SEO tools for small businesses help you manage your online presence, optimize your site for Google, and monitor how many people are visiting your website.
You can use SEO tools to make sure your website is easy to find on search engines and that it ranks highly in search results. You can also use these tools to find out where your website ranks compared to competitors’ sites.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the best free SEO tools for small businesses so you can make sure your site is easily found by customers online.
Free Seo Tools For Small Businesses Verification
Search engine optimization tools are not just for big companies and enterprises who can afford the time and resources for equally big-name platforms. Even the smallest businesses benefit from SEO. And SEO tools for small businesses make optimization easy. The higher quality your SEO, the more visitors you will get to your site and the more potential for converted leads and increased revenue.
When you use these SEO tools for small businesses, you can make the most of the time and resources you have to remain competitive in your industry and location. Of course, we recognize that smaller companies usually have a smaller budget too, which is why we have included a large sampling of free tools so you can optimize without blowing the budget.
FREE SEO TOOLS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
1. SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER
A free SEO tool for small businesses with an unforgettable name, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a web crawler that can perform a basic audit on your site for free. For larger companies, there is a paid version, but most small businesses will find the 500-page free limit enough to get through their entire site.
There are many things this free tool does that can help you optimize your site.
- It finds broken links and server errors, which impact your link authority.
- You can export the errors and fix the problems with a redirect, ensuring visitors are pointed to relevant content.
- Screaming Frog will audit your redirects too, to ensure they are working as well as they can be.
- The crawler looks at content to find duplicate information, low content pages, and issues with titles and metadata.
- It can even make an XML sitemap, ideal for showing search engines exactly what is available on your website.
Those are just a few of this tool’s powerful features. It’s well worth checking out for yourself.
2. GOOGLE ANALYTICS
We have a lot of good things to say about Google when it comes to offering free SEO tools for small businesses. Google Analytics is the gold standard in free metrics tools, giving your business data you can use to monitor your SMB SEO and improve it.
One of the best things about Google Analytics is the ability to set goals, so you can track information, like how much organic traffic a page is getting through SEO and how much of that traffic is converting, such as through people filling in a contact form.
You can also sync Google Analytics to Google Search Console, which we will talk about next.
3. GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Make the most of Google Analytics by syncing it to Google Search Console, another free SEO tool. Google Search Console shows you how people are finding your content, particularly the keywords they are using, and where that content is ranking. With the information, you can see how your targeted keywords are performing versus how people are organically finding your site. And you can then adjust as needed.
4. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
This is a must-have tool for any small business concerned about local results. With Google My Business, you can fill in your information and have it show up in Google maps and searches when people are searching for relevant local information.
5. GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS
Yes, another Google SEO tool! PageSpeed Insights does exactly what it says, giving you information about how well your pages are responding on both mobile and desktop devices. It also gives you suggestions on improving a page. This matters for SEO because nobody is going to stick around for a page that is slow or buggy. If you want to convert visitors, you need a site that works well.
6. GOOGLE TRENDS
Google Trends shows you what people are searching for based on the parameters you set. You can use it for keyword research, finding those that are becoming popular over time and getting in on the trend before it truly takes off. You can also do the opposite, looking for trends that are decreasing over time and choosing a different keyword rather than one that is dying off.
7. SEO QUAKE
SEO Quake is a great free SEO tool for when you want something that works on the fly. It’s a browser extension, which means it gives you SEO information and auditing in real time as you navigate through sites. You do not have to worry about a program or interface, and can use the in-browser setup to compare sites quickly.
PAID SEO TOOLS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
8. SEMRUSH
In our opinion, SEMrush is the best overall multipurpose tool. It combines a lot of the features of many other tools listed, creating a comprehensive platform that offers analytics, market and advertising research, backlink analysis, and keyword research. SEMrush also comes with tools that utilize that data, helping you find keywords with less competition, create charts and reports, and even optimize your writing for SEO as you create content.
While SEMrush is ideally suited to overall SEO for small businesses, it’s also excellent for managing and monitoring specific projects, from competitor analysis to social media posting and ad building. There is not much this tool can’t do.
9. AHREFS
AHrefs is the best tool for all things related to linking and backlinking. It, too, is an all-in-one toolset, but linking is where this system shines.
It boasts the second-most-active web crawler after Google, meaning it comes with the best backlink database in the industry with over 19 trillion known links. You can monitor domain and page-level metrics, backlink profiles, and get a complete breakdown of all outbound links, among other features.
The broken link checker is as robust, offering an easy way to unbreak what has been broken, eliminate dead internal links, and keep on top of your site with scheduled crawls for new dead links.
10. KEYWORD TOOL
Keyword Tool is perfect for finding long-tail keyword opportunities, using Google Autocomplete to determine what users are searching for based on what actual searchers want. While there is a free version of Keyword Tool, the paid version offers twice as many keywords, on average. It also allows for parameters like search volume, competition level, and cost per click data.
11. MANGOOLS SUITE
Mangools Suite is one of our favorite SEO tools. It is very easy to use. Keyword research, for example, can be as simple as inputting a competitor’s website and letting Mangools evaluate it. When you analyze search engine results with Mangools, you can do it in over 52,000 locations, ensuring local accuracy on top of the already powerful SERPWatcher features. Mine comeptitors’ backlinks, check the SEO authority of any site, and identify the content that offers the most value, all through one robust system.
Overall, this suite of SEO tools offers great bang for your buck. Even better, it comes with scalable pricing options. Choose the free version, which works well, upgrade to the basic paid option, or splurge on premium or agency versions that add more power to the toolset.
12. SEOJET
SEOJet is a great new tool for backlink creation and management. This SEO tool for small businesses creates a link map or backlink plan for every page of your website to show you where to build your backlinks next. Set it up based on other sites who are in the top 10 for your selected key phrase or mimic all first-ranked pages across all categories. Either way, you will not have to guess what anchor text to use, what link to build, or how you can work to create a top-ranked page yourself.
This platform also shows you opportunities to create those backlinks, with outreach tools and potential link partners organized and ranked. A guest post service, built-in and heavily discounted, ensures even more chances to get those all-important backlinks going.
There are countless valuable features packed into SEOJet and it does something we haven’t quite seen any other SEO tool for small businesses replicate so far. It is well worth a look to get your backlinks in the best shape possible.
13. ANSWER THE PUBLIC
SEO professionals and marketers can guess what people want to know, but there are often questions we could never imagine. These are the queries people have that are important to them, but they might not share it aloud. And, these are the queries that will drive the most traffic to your site.
Answer the Public positions itself as a direct line to your customers’ thoughts. It looks at autocomplete data from search engines, listing the phrases and questions surrounding a specific keyword. With this information, you can tailor your advertising, SEO, and web campaigns around the answers people are actually seeking.
Ultimately, Answer the Public helps your company be more relevant to your customers. It helps you monitor how people are talking about your keyword, and how that conversation shifts so you can keep up. You might even find hidden niches as you dive into the questions your customers have.
14. UBERSUGGEST
Ubersuggest is an all-in-one SEO tool, with pricing for individuals, businesses, and enterprises. Its focus is generating new keyword ideas, based on long tail versions of search terms. These are the search terms with low search volume and competition levels. Ubersuggest will also provide stats and data on keywords, like search volume.
Ubersuggest also offers ways to use a keyword in the form of a question. This is helpful in marketing to determine what solutions you can provide to searchers. The tool is also great for comparisons and prepositions, showing how you can extend your keyword into phrases.
Perhaps one of the best features of Ubersuggest, users can reverse engineer competitor SEO. Simply typing a competitor’s domain, users get insight into the strategies they use, including page rankings for popular keywords, top-performing content, and keyword suggestions.
15. LOCAL FALCON
Local Falcon is a great tool for local SEO, displaying Google My Business rankings for listings that show up in maps. Instead of returning results based on a general zip code or central geographic location, Local Falcon represents mobile searches from where they occur. Local search is critical to any small business, catering to a local market.
Local Falcon ensures that your business can take advantage of local search in the way that it should, showcasing your share of local voice and average rank position in Google Maps. With their highly visual interface, you can be aware of how you rank and see it compared to the competition.
If Local Falcon’s visualizations show that your rank is not where it should be, it’s a sign that your local SEO needs work. A lot of that comes down to Google My Business and improving your profile with posts, photos, real-time response to reviews, and more. Knowing how you fare locally is the first step, which is why Local Falcon is so helpful.
Local Falcon pricing ranges from a starter account, up to a premium account, all charged monthly. All options provide unlimited keywords and locations, service area business scans, competitor reports, automated scanning, and variable grid sizes.
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.
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