Are you on the look out for the best SEO tools for small businesses that you can use to improve your small business’ online presence and attract customers? Then you’ve just arrived at the right place at the right time.
Any single person running a small business knows how important it is to attract customers online. The world has gone very digital of course but guess what?
There is a lot of competition out there. So how exactly do you stand out?
The one and only answer? SEO!
You need to have the right tools to carry out SEO effectively.
This is the challenge I’m going to tackle for you today.
In this article today, we are going to go ahead and list six of the best SEO tools that will in no doubt increase your website traffic, improve your rankings and all-in-all grow your small business.
Without wasting much time, let’s jump to it.
6 Best SEO tools for Small Businesses in 2025
1. Semrush
Semrush is one of the best SEO toolkits out there. I’m sure you might have heard of it but if not, then today is the day you come to the knowledge.
You can use semrush to do know many things about your business such as keywords your target audience are searching so you can target these keywords in your content to bring then to your website. The sub-tool in semrush that helps with this is the keyword magic tool.
You simply enter a seed keyword related to your business and it will bring up thousands of related keywords that potential customers are searching for.
Filter for the popular ones with low competition and target these keywords in your content and rank on google first page, then watch leads and sales pouring in.
There is also competitor analysis feature which lets you spy on your competitors to discover what they are doing and what is working for them and use those discoveries to improve your website.
If you are just getting to know semrush, then you should definitely try one of it’s best features called “Site audit”. This will scan your site and check it’s overall health. It looks for problems like broken links, missing tags, and more and provides you with ways to fix those technical issues.
Here is how the site audit looks like;
Semrush is not only for keyword research and site audit. It is also AI friendly.
As we all know, AI is the trend of the day and you need to adapt to it to increase your productivity.
Amazingly, Semrush has integrated SEO writing assistant and what this does is that it helps you create articles to rank on google by using the right structure and keywords your potential customers are searching on Google.
Ultimately, Semrush also provides you tracking to keep track of how your website is improving.
The tool comes with a free version if you want to try it. But if you want to take your business to the next level, then upgrade to paid plan to get a complete suite of tools you need.
2. Google Search Console
Google search console is like the number one tool every website owner should have. In fact, it is compulsory for any business who’s looking to drive traffic and get long lasting customers from Google.
It shows you how your website is fairing on its search engine, such as;
- the keywords your website is showing up for
- your top performing pages based on number of people searching, clicks, the position you are ranking
- technical seo issues your website is facing
Not only this but you can also monitor your overall performance.
There are other sub-tools Google search console offers such as indexing, reviews, shopping product snippets (for ecommerce) and much more.
Search Console also checks and will tell you if your site is mobile friendly or not and ways you can fix it. Majority of your potential customers search and browse websites on their mobile phone and you need to ensure your website is ready for that.
If it is not, Google won’t waste time deranking you.
If you just setup your small business website, it is highly recommended you connect your site to google search console to begin knowing how you rank and how customers find you.
As time goes on and as you create content for your business, Google will start to understand what kind of business you are into and it will start to show you what your potential customers are typing into it’s search engine.
This will most likely help you align and improve your website rankings.
Don’t forgot, more rankings equal more visitors and they turn to customers.
What are you waiting for? Setup your search console now
3. Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile used to be known as google my business and it is a very powerful tool today for your business.
Have you every been hungry and searched for “restaurants near me” to get food delivered to you?
Then you’ll notice Google show restaurants that are very close to your location so you can contact them and place an order.
This is exactly what Google business profile can do for you. If you sell products and services in your local area you need to setup a google business profile.
When people in your local area search for that service and products that you offer, you’ll appear in Google search results and maps. This means a lot of potential customers for you.
They can call you on phone or even visit your website or physical address to know more about what you offer.
Here is how it looks like below:
On Google business profile you can add your address, phone number, website, business hours. This will enable customers find you easily. You can also upload photos of the products and services you offer.
Not only this, customers can leave reviews to help you build more credibility and trust.
So don’t waste more time, if you haven’t yet, go setup your google my business profile and start dominating your local market.
Don’t joke with this it is very important for your business visibility, unless you don’t want customers. Who doesn’t?
4. Ahrefs  Â
Ahrefs is like semrush but it focuses more on backlinks. It is in fact the best backlink analysis tool in the digital marketing space.
If you are concerned about improving your small business and staying ahead of the competition then ahrefs is a tool you should consider.
This tool shows you what website is linking to yours and what websites you link to. Not only that, it also gives you many opportunities to acquire more backlinks to your website.
Backlinks is like the backbone of trust for Google. if you want Google to rank you higher, it needs to know through the number of websites that are linking to you to boost you ahead of your competitors.
This is why backlinks are very important. It is like a vote from many websites that you can be trusted.
The more quality backlinks your website have, the more chances google ranks you higher so you can get traffic and convert them to customers.
Ahrefs is not only for backlinks, you can perform keyword research using its “keyword explorer” to find the best keywords your potential customers are typing into Google.
Just like semrush, you can also do a site audit on Ahrefs to find what is holding your website back from ranking. These may be slow pages, broken links, missing tags or meta descriptions, etc. It also provides you the fix to these issues to improve your performance.
You can also track keywords performance and many more.
Ahrefs have some free tools for you to try then decide if you want to go for the paid plans.
Give it a try and it will definitely help you increase your website authority and trust which is key for ranking higher on google.
5. Google Analytics
Another powerful free small business SEO tool is google analytics. Notice this comes from Google once again. Google is dominating search results and you need to leverage it to get more search traffic.
Google analytics is like a heatmap tool that scans your website and reports how potential customers are using it. You can see things like:
- your most popular page getting you the most traffic. Included is how long people stay on the page, how they exit it, etc. This lets you know what keeps people glued to your page and how you can improve to decrease bounce rate
- how you are getting your traffic; is it through, Google, social media or other websites? It will show you.
Google analytics also help you track sales and which marketing efforts bring you the most customers so you can focus more on that.
All of this help you determine what you should prioritize in your business and also tailor ways you can re-strategize and improve.
In summary, you get all the DATA needed to succeed and grow your business. Data is very important because you get exactly what is and what is not working.
To use it, Just install the Google analytics plugin if you are using WordPress and connect it. Google will start to pull the data while you work on other important aspect of your business.
It is 100% free to use.
6. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a plugin by Yoast created to help you fully configure your website SEO. It is a must have plugin if you aren’t using an SEO plugin like Rank Math already.
The fundamentals is very important. You can’t just setup your website and expect traffic and sales.
First you need to do things like tell Google what your website is about. This is communicated in the title tag and meta description of your website.
When people search your website name on Google, they will see it.
Then you need to create a sitemap to show and tell google whenever you have a new content.
Also, your business blog articles need to be SEO optimized for them to rank on Google. You can get tips on how many times your keyword should appear in the content or if it is too much already, meta description of the posts and more.
A tool like Yoast helps you in setting up all of this.
It is a must have for every website.
For business targeting local customers, Yoast also has a local SEO feature to help you show up in local search results and Google maps. This is what we discussed in the Google Business Profile tool earlier. Yoast takes it to the next level, helping you set it up faster so you can attract customers from nearby local search.
Yoast is free to use. There is also the premium version if you need more features but the free version has basically many of the things you need to configure your site SEO.
Conclusion on the Best Small Business SEO tools
Every small business needs to grow online in this digital age to attract lots of customers. It is all about working smart and not hard.
Beginners can start by configuring their site SEO with Yoast plugin, connect to Google search console, use Semrush to find potential customers keywords and run with the other tools.
Now you have it; the blueprint is laid down before you; the best of the best seo tools for small businesses to grow online, drive more traffic and ultimately get customers flowing in.
So what do you think about this list? Which of tools will you use first? Have any questions? Please let us know in the comments section.
Guest Writer
Williams is a finance and tech expert with over nine years of experience. He shares practical and straightforward insights into technology, finance, and entrepreneurship.