Google Search Console is a holy grail, best for monitoring and troubleshooting website issues. The percentage is also high because it's free and the data provided is trustable. The percentage of using SEMrush and Ahrefs is almost the same. Both have some great features and clean user interface along with some limitations in their plans.

The top 3 results are well-deserved IMO. They would be my desert island SEO tools.

But as a nice to have on top, I've started using SiteBulb a lot more recently and the fact that you can schedule regular crawls and get an overview comparison is a great time-saver and helps spot some uncommon issues sooner than you might notice them yourself.

It is great to see that technical SEOs do not take the power of Google Search Console and its insights for granted. Where the budget is limited for tools, GSC contains enough information to address many core issues.

I'm glad to see Search Console on top. It's free, it's comprehensive, and it gives an excellent overview of a website. But like every tool, it is limited, and it has to be used together with other tools to gain better insights.

Makes sense to see GSC on top, it's invaluable data for any SEO campaign. A nice array of tools being used otherwise!

I couldn’t imagine not having GSC and Screaming Frog for technical SEO, the others are nice to have but these two are essential IMO.

GSC dominates the list and rightfully so. I also agree with Screaming Frog SEO Spider as a second favourite for technical SEO work - great insights at a low price.

The top 3 tools are also the ones I use most often for technical SEO. I also like Sitebulb.

Google Search Console is a goldmine of information, and you can get very far with this tool alone. Couple that with Screaming Frog, an incredibly versatile tool, and you've got a winning combo!

Given how few SEOs test, I'm not surprised to see SearchPilot so low on the list…

Interesting that Screaming Frog comes out top over GSC when asked to pick just one! But Screaming Frog really does have amazing functionality, and I would feel quite lost without it.

SEOs are incredibly loyal to their favourite tools - for good reason. The fact that there are a couple of tools here that I've never used, but other SEOs have chosen as their single technical SEO tool, is tempting me to go and check them out.

But thank goodness this is a hypothetical question.

I completely get why the screaming frog came out tops for this one. It’s the Swiss army knife of SEO tools, identifying broken links, redirect errors, on-page elements, hreflang attribution, site visualisations, XML sitemap auditing, canonical errors, and advanced features like GA and GSC integration, pagespeed insights, structured data validation, javascript rendering, scheduling that you get with the paid version. Great tool!

I'm surprised by this. I would have bet on GSC. Still, I find Screaming Frog so helpful that its value cannot be neglected, especially the less apparent functionalities.

A no brainer ;) This tool is so versatile and the team continues to update it to meet growing user needs.

Screaming Frog is my favorite - they have never stopped improving their tool and is just dependable in all aspects of an SEO audit!

This is such a tricky question! Mostly because I use all of the top 3 here. But seeing the responses, I do feel Screaming Frog as the top choice does make most sense.

I personally can't do SEO without Screaming Frog. It's my favourite SEO tool too and all the new updates are making it better every time.

It’s great to see screaming frog is a hands-down champion, they offer a free version with a 500 URL crawl limit making it an attractive tool for freelancers and businesses of all sizes.

Wow, some of these answers have really thrown me. Not naming any names, and I know it's down to personal preference. It's great to see such a diverse range though - the more crawling tools we have available to us, the better for us!

I also use the top 2 tools and compare results between them. I’ll use Sitebulb too, if time allows, just to check for any extra data or for another visual comparison.

Well, I agree with the responses but I wouldn't put Screaming Frog in the same category as SEMRush or Ahrefs; they are all equal good and valuable, but they have different purposes.

Screaming Frog is my go-to crawler. Once you understand the scale of what you can do with it, it cements itself as an indispensable tool. It is one of the very few paid tool subscriptions that I don't question the usefulness of.

This makes a lot of sense. Screaming Frog was the first crawling tool I had access to and I suspect the same is true for the majority if tech SEOs. I'd be interested to see how the answers would be different if we asked the same question but with 'If cost was of no concern' before it.

I'm surprised by SEMRush and Ahrefs choices, I thought there would be fewer who chose these over Screaming Frog.

I use SERanking because it's quick and easy to use.

Screaming Frog is great tool for Technical SEO Specialists at all levels and works perfectly with all websites large and small.

As more established tools, I'm not surprised that Semrush & Ahrefs were the leaders. It is also great to see that SEOs love the SISTRIX Visibility Index. It is my go-to when auditing new websites or conducting visibility spot checks. Only a few tools strike the right balance of valuable data and beautiful, report-ready visualisations. SISTRIX hits the mark in this respect.

I tend to stick with SEMRush. In the past I’ve used Ahrefs but I prefer SEMRush overall.

Agreed. SEMRush and Ahrefs are valuable for tracking search visibility. It also makes sense why they both top the list - can’t talk about one without the other!

Whichever of these tools you prefer, it's important to highlight to clients that they don't show the complete picture. Search results can change rapidly and can vary based on factors like the searcher's location. But overall, these tools are still valuable for monitoring performance over time.

Again, I wonder if there's a barrier to entry causing GetStat to be so low on this list. It's another incredibly powerful tool that can be a bit intimidating to use.

I'm so happy to read this! GSC can be so granular and insightful that it makes use of third party tools redundant for certain tasks.

Nice to see GSC at the top here, add in the API and you have a huge amount of data without a 1,000 row limit.

I like using a combination of GSC and a third party rank tracker to cross-reference for any patterns. SEMRush and Ahrefs have additional functionalities that make them great overall tools to make use of.

I’m also a fan of the top 2 tools here. However, I use SEMRush for rankings primarily because I sometimes find it gives me a more accurate picture for smaller clients or where I might not have as much search volume or history.

In my experience, using a combination of Google Search Console and third-party data is the winning combination.
Google Search Console is fantastic because you can see what queries people are actually using to land on your site. This real-life data is invaluable. You'll sometimes even see zero search volume queries generating significant traffic that other tools wouldn't pick up on.

That being said, in order to find untapped topics/ideas, you can't rely on Search Console, so that's where other tools like Ahrefs or Semrush can show you that data.

Many third party tools, including SEMRush and Ahrefs, create some really useful graphs that track any ranking patterns - as long as everyone in the team is using the same tool consistently to report back on ranking performance

SEMRush tends to be my choice because I use it for auditing and it's a tool I use a lot, so I suppose I mostly use it out of habit. The responses here remind me though how much excitement I get from seeing Google Search Console rankings increase however - so this is something I’ll be returning to more and using for tracking rankings as well as using for other more technical data tracking.

I use SEMRush because it gives me a list of keywords a page is ranking for with a comprehensive breakdown of data like SERP features, ranking position, keyword intent, difficulty, CPC etc. This helps me assess the performance of content and make necessary judgments to improve the content further.

GSC is accurate, provides excellent information, can be accessed by everyone in an organization, and it's easy to read. Also, the learning curve is incredible and allows everyone to understand the meaning behind the data.

Popular platforms like WordPress make life a lot easier, because there's a high chance that the majority of marketing teams have at least some experience with using it before.

From first-hand experience, WordPress provides the most flexibility for technical SEO fixes. Compared to other non-ecommerce solutions, it offers a high level of customisation. Whilst other CMS' are increasing their SEO focus, they have quite a way to go to compete.

I did expect to see WordPress here, but I'm surprised how many people use Drupal! It would be great to understand the respondents' backgrounds to better understand this choice.

Wordpress continues to be a popular CMS to work on, and I totally agree! I know Wix has really made an effort to improve their SEO functionalities recently so it makes sense its grown a bit in popularity

This is expected. Wordpress has been always the easiest choice for content publishing!

I expected this. WordPress is quite popular and offers more flexibility than most CMS.

For the others, I’ve not worked with Drupal before but I know Wix has made some improvements in the past year to earn a spot in the top 3.

WordPress for me, because of its flexibility and the fact I’ve most experience with it. I’ve also seen a lot of problems with it in the past (sites set up by others, hacked sites, etc) but it is powerful and auto updates really help keep it secure.

WordPress is very versatile and is one of the easier CMS platforms to optimize for SEO. There are many plugins like Yoast that help to check the SEO optimization of a WordPress page and ensure that the content is optimized to rank well.

I've used Wordpress for 6+ years and I don't find any other platform to be as robust and versatile.

Shopify all the way for me. I like that it’s easy to use and does exactly what my clients need it to do.

With more ecom start-ups emerging, I expected that Shopify would be a front-runner. It removes a lot of time and resource challenges. In addition, Shopify Plus is continually evolving to better accommodate technical SEO optimisations.

Magento is a great solution for businesses that have a large inventory. But, out of the box, it is not an SEO-first solution. Plugins and bespoke coding are often necessary to accommodate key technical SEO configurations. These additions and amendments can be costly for businesses.

I've definitely had my fair share of issues with Magento! But with the right people it has some incredibly useful functionality, and I definitely believe it is a great choice for very large ecommerce stores

I have worked in many project management systems. They can be a great help or they can be a terrible pain. It is as good as the will of the people using it accordingly.

In case you haven't been using a project management system and want to try it, I suggest the entire team is part of it 100% or else it is pretty unlikely it will work without causing issues and frustrations.

Enabling change takes different time to anyone but if you stick to it, eventually it will work. To your own surprise way better than before.

I'm surprised to see Asana at the top, and I wonder if it's because it's easier and more "playful" than Jira or because it's more suitable for certain types of projects. I still think Jira is more integrated and flexible, primarily when multiple stakeholders work together.