Top 10 B2B SEO Tools for 2022

From keyword research to competitor analysis, precision has always been key to B2B SEO because you are dealing with niche topics and longer customer journeys. This is why you need the most reliable SEO tools to help you make informed decisions and guide your B2B marketing strategy.

In this article, we will be sharing our favourite B2B SEO tools and talking about some of their best features, along with comments from other SEO marketers on what they use the tools for and why they like them. 

Most of these tools are user-friendly and come with easy-to-follow guides on their websites, so whether you are just starting out on your journey, or are an experienced B2B SEO marketer, you will find the right tool. 

All-in-one B2B SEO tools

SEMrush

SEMrush is widely known in the SEO world as one of the most comprehensive tools, covering every aspect of B2B SEO that you can think of, such as:

• Technical SEO audits
• Keyword research with position tracking
• Competitive analysis with keyword gap and backlink gap
• Link building with backlink analysis and brand mentions monitoring
• Content analysis with writing guidelines

It’s important to know that SEMrush is more than just an SEO tool. As reflected in their current title tag “SEMrush – Online Visibility Management Platform”, Semrush is a versatile platform that offers features that help with your other digital marketing needs, such as PPC and social media management.

Therefore, the price is slightly higher than the other B2B SEO tools on this list. If SEO is the only area you work in, you might be paying a little extra for more than what you need.

Sumit Bansal, Founder and CEO of TrumpExcel, said, “I enjoy that I can complete the majority of my research using only one tool. I use it for keyword research, competitor research, site auditing, and a variety of other tasks.”

Elizabeth Kraus, Editor at Fit Small Business, says, “For B2B’s relying on content marketing to drive leads and sales, SEMRush is a powerhouse. When used for keyword research, it shows search volumes, ranking difficulty, ad costs, current SERPs, related keywords, “people also ask” questions–and is far easier to use than Adsense for this purpose. Further setting it apart, last year it added a slew of tools for content marketing, including a template and writing assistant to suggest how you can best optimize for chosen keywords and Brand Monitoring to alert you if your business has been mentioned online.”

SEMrush is easy-to-use and is one of the first tools that introduced me to the world of SEO because it covers almost everything I need within a single platform. If you are looking for a capable all-in-one B2B SEO tool that could support you in not only anything SEO-related, but also digital marketing in general, SEMrush might be the right choice for you.

The full pricing details can be found here.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another popular all-in-one B2B SEO tool that is often considered a direct competitor to Semrush. Some of the main uses include:

• Technical audit
• Backlink analysis
• Keyword research and tracking
• Content analysis

Though they both offer similar SEO features, Ahrefs is known for its reliable and powerful link building capabilities. Some of my favourite link building uses of Ahrefs include broken link building as well as using the Link Intersect Tools to identify the sites that are currently linking to competitors but not us.

Daniel Foley, SEO Specialist of Planday, said, “I resisted getting AHREFs for a long time because I already had SEMrush in my toolkit. I was eventually persuaded to give it a shot, and I must say that in less than 7 months, the tool has become my most-used SEO tool. AHREFs has become the place I go to get a first look at a site and then to dive deeper into the site and its rankings, links, and more, from their keyword database (and competitor insights) to their link database. It comes highly recommended.”

Ahrefs mainly focuses on SEO, unlike SEMrush which offers a more complete toolkit with general digital marketing uses. This is why Ahrefs is more cost-effective if you are looking for an all-in-one tool that focuses mainly on SEO.

The full pricing details can be found here.

B2B SEO tool for technical audits

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

When it comes to technical SEO audits, Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a positive reputation for providing the most accurate results. It is a website crawler that analyses every single URL on a website and highlights any potential technical SEO issues.

Whether you are trying to spot broken links, long title tags, missing meta descriptions, duplicate content or images without alternative texts, Screaming Frog SEO Spider extracts all the information for you so you can easily export the lists of affected pages and start fixing them accordingly.

Technical audits with Screaming Frog SEO Spider might seem overwhelming at first because of the large amount of information presented to you and the slightly steeper learning curve for all the different crawl settings you can use. However, Screaming Frog has a great library of helpful tutorial videos to support you. Once you have got used to the tool, you will be able to take advantage of the more advanced features like custom extractions to carry out deeper analyses that might not be possible to do with other tools.

Angus Chang, Founder of iupilon, said, “This tool is useful for technical and SEO audits and gives minor glitches to the site. This tool does not miss any aspect of technical or off-page SEO. Screaming Frog SEO Spider performs an SEO audit throughout the entire website and is useful for analysing the internal, external and broken links on any website and website pages that are not ranking or getting indexed.”

Pricing: There is a free version with limited features and a paid version with the full features. For the full pricing details, visit this page.

B2B SEO tools for keyword research

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free but powerful keyword research tool that you can use to generate new keyword ideas to inform your B2B SEO strategy.

Simply enter the keyword and the tool will generate suggestions of the short-tail and long-tail keywords related to it, along with useful data such as search volume, trends, buyer intent and probability to rank. Ubersuggest also shows you comparative keywords (keywords containing “vs” and “or”) as well as questions related to the keyword, which are all very useful for generating content ideas.

Google Ads Keyword Planner

As the name suggests, Google Ads Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool that comes with Google Ads. It is free and was originally created for PPC marketers to identify target keywords and plan their PPC campaigns.

This tool is then adopted by many SEO marketers because of its accurate data on search volume and trends from different locations around the world – all data from this tool comes directly from Google itself after all.

Lynda Farley, Co-Founder of Numlooker, said, “Keyword Planner helps determine what keywords offer the most opportunity. It’s a tool used by every B2B search marketer as a leading part of the initial keyword research process and ongoing work. Google Adwords keyword planner tool is mainly used to ascertain what keywords are highly relevant in terms of competitiveness and volume, sparking keyword ideas, and building a highly targeted keyword list to guide optimize efforts.”

B2B SEO tools for link building

Moz Pro

Like Semrush and Ahrefs, Moz Pro is an all-in-one SEO tool, but it is most famous for its link building capabilities. Many consider Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) metrics to be the most trusted link metrics in the SEO world, partly because of the tool’s large link index.

Andrew Dale, Technical Director at CloudTech24, said, “If you’re in the SEO industry, you’ve probably heard of Moz. Moz is a digital marketing industry leader, from their active blog to their well-known MozCon conference. Moz Pro, their main app, allows you to set up campaigns to track keywords and crawl data against your competitors on a weekly basis. You also get access to other tools in their toolbox, such as Keyword Explorer, which is quickly becoming a go-to tool for many digital marketers for keyword research as Google tightens the net on free keyword data.”

Moz Pro’s powerful backlink analysis and link intersect tools help you compare different backlink profiles and identify new link building opportunities and content ideas, while showing you the health of your backlink profile to spot any potentially harmful links.

While a lot of the other B2B SEO tools collect data only from Google, Moz Pro also collects data from Bing and Yahoo. Therefore, if you are looking for a fuller picture of the wider search landscape, Moz Pro would be one of the best options.

The full pricing details can be found here.

Majestic

Majestic is another popular link building tool used by B2B marketers. Its Trust Flow (representing the quality of links) and Citation Flow (representing the quantity of links) metrics are also some of the most-trusted link metrics in the SEO world.

Its Topical Trust Flow is one of the more unique metrics that shows you the topical relevancy of a website by comparing it with other websites in over 800 categories.

Majestic is also available as an extension on Chrome and Firefox, allowing you to conveniently analyse the backlinks of any website you visit.

The pricing details can be found here.

HARO

While not technically an SEO tool, and you can’t do any backlink analysis with it, it is used by many SEO and PR professionals for link building purposes.

HARO stands for “help a reporter out” and is a tool used by journalists and content writers to seek expert opinions they can include in their content. You can use HARO as a “journalist” or a “source”; queries will be posted by “journalists”, then “sources” will receive alerts based on the topic or keyword triggers they have set up.

SEO and PR professionals often act as a source to respond to queries. If their responses are selected and used by journalists in their content, most of the time a link to the source’s website will be included. This link building method is often called Reactive Link Building.

This article itself is proof of HARO’s capabilities, as all the quotes you’re reading are responses to my own query for B2B marketer’s favourite SEO tools.

You can use HARO for free with limited alert options, or go for the paid options which allow you to set up keyword alerts. Full pricing details can be found on this page.

B2B SEO tools for content marketing and optimisations

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a powerful content marketing tool used by many B2B SEO and social media marketers to analyse content performance and generate new content ideas.

Simply type in your target keyword, and the tool will show you what content generates the most backlinks and gets shared the most on social media. Through analysing the existing content that is performing well, it provides you with insights into what type of content to produce, how long the content should be, the format you should use and even when to publish the content.

Buzzsumo can be used for free with limited searches, while paid options are available for more features. Pricing details can be found here.

Surfer

Surfer is commonly used by SEO marketers and copywriters for its on-page content optimisation features.

Similar to Buzzsumo, it analyses existing content that is performing well and provides recommendations on how to improve yours. These include the keywords you should be using, the word count and the structure of your content.

Mason Yu, Sr. SEO Specialist at ClickUp, said, “SurferSEO is our go-to content optimization and NLP analysis tool. It presents more data than any other content optimization tool we’ve seen and has several nifty features such as a content brief and SERP analysis tool. We use SurferSEO every time we want to optimize an article or right before an article gets published.”

Surfer can be integrated with Google Docs and WordPress so you can optimise your content directly without having to copy and paste between platforms.

The pricing details can be found on this page.

Final Thoughts

While there are many other B2B SEO tools available in the market, these are the ones we recommend using for 2022 to inform your data-driven SEO strategy. Whether you are looking for a tool for keyword research, link building, technical audits or on-page optimisations, using these tools will have you covered.

The B2B SEO world is ever-changing and I’m sure by the end of the year there will be even more great tools available for our new SEO needs. Meanwhile, we hope you’ll find a tool on this list that you can take on with you on your SEO journey.