even bother worrying about it until the rumors of “how bad it is” catch my attention, I go to investigate and I end up coming to the same conclusion that I’ll be giving you here:

It’s nothing worth worrying about unless you’re not a white hat person, doing white hat SEO things. In the case of E-A-T, I’m literally only hearing about it almost a year after it’s been released.

Now let me cover:

• All you need to know about this update.
• How it’s affected my sites personally.
• What to do if it negatively affected yours.
• If you should worry about this update or any other future ones Google will release.

What is Google E-A-T?

The abbreviation is as follows:

What this update does is that it basically better analyzes a website for quality content by putting it through certain filters that help it identify if…

The site, it’s blogs and pages have expertise (E), authority (A) and trustworthiness (T). Now while the specifics of how this is determined is a secret, as I’ve said before in covering other updates like the Google Medic, a big reveal that I have come to realize a long time ago is that Google determines much of this stuff (quality content and if it falls within the E-A-T standards) through this:

Most of this stuff is determined by how people visiting your site view it.

The better a person visiting your act behaves on your page/s, the more it means that the quality of your content is higher. You see a big part of understanding SEO and making it work for you is understanding that it’s really based on how a person likes your page and this is what lets Google know it’s quality.

In fact, all of these updates you see Google go through every year is just one evolved way of measuring this after another. They release an update, some sites get pushed higher, they track how readers view these sites and then make adjustments. If they see that readers like a majority of the sites that were pushed higher after the update, it shows that the update itself was a success in doing the following:

Bringing users better content to help them trust Google better.

In fact, this is almost like their mission statement and they LITERALLY talk about this on their webmaster blog here. They ADMIT to experimenting with their algorithm to make this mission a better success and each update is designed to bring them closer to this outcome.

You know, I have to say that while there’s many authority blogs out there which preach on how SEO should be done (including mine), I am surprised how MOST of them hardly ever mention Google’s webmaster blog itself (I do and I’m proud of it!).

It is literally the source and most trusted one at that which talks about what Google is seeking to do and yet most of these people and bloggers ignore the very source that determines their site’s and blog’s rankings and just head over to other places which often steer them into the dark world of black hat marketing (and those are the ones which these updates destroy).

Will E-A-T reward or punish your site’s rankings? A good way to tell:

What I’m about to tell you about this update is literally nothing new. This has been the advice I’ve given to every single blogger and website owner who has asked me how to prevent an update from hurting their rankings.

This is because I consistently stick to the point that all these updates have the same mission in mind (Better quality sites rank better, period.) and each new one released is just meant to keep that evolution going. There’s literally no change in the SEO rules, it’s just the same goal, continuously done better.

So with regards to how your site will do, here is the rule of thumb:

• So once again, to make sure you are safe, do these things.
• And to make sure you are not doing anything to get your site punished, make sure you don’t do these things.

Let’s run 3 sites through the Google E-A-T update (so you see how this works). 

Site 1: Is a few months old, does black hat marketing, produces low quality content and tries to cheat it’s way to the top rankings. It initially gets away with this, gets high rankings and traffic, but that traffic doesn’t really stick around long (black hat sites typically produce bad content).

Site 2: Is also a few months old, but is pretty opposite to site 1, has good content, produces it frequently, and aims to adhere to the E-A-T standards. 

Site 3: Has been around for over a year and basically does the same thing site 2 does, but it’s been doing it longer.

How would Google and the E-A-T update rank these pages? Simple:

Site 3 would rank highest.

Site 2 would rank below that, but would still be in the sandbox. Yet, if given a few more moths, it would be set to become as good as site 3 if it continued along the same path because it would be out of the sandbox and getting higher rankings. By the way, the sandbox is one of Google’s most common algorithm limitations it puts on all sites and has them stay in it for up to 6 months, so don’t mistake bad rankings early on with some sort of punishment from this search engine.

Site 1 would probably not even get ranked and a single SEO update would send it so far down Google’s search or even to a point where it would de-indexed, where it would probably be best for the site owner to just start a new page.

I have found that the people who worry most about these updates are people with new sites or those who have new sites but try to do the type of stuff site 1 does, and they should be worried.

However, the people who think long term and do the right things with their pages are the ones who ALWAYS benefit from these updates and will continue to do so.

Let’s run a little experiment (and I need you to be a part of this):

Allow me to run YOU, the reader right now through the same E-A-T standards by simply asking you questions about this very article you’re reading now:

Does reading this article make you see or think that I know what I’m talking about regarding SEO? If the answer is yes, then I already have the E part down (expertise). 

Am I writing this article in a way that is giving off the impression that “I’ve been there and I know this”? If so, then the A is also down (authority).

Am I giving you great, free information that is answering your questions and calming you down about this update? If the answer is yes, then the T is also handled (trustworthiness). 

Has E-A-T affected my blogs and sites? Nope, it’s either the same or better ranked now.

In fact, other sites I check up on regularly seem to also have their rankings the same. Since this update came out last year, I have noticed an improvement in traffic on some of my bigger sites, but that was also because I was adding content frequently, so there might not be a correlation here.

However, what I can say is that E-A-T did not negatively affect any of my blogs, including this one and if you follow my advice, it won’t affect yours either. It may in fact, do the opposite and help it get more traffic 🙂

There’s 5 SEO tools that I trust to show me what keywords my site ranks for. Each of them also does a great job of tracking so I can see my page’s SEO progress.

Now you don’t need to use all 5 of these tools that I will show you, but depending on how much analysis and reports you want to see, some of these will do a good enough job, while others will do more than enough, so I’ll explain each tool’s additional benefits (they all show you rankings and track them), and you will then decide which one/s you need. 

• The first 2 are free to install, and I personally believe they are mandatory for SEO.
• The next 3 are optional because they cost money, but I use the last one on this list because it saves me the most time.

Here’s how to check your keyword rankings on Google. The 5 tools that show you:

• Webmaster Tools (WMT). Free.
• Bing Webmaster Tools (BWMT). Free.
• SEMRush. Has a trial, but then costs $99 a month (includes other benefits).
• Moz. Also has a trial, but then costs $179 a month (also includes other benefits).
• Jaaxy. 30 day trial, then has a $49 a month plan (I prefer to use this one).

I’ll be going over each one’s benefits and explaining how they do the job. 

1) Google Webmaster Tools (The tool which checks keyword rankings on Google). Mandatory.

Price: Free. It’s also known as WMT or the Google Search Console.

How do I set it up? You have to sign up for an account and then link your page with the program. WMT is absolutely necessary to have, even if you don’t plan to use it because it allows Google to view your page better and helps you control how often Google visits it. Here is how to set it up.

Does it check and track rankings? Yes, but it has limits, and here they are:

It will only show you the positions you pages have on the Google search engine.

You cannot manually input a keyword into WMT to check it’s position, you will only be shown the highest ranked keywords your site shows up on and this list updates, so you will be seeing different lists every month or so.

How does it work? When you connect this program with your page, it literally let’s Google check it out entirely, rank that page faster (if you use the fetch program) and then display to you where it’s positioned your website on Google’s search engine. It will provide you with a list of up to 1,000 keywords your site ranks/positions for on Google.

It’ll tell you the number of clicks your pages got for the keywords it displays, as well as the amount of impressions the keyword was displayed on the Google search engine.

Here is an example:

Like I said, WMT is necessary and I have it installed on EVERY website I have that I do SEO with. Here’s how one of them looks:

You can also organize how this data appears, but by default, it’ll show the highest positions and highest clicks specific pages on your site get.

2) Bing Webmaster Tools (BWMT, or Bing Search Console). Mandatory.

Price: Free.

How do I set it up? You basically have to go through the same set up process with your site as you did on Google’s WMT, here is an official page to sign up. People like to ignore search engines like Bing and only focus on Google when it comes to SEO, but I have to say that this is a mistake and getting a quarter of your traffic from this search engine alone makes it worth registering your site with this program so you can see how it’s doing.

It’s also a simple set up process and it helps Bing rank your page better.

Does this tool check and track rankings? Yes but on Bing and Yahoo only. It also has the same limits as WMT in that you can’t manually input a keyword to see what spot it’s positioned on Bing. You’re just provided an overall report of which terms are up on Bing and doing well.

How does it work? This is basically the equivalent of Google WMT, but all the SEO benefits and applications are on the Bing/Yahoo search engines. I strongly advise that you also use this program. I always do.

Here is an example:

2 very important things:

First, just so you know, your pages will get picked up by both Google and Bing even if you don’t use these 2 programs, but having them installed helps you see the site’s progress, and it also expedites ranking in many cases on these search engines, so not using these things would be very foolish.

And second, how your page ranks on Google may not necessarily mean it’ll show up the same way on Bing. In fact, I often find that my pages get picked up and displayed differently on each search engine. These 2 tools will help me identify that information.

3) SEMRush. Optional.

Price: They allow you to view your website’s general positions and track it, but it is limited and you would need to buy their upgraded level which is $99, but it buys you more than just this keyword tracking ability.

How do I set it up? You can head over to the SEMRush website right now, enter your URL and see it display 10 keywords for your site and how it’s ranking. However, you would need to sign up with the site first, you would not get completely accurate data until you upgrade and and you wouldn’t be shown all the other information either until that upgrade is done.

I personally do not use this program because it is expensive, but some like to use it’s tools if they engage in local marketing work as well as tracking a competing page’s traffic, which this tool does do, BUT it doesn’t provide accurate results, because that type of specific information is only ever known the actual competitor.

Does this tool track and check rankings? Yes. But remember, for the free trial, you’re given general results (they are also outdated sometimes), so you won’t be shown how many clicks your page got from Google, you’ll be shown an estimate of it.

The other 2 programs above will give you a more accurate breakdown of that type of info.

How does it work? SEMRush basically analyzes your page and cross references it with Google to see how it’s doing on that search engine. Then it takes the most common keywords it sees your page ranking for and gives you a report on that.

But that’s just one of it’s functions and there are a lot more if you upgrade. It’s a good service, but it likely more for advanced SEO companies and individuals.

Here is an example of how SEMRush works for this subject:

As you can see, besides showing me the Google position of my page, it also displays data on other SEM related things.

4) Moz. Optional.

Price: It’s basically like SEMRush, it has it’s own free reports and similar limits unless you upgrade to the $179 a month, which also offers additional things you can use. I personally do not use Moz, but it is well known as used by SEO people.

The only issue is, they make you sign up and give your credit card info right away, whereas with SEMRush, they let you try it out more beforehand.

How do I set it up? You first have to sign up to use it. Then you can access the program.

Does it check and track keyword rankings? Yes.

How does it work? Basically the same way as SEMRush. It’s also an advanced program like it.

I don’t have an example to show you here, because I don’t use this program, but like I said, it’s one of the recommended and used ones.

5) Jaaxy. Optional, but my preferred one.

Price: 30 searches and then $49/month. There is also a $99 upgrade.

How do I set it up? Head over to the Jaaxy page and start a free trial. In fact, you can start right here.

How does it work? Jaaxy is one of the only programs I know off that allows you to track individual rankings. It won’t display a whole report for you like the other ones, but you can manually input a keyword into it’s search bar, with your website URL, and it will tell you what position it is on in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Now of course, you can make the argument that you can head over to those search engines and do that yourself, but if your site is new or is hard to find, it’ll take you a long time to look up and then track the positions, and that time adds up a lot. With Jaaxy, I have a whole history of keywords I’ve looked up on it.

In addition this program also shows you a bar of the keyword and how the position of it for your page has risen or fallen, so that’s a good way to see if you’re making improvements or not.

But additionally, this feature of the program is actually one of many others that it offers and I find when it comes to looking up keyword data (before I decide to use it on my page), that Jaaxy offers the best reports on this. It also provides many other things, but the point is, I wouldn’t be using this tool and paying the $49 a month if I wasn’t benefiting from it, which I very much am and I think you will too.

Jaaxy in my opinion, is very important for preliminary keyword research and then intelligently applying the data to your page so the content positions higher, then using the above 2 free programs (WMT and BWMT) to analyze how it’s doing on all the major search engines. It is very often thanks to the research I do through Jaaxy that allows me to get 1st page rankings.

Here is an example of the specific area of this program where it checks, and tracks search engine positioning:

A summary of the 3 of the 5 programs I prefer to use:

• Google search console.
• Bing search console.
• And Jaaxy.

Those are the 3 which are more than enough for me to apply and get results from.

What do I do if my rankings suck?

There are MANY ways you can improve that issue and I list 15 awesome methods here for that. What I would say is that before you even use these 5 programs, to read that article and to understand the most important ways to get high positions on Google and Bing, and then to use these types of tools to aid you in finding the right terms and then tracking the progress of their rankings.

If you have any questions about these 5 programs I listed or do use one or more of them and want to add if you recommend them or something better, I don’t mind 🙂

No matter if you’re a beginner or pro, the following 5 free SEO tools are a must have on your WordPress sites. I personally use these.

Here are the 5 I recommend (and use):

Now I can tell you that there are more than just these options available and some are probably better than the ones on this list, but there’s a number of good reasons why these are recommended, even by someone like me, who does SEO seriously…

1) They are free.

2) They are beginner friendly when it comes to set up .

3) They provide some essential perks to help you with your ranking game.

4) They help you and your WordPress site work better, faster and create smarter, keyword focused content that ranks better.

I’ll go over each and explain the perks:

1) All in One SEO. 

This is a plugin you can install for free on all WordPress site. A paid upgrade for this plugin is available, but honestly it’s not necessary.

I’ve been using this plugin on just about every WP page I’ve made, including this current page. 

How it helps:

This plugin helps “label” your pages when it’s new, so Google can read it’s metadata quickly. This helps improve the speed of indexing and ranking for your page.

Specifically, this plugin auto labels the content you create and publish and basically inputs the most important, initial data Google looks at (the metadata). This just helps Google spiders cut corners and quickly see what your content is about, faster. 

It also makes it easy to install other important things like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.

2) EWWW Image Optimizer. 

I don’t know why this plugin has such a “tasteful” name, but whatever, it’s free and it’s great for SEO. It basically takes any images that are on your site and makes them load faster when someone visits the page, including Google.

How it helps:

One important thing to note about loading speeds is that the longer it takes a website to load, the worse it affects rankings. Additionally, one of the main causes of slow loading times on a page are images and graphics. 

Using this plugin helps cut down slow loading speeds on that specific issue, thus helping the speed of the site loading to rise, and that itself is what helps with SEO.

A great experiment you can run is testing the speed of your site loading without this plugin on a page like this, and then testing it on the same page, but with the plugin running. Odds are, you will notice that there is an increase in score and speed, and that itself makes this plugin well worth it.

And once it’s activated, you do not need to really do anything else, other than update it once in awhile (which you are notified on, so you won’t miss it).

3) XML Sitemaps.

This is a VERY important plugin, which is thankfully free as well. This plugin basically creates an index of your pages, and then you take that info and let Google, and Bing (another important search engine), know about it.

How this helps:

A sitemap basically gives search engines a better, deeper look at your overall pages and this allows them to rank it better. It’s sort of like giving search engines a “tour” of your pages. 

There are several plugins like this available in the WordPress directory if you do a search. I personally use this one:

Once you activate it, it will create the map of your whole site and give you a link. You will take that link and put it into a free program called Webmaster Tools (here are instructions).

The added benefit of this thing is that you can also use Webmaster Tools to then fetch your content faster and avoid having to wait for days or longer to see it indexed in Google. Here are instructions on that.

Note: Once this plugin is installed, you can also use it with Bing Webmaster Tools and I WOULD highly recommend you not neglect this search engine either. 

4) Anti Spam.

It doesn’t matter how new or old your page is, it will be spammed and most of them will try to infiltrate your page through comments. You’ll get fake people (bots) leaving comments on your pages attempting to hack it and even steal information. Allowing such things to run rampant on you pages will ruin the SEO for it because search engines will never trust a “tainted page”.

How this helps:

Since most of the spam and hackers try to come through the comments, installing the anti-spam plugin will help prevent most of it from ever even getting close. That protection just offers less chances that your page will ever get taken down by a hacker or spammer and when I say taken down, I mean through SEO, because these things do ruin rankings it if they are unchecked (see this).

While I do recommend you look at every single comment someone posts on your pages, you will honestly not be able to handle doing this on your own, without this plugin. 

That plugin will eliminate just about every single bad, hacker intended comment that your page gets and the remaining ones will be up to you to moderate. I typically advise trashing any comment that has a link in it. 

If you’re going to link comments, do it yourself, where you edit the comment and internally provide a link, so it’s yours and not an unknown link and that WILL actually help with SEO.

5) Keywords everywhere.

This is the only tool on the list that is not a plugin for your actual WordPress site. It is actually a plugin for your browser and it’s free. You just need to install it. Here is how.

How it helps:

Intelligent keyword research is one of the core things a good SEO person requires. What is the point of writing so much content (a necessary ingredient if you want traffic) if it’s not intended to rank for a keyword that is bound to get your page tons of traffic?

Well using an intelligent plugin like this will help you create more”rankable” content by finding keywords with good search numbers and then targeting them on your page fixes that.

This plugin literally “latches” onto your browser so when you do searches on Google, the results you get ALL come with data on if and how many searches that keyword gets:

After seeing this list, you may have 1 question…

The question is basically if there’s any free or paid SEO tool that basically “does” the work for you, where by installing it, that it basically handles everything that’s needed for your page to rank well.

The truth is that there is no such thing (and if you see some that say that they are, they are black hat and 100% fake). SEO is a business where YOU need to personally be working to creating content (or paying someone to do it) and that is an effort that no tool can do for you. 

The tools (even the very best ones out there, including these), are simply added accessories, which don’t have any effect if you don’t do the major work yourself. The very plugins mentioned in this article basically help maximize my own hard work by having Google notice it better and keeping my page safe from spammers and hackers and that itself is a benefit to SEO growth.

If there are any questions about these plugins I mentioned, please ask!