Free SEO Tools for Small Businesses
SEO is the acronym for “search engine optimization” and refers to the process of improving a website’s ranking in search results. SEO is a popular way for small businesses to increase the visibility of their websites and drive traffic from search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss some free SEO tools that can help you optimize your website so it ranks higher in search results. These tools will also help you track how well your website performs in search engine rankings over time.
Free Seo Tools For Small Businesses Journal
Building and executing an effective digital marketing campaign to improve your website’s traffic and leads is not easy. There are many methods available worldwide, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) being one of the most popular. Companies worldwide are leveraging their web ranking using SEO practices. It is proven to be effective in building organic traffic to your website.
Currently, SEO is hot in the market. Not only big enterprises are using it but also to the smallest businesses. However, hiring a dedicated digital marketing team might be a little bit steep for a small business with a limited budget. You might try to do it on your own. But to be successful, you need to have the proper knowledge and use the right tools.
It’s simply unbearable to do every step, from conducting keyword research to analyzing conversion trends and implementing effective content marketing without the proper tools. To fully help you, here is an article about what is SEO and the Top 16 SEO Tools for small businesses.
Table of Contents
What is SEO?
Best Free SEO Tools for Small Business
- Ahrefs Backlink Checker
- AnswerThePublic
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Hunter.io
- Keywords Everywhere
- Mangools SERP Simulator
- MozBar
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Screaming Frog
- SEMRush Site Audit Tool
- SEOquake
- SimilarWeb
- Ubersuggest
- Yoast WordPress Plugin
- Google
Final thoughts on SEO Tools for Free
What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is optimizing and improving your site to increase its visibility and ranking on search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Google.
Many businesses ask the question, “is SEO worth it?” Fundamentally, SEO is worth all the time and resources to many companies. It is a massive part of digital marketing as trillions of people are searching for anything online. The search engine is the primary source of digital traffic for many famous brands. SEO is great for any business as it provides better visibility of your website.
Best Free SEO Tools for Small Business
If you own a small business, every resource, monetary or time, is essential to you. You need to keep building, and with limited resources, you must work on every free tool you can get your hands on. So, suppose you are looking to optimize your website but have a limited budget. In that case, there are various SEO tools for free available online.
If you’re looking to start SEO optimizing your website for a low to zero cost, here are the best 16 SEO free tools available for you!
- Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Ahrefs offers a free link-building tool called Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker, which shows the top 100 Backlinks to any website. It also gives referring domains, total backlinks, Domain Rating (DR), and URL Rating (UR).
ahrefs backlink checker seo tool for free
Ahrefs’ free backlink checker screenshot
This free link building tool is a great way to check your competitor’s website and find potential link building opportunities. In addition, Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker can give you the following benefits:
It’s an SEO tool for free
See actionable insights and page-level metrics for any website, URL, or pages
Monitor the growth and decline of backlinks of some domains and pages
See all pages and websites linking to your website in a detailed report
See estimated organic traffic to each linking page to your web page
Additional tools such as Free SEO keyword generator
- AnswerThePublic
AnswerthePublic is a free keyword tool for SEO where digital marketers and SEO specialists can align themselves with customers’ thoughts. The app can help marketers guess what people want to know by looking at autocomplete data from search engines and listing questions and phrases commonly searched on specific keywords. SEO Specialists can then tailor your advertising, content, and campaigns around these questions.
answerthepublic seo tool for free
AnswerThePublic’s screencap with ‘best SEO tools for free’
In essence, AnswerthePublic helps businesses to transform their content and be relevant with their customers. It enables you to find new topics, keywords, and related ideas in your niches as you dive into the questions your consumers have. In addition this free keyword tool gives the following advantages:
Targets your keyword research around the questions
Aids you in optimizing your Long-Tail key Phrases
Helps you in answering questions that can get you into Google’s featured snippet
Help you to relate to your target audiences
Accessible and free SEO keyword research tool campaigns
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful online free SEO tool for analytics. Installing it on your website can help you in analyzing and understanding your marketing tactics. Google Analytics reports on which marketing tactic (ads, target keywords, etc.) drives the most traffic to your website.
Krista Seiden’s walkthrough of the new Google Analytics 4
It can help business owners set goals for their marketing and advertising campaigns. In addition, the tool can assist you in delivering a high-quality website to their users and customers and provide all necessary information. Similarly, Google Analytics can give you the following benefits:
Understand user behavior easily
Track online traffic
Sales conversion report
Improve online adverts with marketing analytics
Find the right audience
Google Analytics conversion tracking
- Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the top-tier free SEO tools online. After setting up your account, the software will alert you if Google finds an error on your website. You can also link this tool to google analytics to use more reporting tools in your analytics account.
google search console seo tool for free
With these two tools combined, you’ll be able to review essential stats like clicks per keyword, keyword ranking, and the occasion of when your website showed up in search per keyword. It also provides a click-through rate when your website shows in the search results. In addition, Google Search Console can give you the following advantages:
Improve your website’s appearance as it can show you what your pages look like in Google’s Search engine result page or SERP
Ensure that the title, URL, Meta Description, Site Links, etc. are all correct
Increase Organic Search Time
Understand Google’s Index and remove unwanted URLs from being indexed
Crawl your website
Can be used as a free SEO keyword tool
- Hunter.io
Hunter.io, also known as Email Hunter, is one of the best free link building SEO tools online. It’s an email tool that assists digital marketers in finding the contact information associated with any domain. This tool is excellent for individuals or companies using cold emailing to find leads for their business.hunter.io link building tool free seo tool
For SEO, Hunter.io is a great link-building tool as it allows you to get your hands on the email of your target link-building websites. In addition, the program can also help with the following advantages:
Provides link building templates
Performs bulk operations like domain search, email verification, and email finder
Filter out emails with deliverability issues
Find 100 emails for free!
- Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a free keyword research tool for SEO, available on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. It’s a browser extension that shows monthly search volume, cost per click (CPC), and various Application Programming Interfaces (API) information.
Keywords Everywhere free keyword research tool for seo
Screenshot of Keywords Everywhere tool
This free keyword research tool also provides data right into the search page you just used. Aside from that, Keywords Everywhere also provides the following:
Download your keywords list in Excel, CSV, or PDF file formats
Add your keywords in masse to get their volume metrics.
Search by country and narrow your results by specifying the country
Choose the best language you need
Available on 16 platforms like Google Search, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, Bing, YouTube, YouTube Tags, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and more.
View monthly estimates traffic and the top 5000 keywords on any URL or Domain
Find Keywords that your competitors rank with competitor gap analysis
View Moz DA, Spam Score, DA Trends, backlinks with Moz Link Metrics
- Mangools SERP Simulator
Mangools offers various SEO Tools that are great for digital marketing, SEO Specialist, and businesses. The brand is famous to many users for its design and ease of use.
Mangools SERP Simulator free seo tool
Mangools’ Google SERP Simulator w/ example
Mangools offers a free Google SERP Simulator that lets you see the title tag, URL, and Meta Description of pages in the search result as you write them. In addition, Mangools’ google search preview tool includes more features such as:
Easy fetch and improve the actual title and description of any website
Title tag and meta description length indicator
Add SERP features such as date, star rating, or ads on top of the result
Heatmap features
Export and implement features for the source code of the website
- MozBar
MozBar is one of the best free SEO audit tool extensions, available on both Google Chrome and Firefox, that provides insights and link metrics of a website for SEO purposes. It shows link metrics for pages and web domains as you search and displays other information such as Domain Authority, Page Authority, and website backlinks.
moz bar free seo tool
In addition, the toolbar is integrated into SERPS, which makes it easier for you to look at the authority metrics of each webpage. Aside from that, MozBar free SEO tool provides data, including the webpage’s title tag, alt text, meta robots, etc. Moz toolbar also offers the following benefits:
Finds relevant keywords and lets you know your chance of ranking
Helps you find existing content that needs revamping to rank better
Improves any technical issues with your webpage
Assists you in auditing the current site for any tech issues
Keep track of your most important keywords.
- Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is a free web and mobile SEO tool that helps you find and fix web applications that slow down your website. It reports on the performance of a page on both desktop and mobile devices. It provides insights and suggestions on how it can be improved.
google page insights seo tool for free
Google PageSpeed Insights screencap
Google PageSpeed Insights comes with an open-source tool called Lighthouse that analyzes data by combining real-world information from the Chrome User Experience Report dataset.
- Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an advanced and top tier free SEO tool used to audit your website. It is a website crawler that improves onsite SEO by extracting data & auditing for common SEO issues. The spider bot mimics the Googlebot web crawler, providing essential insights into how Google sees your website. Screaming Frog’s website crawler tool can be used to crawl small to large websites.
Demo and overview of Screaming Frog’s SEO audit tool
It manually checks every page that would usually be labor-intensive for humans. It detects easily missed issues like redirect pages, meta fresh, or duplicate page issues. Aside from that, it can also do the following tasks:
Find broken links
Analyze Page titles & metadata
Extract data with CSS path, XPath, or Regex
Review bots and directives
Generate XML sitemaps
Integrate with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights APIs
Crawl JavaScript websites
Visualize website structure / architecture
Scrape SERPs
- SEMRush Site Audit Tool
SEMRush offers one of the best SEO software for small businesses. SEMrush’s site audit tool is built to help you find and fix on-page SEO errors and drive more traffic to your website.
SEMRush Site Audit Tool free seo tool
Screenshot of SEMRush site audit tool
Their site audit tool tests all significant SEO errors and analyzes results into easy-to-digest reports. In addition, SEMRush free audit tools provides the following benefits:
Compare crawls and progress with different SEO Audits
Schedule weekly technical SEO Audits
Monitor your website’s health with reports
Check the website’s position with a position tracking tool
- SEOquake
SEOquake is a free SEO web browser plugin compatible with Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera addons. The tool provides users organic research data at the click of a button. This free SEO toolbar plugin can also deliver parameters for listing within the search engine results.
seo quacke free seo tool
In addition, the free plugins also allow users to see metrics for landing pages and domains, including Google Index, Alexa Rank, Facebook, and more. Along with organic research data, SEOquake provides other useful tools, including:
SEO Audit any landing page
Break down landing pages with Keyword Density report and reveal competitor’s target keyword
Assist in finding what link exists on any pages with the Internal/External Link analysis
- SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a digital intelligence tool that provides web analytics and information web traffic. It gives estimates of the total traffic various websites receive. It is an excellent tool for SEO masters to see competitors’ top traffic sources – into six major categories, including referring sites, social traffic, and full free SEO tools for keyword research.
similar web free seo tool
SimilarWeb screen capture
In addition, you can do various functions with the tool such as,
Integrate data from SimilarWeb to your competitive dashboard and have a complete picture of competitors’ traffic source
Receive metrics such as industry traffic shares, top traffic resources, and monthly competitor visit
Stay up to date for new competitors entering your industry
Identify industry trends and predict future investment.
- Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free SEO keyword search tool by Neil Patel that specializes in creating new keyword ideas. Ubersuggest allows you to collect insight and competitors strategies that you can adapt and transform for your very own.
ubersuggest free seo keyword tool
Ubersuggest screenshot using ‘free SEO tools’ as example
In addition, Ubersuggest gives the following excellent edges:
Suggests long-tail keyword ideas
Provides critical data in each keyword, including monthly search volume, average CPC, PPC, and SEO Competition
Gives Domain Overview
Discover TOP SEO Pages
See backlink data
- Yoast WordPress Plugin
Yoast SEO is a WordPress Plugin that helps in improving your website’s ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, etc. It helps in optimizing your site’s content and keywords through its user-friendly platform. Once installed to your WordPress site, the Yoast SEO plugin will appear on the bottom of every page or post you create.
yoast wordpress plugin free seo tool
Yoast plugin offers
In addition, Yoast SEO plugin does automated inputs in some areas. Still, you need to do some feedback and planning if you want to fully maximize its benefits. These free SEO plugins also provide the following benefits:
Choose your Keyword focus for your webpage
Provides Google review where you can edit your SEO Title and Meta Description
Provides inputs on your content readability
Suggests improvements on SEO optimization
Scores your websites’ content
- Google
Yes, Google itself might be the best and most important Free SEO Tool on the web.
google seo tool for free
Google is possibly the most popular search engine worldwide, and it’s for a good reason. It’s fast, reliable, and delivers quick search results. In fact, this is why most web owners SEO optimize their sites – to appear on Google. When people perform a search on google, it indexes the website with the most relevant content on the search query. The search engine itself can be used in searching if your SEO campaign is effective by searching your target keywords to see your website’s search rank. In addition, you can use it to see which competitors are ranking on your target keyword. Aside from that, Google can provide the following benefits:
Provides new Google Advanced SEO support page that shows how to use search operators for identifying errors and making improvements
Search hundreds of SEO tutorials and resources online
Several app extensions perfect for an SEO campaign
Final thoughts on SEO Tools for Free
There are numerous free SEO tools available online such as the ones mentioned above. However, there are just sixteen of the tools out there; you just have to find the one that works with you.
If you don’t want to invest, you can start with these free SEO ranking tools to determine whether you need to expand to other devices. If one works with you, you can upgrade to their paid plan anytime. Just make sure to plan it out and stick with your budget and requirements.
free seo tools for youtube
Video is the best performing content type on all social platforms, and if you’re looking to utilize video in your digital marketing approach, you also need to be considering YouTube, and building a YouTube presence.
The online video leader is now the second most-visited website in the world, and boasts an astonishing 1.9 billion active users. YouTube is also considered to be the web’s second-largest search engine, behind parent company Google’s main app, with a growing number of visitors seeking out videos to help them contextualize their various queries and questions.
Given these considerations, YouTube marketing will very likely be worth the effort – but if you want to maximize your YouTube performance, you need to ensure that your videos align with those search trends, and are ‘findable’ when users go looking for related content.
To that, you’ll need the help of some tools. These apps and tips will help you optimize your YouTube videos for user search behaviors.
1. Find a topic with Google Trends
Nothing helps YouTube optimization quite as much as the audience’s genuine interest in the topics you cover. ‘YouTube-able’ content comes in all shapes and sizes – the trick is to find yours.
Start exploring with Google Trends. To do this, type in your focus topic, specify ‘YouTube Search’, then pick a geographical region, category, and time period at which to narrow down the results.
You can take this a step further by adding a topic to compare your focus topic to, in order to see how they compare against each other.
Google Trends also offers a list of related queries for each topic, as well as maps which highlight audience interest across regions. You can also download, embed and share all of this data if needed.
Side perk: Spot breakout trends as part of related queries to boost your videos ranking potential
Pricing: Absolutely free
2. Fetch keyword ideas from Google Ads
Taking the time to find the perfect keyword/s for your content is probably the best investment you can make while laying out your YouTube strategy.
While we’re on the free first-hand data sources, let’s turn to Google Ads’ Keyword Planner. With a topic in mind, you can run a raw keyword research in order to identify search terms and queries with the highest potential.
Keyword Planner fetches tons of keyword ideas based on your seed keyword/phrase, search settings and filters (if any) specified. You can take a closer look at the average monthly searches and competition to single out the best fits. You can then export your keyword list in one click, with all metrics included.
Side perk: Enter up to ten keywords at a time – putting in a URL also works
Pricing: The tool is free
3. Step up your keyword research with Rank Tracker
For next-level keyword research, you can also use YouTube autocomplete – either on the platform itself or via a designated keyword research and analysis tool such as Rank Tracker.
Rank Tracker lets you pull keyword ideas from YouTube’s suggestions, and highlights vital metrics, such as search volume, expected visits, competition, etc.
You can also use Rank Tracker to run a quick ranking check, and yield the keywords that deliver video results in featured snippets. Take note of the keywords with the highest search volume – those are most likely to help you rank in organic search.
Side perk: Set YouTube as the search engine to track your videos’ rankings once they’re up and running
Pricing: Paid versions start at $124 (Professional) and $299 (Enterprise) – free version and trial available
4. Do your metadata homework with TubeBuddy
Optimizing your video content is just as essential as optimizing the content of your webpages – only that there’s no time to waste when it comes to YouTube SEO. Forty-eight hours after your video goes live is your metadata optimization deadline – once you miss that, the algorithm marks your content as less timely, which makes it extra hard to make a comeback.
Tool up with TubeBuddy, a browser extension which eases channel maintenance, and lends a helping hand with things like titles, descriptions, tags, annotations, cards and more.
Once integrated into YouTube, the tool will provide you with valuable insights on all the YouTube videos that you open. Maximize your organic reach by fetching any videos’ tags, and save tons of time you’d spend looking for the best fits within the 500-character limit.
TubeBuddy also provides optimization tips, and suggestions for boosting your channel’s growth. Additionally, the tool can provide automated checks to ensure that your videos are set up correctly (i.e. meeting YouTube’s recommendations).
Side perk: Utilize the ‘Vid2Vid’ feature to promote your older videos in the descriptions of new uploads
Pricing: Paid plans start at $9/mo (Pro), $19/mo (Star), $49/mo (Legend) – a free version is also available
5. Manage like a pro with VidIQ
VidIQ is another channel management toolkit which operates as a browser extension, displaying crucial stats for all the YouTube videos you open – which means effortless competitor research and advanced analytics for each and every video you can find.
The tool’s ‘Most Viewed’ feature lets you identify and match YouTube’s best performing videos against each other. For further intelligence, you can add specific competitor channels, and compare them against your own. With your own 24/7 channel audit on hand, you can see which practices you should consider implementing to boost performance.
You can take it a step further and set up email alerts to keep an eye on trending topics within your field (or your competitors’ channels). And for enhanced outreach, you can use the ‘Facebook Syndication’ feature, and share your video instantly across platforms (though you should exercise caution when cross-posting).
Side perk: Bulk copy cards and end screens, bulk edit end screens.
Pricing: Paid plans start at $7.50/mo (Pro), $39/mo (Boost); free and Enterprise versions available.
6. Introspect your channel with YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics is simply the best when it comes to identifying your channel’s strengths and weak points.
Learning more about your audience, the content that grabs their attention – and makes them stay – as well as the videos they want to share, gives you crucial insights for maintaining and growing your YouTube presence.
We know for a fact that longer videos perform better. We also know that all YouTube algorithms are focused on watch time, so it makes perfect sense to have a closer look at Watch Time and Realtime reports to examine your average view duration, average percentage viewed, as well as audience retention.
Being aware of which of your videos drive subscribes is also a must, since new subscribers give you a significant advantage in YouTube search. Encouraging your audience to subscribe, like and comment – when executed successfully – is a sure way to get a ranking boost.
Side perk: Study your Interaction reports from the last six months to spot patterns in likes, favorites, comments, or sharing
Pricing: The tool is absolutely free.
7. Track and grow user engagement with Awario
User engagement with the video remains number one ranking factor on YouTube. Therefore, keeping an eye on the kind of buzz that surrounds your YouTube content – on the platform itself and elsewhere – is a must.
With a social monitoring tool like Awario, fetching mentions of your video and keywords is made easy – you can simply enter your video’s URL to set up an alert, and collect linkless mentions that are already a ranking signal for Google.
For more specific queries, you can try a Boolean search – configure a targeted search to collect existing mentions and identify new link sources.
Add specific search operators, combine groups of keywords, apply additional language or country filters, and much more – whatever it is, Awario has you covered.
Views, likes, comment and subscriber counts, including new subscribers, are all ranking factors – some more than others. Comments, however, are of particular interest as they speak volumes of user engagement.
You can Like and comment directly from Awario’s dashboard to ensure that none of your audience’s feedback remains unaddressed.
Side perk: Use Awario to run competitor research by setting the tool to track YouTube results only
Pricing: Paid plans come at $29/mo (Starter), $89/mo (Pro), and $299/mo (Enterprise); free trial available.
8. Mix up your visuals with Canva
Channel art may not be the first thing on your mind when laying out the course of your YouTube optimization strategy. However, in a world of tools like Canva, getting creative has never been easier – so why miss out?
A freemium graphic design app, Canva is there to help you manifest your inner designer, via all sorts of visuals – be it a logo or a mind map. As part of your YouTube SEO efforts, expressing your artistic self can be done through developing channel art and thumbnails to increase your click-through rates.
You can start from scratch or browse through the categories and pick any of the templates the app has to offer: Canva’s drag-and-drop interface lets you use professionally designed layouts to further customize them, creating unique and compelling visuals, and re-inventing your channel’s looks.
Side perk: You can also use Canva’s mobile app to create designs and collaborate on projects while on the go
Pricing: Canva Pro comes at $12.95/mo, Enterprise is available on request. There’s also a free plan.
Summary
With YouTubing now a universal pastime, and profitable line of work alike, video optimization is a skill for every marketer to acquire – and sooner rather than later. YouTube SEO is neither quick nor easy – however, when mastered, it can prove to be extremely rewarding.
Download the tools that look like the best fit for your process, and use this listing as a roadmap to make the most of the platform’s ever-growing potential.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
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