How to use the SEO tools?

When writing new content for your website or for a client's website, it's important to know what people are searching for online. But, it can also be helpful to know what keywords competitors are ranking for.

I've built exactly that: tools to make informed decisions on what to write about. They're put together in a toolkit called Umbrellum, and you try them for free without signing up on this page. These free tools are the best tools for small businesses as they will help you get going in the right direction.

There are some different types of tools available:

• Keyword discovery: Enter a keyword and get a list of related keywords and their search volumes. this way you know what subjects your target market is searching for and what topics to write about. This should be your number 1 tool for keyword research.
• Google Ads keyword planner alternative: Google used to return search volumes in their keyword planner tool in Google Adwords (now called Google Ads). But currently, they only show that for high paying customers. If your account isn't big enough you'll only see ranges.
  
  Fortunately, with this tool you can check up to 1400 keywords at the same time and get their search volumes and the search volumes of the past 12 months. This way you have an alternative to the old Google Ads keyword planner.
• Keyword merge: This tool is quite a simple one. Sometimes you want to merge lists of words into a bigger list of words. Sounds complicated, but basically you might have a list like "laptops, windows laptops, macbooks, office laptops, gaming laptops" and a list you want to combine them with: "cheahp, fast, best". With the keyword merge tool you can combine all of these combinations and get their search volume.
• Ranked pages: One of the things I always do for an SEO client is see what keywords their competitor is ranking for. I've built the Ranked pages tool for this. You simply enter a url of one of your competitors and it spits out all the keywords they are ranking for. You can enter a specific page or the entire domain. It will return a maximum of 1000 results.
• Top pages: This tool gives you an overview of the best performing pages of a competitor. I you're starting out with a new project or website I recommend you start with this tool. You basically enter a competitors' domain in the tool and it gives you an overview of what pages rank the best. The advice is, start creating pages yourself about that subject as well. If you start there you'll immediately start to compete with them and get the most traction in the shortest timespan.
• Keyword gaps: One all time favourite of mine is to see what keywords competitors are ranking for, but I'm not. It's an easy quick win analysis and I often only need to change a few pages and insert some keywords to start ranking as well.
  
  What the tool does is this: it scrapes Google's top 5 results for a keyword. It then uses the "ranked keywords" functionality to find all the keywords a page is ranking for. It also does that for your site as well. Then it looks at the difference of the 5 lists of keywords the top 5 is ranking for, and the list of keywords your page is ranking for. The difference are keywords that you're not ranking for yet. It returns those results for you to export and write content about.