Choose a tool for the question you need to answer. A small set of reliable measurements is more useful than collecting scores from every available dashboard.
Search performance and indexing
- Google Search Console helps you inspect your site's search performance and indexing information.
- Bing Webmaster Tools provides webmaster reports for Bing.
- A spreadsheet is enough to maintain a keyword map, content inventory, change log, and baseline report.
Speed and page experience
- PageSpeed Insights provides a starting point for investigating page performance.
- Your browser's developer tools can help inspect network requests, layout behaviour, and the rendered page.
- Use the site speed guide to turn findings into specific improvements.
Structured data and crawl instructions
- Google Rich Results Test checks supported structured data on a page.
- Schema Markup Validator helps inspect schema markup.
- Review your public robots.txt and sitemap files, then compare them with what your search-console reports show. See the technical SEO checklist.
AI visibility
Keep a repeatable prompt log with the question, tool, date, brand mentions, and cited URLs. Use a fixed sample of relevant customer questions, and record the limitations of that sample. Compare referral traffic separately from mentions: they answer different questions.
Follow the AI mention monitoring guide and score trackers to build a useful record.
Keyword and competitor research
Start with customer questions, Search Console queries, search suggestions, and manual review of relevant results. Group ideas by intent and map them to pages. Use the keyword research guide and competitor analysis guide to organise the work.
Tool availability and limits can change. Check each tool's own information before relying on a feature or committing to a paid plan.