SEO remains one of the most critical branches of digital marketing, with every global organization through to small-time creators, fighting for visibility in the SERPS. Following the disruption in 2024 with the leaked documents from Google and the helpful content update, SEO is more challenging now than ever. If you’re going to make a mark with your SEO efforts in 2025 – the following SEO tools are a must in your martech stack!
There’s a mixture of paid and free options – and these tools can be used by complete beginners or large businesses with existing SEO strategies!
Surfer SEO
Surfer is one of my favorite SEO tools which IMO wipes the floor with the competition when it comes to content optimization. It has a few different product offerings, some free and some paid, but the main paid aspects include the live Content Editor, an Auditing Tool, and Topical Mapping, and of course various AI generation features. It’s a bit pricey, especially for those on a budget, but I think it’s worth it for those who want to focus purely on keyword research and writing really good SEO-optimized content.
The Content Editor, my favorite, is a tool where you can edit your articles while simultaneously monitoring a live SEO score. This scoring uses over 500 ranking factors and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to suggest keyword usage, structure, and readability. It’s arguably the best tool out there for live SEO editing, helping you optimize every piece of content as much as you can.
Other notable features include the Audit Tool which evaluates existing content by analyzing metrics such as word count, keyword density, and backlink profiles, with suggestions on how to improve on-page optimization. The Topical Mapping feature helps to visualize and optimize keyword research and clustering, which helps with strategy and content creation. Finally, there are the AI features, which allow you to generate a full article – but with better quality content than using say ChatGPT or Gemini directly.
Not to mention Surfer has some great free tools to use:
- AI outline generator
- AI Detector
- AI humanizer
- Keyword surfer extension
Pricing
Surfer SEO offers three pricing tiers:
- Essential Plan: $99 per month.
- Scale Plan: $219 per month.
- Custom Plan: Dependant on your needs.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another popular name in the industry, positioning itself as an all-in-one SEO tool. It could take some time to list all the features, but some of the most notable ones include the Site Explorer, Site Audit, Content Explorer, and Keyword Explorer. Ahrefs provides almost every feature you could need for your SEO strategy, whether it’s content gap analysis, keyword research, or competitor analysis. I will say that Ahrefs is on the pricey end of the scale when it comes to SEO tools. Oh, it has also added an AI content editor, suspiciously similar to Surfer…
Some of the things Ahrefs can help you with include:
- Perform keyword research.
- Run a competitor analysis.
- Audit your website.
- Monitor your rankings.
- Identify technical SEO issues.
- Create a dashboard for all your metrics.
I would say the most notable feature of Ahrefs is its ability to support competitor analysis. While it’s not a ‘direct’ feature, many of the capabilities in Ahrefs link towards competitor analysis, whether it’s through the Keyword Explorer, Site Explorer, or Competitive Analysis Tool. You can analyze competitors’ backlink profiles to try and target those sources in your outreach campaign, identify keyword opportunities that the competition has missed, and even check their Core Web Vitals.
Another great feature of Ahrefs is its Keyword Explorer which is essential for keyword research and planning. They have their own database of keywords with metrics such as search volume, keyword density, ranking potential, estimated ranking difficulty and much more. The tool also allows you to cluster keywords, see search phrases, and questions people ask, and even see the search history of queries. I have used a fair few keyword tools, and I would say Ahrefs is by far the best to build out a strong keyword strategy.
Ahrefs also offers some free tools:
- Webmaster Tools
- Backlink Checker
- Broken Link Checker
- Website Authority Checker
- Keyword Generator
- YouTube Keyword Tool
- Amazon Keyword Tool
- Bing Keyword Tool
- SERP Checker
- SEO Toolbar
- WordPress Plugin
- Keyword Rank Checker
- Keyword Difficulty Checker
- Website Checker
- AI Writing tools
- SEO Audit Tool
Pricing
Ahrefs has 4 primary pricing plans to accommodate different needs, but you get 2 months free when paying annually:
- Lite Plan: $119 per month.
- Standard Plan: $229 per month.
- Advanced Plan: $419 per month.
- Enterprise Plan: $1,394 per month.
There is also a Starter Plan which is $27 per month but offers limited access and a free plan which still provides good access in my opinion.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog’s tool – the SEO Spider is a little different but a powerhouse when it comes to technical SEO auditing. Essentially it’s a website crawler that will pick apart your website piece by piece and find every technical problem you could want to know – allowing you to improve it and optimize your site. It will find issues such as broken links, redirect errors, insecure pages, missing H-tags, and more. You can schedule the audits to run automatically too.
A really great feature of the SEO Spider tool is the visualization options, which include the following graphs:
- Crawl Tree
- Directory Tree
- Force-Directed Crawl
- Force-Directed Directory Tree
- Inlink Anchor Text Word Cloud
- Body Text Word Cloud
You can also compare different crawls – which can help to identify any changes and how they have impacted the technical SEO of your site. If you haven’t used this tool before, the best thing to do is download the free version, run a crawl of your site, and just click around – checking out all the different errors and potential issues it may have found.
Pricing
Screaming Frog offers a free version of the SEO Spider, allowing crawling of up to 500 URLs, suitable for small websites and initial audits. Then paid license is available:
- SEO Spider License: £199 per year, providing unlimited URL crawling and access to advanced features such as saving and re-uploading crawls, custom extraction, and integration with Google Analytics.
AnswerThePublic
I almost didn’t include this tool on the list, but I think it’s a useful one for beginners. AnswerThePublic is a ‘Search Listening Tool’ but to simplify it, it shows you what people are searching for on different search engines. Why is this useful for SEO? Well, I wouldn’t say it directly helps, but it’s a great addition to your research and planning – where you can identify common questions and key phrases that could potentially be targeted for one of your articles. This would have to be combined with keyword research, content optimization, and so on to be effective.
An example of it in action: You search for a term, in this case, I just entered ‘Marketing’ and you get a wheel (shown below) which shows different forms of questions based on How, Why, Will, etc. that relate to the keyword marketing. You also get prepositions and comparisons too.
You can also set up Search Listening Alerts which monitors changes in search behavior over time and sends notifications when new questions or phrases emerge, helping you to keep ahead of trends and adjust content strategies. There’s also the ability to search for Bing instead of Google, and export to CSV if you prefer the spreadsheet over the wheel!
Pricing
AnswerThePublic offers both free and paid plans:
- Free Option: Limited to a few searches per day, suitable for occasional use.
- Individual Plan: Starting at $11 per month.
- Pro Plan: Starting at $99 per month.
- Expert Plan: Starting at $199 per month.
Clearscope
Coming in as a strong competitor to Surfer is Clearscope – a ‘content-first SEO platform’ that focuses on the content journey from planning to optimization to long-term monitoring. With Clearcsope you can perform keyword research with insights into search volume and competition, write content directly with a live grading system, and also upgrade and optimize existing content. As far as pricing goes, I think Clearscope is expensive, but if you have the budget, it’s a worthwhile investment.
The content editor is probably one of the best features of Clearscope – similar to Surfer you can edit in-platform and see suggested improvements and keyword opportunities as you go. Rather than a score, Clearscope gives your content a grade which is based on content relevance and comprehensiveness and also looks at word count and readability.
Other features you get within the editor are recommended words or phrases relevant to the topic, suggestions to help you answer search intent, and a Term Map displaying the recommended terms based on topical relevance. There are a handful of other features too. It also has Google Docs integration and a WordPress plugin option.
The keyword research feature, based on a credit usage system, is good for those wanting to identify keyword opportunities with essential SEO data – without the fluff. You can search for queries, see questions, and look at similar/exact match keywords – in addition to being able to look at competitor insights. There are no bells and whistles, but it does what you need and helps you get the job done.
Pricing
Clearscope has three main pricing plans and optional add-ons:
- Essentials Plan: $189 per month.
- Professional Plan: $399 per month.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO was originally a plugin built for WordPress and is probably the most popular and widely used SEO plugin in the world. It also has a Shopify plugin and multiple variations of WP plugins to support news, video, e-commerce, and so on. The plugin supports many different aspects of SEO including sitemaps & Robots.txt, keyword optimization, title & meta optimization, and AI-powered suggestions. It’s pretty much a plug-and-play SEO tool for WordPress site owners – I would say that this plugin should be a standard download for anyone new to SEO or new site owners. The setup is easy, the UI is clean, and it helps you get through the basics. Even the free version is packed with useful features.
One great feature of Yoast for WordPress is the on-page SEO analysis for your articles. You simply enter the keyword you are targeting and Yoast will analyze the content in your editor and identify problems, improvements, and good results – which helps to fully optimize your article for publishing. It also provides suggestions for internal linking as you go, which is extremely helpful.
Yoast has many other time-saving features such as selecting canonical links, managing redirects, social media previews, and integrations with external platforms (Semrush). If you are a beginner when it comes to technical SEO and on-page SEO, then I think Yoast is a top choice and a great place to start – I would say not to replace other tools and rely on it solely as your only SEO tool though.
Pricing
Yoast SEO offers both free and premium versions:
- Free Version: Includes basic SEO features.
- Premium Version: Priced at $99 per year.
ChatGPT / Perplexity
I don’t think ChatGPT needs an introduction but Perplexity is another AI tool that acts more as a search engine. It uses other websites as sources to summarize key information you want to know, which is incredibly useful. You might be wondering why I have merged these two and also what they have to do with SEO… well a lot actually, which I will cover. The best part about these tools is they are free (unless you want to pay for the more advanced models). I will say that you should use these as supplementary tools in your SEO efforts, they will not be effective by themselves.
So let’s focus on ChatGPT. It has many different use cases for SEO, you can use it to perform keyword research, analyze your articles, write schema markup, optimize articles with keywords, suggest sources to link to, brainstorm, and even write articles based on keywords. Consider these prompt engineering strategies to get the most out of your AI experience.
Before you ask – YES – AI-generated content can rank without any editing. I have seen it, I have done it, but I don’t recommend it.
Perplexity can supplement ChatGPT and support with research, competitor analysis, identifying search intent, and performing content gap analysis. Although ChatGPT now has search capabilities, I still think Perplexity does a much better job at identifying sources.
So with both of these tools, you can research, plan, optimize, and create as a part of your SEO strategy. Combine with some of the other tools on this list such as Screaming Frog and Ahrefs, and you’ve got a neat SEO tech stack going on.
Pricing
ChatGPT offers both free and subscription-based access:
- Free Access: Limited features and availability.
- ChatGPT Plus: $20 per month.
Perplexity also offers free and paid options:
- Free Access: Limitations and fewer features.
- Professional: $20 per month.
Semrush
When it comes to Semrush, most people are torn between that and Ahrefs as the two are very similar. These similarities include an overview dashboard, keyword research tools, backlink analysis, auditing, error suggestions, domain information and much more. It also offers free tools for users and free online courses for people to learn more. Its price point is a bit higher than Ahrefs, but when it comes to reliability, Semrush actually has a larger database to support its functionality so I would argue that price point and say that Semrush takes the win.
Semrush’s Keyword Research tools help to identify high-performing keywords packed with vital metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive density, assisting in the selection of keywords for both organic and paid campaigns. It also provides historical data on keywords and provides suggestions based on your searches. The difference with Semrush is that is has 22.3 billion keywords in its database compared to 7 Billion Ahrefs, and its historical data dates back to 2012 (compared to 2015) – source. The larger the database, the more accurate the data, in theory.
Semrush also offers a bunch of free tools including:
- Website Authority Checker
- Keyword Rank Checker
- SERP Checker
- Keyword Search Volume Checker
Pricing
Semrush offers several pricing plans plus a bunch of extra add-ons:
- Pro Plan: $139.95 per month.
- Guru Plan: $249.95 per month.
- Business Plan: $499.95 per month.
NeuronWriter
NeuronWriter is an ‘advanced content editor with semantic models (NLP), Google SERP analysis, and competition data.’ It’s a content editor, with scoring, very similar to the editor that Surfer and Clearscope use. The use of natural language processing (NLP) and AI recommendations supports users with the production of high-ranking content. You can generate draft ideas, identify search intent, and write your articles using AI – then use the scoring and keyword system to optimize. The price is much cheaper than others in the space, but it doesn’t offer many other tools/features like they do.
NeuronWriter’s AI feature is useful here, especially if you create a lot of AI content. There are tools to “Auto-Insert Terms” and “Synonyms” which improve content quality by suggesting relevant keywords and alternative expressions without you having to do the work. Then you can create draft outlines and the whole article if you want to, without even leaving the tool. Other features I like about NeuronWriter are you can create content at scale, plan content effectively, and also use AI templates, which all help to simplify creating SEO-optimized content.
Pricing
NeuronWriter provides several pricing plans to accommodate different needs:
- Bronze Plan: $23 per month.
- Silver Plan: $45 per month.
- Gold Plan: $69 per month.
- Platinum Plan:$93 per month.
- Diamond Plan: $117 per month.
Google Tools
Although it sounds obvious, you’d be surprised how many don’t use any of Google’s suite of tools for SEO. It’s not even a case of these being the best SEO tools, they are more absolute SEO tools that you SHOULD have in your stack. Each tool has a different use case, and while it can be argued that you only need the Google tech stack and no other tool, I would still recommend using another tool on this list that’s specifically designed for SEO. I won’t go into too much detail on these but the tools you need to consider include:
- Google Search Console – Used to monitor site performance, rankings, crawl rates, indexing, and keyword/page performance.
- Google Trends – Used to identify emerging topics and ‘quick-win’ keywords where you can get ahead of the competition.
- Google Search – This can be used for research. Simply type keywords or phrases to get suggestions, and questions, and look at results for search intent etc.
- Page Speed Insights – For technical SEO to diagnose issues relating to speed, user experience, page sizes, etc.
- Gemini – Similar to ChatGPT and can be used to support research, ideation, creation, and analysis.
- Google Business Profile – Essential and a must-have for local SEO.
- Google Keyword Planner – A keyword research tool, built for search campaigns.
- Google Rich Results Test – Used to text structured data and if your page can show for carousel, recipes, etc.
There’s no pricing for these – they are all free. Unless you want to pay for Gemini AI advanced, but it’s not necessary.
