There are so many tools available to help you achieve success in your blog, it’s hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve taken the guesswork out of choosing the right tool with our online directory of the most effective and helpful tools on the web.
Whether you’re looking for help with SEO, social media, or email marketing, you can find a tool here to meet your needs.
Table of Contents
Combo Seo Tools
Whenever I dream up a home improvement project for my place, I end up working smartest and fastest when I have the right tools at my disposal. It’s amazing the difference a good tool can make – and the extra time it takes to get work done without a helpful tool.
Fast-forward to online marketing. How can you work smarter and faster with SEO?
It starts with having the right tools.
I’ve collected a big sampling of the best free SEO tools on the market—tools with a wide variety of uses and covering a number of common needs. These tools are fast, free, and easy-to-use. I hope you find one or two (or twenty) you can put to good use, today.
- Google PageSpeed Insights
Check the speed and usability of your site on multiple devices
Limitations: None
Enter a URL and this tool will test the loading time and performance for that URL on desktop and mobile. It then grades your site’s performance on a score from 0 – 100. It tells you exactly how fast it takes to load the site according to different metrics, and also suggests areas for improvements.
Alternatives:Pingdom, WebPageTest, and GTMetrix
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Run a technical audit of your site
Limitations: 5,000 crawl credits per project per month
Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, verify your website and you’ll be able to audit your website for over 100+ technical SEO issues. The tool also gives suggestions on how to fix them.
After running an audit, it also suggests areas where you can improve your internal linking, which is helpful in boosting your rankings in search engines.
This tool also allows you to see your site’s organic keyword rankings as well as who’s linking to you.
Alternatives:Screaming Frog (audit), Beam Us Up (audit)
- Answer the Public
Hundreds of keyword ideas based on a single keyword
Limitations: Two free searches per day
Enter any relevant keyword, and Answer the Public will provide a huge list of long-tail keyword opportunities, plus common questions asked.
Alternatives: KeywordTool.io, UberSuggest, Keyword Sheeter, Keyword Generator
- Google Analytics
Complete web stats and search insights
Limitations: No limitations for its usage, but queries that are sending you organic traffic are hidden
Quite possibly the most powerful free analytics tool available, Google Analytics tracks pretty much every bit of traffic you can imagine on your website—where it comes from, which page is receiving it and so on.
While it’s not purely for SEO, it’s still a helpful tool to track if you’re getting traffic from organic search.
However, Google Analytics has since stopped showing which keywords are sending you those traffic. You’ll have to pair it with a tool like Keyword Hero to uncover what’s behind “(not provided).”
Alternatives:Matomo, Open Web Analytics, and Clicky
- Google Search Console
Constant website analysis, alerts, and error reports
Limitations: Only shows a handful of technical SEO issues, the top 1,000 backlinks and top 1,000 organic keywords
Google Search Console gives you a taste of what the most used search engine thinks of your website. You can use it to check and fix technical issues on your website, see important SEO data like clicks, impressions and average ranking position, submit sitemaps and more.
If ranking in search engines like Bing and Yandex are important to you, then take note that they have their own “search console” too.
Alternatives:Bing Webmaster Tools, Yandex Webmaster Tools
- Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
Comprehensive link analysis
Limitations: Free for the top 100 backlinks
The free version of Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker shows the top 100 backlinks to any website or URL, along with the total number of backlinks and referring domains (links from unique sites), Domain Rating (DR), and URL Rating (UR) where applicable.
A great way to use this tool is to paste your competitor’s website and find potential link building opportunities.
Alternatives: Moz Link Explorer
- Google Ads Keyword Planner
Know what people search for
Limitations: You’ll need to run an ad campaign to see exact search volumes
Enter a keyword or group of keywords into the tool, and Google Keyword Planner will return all sorts of helpful stats to guide your keyword strategy: monthly search volume, competition, and even suggested terms you might not have considered.
Alternatives:Bing Keyword Planner
- SERPSim
Preview how your web pages will look in Google’s search results
Limitations: None
See how your meta title and description will appear in the search results before you even publish your web page. Works for desktop and mobile.
Check for truncation issues and fix them instantly.
Alternatives: Portent’s SERP Preview Tool
- Google Trends
See the relative search popularity of topics
Limitations: None
Google Trends shows the popular search terms over time, which is useful for uncovering seasonal variations in search popularity amongst other things. Compare multiple terms to see the relative popularity.
- Ahrefs’ SEO toolbar
Check the broken links, redirect chains, nofollow links and on-page elements for any webpage
Limitations: Technical and on-page SEO features are free, but you’ll need an Ahrefs account to see SEO metrics within the SERPs
The Ahrefs SEO toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension that allows you to check for broken links, trace redirect chains and highlight nofollow links for any webpage. It also generates an on-page SEO report that includes the webpage’s:
Title
Meta description
Word count
Headers
Hreflang tags
Canonicals
OG tags
This makes analyzing any page much easier and faster.
If you have access to a paid Ahrefs account, you’ll also be able to see important keyword metrics like search volume, CPC and keyword difficulty within the SERPs.
Alternatives:Detailed SEO Extension, SEO Minion, LinkMiner (broken links), Ayima Redirect Path (redirect tracing)
- Moz Local Listing Score
See how your local business looks online
Limitations: Data is only available for three countries: US, Canada & UK
Moz crunches data from more than 10 different sources—including Google, Yelp, and Facebook—to score your brick-and-mortar business on how it looks online. Results come complete with actionable fixes for inconsistent or incomplete listings.
- Yoast SEO
Optimize your blog posts for search engines
Limitations: Some data limitations, which you can unlock via a premium account
Enter the main keyword for your blog post and Yoast SEO will suggest how to tweak your blog post to optimize it for search engines.
Alternatives: Rank Math, All in One SEO Pack, The SEO Framework
- JSON-LD Schema Generator For SEO
Customize how your web pages appear in the search results
Limitations: None
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Create custom code so that your reviews, events, organizations, and people are displayed the way you want in Google’s search results. Once you’ve created your schema code, copy and paste into your website.
Then, use the next tool to check if the implementation has been done correctly.
Alternatives:Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator
- Classy Schema Structured Data Viewer
Check if your structured data was implemented correctly
Limitations: None
Always double check to make sure you’re implementing the technical aspects of SEO right. Use this tool to see if your structured data/schema markup was done correctly.
Alternatives: Google Structured Data Testing Tool (deprecating soon), Google’s Rich Results Test (currently does not test for all possible schema markups)
- SimilarWeb
View site stats for any domain
Limitations: You’ll need a paid account to see every data point, but the free version is good enough to get a snapshot of your competitor’s activity
Use this tool to estimate how much traffic a website gets. See a breakdown of traffic sources, locations, and more. A helpful tool for competitor research.
- SERP Robot
See your ranking position for up to five keywords
Limitations: None
Enter any website or web page and up to five keywords to see where you rank for each of them. Check your competitors’ rankings too.
- XML Sitemaps
Create a sitemap
Limitations: Free up to 500 pages
Simply enter your site’s URL and some optional parameters, and XML Sitemaps will create a sitemap that you can upload to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Robots.txt Generator
Generate a robots.txt for your site
Limitations: None
Robots.txt files let the web robots know what to do with a website’s pages. When a page is disallowed in robots.txt, that’s instructions telling the robots to completely skip over those web pages.
Alternatives: YellowPipe’s Robots.txt Generator
- Copyscape
Check for duplicate content
Limitations: Only the top 10 results are shown
Enter a URL for a blog post or website, and Copyscape can tell you where else that content exists online. You might find results that you’ll need to follow-up with to help get your SEO in order.
- Google Alerts
Get alerted of any online mentions of your brand, product or company
Limitations: None
Enter your brand, company or product name and Google will send you an email if it finds any webpage mentioning those terms.
- Screaming Frog SEO Log File Analyser
Upload and analyze your log files
Limitations: Up to 1,000 lines
If you’re interested to find out what Googlebot is doing on your site, you can look into your website’s log files. Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser allows you to do that for free.
Alternatives: SEOlyzer
- Exploding Topics
Discover the hottest trends
Limitations: None
SEOs often target topics with high search volume, but that means targeting topics that are already popular. What if you could find and target topics right before they hit the mainstream?
Use this tool to do that.
Alternatives: Glimpse, Treendly
- The Hreflang Tags Generator Tool
Generate hreflang tags for your multi-language/multi-country site
Limitations: None
If your site targets different countries or different languages, you’ll need to set up your hreflang tags properly. Unfortunately, it’s quite easy to mess up, which can cause issues for your site.
Enter your site’s URL, the language and country of the URL and the tool will generate the necessary hreflang annotations for you.
- Keyword Surfer
See search volumes and CPC data within the SERPs
Limitations: None
Install this free Chrome extension and you’ll be able to see search volumes and CPC data for any keyword you enter into Google. You’ll also see suggested keyword ideas that are related to your query.
Alternatives: WMS Everywhere
- Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Check your site’s mobile-friendliness
Limitations: None
Enter any URL and this tool will tell you if it’s mobile-friendly. It also tells you what went wrong and what you need to fix.
- Website Authority Checker
Check your website’s Domain Rating
Limitations: None
Enter your URL and see the Domain Rating (DR) of your website. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the more authoritative your website.
A high DR has been shown to correlate positively with higher Google rankings.
Alternatives: Moz’s Domain SEO Analysis Tool
- Whitespark’s Google Review Link Generator
Create a link for customers to review your business on Google
Customer reviews are important for local SEO purposes. This tool allows you to create a shareable link for customers to review your business on Google.
best cheap seo tools
Having a good search engine ranking can boost visibility, traffic, and sales.
But improving your SEO can be expensive.
SEO tools can cost hundreds of dollars every month. As a startup, you have limited funds and time. You need a fast, affordable, and sustainable path to increase signups.
But here’s the good news.
There are plenty of high-quality SEO tools on the market that are free… In fact, I use these free SEO tools often, especially when it comes to discovering keywords and link building opportunities.
So if you want to use these free and affordable SEO tools, make sure you continue reading below.
Google Analytics
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics can show you everything you need to know when it comes to your website’s data.
For example, Google Analytics can track every action you make on your website and show you how these actions affect traffic and conversions.
I highly recommend Google Analytics when it comes to tracking downloads, clicks, email signups, conversions, and keywords.
google page speed
- Google PageSpeed
Did you know that page speed is a direct ranking factor? The faster your webpage loads, the better your ranks can be.
Google PageSpeed is a fantastic tool to measure your website speed on both mobile and desktop. It also suggests improvements based on Google Webmaster Guidelines.
google keyword planner
- Google Keyword Planner
With the Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that you can use when you sign up for a Google Ads account, you can discover highly searched terms or easy-to-rank keywords.
Google can also give you suggested keywords based on your keywords. These suggested keywords also come with key metrics as well!
google search console
- Google Search Console
Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) allows you to measure your website’s traffic, performance, and fix any issues when it comes to Google Search results.
For example, Google Search Console can use the Crawl Errors tool to find broken URLs that will show up negatively on Google.
It can also give you a complete breakdown of your backlink profile as well.
You can also see how your website is performing under Search Analytics. Here, you can track the total number of impressions in your SERPs, your average ranking position, and the click-through rate.
You can also find out which page is ranking for which keywords as well.
While Google Search Console is not exactly an SEO tool, the data from Google Search Console, can help you make better-informed decisions.
SEO PowerSuite
- SEO PowerSuite
The SEO PowerSuite is an all-in-one SEO software that covers every step in an SEO campaign. While the SEO PowerSuite has a paid version, the free version remains one of the most effective SEO site suites available.
With the SEO Powersuite (Free Version), you can:
Track keyword searches, improve your rankings, & steal traffic from your competitors
Perform SEO audits & optimize your site
Discover over 100k competitor backlinks & construct your link building strategy
Manage your links, build new partnerships, & find guest blogging opportunities
screamingfrog
- Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a fantastic website crawler that analyses and audits on-site SEO for you (or your competitor’s) site URL.
Here, you can find broken links, errors, and redirects, analyze page titles and metadata, review meta robots and directives, discover duplicate pages, and generate XML sitemaps.
While the Screaming Frog has both paid and free versions, the free version is available for up to 500 URLs.
gtmetrix
- GTmetrix
If you’re keen to boost your page’s speed, you should try GTmetrix. GTmetrix is a Page Speed tool that gives you more in-depth and thorough information about your site’s speed than Google Page Speed Insights.
GTmetrix gives you an overall site speed score, with a breakdown of what’s good and bad about your site.
GTmetrix also ranks your site speed problems in order of priority. The ranking system can help you can focus on the most important page speed factors first.
Furthermore, GTmetrix also explains problems in detail by outlining why, what, and how you can fix the problem.
While GTmetrix has both paid and free versions, the free version lets you monitor up to 3 URLs and save up to 20 URLs.
Ubersuggest
- Ubersuggest
Knowing which keywords are the best for your site is hard. But Ubersuggest is a handy little tool. Ubersuggest is a free keyword tool that can give you suggestions based on keyword ideas.
For example, if you want to rank for an article in the travel niche on Berlin Walking tours, you can hop on Ubersuggest, select the country and database you want to rank in and type in a keyword.
Ubersuggest will give you a list of alternate keywords people search for around the keyword you entered. Here, you can view search by toggling volume, cost per click, and competition for each result.
It’s a great way to build up a list of keywords for your website.
Check My Links
- Check My Links
Did you know that broken links can hurt your SEO? Instead of manually checking your links, you can use Check My Links to crawl your entire site to find broken links.
This way, you can quickly identify and repair these broken links and improve your SEO almost immediately.
For example, Check My Links will highlight valid links in green.
It’ll list warning links in yellow, and broken links you need to fix, in red.
openlinkprofiler
- Open Link Profiler
One of the best ways to boost your SEO is to build links. With Open Link Profiler’s browser, you gain incredible data about your backlink profile. All you need to do is go to their website and enter your URL.
You’ll then gain access to your Backlink Profile.
You can also access a list that breaks down all the links to your website. You can access their quality and see where the link is from.
You can export up to 1000 links from OpenLinkProfiler for free.
ahrefs
- Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most expensive tools in the market. Ahref’s Lite plan begins at $99 per month, while the most popular standard plan is $179 per month.
Thankfully, Ahrefs offers a $7 for 7 days trial for both the Lite and Standard Option.
- SEMRush
SEMRush is another popular, premium, and well-known SEO tool. SEMRush’s Pro plan is $99.95 per month, while the most popular Guru option is $199.95 per month.
With SEMRush, you can sign up for a 7-day free trial for both the Pro and Guru plans.
I personally use SEMRush to find out what my competitors are doing so I can replicate their successes with my site.
Although premium SEO tools are expensive, most tools offer a free trial or a discounted sign-up rate. While they offer a limited time-frame (e.g 7 days, 2 weeks, or 1 month), you can plan what you need from these tools in advance so you can use the trial period effectively.
Conclusion
You don’t always have to use expensive SEO tools to rank well.
This group of free SEO tools is a great place to start.
They can help you audit your site, improve site speed, analyze data, improve ranks, fix broken links, and assist with other digital marketing efforts. Plus, they’re pretty easy to learn and use.
What are you waiting for?
Get started today!
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
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