The Web Tools hub covers SEO platforms and analytics tools that help you understand and improve how a website performs, both in search results and with real visitors. SEO platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush are built for competitive research, keyword tracking, and backlink analysis, while Google Analytics and Google Search Console are free tools from Google that report on your own site’s traffic and search performance rather than your competitors’.
This hub is useful for site owners, content marketers, and SEO practitioners who need to decide where organic traffic is coming from, which keywords and pages are underperforming, and whether a paid SEO platform is worth the cost on top of the free tools Google already provides. It’s also useful for anyone unsure what each tool actually measures, since these four tools are often mentioned together despite doing different jobs.
In practice, Ahrefs and Semrush overlap heavily — both offer backlink analysis, keyword research, and site audits — so the choice between them tends to come down to workflow preferences and budget rather than one being objectively better. Google Analytics and Google Search Console are not alternatives to each other at all: Analytics tracks visitor behavior once someone lands on your site, while Search Console reports specifically on how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your pages in organic search. Most sites end up using Analytics and Search Console together, then adding a paid platform like Ahrefs or Semrush once they need deeper competitive or backlink data.
From here, you can read the full profile for each tool, compare Ahrefs and Semrush head-to-head, see how Google Analytics and Google Search Console fit together, or browse the complete Web Tools category archive.
SEO platforms
Ahrefs — SEO professionals, content marketers, and site owners who need deep competitor and backlink analysis. Semrush — Marketing teams and SEO professionals who want an all-in-one platform covering both SEO and AI search visibility. See our comparison: Ahrefs vs Semrush. Neither is universally “better” — they overlap heavily and the right choice depends on your workflow and budget.
Analytics and search data
Google Analytics — Website and app owners of any size who need to understand traffic sources and user behavior. Google Search Console — Website owners and SEO practitioners who need to monitor how Google indexes and ranks their site. These two are complementary, not competing — see Google Analytics vs Google Search Console for how they fit together.
More guides
We don’t yet have a single best-of roundup covering every Web Tool — more guides may be added here over time.
Explore related categories
SEO and analytics work rarely happens on its own. See our Marketing Software hub for the email platforms that traffic and conversion data often feeds into, our Cybersecurity Tools hub for the password managers and VPNs that protect the accounts behind these platforms, or our Design Software hub for the tools behind the landing pages and creative these tools measure.
See every Tool category
Browse all Web Tools, or see the full Tool catalog.