Ahrefs does link checks and suggestions for free.
What Ghost is missing for SEO is tools to automatically insert links, a leaky paywall option, easier SEO configurations and default settings (like Yoast), easy bulk editing (can’t even open posts in a new window in the editor), and better internal searches/filters (show all posts with the same keyword in a single page for bulk editing, etc).
Ghost is easy and just works.
Wordpress is complex and doesn’t work if you don’t know exactly what you do.
I LOVE ghost.
I hear you on all of this. I use Neuronwriter sometimes to check the keywords, etc. I follow basic best practices.
My site performs waaaaay better since migrating to Ghost a couple of years ago. All of those bells and whistles are more code and more bloat for Google/Bing to sort through.
I find the simplicity of Ghost’s interface not only encourages me to write more often, its performance on the SEO front is superior.