12 Best SEO Software for Small Business in 2023

If you’re a small business owner, you know that SEO is essential for your website. You need to be at the top of the search engine results page to attract new customers.

Luckily, there are many SEO software programs out there that can help you achieve this goal. Whether you’re looking for innovative search engine ranking software for your business or the best tools for your SEO agency, so you can help others.

Afterall, SEO drives 1,000%+ more traffic than social media.

Let’s look at the best tools on the market and how they can help your business succeed online!

1) Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is my favorite SEO tool that offers many features, including backlink analysis, keyword research, and competitor tracking.

Surfer SEO can help you improve your website’s SEO ranking and attract more visitors to your site.

No experience necessary

Worried about training your team members to learn all the nuances of SEO?

Not anymore.

With Surfer’s seo analysis tool, all you need to do is tell your team member to get their score in the green!

Surfer will provide outlines, headlines, popular questions, and keyword ideas for your content.

This article you’re reading right now was optimized with Surfer SEO!

2) Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular search engine optimization software tools in digital marketing.

A favorite among SEO agencies, It offers a wide variety of SEO tools and features, including webmaster tools like site auditor, backlink analysis, keyword research tool, rank tracking tool, and competitor analysis.

Ahrefs can help you improve your small business SEO ranking and attract more visitors to your site.

Ahrefs is one of my favorite keyword tools, but it’s best to supplement with an understanding of search intent and Google Trends.

It’s very easy to track keyword rankings which will inevitably fluctuate!

Traffic

Top Pages

See how your small business marketing efforts move the needle over time and track which changes had the most impact.

Wondering where your website visitors are going the most?

Navigate to the top pages to see which are the most popular. Then, you can focus on developing those pages and adding a CTA or opt-in for leads and sales.

Post content from these pages to social media for even more targeted traffic.

Keyword Research

Ready to start running paid search ads or write a new piece of content?

Navigate to the keyword research tab to discover and analyze new keywords.

Use the keyword difficulty score to determine how hard it is to rank in the top 10 results on SERP (search engine results page/ Google page 1).

You can even see the estimated number of referring domains you need to rank.

In this example, for the keyword “backpacks,” you would need 22 websites to link to your page for Google to determine authority and list on page 1.

Check out the trends of when people are searching most and if, in general, people are searching less or more over time.

Competitive Research

Find out all the sneaky details about a competitor’s website by entering them into site explorer.

You could use software like Spyfu or, you can reverse-engineer within Ahrefs to see which keywords they rank for, do-follow backlinks they have acquired, and even their “content gap” between their competitors for guest posting opportunities.

Running google ads?

Check out your competitor’s live ads and the keywords they’re bidding on.

Even if you’re a small business with no budget for paid ads, you can look at their competitive messaging and how they’re attracting new customers.

3) Google My Business (now Google Business Profile)

Google My Business (most recently Google Business Profile) is another essential SEO tool for small businesses.

This tool allows you to create a free listing for your business on Google Maps and Google Search.

It also helps you track how well your website is performing online. In addition, Google My Business provides helpful tips and advice for improving your website’s SEO ranking.

As a small business, it is incredibly important to monitor your star rating on google and respond to reviews in a timely manner.

Add photos, products, and services to put your best foot forward when customers are searching for what you have to offer.

BONUS: 4 Expert Tips

As one of the most popular free SEO tools for small businesses, there are a few things to keep in mind for the best success (and your sanity) when managing your Google My Business listing.

1) Dropping below a 5-star rating is inevitable- don’t let it get you down

Many new businesses and entrepreneurs will obsess over their star ratings.

And why wouldn’t you?

However, it is important to keep in mind that every business will inevitably drop below 5 stars due to fake reviews, disgruntled customers, and even some by mistake.

2) People expect to see a combination of low and high ratings

Customers and clients expect to see a combination of high and low star ratings.

What matters most is how you respond to those reviews as potential customers will look for your response and what they can expect if they have the same issue.

3) Google has made the verification process and review removal process extremely difficult

Google used to have a fairly simple process and support for getting your business verified through the mail and taking down fake or misleading reviews when you report them.

However, Google has cracked down on this process over the years and won’t take down a poor review even if you can prove it was fake or added by mistake.

The best thing you can do is respond to the review with something along the lines of:

“Thank you for feedback. We don’t have a record of you in our system, please contact us at ______”.

4) Yes, you must use your address

A lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs are understandably cautious when posting their addresses on Google My Business.

It is 100% within your right to keep your address private.

However, this will affect your rankings.

I wish it didn’t, but unfortunately, it does.

Consider your options and tradeoffs with using your personal address on the web.

4) Google PageSpeed Insights

Another important (and free!) SEO tool that you should use for your small business website is Google PageSpeed Insights.

Used by SEO agencies, this tool analyzes your website’s page speed and provides suggestions for improving it.

A fast-loading website is essential for good SEO ranking, so using Google Page Speed Insights can help you improve your website’s performance.

If you are struggling with website speed, there are a few things you can do but it will depend on your website builder platform (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, etc.).

In general, you want to make sure your images are sized correctly for the web, your website template is optimized, and you have some sort of website caching solution.

BONUS: My website has an excellent page speed score because I used a newer WordPress addition to build my site: Kadence Blocks.

5) Google Analytics

Adding to the G Suite of essential (and again free!) tools for small businesses is Google Analytics.

It helps you track how many visitors are coming to your website, where they are coming from, and what pages they are visiting.

This information can be helpful in determining which aspects of your website need improvement.

It’s easy to get lost with the amount of data in Google Analytics, but for a free tool it is more than you need to get started with data-informed decisions for your business.

6) JasperAI with Surfer

JasperAI is a new AI-powered SEO software program that offers many useful features, including competitor analysis, keyword research, and backlink analysis.

JasperAI can help you achieve better SEO results for your business website.

As a small business owner, you might be trying to fit in content writing on top of all of your more pressing responsibilities.

With the recent rise of AI copywriting software, JasperAI can help you and your team bang out new content in no time.

Jasper helped me write this article you’re reading right now!

Check out all the ways you can use Jasper, including content writing, website copy, SEO title tags, social media captions, images, art, and more!

Combined with SurferSEO, it is a powerful SEO-optimized workflow process that you or your team can easily manage to rank on Google.

7) Bright Local

Bright Local is another popular SEO software company that helps businesses track their local search rankings.

It also provides tips for improving your website’s visibility in local search results.

When you’re a local business, it is important to build out local citations.

A citation is your NAP (name, address, and phone number) posted in local directories across the web.

This builds authority to your business and helps your customers find you.

The most affordable small business solution

Unlike other local SEO tools (like Moz), BrightLocal doesn’t charge you a recurring fee to build citations (even though they try to get you to subscribe).

So you can pretty much set it and forget it (for the most part).

EXPERT TIP: It is critical that you’re NAP is exactly the same across the web (including your Google My Business Listing).

Make sure you decide this before you build out citations.

Overall, this is a great affordable tool for small businesses and agencies alike.

8) SEMRush

SEMRush is a well-known SEO software program that offers a variety of features, including site audit, competitor analysis, keyword research, and link building tools.

Similar to Ahrefs, SEMRush can help you improve your website’s SEO ranking and attract more visitors to your site.

Although SEMRush is more expensive than Ahrefs, you can access basic features on the free account (without having to upgrade).

SEMRush does have a good content writing tool to help optimize your blog posts for search engine rankings.

9) Google Keyword Planner

Enter the holy grail of keyword research, Google Keyword Planner is an important tool for small businesses that want to do effective keyword research.

This tool allows you to find new keyword ideas and measure their competitiveness. In addition, Google Keyword Planner provides information on how many people are searching for each keyword.

Compared to Ahrefs and SEMRush‘s monthly plans, Google Keyword Planner is a free tool within the google ads platform.

Note that you will need to create a Google Ads account to use the tool.

You can search by keywords or a competitor’s website to find the average monthly organic search traffic of a particular term and the CPC (cost-per-click) if you were to run paid search ads for this term.

BONUS: Check out Neil Patel’s Uber Suggest tool if you are finding Google Keyword Planner difficult to use or don’t want to create a Google Ads account.

10) Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular and free WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.

It offers features such as page analysis, readability checks, and XML sitemaps. Yoast SEO can help you improve your website’s SEO ranking and attract more visitors to your site.

Yoast is a super easy WordPress SEO plugin to help your page rank on Google.

If you are using one of the other popular website builders such as Wix or Squarespace, you should have built-in search engine optimization tools to update title tags and page URLs for visibility on major search engines.

11) Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another one of the best SEO software for small business.

It helps you track your website’s visibility in Google search results, identify errors, monitor search volume, and troubleshoot problems. In addition, Google Search Console provides helpful tips for improving your website’s SEO ranking.

Different from Google Analytics, Google Search Console helps you track your visibility on SERP (search engine results page) and improve your search engine optimization.

12) Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a useful, free SEO tool that helps you find long-tail keywords. It generates a list of questions that people are asking about your topic and can help you find new keywords to target in your SEO strategy.

If none of the above tools help you find ideas for content, Answer the Public offers a great visualization of connected ideas and topics.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the best SEO software for small business available in 2022. By using these SEO tools, you can improve your website’s SEO ranking and attract more visitors to your site.

Do you have any favorite SEO tools that we didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments below!