Search marketing is bigger than ever as Google continues to grow and rankings are more important than ever before. Today’s top USA-based SEO services will utilize tools like these to better understand your website’s ranking, and how to bring it up.

Some of these are free, others paid, but all of them are essential. Let’s dive in and take a look!

SEMrush

Our first tool is called SEMrush and it’s an amazing place to start. There’s a free version to give you the run of the features, but the paid version will offer the full experience. You can enter the URL of your competitors into it and see a full breakdown of the keywords they’re using.

You can also enter keywords and get a huge list of suggestions based on your input. With the additional features unlocked, you can go so far as to analyze your competition’s ad campaigns and conduct an analysis of their backlinks as well.

Knowing your competition is key for search marketers, because it can mean the difference between a low position and a high one in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

Buzzsumo

A lot of work goes into creating, optimizing, and promoting a piece of content, which is why you need to be confident in your subject matter. 

You can use BuzzSumo once per day for free and that’s about all you’ll need to see before you’re sold. You can put it in any competitor’s URL and see what content is performing the best, in addition to how many social media shares they are getting. It’s an amazing tool that can give you the confidence you need to pull the trigger on your next content concept.

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Majestic

Backlinks are an important part of any SEO strategy, which is why Majestic should be on your list. This tool can be used for free at first and allows you to harness their Site Explorer and Backlink History Checker to see where your competition has been getting backlinks from.

Finding out where your competitors are getting their backlinks is important as it can give you an edge in terms of websites where you’ll find opportunities to earn links of your own.

AuthorityLabs

AuthorityLabs is a great service that takes the guesswork out of your SEO. It gives you full breakdowns of your rankings each and every day, which gives you the chance to make quick reactions if you start slipping on any of the keywords you’re targeting.

You can track both global and local rankings as well. With a free trial, you’ll have a risk-free opportunity to check it out.

Keyword.io

This was one of the first keyword research tools I found and it remains one of my favorites to this day. Completely free, it allows you to enter a main keyword or topic and then it generates a huge amount of data to inform your strategy.

It also includes things like autocomplete to help you find long-tail keyword options and formulate stronger associations with your content and the topic at hand.

Final Thoughts

Search marketers have numerous tools at their disposal, but these are the best ones. Which tools do you prefer for your search marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments!