Search Engine Optimisation is important to ensure the right people find the right business. Find out what top free SEO tools you can use in the MENA region.
Setting up a website for your business and learning some basic SEO tips is just the start towards conquering the online business world. To really see an improvement in your website, online store and online performance, it is important to revisit your SEO strategy at least once a month to stay up-to-date with the industry and make use of any essential tools out there.
SEO in MENA
The MENA region is still significantly behind the world industry standard when it comes to SEO knowledge and application. Many companies do not know exactly how it works or feel like they do not need to invest in SEO from the beginning. Approximately only 1% of MENA businesses attempt to correctly apply SEO to improve their online presence and visibility on search engines.
Nigel Keelson-Anfu, an SEO expert for over 10 years, moved to Dubai from London in 2015. According to Keelson-Anfu, many businesses in the Middle East focus solely on churning out exceptional pieces of content without thinking of where and who is able to access it. “It is like building a house, but starting with the roof first!” says Keelson-Anfu. “Technical SEO is the science of search. It is about understanding how Google, and other search engines, access and crawl your site and how they decide on which pages they will index and how quickly this can all be achieved. This is especially important when you consider the accelerated shift to smartphones – the UAE & KSA have some of the highest figures for smartphone penetration in the world.”
In other words, there is no point in creating beautiful websites and publishing engaging content if no one is able to find it. This is where SEO comes in, and the great part about this is that there are plenty of free tools available in the MENA region that many of us successfully use.
Top Free SEO Tools
Google Search Console (GSC)
Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools (a term still many in the SEO circle continue to use), this online platform of resources from Google allows you to monitor and maintain your website’s presence on Google’s search results page. The Search Console is useful for adding quick html codes, monitoring your meta data and gaining a quick overview of your site’s performance.
- Submit content for crawling. Under normal circumstances, it can take Google up to four weeks to index your website. To speed up the process and assist Google in making a decision faster, you can submit new web pages to the Search Console for Google to crawl.
- Use the tool to weed out errors and 404 pages on your website by crawling through your URLs.
- Submit your sitemap to the Search Console to help speed up the crawl process and let Google know how your site is organised.
Carlos Castañeda, our in-house SEO specialist at JadoPado, believes that the use of GSC is indispensable today. “It is probably the only SEO tool available that directly connects to Google and its staff, and is necessary in risky situations like Google penalties, unnatural spam links, indexation issues, redirects and 404s; issues that need to be solved as soon as possible,” says Castañeda.
Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner is part of the Google Adword platform. It allows you to research keywords, related search terms as well as obtain search volumes. The results display top keywords with the average monthly search volume for the period you have specified. You can filter your search results by country or countries, language, date range and more. By obtaining a list of keywords, you can make sure the right phrases and terms are used in your meta data as well as website content to target your chosen audience.
Google Trends
A helpful but overlooked tool, Google Trends gives you an overview of keyword and search term performance over a period of time so you can not only take a look at what is trending at the moment, but also analyse seasonal content to see what works when and helps you plan for future content.
We did a quick search for ‘Best Schools in Dubai’ and got the below graph.
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You can filter the date range you want accordingly to see search trends for your phrase over time.
On the same timeline, we included the phrase ‘Best schools in Abu Dhabi’ to compare the results.
This tool is essentially useful for analysing seasonal drops and highs on page performance, exploring market opportunities and comparing content ideas.
Moz
Definitely one of the top SEO tools across the MENA region and worldwide, Moz has been an established name in the SEO industry since 2004. The platform has a suite of useful free and subscription-based SEO tools and guides.
- Open Site Explorer (OSE). Any SEO specialist knows that link building is one of the most important things you can do for your website. The OSE from Moz is a backlink analysis tool that can help you get started and develop your link building efforts. Link building is essentially the process of getting other websites to link to a page on your website. OSE allows you to identify opportunities for link building, track your inbound links and even take a look at your competitors’ link building strengths.
- Keyword Explorer. A similar keyword research tool to Google’s planner, Moz’s platform is said to be better at showcasing long-tail keywords in its results, as well as additional filters on your search query.
- MozBar. A toolbar that you can simply add as an extension on your browser, MozBar displays instant metrics on your on-page searches, social and overall page. One of the key benefits of installing the MozBar on your browser is that you can immediately see your domain authority, view your meta tags and link metrics of not just your page but of your competitors as well.
Screaming Frog - SEO Spider Tool
One of the most popular crawling tools out there, Screaming Frog’s Spider Tool lets you search and filter through your website’s SEO data in an in-depth fashion. You can download link errors, meta data, image alt tags, response time, redirects, broken links and much more. With the free version you can crawl up to 500 URLs, which is a useful amount for a small website or blog.
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Google PageSpeed Insights
Did you know that a large number of web users are likely to abandon pages that don’t load within three seconds? A user’s experience can be determined by your page loading time so it is important to sit up and pay attention. Google’s PageSpeed Insight tool analyses both the mobile and desktop versions of your page and displays a summary of suggestions to speed up your page load time, including image optimisation, file compression and server response time improvements.
Microsoft SEO Toolkit
This is a downloadable toolkit that works only for Windows users, and includes a mixture of SEO tools. Use the Microsoft SEO Toolkit to get page load time insights, identify broken links, upload your sitemap to search engines and get URL information.
Wayback Machine
This nonprofit digital archive of the Internet is not exactly an SEO tool, but can be used as a great inspection tool to look at archived versions of web pages over time. Use it to find old redirects and URLs, view site changes from previous years and find old content.
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A good mix of these tools is always recommended to make the most of your SEO strategy. Start your SEO strategy by conducting a sufficient amount of research. Abdullah Ojjeh, operations manager at finance comparison website Compareit4me , makes sure that keywords play a central role in producing top quality content. “Google’s Keyword Planner tool shows the highest-ranking trends on what people are searching for, so we optimise everything — our product pages, our static pages, and our blog content — based on that data,” says Ojjeh.
Dubai-based technology company Bayzat uses a mix of free and paid SEO tools to stay ahead of the competition. According to Poonam Sasane, SEO executive at Bayzat, content plays a key element in the company’s SEO strategy so it also uses tools like Copyscape, HootSuite, BuzzSumo and Scoop.it to achieve the best results for its SEO content strategy.
What’s Next for SEO in MENA?
A common demand businesses in the Middle East pose to SEO specialists is the need to see results almost immediately. SEO is a long-term strategy that can take weeks and months to yield results. By tackling simple and easy fixes like image alt tags, meta descriptions and creation of useful and shareable content you will already be a few steps ahead in the SEO game.
Read our full SEO guide here to get started.
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Another window to start tapping into is the localisation of SEO and Arabic content for MENA. Ojjeh at Compareit4me notes that “there’s a lack of understanding on how to optimise Arabic content in the MENA region. And this is especially true in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where around 97% of people browse in Arabic.” Keep your audience in mind when creating content. Use the tools above to identify who your customers are, what they are searching for and in what language.
With plenty of potential to grow your website’s SEO and online presence, make sure you take risks and play around with tools to see what works for you. Some SEO tools and techniques that work for others may not necessarily work for your business, so the key is to invest a sufficient amount of time in experiencing the tools and learning them.
Have any favourite SEO tools you use? Drop us a line in the comments section below to share your thoughts.
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