Last updated on January 13th, 2023
If you are a Mac user, then you know that trying to find softwares and tools to download and use is almost a near-impossible task.
Microsoft Windows is the most popular desktop operating system around the world with 76% of the market share. What this also means is that a lot of softwares are built using and made compatible with Microsoft Windows – and not a lot are adapted to be compatible with Mac OS.
So, finding softwares for your Mac can be tricky. I’ve heard some complaints recently about how some of the best SEO softwares out there are not compatible with Macs, so I thought I would help out by recommending some of the best SEO softwares that are compatible with Mac OS.
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This way, more businesses can hopefully access the SEO softwares they need to boost their digital marketing strategies.
Check out the information below and I hope you find it useful!
What Is SEO?
Before I go into SEO softwares specifically, I would like to just cover the basics of SEO so everyone here is on the same page.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s a digital marketing strategy that focuses on making your website more user and audience friendly.
This can range from increasing your website’s load times, linking it to other platforms and websites like social media, publishing content that includes keywords that are also featured in your target market’s searches, making your website’s design and lay out easy to navigate, and much more.
This is so when search engines check out your website using bots known as ‘crawlers’, it can use these features to evaluate your website favorably and be more likely to recommend your website to its users. As a result, your website will climb the rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is incredibly important for boosting your business’s visibility online as 67% of clicks go to the first five websites that appear on every results page, with 28.5% of users clicking on the very first ranked website.
On top of that, only 0.63% of Google searches click through websites on the second page. Clearly, the lower down your website ranks on search engines, the less likely it is that your target audience will be able to find your business.
Because of this, businesses want to optimize their websites so they rank higher on SERPs. The more trustworthy your website is to search engines, the higher it will rank – and the more click-through rates your website will receive.
But optimizing your website can be tricky. Most businesses try to optimize their websites for Google as Google is the most widely used search engine with a share of the market around 83%.
Google itself uses over 200 different factors to rank websites for its users, so business owners and marketers have a lot of work to do in order to optimize their websites as much as they possibly can.
What this all means is that SEO is incredibly important for businesses and has become a very popular digital marketing strategy.
According to HubSpot’s Marketing Trends Report of 2022, 75% of marketers agreed that SEO strategies were effective in some way (ranging from somewhat to very).
Another study even found that SEO is preferred by 70% of marketers over other traditional digital marketing strategies such as paid per click (PPC). This just goes to show how important SEO is to businesses and marketers.
One tool that digital marketers and business owners are using to help them optimize their websites is SEO softwares.
There are lots of tools out there that are designed to help businesses improve the ranking of their websites but, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these tools are designed to be compatible with operating systems like Windows.
This means that it’s more difficult for Mac OS users to find the right SEO software and tools for their computers.
So, let’s move on and take a look at some of the best SEO softwares that are compatible with Mac OS.
Best SEO Software For Mac OS
Google Analytics
When it comes to SEO tools and software, there is one that will always be at the top of every marketer’s lists – Google Analytics.
I mentioned earlier how Google is the largest search engine in the world and how it uses over 200 ranking factors to evaluate the websites it recommends to its users. So, as an analytics tool for SEO that is published by Google itself, Google Analytics is incredibly useful for businesses.
As a result, over 28.1 million websites are currently using Google Analytics, making it one of the most popular analytics tools used worldwide.
Google Analytics works by collecting data from your website (and any app version) to provide you with reports that clearly display this valuable data. This is then used by businesses for marketing and SEO purposes.
At a glance, it may see that Google Analytics is pretty limited when it comes to features, but here’s the best part – it’s completely free to use! This means that Mac users everywhere can access Google Analytics and use it to gather valuable data for absolutely no cost at all!
Customer’s Verdict
The fact that Google Analytics is used by millions of websites is testament to how incredibly useful this tool is considered to be.
It also did not take long for my online research to find thousands of positive reviews and high ratings for Google Analytics, which again just goes to show how popular this tool is.
The praise online for Google Analytics usually mentions how easy it is to use as it’s a great way to gather your SEO data all in one centralized place.
It helps businesses make sense of their data, which then helps them make more confident decisions to benefit their business.
However, as a free tool, there are understandably some limitations with Google Analytics.
As a result, some users have complaints about the tool but these usually refer to how basic the features are, and how updated versions of the user interface are a lot more complicated than they once were.
My Verdict
Google Analytics is a tool that I recommended to pretty much every business and marketer out there. It’s reliable and free to use, so it’s a great starting point for beginners and small businesses.
Sure, there is a learning curve that comes with using it for the first time but after a while, you start to get used to the user interface and it becomes much easier to use.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a UK based SEO agency known for their great quality services when it comes to digital marketing campaigns. However, for Mac users, the best tool they have to offer is their SEO spider tool.
Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is a website crawler that is compatible with Mac OS as well as Windows and Linux, meaning that it’s used and trusted by thousands of agencies and SEO specialists around the world.
It scans and extracts data from your website which can be used to identify errors that are damaging your website’s optimization and help businesses make informed decisions regarding their SEO.
As a website crawler, the Spider SEO tool can help businesses identify any broken links, errors, and even redirects on their website that could be damaging their optimization.
It also can help identify duplicate pages, offer site visualizations, and analyze your page titles and meta data to help you gain valuable insights for future SEO decisions.
This is done by scanning and analyzing the pages on your website and reporting any of the above issues – all of which can lower your SERP ranking.
All of these features are available on the Spider SEO free plan, but the paid plan offers way more features.
On top of all the above uses, the paid plan for Spider SEO can also schedule crawls for increased efficiency, check spelling and grammar, integrate with Google Analytics, and check your website’s structured data, and more.
The paid plan does currently cost $209 per year, but you also get unlimited URL crawls which is perfect for businesses with big websites.
Customer’s Verdict
Because Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is compatible with many operating systems (including Mac OS), it’s able to be used by thousands of businesses and marketers all around the world.
My online research found an overwhelmingly positive response to the SEO spider with consistent high ratings and positive reviews.
These reviews are filled with praise for the SEO Spider, with some even calling the tool ‘mandatory’ and ‘the only SEO tool you will ever need’.
While I think this is a little hyperbolic, there’s no denying that many users regard SEO Spider as a very valuable SEO software.
However, nothing is perfect, and I think it’s worth mentioning some of the criticisms I also found in my online research. Some users reported slow scanning times and little bugs when crawling through very large websites.
This could be because the SEO Spider has not been updated in a very long time and just needs that brush up to work better with modern technology.
My Verdict
Overall, I really like Screaming Frog SEO Spider because it can help identify massive errors and issues with your website very quickly and easily. This makes it incredibly useful for SEO purposes.
While I have never experienced any glitches with this software, I still think it could be improved by becoming a cloud-based tool rather than something that needs installing on computers.
Advanced Web Ranking
Data and analytics are incredibly important for SEO strategies, as the information it provides can help businesses and marketers make better decisions in the future.
As a result, a lot of businesses use an SEO intelligence software that offers important insights and reports – and one of the best for Mac users is Advanced Web Ranking.
This software can help businesses in three key areas: tracking SERP rankings, track and analyze your competitors, and provide valuable automatic SEO reports.
These are very useful features, especially in regard to competitive intelligence. A recent survey found that businesses consider their industries to be far more competitive compared to just three years ago, and now 94% of businesses are actively investing in competitive intelligence.
What this means is that the Advance Web Ranking’s ability to gather data about your competitor’s SERP performance and their keyword strategies could provide you with an edge over your competitors.
There are also other incredibly useful features that businesses can use, such as automatic white-label reports.
These allow you to create customized reports that reflect your business’s brand and they can be easily exported to third party exports to help you share your data with others and use it to inform your other business decisions.
You can also use Advanced Web Ranking to help search for reliable SERP data in metrics that actually matter so you can take action to improve your SEO based on the insights you have received.
There is also the ability to track and discover keywords which can be used to help your content marketing efforts.
So, it’s clear that Advanced Web Ranking can offer Mac OS users a ton of valuable data to help with their SEO strategies and decisions.
Customer’s Verdict
Advanced Web Ranking has a very good online reputation with high rankings and very positive reviews, but it’s also worth mentioning that the pool of reviews and ratings I was able to analyze was much smaller than some other softwares on this list.
Despite this, Advanced Web Ranking has plenty of praise online with a lot of users mentioning how easy the software was to use thanks to its interface, and the data the software provided was reliable and insighting.
Plus, according to Advanced Web Ranking’s own testimonials, 73% of their users would recommend their services and a whopping 89% of users were satisfied with the services they received.
As for criticisms, a few users have mentioned features they would like to see in the future – such as more reporting options, a more updated user interface, and advanced exporting tools.
My Verdict
I enjoyed my experiences with Advanced Web Ranking and I was very impressed with the reliable data and reports I received through using the software.
As a digital marketer with years of experience in this industry, I truly understand the value of such data and this software is definitely one of the best to use to gather SEO intelligence.
There’s just one issue I have – the price. It’s no surprise that a software that is so heavily dependent on data gathering, analysis, and reporting, also costs quite a bit each month.
This makes it harder for smaller businesses to justify purchasing and using this software – but if you can budget it in, I definitely do recommend it.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO platform which is entirely cloud based, which means that it can be used no matter your computer’s operating system. It’s also incredibly popular – and it’s super easy to see why.
Ahrefs offers the largest online crawler after Google, meaning that it’s powerful and helps you gather a ton of data for your analysis and reports. It’s also super reliable and allows businesses to check data regarding their rankings, ratings, backlinks, and traffic.
It also allows you to automatically audit your website to check for errors that could be damaging your SERP rankings.
There’s also tools which help businesses find effective keywords to help improve their audience reach, track your competitors to give yours business an edge, access a link database to build links for your business’s website, and research content to help provide you with ideas.
All of these are great tools to help you optimize your website but unfortunately, not all of them are available with certain Ahrefs plans.
Overall, Ahrefs is a very content-rich SEO software with tools that can help businesses with keyword research, content marketing, backlinks, competitor intelligence, and much more. You just need to find the right paid plan for your business.
Customer’s Verdict
Due to Ahrefs’ great range of features, its power, and its ease of use, it has a massive user base. This means that during my online research, I found plenty of great reviews and ratings for Ahrefs which proved just how popular this SEO software is.
Many users praise the design of the dashboard, the ease of use which allows users to easily find the right data and reports they need. The data itself is called ‘phenomenal’ and ‘reliable’ with credit going to the software’s crawling ability and power.
One of the main complaints about Ahrefs is the pricing, along with the fact that some of the best Ahrefs tools are locked behind paywalls in their higher priced plans – leaving smaller businesses out of luck.
My Verdict
Ahrefs is easily one of my favorite SEO softwares of all time purely because of how in-depth its tools and features are, making them incredibly useful for marketers like me.
However, my main issue with Ahrefs is again, the pricing.
There’s a massive jump between the cost of its lite plan and its standard, and then again between standard and advanced. Not only that but even the monthly cost of its lite plan is pretty expensive but it’s understandable considering how rich this software is.
Surfer SEO
If keyword research is a core part of your SEO strategy, or you are also interested in combining your SEO efforts with content marketing, then Surfer SEO is definitely a tool you should consider trying out.
It works by offering optimization for your on-page content. You choose your target keyword for your article and Surfer will then give you a range of additional keywords (and sometimes phrases) that are also used in the highest ranking articles with the same keywords.
You can then write your article and Surfer SEO ‘ranks’ your article by showing you how optimized the content is depending on how many keywords you add.
This makes it so much easier to create optimized articles and content for your website, so if keyword research and content are your main concerns for SEO, then Surfer SEO is a great solution.
It also offers other useful tools such as a SERP analyzer and website auditor to check the performance of your business’s website.
Although Surfer SEO is not the most robust SEO software, it’s still a great solution to use if you want to focus your SEO strategy on content and keyword research.
Customer’s Verdict
Because SEO Surfer is a relatively ‘niche’ SEO software, it doesn’t have as large of a user base as other softwares like Ahrefs do.
As a result, there were a lot less reviews and ratings for me to research and analyze online to see what others thought about Surfer SEO.
However, from the reviews I did manage to find, users praise the ease of use and how effective Surfer SEO is for optimizing content. This makes it a great tool for blogs and content websites.
As far as criticisms go, the obvious complaint is that there aren’t a lot of features on offer – especially when compared to Surfer SEO’s competitors who charge a similar monthly fee.
My Verdict
I think SEO Surfer is a great choice for blogs and businesses who rely a lot on written content. However, this makes it a very niche tool that is not worth the money for a lot of businesses that are looking for a more ‘general’ solution for their SEO.
The price is also another downside because I’ve seen general SEO softwares that offer similar features (although not as in-depth when it comes to keyword research and support for content) for a very similar monthly cost.
So, you can get more features for the same price if you want to opt for another software – but it’s still a very well built tool for niche websites.
SEO Software Buyer’s Guide
So, those were my top recommendations for SEO software that are compatible with Mac OS.
There are still way more options out there so if you want to continue researching different SEO softwares, then here is a ‘buyer’s guide’ of sorts so you can check out what factors you need to consider before opting for your SEO software.
Of course, the fact that it needs to be compatible with Mac OS goes without saying – but here are some other things you should think about when choosing the right SEO software for your business.
Auditing
An SEO audit is basically a deep dive evaluation into the numerous factors which can affect your website’s SERP ranking. This can include both on-page SEO and off-page SEO, as well as technical SEO performances.
Clearly, auditing is an incredibly useful feature to have available on your SEO software.
It basically allows you to check your website’s performance and highlight any issues that could be seriously affecting your website’s SEO. This allows businesses to fix any SEO issues, but especially the issues that are much more difficult to see because they are off-page.
As a result, I seriously recommend getting an SEO software that offers auditing and crawling services. This is so you can gather data that gives you insight into your website’s performance, and you can use those insights to back up future SEO strategies.
This can completely change how successful your SEO marketing strategies are and be a huge advantage to your business.
Keyword Research
A huge part of SEO is keyword research.
Keyword research helps businesses find the words and phrases their target audience are using in their search engine searches.
As 68% of online experiences begin with using a search engine, businesses want to use as many relevant keywords in their content not only to help their audience find their articles (and by proxy, their business) but it also helps search engines define their website so it can be recommended to users who use similar keywords.
The thing is that trending keywords are constantly changing. Keywords that you included in your content a week ago may not be the most searched keywords this week.
In fact, 94.74% of keywords get 10 monthly searches (or fewer) which makes finding the right keywords very difficult for a lot of businesses.
Using an SEO software that offers keyword research services and features can help make this process so much easier for businesses.
It can find the most recent trending keywords for you to add to your content, track what keywords your competitors are using in their own content marketing efforts, and help you track what keywords were the most successful for your business.
Even if you don’t plan on adding much written content to your website, this feature can still be useful for writing product descriptions, about pages, and more – all to help define your website so search engines can identify it and know which search engine users would benefit the most from visiting it.
So, opting for a SEO software that has keyword research features is a pretty wise choice in my opinion.
Link Building
Link building is often the toughest part of SEO for a lot of businesses as it involves getting other platforms and websites to link back to your main website – but your competitors are hardly likely to recommend you to their audiences!
But building links to your website is so important for its optimization as backlinks are one of the top three ranking factors for Google. So, it’s vital that businesses get this part of SEO right – and SEO softwares can help you out.
Some SEO softwares offer link building services to help discover the best strategies for improving the number of backlinks for your business’s website. They can help you find the domains which are linking to your competitors so you can potentially get them to link to you too.
73.5% of domains have reciprocal links so if you try linking to these websites, they could potentially link back to you in return and provide your website with backlinks to boost its SEO.
Other link building services an SEO software could potentially offer includes the ability to track your backlinks to highlight the ones that become redundant or break, and track the performance of those links to see where your traffic is coming from.
Reporting
Data and analytics are incredibly important for businesses.
Around 57% of organizations use data and analytics to help drive their business’s strategies and make informed changes.
This same report also found that using analytics offered businesses a lot of benefits including improved efficiency (64%), faster decision making (56%), improved customer retention and acquisition (46%), and also gave them a competitive advantage (43%).
Because of this, a lot of businesses now look for analytics and reporting features with their softwares no matter what the software itself is used for.
This means that your ideal SEO software should also offer some great analytics and reporting features.
This blends in heavily with auditing features and keyword research, but other reporting features could also include competitive analysis, content analysis that goes beyond just keyword research (including the types of articles which are trending, such as listicles or best ofs), key performance indicators for your business, trends in your business’s SERP performance, and more.
Another great feature that comes under this umbrella is SEO report customization itself. A lot of SEO softwares will report your analysis and data to you but use their own branding for the reports.
However, some SEO softwares allow you to make your own reports with your own graphs, charts, and data while all using your own business’s branding.
This means you can forward these reports to clients and investors so they can see the same information quickly and efficiently, but the reports themselves look so much more professional all because they use your branding.
These white label reports are a rare feature to find these days as most softwares gives you the analysis and reporting part but without the customization, so finding a SEO software with reporting customization is like finding gold in my opinion.
Automation
Automation is a great feature to have in any kind of software for your business, because it can really boost your own productivity and efficiency.
One recent study found that 40% of workers agree that a quarter of their work time is wasted on repetitive tasks, and many agree that automation could help with this issue.
In fact, 70% of the survey respondents agreed that the biggest potential for automation was to help reduce the time wasted at work on repetitive tasks and another 60% agreed that they could potentially improve productivity by six hours of work time all thanks to automation.
So, I really recommend looking for any automation with your SEO software. This can include automated auditing, crawling, keyword research, and more.
By allowing businesses to set up these scans and research automatically, it can save your business a lot of time having to go through the same tasks each and every day – sometimes only to find very similar results.
Plus, these automated auditing can help run checks on your website in the background while you work, so you get instant feedback on any performance issues that could be really damaging your website’s SEO and your customer’s experiences.
This means they can be solved more quickly and your business’s reputation loses less credit in terms of SEO and customer user experience.
Price
Finally, I just want to talk about prices.
Costs are a big concern for businesses, particularly small businesses as 38% of startups fail because they fail to raise new revenue and run out of cash. As a result, a lot of businesses want to opt for the most affordable SEO software possible.
Some SEO softwares are free to use or offer free plans with paid upscaling options, but these free options are usually very limited when it comes to features. However, I’ve also seen a lot of paid SEO softwares which are very expensive although they are very robust and rich with features.
I’d recommend you set yourself a budget and then see what you can get with your budget. Remember you can still take advantage of any free SEO softwares, and then use your paid SEO software to fill in the gaps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Is SEO Dying?
No, SEO is not dying.
SEO is still a very powerful strategy in digital marketing. I go into depth in a section above why SEO is so important for businesses, but here’s the quick run-down:
SEO stands for search engine optimization and if your business’s website is not fully optimized for search engines like Google, then your audience won’t be able to find it online.
Even if they search the name of your company directly into the search bar, search engines will offer them a ton of other similar websites first because they think they are ‘better’.
As a result, SEO is incredibly important and without it, your business may struggle to have an effective online presence which can result in lower revenue for your business and damage your other digital marketing efforts.
Can I Do SEO By Myself?
Yes, it is possible to do SEO all by yourself if you are a solo business owner. With the right softwares, knowledge, and tools, you can optimize your business’s website all through your own efforts – but not a lot of business owners bother.
Learning SEO can take a lot of time. I’ve written a previous article doing in depth into how long it can take to learn SEO but on average, it can take weeks for some people to learn the basics of SEO while others take years to fully understand and master it.
As a result, a lot of businesses hire digital marketers or agencies to help set up their optimized website, but it is possible to do it all yourself with the help of some softwares and monitoring tools.
Are There Different Types Of SEO?
There are actually several different types of SEO, each defined by different features.
I won’t go into them all here because there is a lot to cover, but here’s some examples of different types of SEO that you may hear about in your research:
White Hat SEO/Black Hat SEO – White hat SEO are SEO practices which are in line with the terms and conditions set out by search engines like Google, while black hat SEO breaks these terms and conditions and could get your website banned.
Local SEO/International SEO – The difference between these two are obvious. Local SEO helps local business rank higher for users who are nearby, while international SEO helps make your website rank higher for international audiences.
The difference in strategy boils down to key words, language, currency, and more.
On Page SEO/Off Page SEO – On page SEO is all about optimizing the things that appear on your website like your content writing, images, links, URL codes, and more.
Off page SEO is things you can optimize outside of your website to help improve your rankings. This includes social media advertising, company reviews and ratings, and getting links from other websites in the same field as you.
There are many more types of SEO out there, but these are the most common ones which most businesses and marketers are concerned about (in my opinion).
Final Thoughts
It can be incredibly frustrating to find the perfect SEO software for your company only to find out that it’s not compatible with your computer’s operating system.
It’s an issue seen time and time again with Mac users – but, thankfully, there is still a lot of SEO softwares and tools available for Mac OS users to use for their SEO strategies.
I have mentioned some of my favorites above along with a handy ‘buyer’s guide’ to help you out while you continue your SEO software research.
So, I hope this information has been helpful to you and that you find the best possible SEO software for your Mac OS to help boost your business! Good luck!
