The digital marketing industry is constantly changing, and there are a lot of tools you can use to improve your performance.
To help out, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite free SEO tools for digital marketers on Instagram. You’ll find these tools useful in improving your organic reach, as well as in making sure you’re getting the best value from your paid advertising efforts.
Table of Contents
Free Seo Tools For Digital Marketers On Instagram
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.
best free seo tools
This is a list of the 25 best free SEO tools on the planet.
In fact, these tools have helped my site get 449k+ visitors per month.
Backlinko – Users – September 2021
(Most of which came from SEO.)
The best part?
All of these tools work GREAT in 2022.
Let’s get started…
- Answer The Public
- Woorank’s SEO & Website Analysis Tool
- Animalz Revive
- CanIRank
- Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
- Seed Keywords
- Exploding Topics
- Seobility
- Ubersuggest
- BROWSEO
- Detailed.com
- Google Search Console
- SERPerator
- Screaming Frog
- Google Analytics
- Reddit Keyword Research Tool
- Yoast WordPress Plugin
- Panguin Tool
- Wordtracker Scout
- Lipperhey
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Dareboost
- Siteliner
- KWFinder
- People Also Ask
Bonus #1. Bulk Google Rank Checker
Bonus #2. LSI Graph
25 Best Free SEO Tools - Answer The Public
Find 150+ keyword ideas in seconds.
Most SEO tools get their data from the same place: The Google Keyword Planner.
Answer the Public is different.
This awesome tool finds questions that people ask on forums, blogs and on social media.
And it turns those questions into awesome keywords:
Answer The Public – “keto diet”
Best Feature: “Vs. Keywords”
You’d be surprised how many people search for “X vs. Y” keywords in Google.
(For example: “iPhone vs. Android” or “SEMRush vs. Ahrefs”.)
And Answer the Public has a section of the results dedicated to “Vs. Keywords”.
Answer The Public – “keto diet” – Versus section
This brings us to the 2nd tool on our list…
- Woorank’s SEO & Website Analysis Tool
Get a list of SEO improvements in seconds.
This is a very handy Chrome extension.
First, you get an overall SEO score.
Then, the tool shows you EXACTLY how to improve your site’s on-page and off-page SEO.
WooRank – Chrome extension
Best Feature: “Marketing Checklist”
Most SEO tools only tell you about problems… not solutions.
But with Woorank you get a detailed SEO checklist that you can use to fix any issues that you run into.
WooRank – Marketing checklist
And now it’s time for our next free SEO tool…
- Animalz Revive
Improve and update old content.
Animalz Revive helps you find older content on your site that needs an update, an upgrade… or both.
Before this tool, you had to manually comb through your Google Analytics account to find these pages.Which was a giant pain.
Fortunately, this tool tells you exactly which articles on your site need the most attention.
Animalz Revive Advice
Best Feature: “Traffic Loss Since Peak (Views)”
This feature lets you know exactly how many visitors that a piece of outdated content is costing you.
Animalz Revive
- CanIRank
Quickly answer the question: “Can I rank for this keyword?”.
CanIRank is a super-detailed keyword difficulty tool.
And unlike most free SEO tools, CanIRank doesn’t give you generic advice like:
“This keyword is really competitive”
Or
“This keyword has low competition”
Instead, it tells you whether or not YOU can rank for that keyword.
CanIRank
Very cool.
Best Feature: “How can you better target this keyword?”
CanIRank isn’t just for sizing up the first-page competition.
It also gives you suggestions that can help you rank for a specific term.
CanIRank – Keyword probability
- Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
Get your site ready for Google’s Mobile-first Indexing.
You might have heard that Google recently made a big change to its algorithm.
(This change is officially called “Mobile-First Indexing”.)
The bottom line is this:
If your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you’re in big trouble.
Fortunately, you don’t need a full-time developer to make your site mobile-friendly. All you need to do is run your site through the Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
And it tells you whether or not Google considers your site mobile-friendly.
Google’s mobile friendly test
Best Feature: “Page loading issues”
This feature shows you how you can improve your site’s code. That way, Google’s mobile crawler can find and index all of the resources on your site.
Mobile-Friendly Test – Issues
- Seed Keywords
Find completely fresh keyword ideas.
Most keyword research tools work the exact same way:
Enter a seed keyword into the tool.
Get a list of closely-related terms.
The problem with this approach is this:
Everyone types the same seed keywords into these tools.
Well, Seed Keywords takes a completely different approach.
Instead of pulling seed keywords out of thin air, you ask your customers how they’d search for you online.
SeedKeywords – Scenario
Then, type those seed keywords into your favorite keyword research tool.
Best Feature: “Submit Query”
Once the results come in, you can use SeedKeywords to do a Google search for the keywords that people gave you.
That way you can quickly scan the search results… and see how competitive those keywords are.
SeedKeywords – Results
- Exploding Topics
Find popular keywords before they get competitive.
This free SEO tool does one simple thing:
It bubbles up topics that are just starting to trend.
exploding topics Homepage
That way, you can create content around these emerging trends (or optimize your old content around a new keyword).
The tool currently has about 2k topics in its database. And they’re adding more every week.
Best Feature: Categories
Categories let you drill down to a specific topic category that’s important to your business.
For example, let’s say you run marketing for a skincare brand. Well, you’d hit “beauty” and get a list of emerging topics in that space.
exploding topics Category Page
Nice.
- Seobility
Get a deep-dive SEO site analysis.
SEObility crawls your entire site and lets you know about search engine optimization issues like:
Slow loading pages
Blocked pages
Sitemap problems
Technical SEO issues
Lots more
SEOBility
You usually only get this type of stuff from paid SEO tools. So it’s really nice that Seobility gives you this data for free.
Best Feature: Content Report
This report hands you a list of pages that have content-related SEO issues.
(Things like: thin content, missing meta titles, keyword stuffing, and duplicate content.)
SEOBility – Content report
- Ubersuggest
Get keyword suggestions and competition data.
Ubersuggest has a lot of features that are usually only found in premium SEO tools.
But it’s 100% free.
To use it, type in a keyword that you want to rank for (or a competing website that you want to rank above).
Ubersuggest – Search
And Ubersuggest will give you detailed data on keyword difficulty, monthly search volume, and more.
Ubersuggest – Results
Plus, you get a list of suggested keywords that are based on the keyword you typed in.
Ubersuggest – Keyword suggestions
Best Feature: “Comparisons”
This feature shows you “X vs. Y” keywords.
Ubersuggest – Keyword comparisons
In my experience, X vs. Y keywords are super untapped.
Sure, they may not get as many searches as traditional keywords. But they’re SUPER targeted and high-converting.
And to my knowledge Ubersuggest is the only tool that specifically bubbles up X vs. Y keywords.
- BROWSEO
See your site through the eyes of a search engine.
As it turns out, search engines see your site VERY differently than you do.
And BROWSEO gives you the type of x-ray vision that search engines have.
BROWSEO
Best Feature: SERP Preview
Get a sweet preview of how your page appears in the search results:
BROWSEO – SERP preview
This is helpful for figuring out if your title and description tag are SEO-friendly (or too long). And optimizing your title and description can also help you get more organic clicks.
- Detailed.com
Get intel on your competition.
Detailed gives you a curated list of the most popular sites in your industry.
That way, you can size up your biggest competitors.
(And copy what they’re doing.)
Detailed
Best Feature: “Mentions”
This feature shows you who recently linked to (and tweeted about) your competition.
Detailed – Backlinko
- Google Search Console
Get SEO help straight from Google.
No list of free SEO tools would be complete without the Google Search Console.
Why?
The GSC is a VERY feature-rich piece of SEO software. And unlike pretty much every other tool on the market, you know the data is legit.
(After all, it comes from Google.)
For example, you can use the Google Search Console as a rank tracker to check your site’s rankings in the SERPs.
Using Google Search Console as a rank checker
Best Feature: Index Coverage Report
The Index Coverage Report gives you a list of pages on your site that aren’t getting indexed.
You can also see how you can get things back on track.
Google Search Console – Index coverage report
- SERPerator
This awesome tool lets you check the SERPs across different locations and devices.
As you probably know, the search results change dramatically depending on where you are and what device you’re using.
(Especially for local searches, like: “pizza shop” or “landscaper”.)
And this tool lets you see exactly how the results will look for someone searching on a particular phone from pretty much any major city in the world.
SERPerator – iPhone results
Best Feature: Compare Devices
See how the results look on two different mobile devices… side-by-side.
SERPerator – iPhone, compare devices
- Screaming Frog
Find and fix technical SEO issues in seconds.
Let’s face it:
Finding technical SEO problems on your site can be a HUGE pain.
Enter: Screaming Frog.
This nifty tool crawls your site using a Google-like crawler. And it generates a report of potential issues (like HTTP header errors, javascript rendering issues, bloated HTML, and crawl errors).
Screaming Frog
Best Feature: Discover Duplicate Content
As you might have heard, Google HATES duplicate content.
Fortunately, you can use Screaming Frog to quickly ID pages with duplicate content.
Screaming Frog – Duplicate content
- Google Analytics
See how people find and interact with your site.
OK, OK. Google Analytics isn’t really an SEO tool.
But it’s almost impossible to run an SEO campaign without it.
Why?
The data in Google Analytics tells you whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off.
I’m talking about data like:
Organic traffic
Bounce rate
Traffic sources
Time on site
Page speed
Google Analytics
Best Feature: Google Analytics and Google Search Console Integration
Google Analytics is super powerful on its own.
But when you combine it with the Google Search Console?
It’s even MORE powerful.
Linking your GSC account with GA hooks you up with helpful info, like the keywords people use to find your site, your organic CTR, and more cool stuff.
Google Analytics – Google Search Console
- Reddit Keyword Research Tool
This is one of my favorite little keyword research tools.
Why? Because it can bring up terms that I probably wouldn’t find with any other tool.
This tool scrapes Reddit words and phrases that tend to crop up in specific subreddits.
Reddit Keyword Research Tool
So if you know where your target audience hangs out on Reddit, this is a goldmine of keyword and content topic ideas.
Best Feature: Context
This feature takes you to the actual thread on Reddit.
That way, you can see exactly how that keyword is used in discussions.
- Yoast WordPress Plugin
The best SEO plugin for WordPress.
If your site runs on WordPress, you need to install Yoast ASAP.
It’s by far the most robust SEO plugin on the market.
The best part? It’s 100% free.
Yoast SEO WordPress plugin
Best Feature: XML Sitemap Generator
Sitemaps help Google and other search engines find, crawl and index all of the pages on your site.
And with the Yoast plugin, you don’t have to tinker with your sitemap every time you add a new page to your site.
That’s because Yoast updates your sitemap automatically. Cool.
Yoast – Sitemap
- Panguin Tool
Get to the bottom of a rankings drop.
This tool correlates your search traffic with known Google updates.
Why is this helpful?
Well, if you notice that your rankings dropped around the time of a big Google update, you can figure out what went wrong… and fix it.
Panguin
Best Feature: Switch Updates On/Off
Panguin makes it easy to zero in on a specific update.
For example, if you’re a local business that focuses on local SEO, you can only have Panguin ONLY show you Google updates that impacted local results.
Panguin – On/Off
- Wordtracker Scout
Steal your competitor’s keywords.
Wordtracker scout takes a unique approach to keyword research…
Instead of entering keywords into a tool, Wordtracker shows you the most common terms on a page.
That way, you can go over to one of your competitor’s pages… and grab the keywords they’re using in their content.
WordTracker Scout
(Note: This is only available as Chrome extension and isn’t supported for Firefox)
Best Feature: Opportunity
Shows you which keywords on your list have the best ratio of search volume and competition.
WordTracker Scout – Opportunity
- Lipperhey
Powerful website analyzer.
Lipperhey is a full-featured SEO analyzer that doesn’t cost a penny.
LipperHey
Best Feature: Keyword Suggestions
Get a list of keywords to add to specific pages on your site.
(Which can help you get more organic traffic from long-tail keywords).
LipperHey – Keyword suggestions
- Bing Webmaster Tools
Optimize your site for Bing.
Bing Webmaster Tools is basically the Google Search Console… but for Bing.
So if you want to get your site indexed (and ranked) in Bing, Bing Webmaster Tools is a must-have.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Best Feature: Keyword Research Tool
Get keyword ideas (and data) straight from Bing.
And unlike the Google Keyword Planner, the data from Bing is strictly for organic search (not Bing PPC or Adwords).
Bing Webmaster Tools – Keyword Research tool
- Dareboost
Analyze your site for speed, SEO, security and more.
Dareboost isn’t strictly an SEO tool.
But it does analyze your site for things that indirectly impact SEO, like your site’s loading speed and security.
Dareboost
Best Feature: Priorities
Let’s you know where to start first. Helpful if you’re strapped for time.
Dareboost – Priorities
- Siteliner
Get a full SEO report for free.
Siteliner scans your site for SEO problems (like blocked pages, messed up redirects and broken links).
Siteliner
Best Feature: Comparison with Other Sites
This lets you compare your site’s loading speed and page size to other site’s in Siteliner’s database. Helpful for benchmarking.
Siteliner – Comparison with other sites
- KWFinder
No-nonsense keyword research tool.
The best part of KWFinder is how darn easy it is to use.
But don’t let this fool you into thinking KWFinder isn’t powerful. It’s a legit keyword tool that lots of pros use.
KWFinder
Best Feature: LPS
LPS=Link Profile Strength.
This feature basically tells you how many links you’ll need to rank for that keyword.
So if you find a keyword that has a LPS of 50+, you know that you’ll need to do some serious link building to rank for that term.
KWFinder – LPS
- People Also Ask
This free tool pulls questions that appear in the “People Also Ask” section of Google’s search results.
Usetopic – People Also Ask
My only gripe with the tool is that it takes a while for the results to load. But I understand that’s because it has to actually run the search and grab questions from the PAA box. Which takes a while.
Overall, a very cool tool for finding question keywords.
Best Feature: Related Questions
People Also Ask shows you questions that you’d usually have to get by manually clicking on the PAA box in the SERPs.
For example, one of the questions the tool showed me was “What is a good keyword?”. And I also got a handful of questions that were closely related to the original question.
People Also Ask – Related questions
Bonus #1. Bulk Google Rank Checker
Simple and accurate rank checker tool.
If you want to see where you rank for a specific keyword in Google, you definitely want to use a rank tracking tool.
This free tool makes the process a cinch (and you can check up to 10 keywords for free).
Bulk Google Rank Checker
Best Feature: Search Engine Rankings
See where you rank in the SERPs… and where your competitors rank.
Bulk Google Rank Checker – SERPs
Bonus #2. LSI Graph
Advanced content optimization.
LSI keywords can help take your on-page SEO to the next level.
And that’s exactly what LSIGraph is designed to do: it creates a list of LSI keywords that you can sprinkle into your content.
LSI Graph
Best Feature: Analysis
Analysis lets you dig deep on an LSI keyword from your list. That way, you can find even MORE awesome LSI keywords to use.
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