On the user’s end, it’s a simple process. Type something into Google, Yahoo, or Bing and, voila, a neatly prioritized list of results.
Behind the scenes, however, there’s tons of work happening to arrange those results. Search engines need help to seek out appropriate content.

That help comes from sitemaps.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a map of your website that indexes relevant pages, so search engines can read them.

For example, at some moment when you Google “what is visual voicemail?” Google knows what pages to rank based on sitemaps, and perceived values of those URLs, so as to answer that question.
It might prioritize informative URLs like blog posts.
Alternatively, if you were to Google just “best business phone app”, Google would prioritize reviews and products.
You want people to seek out your site. But, you furthermore may want people to remain there and find it useful. the best way to ensure both is to optimize your sitemap.

Use WordPress Plugins to create Sitemaps Automatically

There are tons of great WordPress sites with plugins that can design and create webpages and automatically generate a sitemap for you.
WordPress plugins are apps that allow you to add new features and functionality to your website.
WordPress companies will have a strong understanding of SEO, so it’ll remove tons of the trial and error involved in producing your own sitemaps.

Consider Dynamic Sitemaps

Whenever your website changes, your sitemap will have to be updated to reflect those changes, ensuring bots are being directed to the latest content your website has to offer.
Doing this manually can be time-consuming, especially for larger sites.
Instead, you’ll create a dynamic sitemap.
A dynamic sitemap will automatically update your sitemap each time changes are made to indexed pages. It’s faster and uses fewer resources.
It’s an excellent option for large sites with numerous engagements.
Something like a CCaaS provider, for example, provides cloud-based communication software to third parties, via their own software.
Naturally, they will have frequent traffic from different businesses. they could use a dynamic sitemap to reflect the constant changes in user engagement, making them preferable in program rankings.

Test Your Sitemap

Before submitting your sitemap to search engines, run tests to ensure every index is accounted for. After testing, fix the issues.
This can be tricky. Search engines can only tell you that indexes aren’t being read. They can’t point to which of them aren’t being read, or why.

Try rearranging sitemaps based on specific criteria and submitting individually.
For example, resubmit your sitemap indexing pages with images, or video feeds. If those specific URLs have problems, you’ll deduce that the problem is with images or videos.

Quality Over Quantity

Search engines value high-quality pages.
High-quality pages have relevant, original content. Ideally, they will have images, videos, and high engagement (comments or reviews from users).
Low-quality pages are those that, while important, aren’t what users are searching for.
For example, let’s say your site provides cheap web hosting.
Your sitemap could index home pages, product pages, or blog posts – high-quality pages that people are useful to users.
You shouldn’t index an URL for checkout, or customer complaint page. Though they are related, they are not what users are searching for. If people are directed to those pages, they will presumably leave, increasing churn.
Including them in your sitemap will make search engines think the whole site is lower quality, rank it lower on search engine results.

Don’t Make Your Sitemap too large

There’s a limit to what search engines can handle.
The limit is high; 50,000 URLs per sitemap for Bing and Google, and most sites won’t reach it.
Even if you don’t, you ought to avoid extraneous URLs so there’s plenty of room for your sitemap to grow.
If you do reach that limit, split one large website into smaller sitemaps and submit them separately.

Don’t Trick the search engine

Sitemaps use timestamps to notice the last time a URL has changed. It’s a useful feature because it means any content updates will be registered by search engines and marked as up-to-date content.
Some people use this feature to trick search engines, changing the date so that it’s considered recent content and prioritized in search engine results.
This doesn’t work. Search engines have caught onto this and can check for any actual changes to URL content when its date has changed. If nothing important has changed, it can be flagged, and have its timestamp removed altogether.

So, any time you make modifications, only change the date if they’re substantial changes that add value.
For example, if you sell business communication tools, they’re likely to change as technology progresses. So, you’ll probably be adding new content to old URLs to keep up with the times. These are relevant changes and should be reflected within the modification date stamp.
If you’re going back to old URLs to make fairly trivial changes, like design and formatting, don’t change the date stamp. If you do, search engines will assume you’re trying to cheat, and consider them as lower quality.

Don’t Waste Crawl Budget

We mentioned before that there’s a limit to the number of URLs an inquiry engine can read per sitemap.
This is referred to as a crawl budget.
As it’s limited, be selective about which URLs you would like to be recognized.
You can use a “no index” tag to prevent certain URLs from being read. You’d use this for utility pages that you simply don’t want showing up in search results, like payment portals.

You’re telling search engines to ignore certain URLs, but it still counts toward your overall crawl budget, so consider removing them altogether.
Keeping them in with a no-index tag will preserve link equity. You’re telling the system it’s a crucial part of your website, with links to other parts of your site, but won’t be useful in search results.

Points to Ponder

SEO practices are ongoing. You’re trying to get noticed in an ever-shifting mass of online content. As such, your content, and sitemaps are going to change as you continue to optimize.
So, don’t expect to get perfect results overnight. respond to research and feedback and stay consistent with your good SEO practices.
Do this, and you’re giving your website the best possible chance because it steps into the wider world.

The post 7 Best SEO Practices for Sitemap Optimization appeared first on Acme Themes Blog.

These free and paid SEO tools will help you to analyze your website health and technical issues so that you can optimize for better ranking and ultimately grow your online business.

So, let’s get started!

What Are SEO Tools?

SEO tools are software that helps you optimize websites in order to beat the ranking in search engines. These tools are helpful for analyzing and optimizing the contents, technical issues occurred within the websites. Different SEO tools will help you do different things. Some are great for keyword research (on-page SEO techniques) while others are better for tracking and managing your keywords and your combined on-page and off-page efforts.

CMS like WordPress allows you to install different SEO plugins that help you optimize your content. WordPress SEO plugins are an example of SEO tools.

Today’s market is crowded with dozens of SEO tools for every taste and budget. Experienced marketers and big companies usually prefer paid all-in-one platforms. They are quick and handy.

As search engines endlessly hone their skills, and search engine optimization (SEO) continues to change, you need to be updated with the latest algorithms and follows the guidelines. For that, you need the accurate and latest status of your website. A lot of paid platforms include free or freemium tools and features. Some of them only require you to create an account, and others are free to use but come with certain restrictions.

These professional tools can still be helpful if you’re new to SEO, work with small projects, or simply don’t want to buy any expensive plans.

What Does SEO Tool Do?

SEO tools do not do complex tasks for you. Instead, it simply helps in making the content technically sound. When it comes to quality and really good content, SEO tools have nothing to relate to. That means, relying completely on the tool for better ranking is one of the biggest misconceptions.

There are lots of free versions of SEO tools available in the market. But the free version offers limited features and functionalities.

Let’s take a look at the top 20 best SEO tools that you must be used in the year 2022 to dominate your niche.

List of Best SEO Tools in 2023 (Free and Paid Collection)

1. Google Search Console (Free) – Best SEO Tools by Google
2. Google Analytics (Free) – Best Website Analytics Tool by Google
3. Google Keyword Planner (Free) – Best Keyword Research Tool by Google
4. Semrush (Paid) – Best Marketing SEO Tool
5. Ahrefs (Paid) – Best Backlinks and SEO Analysis Tool
6. Moz Pro (Paid) – A Complete SEO Toolset
7. Uggersuggest (Free) – Free Keyword Analysis Tool
8. Google Mobile-Friendly Test (Free) -Best Mobile-Friendly Tester
9. Screaming Frog (Paid) – Best Website Crawler & Log File Analyzer Tool
10. Woorank (Paid) – Best Competitive Analysis Tool
11. Google PageSpeed Insight  (Free) – Website Speed Tester Tool by Google
12. Seobility – Best SEO Content Report Tool
13. GTMetrics (Free) – Best Website Speed Test Tool
14. Yoast SEO (Free & Paid)- Best WordPress Plugin
15. Answer the Public (Free) – Best Visual Research Tool
16. SimilarWeb – Website and App Comparison Tool
17. Alexa SEO Tools – Best Collection of Freemium SEO Tools
18. SEOSiteCheckup – Quick Website Analyzer Tool

Best SEO Tools in 2023

#Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is an essential tool by Google that helps you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. Google Search Console is search-engine focused, providing tools and insights that can help site owners improve visibility and presence in the SERPs. As an SEO professional, you must use Google Search Console to track the performance of the website in every aspect.

Core Features

• Performance (Impression, Position, CTR, Total Click) of the individual page.
• Keyword performance
• URL Inspection
• Index Coverage
• Sitemap Status
• Speed & Mobile Usability

#Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best SEO tools provided by Google. It gives you in-depth insights into users, their demography, geography, and intention. You can track vital information about visitors, how they came to the site, where are they from, which demographics, most popular content, and lots of other results. This is one of my favorite tools that I use every day of my life

Core Features

• Traffic Reporting
• Conversion Tracking
• Traffic Sources/Channels
• Custom Dashboard

#Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a free Google Ads tool for new or experienced advertisers that’s like a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns. You can use Keyword Planner to search for keywords and see how a list of keywords might perform. Keyword Planner can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns. Google Keyword Planner is used mostly for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, Keyword Research by internet marketers.

Core Features:

• Keyword Volume, CPC, Competition.
• Visualizing mobile trends
• Keyword Comparison
• Filter by Location, Language, Search Networks, Time Period
• Get historical statistics and traffic forecasts

#SEMrush

In the list of best SEO Tools, we have SEMrush. It is a premium SEO tool that does your keyword research, tracks the keyword strategy used by your competition, runs an SEO audit of your blog, looks for backlinking opportunities, and lots more.

As of 2023, SEMrush has a massive database of over 46 million domains and 120 million keywords. It tracks so many things, such as the organic position of a domain or landing URL on Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages), copies of AdWords ads and their positions, CPC ads, competitor analysis and so much more. SEMrush helps with your content marketing, and that is the most important thing it does. Check out more features below-

Core Features:

• Effective Keyword Research
• Comparative Competitive Intelligence
• Past and current ranking tracking
• Analyze competitor’s competition
• Domain Overview (Traffic, Backlinks)
• Traffic Analysis
• Backlink Audit and many more…

#Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another best SEO tool to use in 2023. It is a paid SEO tool that helps you with organic keywords, backlink analysis, top-performing pages, organic keyword status, overall site traffic, rank tracking, web monitoring, content, and keyword research. Ahrefs is a widely used SEO tool and will be used in 2023 as well.

Core Features

• Site Explorer
• Keywords Explorer
• Website Audit
• Rank Tracker
• Content Explorer
• SERP Checker

#Moz Pro

Moz Pro is a complete SEO toolset that helps boost your rankings and search engine visibility. It offers SEO tools that include keyword research, link building, site audits, and page optimization insights in order to help companies to have a better view of the position they have on search engines and how to improve their ranking. Check out the main features below.

Core Features

• Site Audits
• Rank Tracking
• Backlink Analysis
• Keyword Research

#Uggersuggest

Ubbersuggest is a free online SEO tool that helps inform your content strategy based on things like Keyword traffic volume, difficulty to rank for a specific keyword as well as PPC difficulty. It also provides you with a whole bunch of other keyword ideas. I also love that it uses location-based data. It has an extremely friendly user interface, and main and related keyword suggestions, and also displays the top 100 SERPs for each clicked keyword/key phrase. You can also get competition scores.

Core Features

• Domain Overview
• Top SEO pages
• Keyword Suggestion
• Content Idea
• Backlink Data

#Mobile-Friendly Test Tool

The mobile-friendly test tool enables you to learn about the page score and how responsive the design of your website is. What you need to work on and what is perfect, our tool will notify you about all. For example, the text is too small, the content is broader than the screen size, has utilized plugins that are not compatible, and more. At the present time, people are visiting websites from various devices with varied screen sizes. You don’t have to follow the screen measurement of every device but a few. Phones or tabs with a difference of almost 0.1 inches will not notice any change, but the device with nearly an inch of variance will.

#Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is an SEO spider application that evaluates on-site SEO issues. It can find broken links, server errors, blocked URLs, and duplicate pages. It also crawls your site to analyze technical and on-site SEO.

You can crawl 500 URLs for free, or purchase a license for additional advanced features. The SEO Spider is a powerful and flexible site crawler, able to crawl both small and very large websites efficiently while allowing you to analyze the results in real time. It gathers key onsite data to allow SEOs to make informed decisions.

Core Features

• Find Broken Links
• Audit Redirects
• Analyze Page Titles and Meta Data
• Discover Duplicate Contents
• Crawl JavaScripts Website and many more…

#Woorank

Woorank is another best SEO tool (Freemium) very useful for website review that analyses on-page and off-page SEO to rank better for search. It provides an actionable checklist that gives your team the insights it needs to fix performance issues and increase search rankings. You get basic features of on-page and off-page reports.

Core Features 

• On-Page Report
• Off-Page Report
• Keyword Tool
• Website Crawl
• SEO Monitoring
• Sales Tool
• Woorank Extension

#Google PageSpeed Insight 

PageSpeed Insights is an online tool that helps in identifying performance best practices on any given website, provides suggestions on a webpage’s optimizations, and suggests overall ideas of how to make a website faster. This tool can be accessed directly in any browser.

Core Features

• Field Data
• Original Summary
• Lab Data (First Contentful Paint, First Meaningful Paint)

#Seobility

Seobility is an online SEO tool for better website optimization. It checks your complete website, by crawling all linked pages. All found pages with errors, problems with the on-page optimization, or problems regarding the page content like duplicate content are collected and displayed in each check section. Of course, you can also analyze all the problems of a single page in our page browser.

For a sustainable and continuous review of your website, each project is constantly crawled and analyzed by our crawlers to track the progress of your optimization. You will also be notified by our monitoring service with the status of your website via e-mail if server errors and major problems occur.

Core Features

• Website Crawling and Site Auditor
•  Google Rank Tracker with Daily Updates
•  Backlink Checker and Link Building Tools
•  Continuous Monitoring and White label Reporting

#GTMetrics

GTmetrix is another best SEO tool used for website speed and performance audits. This tool provides insights into the root causes behind performance failures and generates various benchmark scores. GTmetrix also provides actionable recommendations for improving your site speed. GTmetrix has a suite of features and options to make optimizing your website clear and easy.

Core Features

• Get a summary of key performance indicators
• Track performance with monitoring, graphs, and alerts
• Test page from multiple regions
• Analyze your page on an actual Android device
• Simulate devices, change screen resolution and more with the Developer Toolkit
• Playback page loads with videos and many more…

#Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO Plugin is one of the best and most downloaded WordPress Plugins as of now. This WordPress SEO plugin helps you with your search engine optimization. Since its launch time back in 2008, Yoast has helped millions of people all across the world.

Yoast SEO does everything in its power to please both visitors and search engine spiders. A dedicated team of developers, testers, architects, and SEO experts work daily to improve the plugin with every release.

So, basically, Yoast SEO is for a business owner, professional blogger, content creator, developer, or SEO expert. It helps you keep your website in perfect shape.

Core Features

• The SEO analysis
• Readability Analysis
• Snippet preview for Desktop and Mobile
• The most advanced XML Sitemaps functionality at the push of a button.
• Full control over the site’s breadcrumbs
• Canonical URL to avoid duplicate content
• Social previews
• Insights tool for focused keyword/key-phrase
• Article optimization for synonyms and related key-phrases
• Automatic internal linking suggestions and many more…

Read – Yoast SEO Plugin vs All In One SEO Pack | Which One is Better?

#Answer the Public

The auto-suggest results provided by Google & Bing are a goldmine of insight for today’s marketers. As you type you are presented with an aggregated view of the questions & therefore a hint of the motivations & emotions of the people behind each search query.

Answer The Public is a keyword tool that visualizes search questions and suggested autocomplete searches in an image called a search cloud. Categories consist of the 5 Ws, plus ‘how’, ‘can’, ‘are’, ‘which’, and ‘will’. It’s one of the best but most underutilized sources of research for content ideas. So, you can use this tool for content development ideas.

Core Features

• Keyword Prepositions
• Keyword Comparisons
• LSI Keyword Listings in Alphabetical Ordering

#SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is an online tool that provides web analytics services for businesses. The company offers its customers information on their clients’ and competitors’ website traffic volumes; referral sources, including keyword analysis, and website “stickiness”. SimilarWeb is one of the best online tools for measuring and comparing Website Metrics and Mobile App Metrics. Check out the core features below-

Core Features

• Website Analysis ( Traffic and Engagement Metrics, SEO & PPC Keywords, Audience Interests, Traffic Sources, Popular Pages)
• Industry Analysis (Traffic and Engagement Metrics, SEO & PPC, Industry Leaders)
• App Analysis (Reach and Engagement, Audience Interest, Retention, Google Play Keyword Analysis)

Also, Read – Types of Website Traffic

#Alexa SEO Tool

Alexa SEO Tools is the collection of the best SEO tools that you can use in the year 2020 for better ranking. Alexa is an Amazon company that is primarily focused on website ranking and traffic estimation. But it also offers the best SEO tools. The SEO tools in Alexa’s Marketing Stack help you get better results from search engine optimization. Keyword tools and SEO checkers make it easy to find opportunities to drive more organic traffic.

Core Features

• Competitor Keyword Matrix
• Competitor Backlink Checker
• Keyword Difficulty Tool
• On-Page SEO Checker
• Site Audit Tool

#SEOSiteCheckup

SEO Site Checkup offers an easy-to-understand and comprehensive set of SEO tools to help you understand your website from a search engine’s perspective. In just a matter of a few seconds and a couple of clicks, you can see how a search engine may interpret your site. Our SEO reports also let you know of any problems or technical shortcomings on your website that may be hurting your search engine rankings. Keeping updated with the top SEO trends or optimizing your business with Local SEO is important in order to stay compliant with Google’s Standard Policy.

Core Features

• Complete Website Analysis
• Easy Sitemap Generator
• Detect Broken Links
• Website Monitoring
• White Label Reports
• Loading Speed Tracking
• Technical Support

Conclusion

So, these are the must-use best SEO tools in 2022 that are widely used in the year 2023 by SEO professionals. Some of the above-listed tools work pretty much the same. But you can use different tools to explore more in-depth insight into the website.

Being an SEO professional, you have to be familiar with these tools or at least free tools such as Google Analytics for data analysis, Google Search Console for website visibility, Mobile-Friendly Test Tool for responsiveness, Google Page Insight for Speed testing, Google Keyword Planner for keyword analysis.

You can use paid tools according to your budget size for more features and better measurements. But do not run just behind the paid tools, you can do a lot with the free tools as well. Check out 15 best free SEO tools here where you should not pay a single dollar.

Other SEO Articles:

• 13 Essential SEO Tips For WordPress Website
• 10 Common Off-Page SEO Techniques
• How to Do a Technical SEO For a Website?

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The post 18 Best SEO Tools To Use in 2023 For Better Ranking (Freemium) appeared first on Acme Themes Blog.