In this post, we’ll talk about the benefits of using automated SEO software. You may be asking yourself, “Why would I need to use an automated SEO tool?”
The answer is simple. You don’t have to do everything yourself! That’s right; there are tools available that can help you manage some of the more tedious aspects of SEO.
For example, let’s say you’ve written a blog post and now want to optimize it for search engines. You could do this manually by adding keywords, making sure they’re spelled correctly and placed in the right spots throughout your article. This process can take hours!
Or… you could use an automated tool like [product name]. Our software will do all that work for you within seconds!
Free Automated Seo Software
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
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Publish Flawlessly. Analyze Effortlessly. Engage Authentically.
Buffer is the all-you-need social media toolkit that lets you focus on doing what you love for your business.
Get started for free now
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 free seo tools
When creating content online, it’s important to have a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy alongside your content strategy. Doing so will ensure your posts are as optimized as possible. SEO tools can help you identify ways to improve the discoverability of your site.
SEO can seem daunting to novices, but there are several free SEO tools are are just as powerful as their paid counterparts.
Here’s a breakdown of 10 of the best free SEO tools and software.
Best free on-page optimization tools
Rank Math Plugin
Rank Math is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website content. It lets you add meta titles, descriptions and structure your data more easily. Simply download and install this plugin to your WordPress website to begin using it.
Benefits
Rank Math gives your content an SEO score for each page. When you indicate what keyword you’re targeting, this plugin suggests ways to increase your ranking for that keyword. You can also identify and fix dead links on your site and redirect URLs to new pages.
Screenshot of the Rank Math WordPress plugin
Yoast SEO Plugin
The Yoast SEO plugin makes it easy to optimize your WordPress site and identify gaps in your content. If your site runs on WordPress, install and activate the Yoast plugin to begin.
Benefits
The Yoast plugin allows you to improve and modify your content in three ways: SEO, readability and social. With Yoast, you can set meta descriptions, titles, canonical URL, and label index/no-index pages and other backend settings on your site. This plugin will assign every post a readability score by measuring sentence and paragraph length and other criteria. And Yoast also has excellent features to help you improve the shareability of your posts on social media.
Screenshot of Yoast SEO WordPress plugin
Best free keyword research tools
Google Trends
As the name suggests, Google Trends helps you track the popularity of topics and trends in your industry over time. Use this tool to identify current trends and use that information to craft a timely and relevant content marketing strategy.
Benefits
Google Trends gives you a clear picture of how specific trends change over time and how people’s searching patterns around it change. To use Google Trends, start by typing in a keyword. You’ll see the interest in that topic over time, which regions show the most interest, and other keywords people are searching for related to that query. This tool works best when combined with other keywords to show comparisons of trends over time.
Screenshot of Google Trends dashboard for they keywork “football” and its trend ranking over time and by U.S. region
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator is a lite version of Ahrefs full tool and will show you the top 100 related keyword ideas when searching a keyword or phrase. To use this free tool, enter up to 100 keywords or phrases in the search bar. You’ll see a list of the top 100 keywords related to your search as well as their search volume from when the data for that keyword was last updated, and keyword difficulties for the first 10 keywords on the list.
Benefits
This tool gives users a taste of what Ahrefs’ full tool can do and is perfect for people who want to explore some industry keywords. In addition to the keywords, you can also see the top 50 questions related to that keyword.
Screenshot of Ahrefs Keyword Generator and results for the keyword “social media”
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that helps users generate new keywords and content ideas. This tool will give you a high-level overview of the keyword you’re searching for. It’s a great tool to use when looking for new ways to fill your social media or content calendar because the tool also shows you related long-tail keywords and suggests content ideas based on the keyword.
Benefits
When you do your keyword search, you’ll see the monthly keyword search volume, how competitive it is to rank for, and the average cost per click. The tool will also provide you the average number of backlinks that a site should have to rank for that keyword.
Screenshot of Ubersuggest keyword tool for the keyword “yoga”
Best free SEO tools for analytics
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC), previously known as Google Webmasters, helps you understand how Google crawls and indexes your site. To use the Google Search Console, create an account and add your website as a property within the account. Once you’ve added your domain, verify you’re the site owner before you can access all of its features.
Benefits
There are several features to highlight about Google Search Console, one of which is that it can help you diagnose technical errors on your website. It can also help you understand what keywords or content are ranking for your site.
Screenshot of Google Console dashboard
Bing Webmaster Tools
An often overlooked tool, Bing Webmaster also has a full suite of analytics to help you analyze your website and search analytics. Create your free Bing Webmaster Tools account, add your website and verify your ownership of the site. Then create or upload your sitemaps. Once complete, you’re able to start optimizing your site and its content using Bing Webmaster Tools’ features and suggestions.
Benefits
Bing Webmaster Tools can provide useful keyword research, reporting, and can crawl your website to identify issues. It’s a good way to get a virtual second opinion on your site or find any new information that Google Search Console didn’t reveal.
Screenshot of Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard
Google Analytics
To know if your SEO efforts are working, you need to analyze your site’s findability to see where your traffic is coming from. You may notice a spike in traffic after making post optimizations, but that traffic could be coming from another source like social media. Google Analytics provides you with in-depth details about your website visitors, as well as real-time activity.
With an existing Google account, sign into Google Analytics and connect with your website. To get the most helpful SEO information, pair it with your Google Console account. When you link the two tools, you’ll be able to see the keywords people are using to find your site, identify your click-through-rates on those keywords and more.
Benefits
Google Analytics lets you see how people interact with your website. Using Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see how many people are visiting your site, where your traffic is coming from, how long people are spending on the page and so much more.
Screenshot of Google Analytics
Best free tools for link building
Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Like their Keyword Research tool, Ahrefs Backlink Checker is a free version of their full tool that shows you the top 100 backlinks to any website you search. To use this tool, enter a URL into their search bar and you’ll see the site’s domain rating, the number of backlinks, and the number of referring domains.
Benefits
This free tool is great for some light backlink checking as well as analyzing your competitors. Even though you’re limited to viewing 100 links, it’s still a great place to start. You’ll see the total number of backlinks, links from referring domains, the site’s Domain Rating, and its URL rating.
Screenshot of Ahrefs Backlink Checker homepage
SEM Rush
Similar to the other tools mentioned above, SEM Rush has a free version of their robust tool. Not just for link building, SEM Rush can provide help with keyword research, on-page SEO audits, content optimizations, rank tracking and much more. Create a free account and access these features.
Benefits
The SEM Rush’s Backlink Analysis and Link Building Tool provides you an in-depth look at your backlink profile. The free version limits you to 100 domains in the Link Building Tool but you’ll be able to identify your referring domains and backlinks overtime, including gains and losses, and your backlink authority score. The tool helps you identify areas to improve your link building efforts or where you can gain more visibility online.
Screenshot of SEM Rush’s backlink analytics tool
Final thoughts on free SEO tools
While SEO is a crucial part of the content process, it works best when combined with other marketing strategies like content and social media marketing. You’ll get the most out of your optimizations when using both SEO and social monitoring software together. And these free SEO tools help you build a foundation to these strategies.
Throw in some social media keyword search tools and you’ll be able to cast an even broader net to learn more about what your audience wants. For more on how to marry your social media and SEO strategies, check our post on how SEO can inform social media marketing and vice versa.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines