SEO in 2013 is likely to be very different than in years past, as social media appears to be taking centre stage. While SEO is of course here to stay, its role has changed slightly now.

Rather than gearing websites towards search engines, it’s now all about the user experience, which means SEO experts will need to be one hundred per cent clued up on the best tools and programmes out there in order to deliver a better level of website quality. If you’ve been casting around for some great tools you can use, here are seven of the best for 2013:

1) Screaming Frog

This tool has been at the top of the list for some time now. It’s an SEO Spider that can quickly assess an entire website and provide you with a list of issues so you can fix problems you may have not even known about otherwise.

You can export all of the data it produces into Excel, which makes it much easier to sort through, and it can collate information regarding links, images, CSS, HTML scripts and apps. If you’re only able to use one tool, Screaming Frog should be it.

2) SEOmoz

SEOmoz is a software company offering up a huge range of SEO tools. You can find many tools all rolled into one on this site, and they’re all useful. You’ll find a campaign manager, twitter analytics, link analysis programme, on-page analysis, rank tracker, website crawler, SEO toolbar, keyword analysis and an SEO tool builder you can use to create your own programme.

And, if you want to stay on the cutting edge of SEO, you should definitely add the SEOmoz blog onto your daily reading list.

3) Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics can aid you in assessing your own site’s SEO success while also offering you new opportunities worldwide. It has a great keyword rank tracker and competitor analysis tool to see how you fair against your competitors.

It’s main function though is its SEO visibility analysis, which can allow you to track the success of your entire campaign. Along with this, it can also identify potential SEO issues so you can fix them ASAP.

4) SEMrush

This tool is used by a huge range of well-known companies, including PayPal, Forbes, Expedia, Philips and others. SEMrush is so popular because it can show you how you compare to your competitors. With it, you can compare organic positions, PPC ad text, keyword research, SEO metrics and more.

5) Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This tool should be in every SEO’s arsenal, as the Google Adwords keyword tool can show you the top level keywords you should be targeting. They come straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, so even if you use other keyword tools you should always check with Adwords first.

You can find broad, exact and phrase keywords and can select from global and local searches. However, always take the data from Adwords with a pinch of salt, as the results are based on averages and don’t take seasonality into account.

6) Internet Officer

This useful tool can help you to figure out whether there are any redirects associated with a particular link. You may find that there are 301, 302 or HTML redirects linked to your site. With Internet Officer, you can quickly and easily sift through problem links to get everything sorted.

7) Pingdom Tools

Google reportedly increased its reliance on site speed back in 2010, meaning it is now an important factor in website rankings. If you want to find out how your website fares against others, use the site speed tester on Pingdom Tools.

It loads your site from the US (where the GoogleBot is located) in order to give results similar to those found by Google, and then shows you an analysis against other sites that have been tested. There you have it – seven of the biggest and best tools for 2013.

Do you already use any of these tools or have you managed to come across a couple of new ones after reading this article? Let us know by commenting! This article was written by Aurora Johnson on behalf of Custard, an agency offering expert search marketing services as well as social, design and PR.

Tagged as: 2013, SEO tools