13 On-Page SEO Tools (+ How to Use Them)

If there’s one thing about SEO most consultants, freelancers, agency owners (and clients) can agree on, it’s this:

It can take a lot of time to see success with an SEO strategy.

That’s why there are so many technical SEO tools, link building guides and blog posts about keyword research to help make the various SEO tasks much easier to manage.

On-page SEO is no different.

It is a vital part of success to any SEO campaign, and there are several elements you need to manage—checking meta tags, optimizing headings, writing content for SEO, and more.

This article is a quick rundown of the best on-page SEO tools, what they are, why they’re important, and how to use them to get more search traffic.

But first:

What Is On-Page SEO and Off Page SEO?

First, it is important to understand the difference between on- and off-page SEO.

Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/06/13/off-page-seo

Anything that is “on-page” refers to the SEO factors that occur on your website at the page-level. You have direct control over every SEO element that is on your own pages.

Off-page SEO refers to SEO elements that occur beyond your website, such as backlinks, social media, and so on. You don’t always have full control over off-page elements.

While there are SEO tools for both, this guide will only cover on-page optimization tools.

Why Does On-Page SEO Matter?

On-page SEO is important because it is how you control how search engines and users see the content on your web pages.

It affects how your pages appear in SERPs, it helps search engines understand your pages when it crawls them, and so on.

You can think of on-page SEO as being the introductory sales pitch from your business to Google and your audience. Having a website that is highly optimized helps you rank better for target keywords, increase traffic, and earn more backlinks.

What Are The Most Important Parts of On-Page SEO?

While there are several important elements for on-page SEO, there are a few that are more important than others. The best on-page SEO tools will be what helps you optimize your pages for these:

• Keywords: including keywords in the content, meta tags, heading tags, etc
• Content: writing high quality and relevant content for target and semantic keywords
• Internal links: adding links to other relevant pages on your website
• Page speed: having a page that loads quickly
• Mobile friendliness: having a page that looks good and is fully functional on phones

If a tool also helps you with less important factors, you can consider that a bonus. But if you only have so much money to spend on tools, always pick the ones that help you in these areas.

On-Page SEO Tools

Now it’s time to look at the SEO tools that help you manage your on-page optimization. Some of them help with specific tasks for businesses, some are SEO agency tools and some have really specific use cases.

Here are the 13 best on-page SEO tools with a quick outline of their features, benefits, and pricing.

1. SurferSEO

SurferSEO offers a full-service solution for all the major on-page SEO tasks. It has features to help optimize content for SEO, from blogs to full-length articles. Its bread and butter is the keyword surfing tool, which is a Chrome extension that shows find search data for keyword searches you perform.

If you use the tool itself, you can use it to perform mass-keyword research, analyze SERPs, or perform an SEO audit on your website. It has several different pricing plan tiers, so you can pick a plan that works for your needs and budget.

Features:

• Keyword surfer
• Keyword research
• SEO audit
• Content editor
• SERP analyzer

Pricing: 

• Low = $29 per month for the Hobby plan
• High = $650 per month for the Business+ plan
• Enterprise plans are available

2. PageOptimizer Pro

PageOptimizer Pro is a very simple but one of the most useful site audit tools you can use for on-page optimizations. It has two different methods, their Chrome extension and dashboard.

With the extension, you log into your CMS or have your content in a Google Doc. You can then run the extension tool to have it analyze the page. It will show you recommendations to better optimize it, which you can then quickly and easily implement.

The dashboard works by entering your website domain, target page and keyword and let it run. You can add competitors to compare their page(s) to yours, and get much more in-depth recommendations and insights.

Features:

• Keyword recommendations, including variants
• LSI terms
• Word count ranges
• Header tag optimization
• Schema markup placement

Pricing: 

• Low = $20 per month for the Basic plan
• High = $39 per month for the Unlimited plan

3. Website Auditor

Website Auditor is a tool by Link Assistant specifically made for on-page optimization. You can use it to perform a complete on-page audit, and then use their SEO guides and resources to learn how to improve your page.

For agencies, it is also one of the best white label SEO tools as you can run regular reports for your clients. It will allow you to run quick audits on the websites of clients or prospects so you can give them valuable insights.

Features:

• Website structure analysis
• HTML coding and page structure analysis
• Page loading diagnosis
• Broken link checker
• Website link structure

Pricing: 

• Low = $124 per year for the Professional plan
• High = $299 per year for the Enterprise plan

4. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog has been around for a long time in the SEO world. Their SEO Spider is one of the best SEO monitoring tools you can use. Part of what makes it useful is that they have a free plan available for businesses just getting started.

You can use it to crawl your website and all its pages and check any on-page elements for analysis. Some of its more useful features including finding broken links and duplicate content, or generating XML sitemaps. But it has many more features to make even the paid plan worth it.

Features:

• Page title and meta data analysis
• Link checker for broken links and redirects
• Website crawler
• Duplicate content checker

Pricing: 

• Low = Free
• High = £149.00 per year for the Paid Version plan

5. Clearscope

Clearscope is a more specialized tool that focuses on content. It uses artificial intelligence to give better insights and recommendations for optimizing your page’s content. Its stated goal is to help you write better quality, more relevant content for your website’s target keywords.

It starts with their keyword research tools you can use to find suggestions based on you or your competitors’ content. From there, it will help you write new content or better optimize existing pages.

Features:

• SEO audit
• Keyword suggestions
• SERP rank tracking
• Custom reports

Pricing: 

• Low = $350 per month for their Pro plan
• High = Agency and Enterprise plans based on negotiation

6. On Page Grader from Moz

Moz is well known in the SEO industry as having several tools to help with every possible part of the job. The Moz On-Page Grader is a great way to analyze your page and rate it according to a list of top on-page SEO factors. It will give out grades that come with effective and actionable insights.

Like all of Moz’s tools, the On-Page Grader is simple and intuitive to use. Even people new to SEO can use it to improve their pages’ rankings thanks to its easy to understand checklist format.

Features:

• On-page audit
• SEO grading

Pricing: 

• Must subscribe to Moz Pro to access this tool
• Low = $99 per month for the Standard plan
• High = $599 per month for the Premium plan

7. SEMrush’s On-Page SEO Checker

SEMRush is another major SEO solutions platform that offers a suite of specialized tools. Their On-Page SEO Checker helps you find opportunities to improve your website. It pulls data from several sources and compares your pages to your competitors according to target keywords.

It then churns out suggestions on how to better optimize your website’s pages. It covers all of the on-page SEO elements, and shows every improvement per page. You just enter the pages you want to improve, connect your Google properties, and let it run.

Features:

• SERP features ideas
• Content recommendations
• User experience optimization
• Keyword suggestions

Pricing: 

• Must subscribe to SEMRush to access the SEO checker tool
• Low = $99.95 per month for the Pro plan
• High = $399.95 per month for the Business plan

8. Site Checker Pro

Sitechecker Pro is another full-service on-page tool. It was launched back in 2016 by a team of SEO specialists, and was designed more for other SEO specialists or agencies to use. It comes with all of the tools you would want to have in an SEO platform, including a free chrome extension.

It also is one of the better organic or local rank tracking tools you will find. That way, you can track the progress of your SEO campaign and how effective your optimizations are over time.

Features:

• Chrome extension
• On-page SEO audit
• Website SEO reporting
• SEO monitoring
• local rank tracking tools

Pricing: 

• Free

9. SEOCrawler

The big benefit of SEOCrawler as an on-page optimization tool is that it automates a lot of the usual process involved with SEO. It analyzes a page quickly, and shows things like page speed, meta tags, keywords, and more. Collecting all of that in one location saves you a lot of time gathering it together yourself from other sources.

After analyzing your pages, it will also give you a list of suggestions for how you can better optimize them. This can be very effective as a sort of automated SEO consultant. Businesses can use it to fix their website, including great potential for local SEO tools.

Features:

• Rank tracker
• Site audit
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research
• White label reporting

Pricing: 

• Free

10. Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs is up there with Moz and SEMRush as the best complete SEO solution platforms. Their Keyword Explorer tool is among the very best when it comes to gaining valuable insights into keyword optimization.

You can use it to find new and better keywords to target. Their tool shows scoring, backlink data, and more to compare different keywords. You can find keywords by entering your website or your competitors’. It will show you seed keywords, similar keywords, and more.

Features:

• 10 search engines’ worth of keyword data
• Search volumes, difficulty scores and click data
• Parent topic for target keyword
• Advanced SEO metrics
• SERP overview and position history

Pricing: 

• Must subscribe to Ahrefs platform to access Keyword Explorer tool
• Low = $99 per month for Lite plan
• High = $999 per month for Agency plan

11. Copyscape

Copyscape is a simple tool with one function: to check if content online is plagiarised. You can enter the URL of a page and it will tell you if any part of it was plagiarized from another source. You can also set up automatic alerts to know if another website plagiarized your content.

Unique and quality content is one of the most important on-page SEO elements, so this tool can be a big help. It helps you protect your content from getting plagiarized, but it also helps you write your content as well.

If you hire copywriters, you can use this free tool to test what they send you. You can also check to make sure that you rewrote content enough to avoid plagiarism, if you borrow from other sources.

Features:

• Plagiarism tester
• Automatic plagiarism alerts

Pricing: 

• Free

12. Google Developers PageSpeed Insight

Another simple and free tool, this resource comes from Google themselves. They created this PageSpeed Insights tool to help people test the loading speed for specific pages. Considering how page loading speed is one of the top on-page ranking factors, it’s a good tool to use.

This tool shows you the loading speeds split by desktop and mobile. It also provides both general and specific ratings for page speed factors. With the results, you get actionable insights to fix specific problems that slow your loading speeds.

Features:

• Desktop and mobile page speed rating
• Opportunity report to fix diagnosed problems

Pricing: 

• Free

13. Google Search Console

Google Search Console (or Webmaster Tools if you are old school) is one of Google’s many free SEO tools that every marketer should use for improving organic search. For on-page optimisations GSC is uniquely useful.

Inside the performance report you can look for underperforming pages to improve, see which titles get the most clicks and see if there are any updates to your meta data you can do to boost CTR.

Features:

• Search performance reporting
• Help with SERP analysis
• Push data to Google Sheets for more analysis

Pricing: 

• Free

Summary

All of these on-page SEO tools cover a wide range of tasks that you would normally have to perform manually. They cover the big important tasks, such as keywords and content. But they also include the simple elements, like checking content for originality.

You do not need to invest in all of these tools, but they should give you a good idea of what your biggest needs are. They can form a starting point for your in-depth research into each tool you think can help you the most.

Whether you want to optimize local landing pages to rank better, or fix simple on-page technical elements, you will find a tool to help.