Your SEO Tool Kit: 3 Free Tools To Improve Your Rankings

Recently we covered the topic of What Google Really Wants From Event Professionals. Today we will be sharing a few favorite free SEO tools that are recommended for website strategy, optimization, and analysis. 

Consider this article your free SEO tool kit!

Tool for Strategy: KWFinder

While you can do great job with the design of your website,  SEO won’t bring you traffic or clients if you’re not focusing on the right keywords.

So how do you find which keywords people actually search for?I recommend KWFinder.

In the analysis below, I typed in the keyword “raleigh nc event planners.”

You can see that KWFinder gives me a few great pieces of data:

• In the “Search” column, you’ll find the estimated number of searches for this keyword every month.  260 is a good number of monthly searches!
• More keyword ideas on the table on the left.  I see that “corporate event planning raleigh nc” gets 50 searches per month, and I may not have thought of that keyword.  I  might consider creating a Corporate Event Planning page on my website to specifically target this keyword phrase.
• An analysis of the current search results on the right.  You can see who is currently ranking in the results for this search.  Look at the “LPS” (Link Profile Score) column to see which sites are strongest.

Try a few variations and ideas, and make notes of keywords you might want to target.  You can only do a few free searches per day, so use them wisely.

Tool for Optimization: Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress

Ready to optimize your website for your chosen keywords? If you use WordPress as your website platform, I highly recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin.

Install the plugin, and then walk through the configuration wizard to set your basic settings, connect with your social profiles, and get your site set up for success.

For more information on how to use the Yoast plugin, check out this Beginners Guide to Yoast.

Tool for Analysis: Google Search Console

Did you know that Google offers a free tool that helps you better communicate with them? I recommend that every website have a Google Search Console profile.

Here are a few steps to taking advantage of Google Search Console:

1. Sign up for an account
2. Create your site and verify it (if you’re not sure how, search Google for “how to set up Google Search Console for [platform]”, ie “how to set up Google Search Console for Showit”)
3. Submit your website’s sitemap (again, this varies based on your website platform, so search for instructions—for example, “How to submit a sitemap from Squarespace”)
4. Wait at least 7 days for some data to populate.  Then, it’s time to analyze!

What’s powerful about Google Search Console is that it is the only tool that tells you for sure which keywords are driving traffic to your website.

To see which keywords are bringing you traffic, click on the Performance report. At the top, click the boxes for “Total clicks”, “Total impressions”, and “Average position”.

Using this data, you can see what’s working for you.

• “Clicks” are the number of times someone has clicked on your website after searching for the phrase under “Queries”
• “Impressions” are the number of times your site has been shown in the search results
• “Position” is the average spot your website was in the search results for that query. Keep in mind that positions 1-10 are on the first page of Google, 11-20 on the second page, etc.

Armed with these tools, you’ll know way more about your own SEO than most event professionals.Take some time to use them and see how you can improve.

Sara Dunn is a wedding SEO consultant at SaraDoesSEO.com, helping wedding planners, photographers, venues, florists, and more reach rockstar status on Google.