Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Digital SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
2026 is just around the corner, and SEO is more important than ever, as the online economy is now outperforming the traditional economy, with growth projections of around 7% for 2026. Using the right tools strategically is crucial for enhancing brand growth in the digital age. In this article, we will discuss some of the key SEO tools marketers can use to optimise for growth in 2026.
Yoast
Yoast is an SEO plugin with a variety of different features you can use to optimise your content. Traditionally a plugin used for WordPress sites, Yoast also offers versions for other CMS, including Shopify. Some of the features available to users to enhance their sites include:
- SEO content analysis
- XML sitemaps
- Meta Descriptions
- Redirects
Yoast is currently available as a free plugin; however, premium users have access to more features, including setting up redirects from old content to more relevant content and an SEO workout feature that gives you tips on how to rank more efficiently.
SERanking
SERanking is an all-around SEO platform that has several different features to help users create content and optimise their websites to improve search engine rankings. Some of SERanking’s most notable features include their keyword research tool, keyword rank tracking, and competitor research tool. SERanking’s crowning jewel is their website audit tool, which crawls sites and highlights issues for users relating to crawling, indexability, content and site speed.
The reason I believe SERankings’ website audit tool stands out from others is that it generates a health score, which you can see altered in real time when you fix issues. It also tells you how much impact fixing an issue will have on improving your health score, allowing the prioritisation of tasks.
SERanking offers a free 14-day trial but is a paid subscription platform after, with plans starting at £40 a month for the essential plan.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is primarily an SEO audit tool as opposed to an all-around SEO platform, and much like SERanking’s website audit tool, it allows you to crawl your websites to fix any technical issues that may be cropping up. Unlike SERanking, however, Screaming Frog does have a free version, which allows users to crawl up to 500 URLs each day, while also having paid plans that allow users to have unlimited crawling potential.
Screaming Frog is beneficial for larger sites as it can crawl thousands of URLs in a short period of time and allows users to compile actionable reports to share internally or externally. Screaming Frog, however, is not as beginner-friendly or user-friendly as its counterparts, such as SERankings’ technical audit tool.
SEMRush
The most popular all-round SEO platform, SEMRush, has all the features of SERanking and more, including keyword and backlink gap analysers, position tracking, seo writing assistant and more.
One of SEMRush’s best features is its keyword magic tool, which gives super detailed information on what keywords to use in your content. Here’s what SEMRush had to say on the difference between its keyword magic tool and its competitors.
‘’Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool is a keyword research tool that helps you discover highly relevant keyword suggestions. Better than a simple keyword generator, the Keyword Magic Tool uses actual data, advanced filters, and AI to provide the best keyword opportunities for organic growth.”
Making use of all these different SEO tools will help to optimise and future-proof your content for growth in the digital age.
