11 SEO tools that are free to creators
SEO can be confusing and time-consuming, however it doesn't have to be. Here are 11 reliable SEO tools that can help you optimize your site's performance and draw increased traffic.
SEO is often confusing and complex, especially for those who are new to the field. Long-tail and short-tail keywords anchor text and TXT files, backlinking and link-building . . . It's enough to make your brain spin.
The best part? There are a lot of easy-to-use, affordable (sometimes even free) software tools that can do a lot of the SEO work (and algorithm analyzing) for you.
The list below includes 11 basic SEO tools that can help you optimize your website and get increased attention for your online merchandise. Plus, as an added benefit each tool in the list is free.
But first, what exactly are SEO-related tools?
What is SEO? (And why you should employ them?)
SEO tools allow for anyone with a website to make their website content more optimized for search engines.
The content that has been optimized is more prominent on search results that include relevant keywords and phrases. The more optimized your content, the easier it will be for users to find it through search.
With organic search accounting for 53% of the total internet traffic making sure you're able to grab the first spot in the result page can be crucial particularly when you consider that the first five results of the Google search are responsible for 67.6 percent of clicks .
What would SEO look like in action?
If I'm a parent with lots of responsibilities who's struggling to maintain my family's budget I could search Google for an expression like "budgeting for busy moms".
When I go to your website, I'll be able to see your blog, and see that you've got the knowledge I'm searching for or perhaps sign up for your course.
The snippet of text that is featured for the term "budgeting with busy parents" is the article from Simplified Motherhood, a website dedicated to providing educational contentthat includes online courses as well as digital downloads -- which helps busy mothers stay organized.
SEO tools can help you get that coveted top spot in the search results -even if you do not have a dedicated digital marketing team (or any team in all). The tools could even level make it easier for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs to compete with big companies that have larger budgets.
The reason is that SEO is more affordable as cost-per-click (CPC) marketing and more effective. The Databox survey discovered 77% of marketing professionals believe that SEO is superior to PPC ads in generating sales.
And just a few simple SEO tweaks can make a big impact on organic traffic and sales. It's the reason nearly 64% of marketers spend time on SEO.
(If you do not have the right website for optimization then you could create one by using . Register to get a 14-day free trial before you can begin selling your digital products through your website.)
Before we dive into our list of best SEO tools designed for entrepreneurs, let's go over the most common types of SEO tools.
Different types of SEO-related tools
Some SEO tools are akin to Swiss knifes that come with several tools and features that can assist in a variety of SEO tasks. However, certain tools are concentrated on one particular piece that makes up the SEO puzzle.
Here are some of the most popular kinds of SEO tools.
Keyword search instruments: These tools help you identify popular words or phrases people use in Google and other search engines.
They can also provide you with keywords' difficulty -- how difficult it is to get your content to be ranked for a specific keyword -- and monthly searches -- how many times a keyword is searched in a month -in order to determine the most suitable search terms .
Rank-tracking tools: Rank-tracking tools tell how your website performs for keywords that you are targeting, so you can adjust your website's content in line with this.
Tools for building links: Link-building means earning backlinks -- links to your website from different websites, to build your site's authority with search engines. it's a crucial piece of an effective SEO strategy.
Links-building tools will help you locate backlink opportunities and find out which websites link to your site.
Technical SEO tools Technical SEO tools dive deep into the intricacies of SEO. The website's back end the technical SEO tools ensure that your website pages are designed for users and crawlers. These are search engine robots responsible for indexing updated and new content.
Tools to analyze: SEO reporting and analytics tools will show you how well your site is doing across a variety of metrics, including the amount of traffic, conversions, and visits to the website, and more.
Now, without further ado now, let's dive into our top SEO tools for information entrepreneurs.
11 . The best SEO tools that are free for information entrepreneurs.
1. Ahrefs' free SEO tools
Though their premium plans start at $99/month , Ahrefs offers a variety of free SEO tools. Below are a few of their most popular tools:
Webmaster tools : Ahrefs webmaster tools are available for free to all site owners, and technically are "free restricted access to Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " -- but they offer some very useful features, including:
An SEO audit and backlink analysis of your site
Competitive analysis of other websites" SEO
Actionable SEO metrics, including organic traffic as well as keyword ranking
Keyword generator : Input up to 10 keywords or phrases and Ahrefs will show you 100 related keywords that include the phrase or word that you entered and the difficulty of the first 10.
keyword rank checker : Find out how your site is ranked for any given keyword.
Backlink tester : Click on any domain to see its domain ranking (the quality of the target web page's profile of backlinks) as well as the number of backlinks it has, plus the number of websites which hyperlink to it.
If you're a fan of Ahrefs toolkits for free and are looking to become deeper into the information, you can try a 7-day trial of their entire platform for $7.
If you opt for the paid subscription, I recommend checking the SEO Toolbar that is a cost-free Firefox as well as Chrome extension that displays immediate SEO statistics for every webpage you visit.
2. Moz's SEO tools for free
As with Ahrefs, Moz has a robust paid platform but also offers several free tools . Below are a few of the best:
Keyword SEO Analysis Tool You can enter an URL and look up SEO-related metrics like:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
Pages that rank top that are determined by "Page Authority" Moz's algorithm for link metrics
The estimated number of clicks on top keywords
Recently, new links were added to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that shows you immediate SEO metrics when you visit any web page or search results webpage (SERP).
Keyword Explorer Type in an appropriate keyword to gain access to:
Monthly search volume
Data for keyword research that is exportable in CSV and Excel spreadsheets
Long-tail keywords -- keywords that are more relevant and have smaller search volumes
Key difficulty scores
Search engine results analysis with information for each result appearing on the initial page of results.
Keyword suggestions for countries
When you sign up for the free Moz accounts, you're limited to 10 keyword analysis queries per month. For full access to Moz's services, which include the Keyword and Site Explorers, Moz Pro plans begin at $149 per month and you're able to test a free trial for 30 days prior to committing to a paid package.
3. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner Google Keyword Planner is the Google's tool for researching keywords.
This tool can help you figure the keywords that people are searching in your niche. You can see an annual search volume as well as a forecasted search volume, plus find keyword suggestions to aid you in reaching the right audience.
It's free for anyone with an Google account. (That however, it may occasionally be difficult to get access If you do run through a problem, this guide from Ahrefs has some great troubleshooting tips.)
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is a different tool that's free by the search experts of Google. GSC offers tools and reports which help you assess your website's performance as well as traffic especially in terms of what and how it will show on Google the search engine results.
Some of the principal characteristics of GSC include:
Confirming the fact that Google will be able to find and crawl your website.
Fixing indexing problems and requesting indexing for new or revised material.
Viewing Google search traffic data for your site, which includes how frequently your site is featured in Google searches, which queries show your site, and the frequency with which users visit your website in response to those searches.
Notifying you when Google detects spam, indexing, or other issues with your site.
Showing you which sites link to your website (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC is not without its steep learning curve but there are many resources for you to navigate this platform. For instance, these free training videos on Google.
P.S. In case your audience makes use of Bing to browse, Bing Webmaster Tools is the (free) Bing equivalent of GSC.
5. Google Analytics (GA)
Google Analytics gives you all of the information you require to understand how customers use your site. In order to use it for SEO, add an Google Analytics tracking code on your website and connect your site with GSC.
GA provides free reports on SEO metrics like:
Organic traffic (on both desktops and phones)
Organic conversions
Top page of landing pages
Top exit pages (the final page people visit before leaving your website)
Bounce rate
Time on site
Pages per visit
Plus a lot of . . .
One downside to GA has to do with the fact that as with GSC the robustness of GA leads to a more steep learning curve. That said it is possible to find excellent training materials available, such as Google Analytics Academy as well as this guide by Ahrefs about using GA to improve SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly test
Mobile-friendly testing by Google's Google Labs is our only free application that comes from Google on our list. Although it's technically component of GSC but it's so important -- and easy enough to utilize to warrant its own place in the list.
You enter your website's URL then Google tells you whether your site is optimized for mobile. Also, it shows you the way your website looks like when viewed on a mobile device.
What is the reason this tool is so valuable?
Mobile optimization is a crucial element in your website's user experience and SEO.
The mobile-friendly traffic accounts around half the total traffic on websites worldwide And users are nearly five times as likely to abandon your website if it isn't mobile-friendly.
Furthermore, Google announced in the year 2018 that they're boosting the ranking of sites optimized for mobile in their mobile search results therefore optimizing your site's mobile usability can help your search engine optimization also.
Similar to all tools in GSC Mobile-friendly tester is available for free.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a site crawler, which means that it analyzes and audits both on-page and technical SEO issues. SEO Spider is "trusted by hundreds of SEOs and other agencies across the globe to conduct technical SEO site audits".
Web crawlers such as SEO Spider can help you identify broken links, find redundant content that is on your website, and analyze your page titles and metadata to ensure that your SEO is working exactly as it should, both at the front end and the back.
The free version of SEO Spider lets you crawl up to 500 URLs, which, unless your website contains greater than 500 page, will be enough. If you have a ton of content or run multiple sites, the paid version will set you back PS149.00 for a year.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix analyzes the loading speed of your web pages. If it determines your site's loading time is lower than it ought to be, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing the site's performance and gives you actionable tips to speed up loading times.
Like mobile optimization, load time and speed of your website are crucial to your users' experience.
26.9 Percent of site visitors have to wait for less than four seconds for the page to load- and 45.4 percent of users said they would be less likely to purchase things if loading speeds were slower than expected.
It is a factor on the SEO part, too. According to SEO experts of Moz , "Google has indicated site speed (and in turn that page speed) is among the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages."
The GTmetrix free version lets users monitor only one URL per day and upgrading to GTmetrix PRO starts at $10/month. If you'd rather use an unpaid tool or Google's PageSpeed Insights tool is a similar, but not as robust -- option.
9. Yoast SEO
If you own a WordPress blog, Yoast is the SEO tool for you. It's a WordPress plugin that can help you optimize your content right within the WordPress page editor.
Enter the keywords or phrases you want your webpage or blog to rank for, then Yoast checks your content and tells you whether you're using keywords in the right amount (or too much) and at the right spots like headers.
Yoast can also let you see how your website or post will look on the Google search result page.
At the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures as well as the structured information which "helps search engines figure out what every part of your website is as well as who it belongs to and the way it connects".
The trial version of Yoast comes with nearly all features that is available in the premium version. The latter costs $89/year for just one WordPress site.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a competitor analysis tool. You can search for your competitors' websites and check their stats on traffic which include:
Pages at the top
Visits total
Traffic sources
Top referring sites
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Rate of bounce
SimilarWeb offers a free alternative, that is limited to 5 results for each metric. If you love the free tool, you can always change to "Enterprise" down the way, however the free version gives you plenty of top-level data to utilize.
11. SERPsim
The company claims it is "the most precise SERP Snippet generator" SERPsim is a search results preview generator that includes mobile and desktop views.
The tool is free and allows you to check your Meta description -- an HTML attribute that gives a brief summary of your website -- to determine how they will appear on a Google SERP.
You are able to import your current metadata or paste in text. This is an excellent method to ensure that your metadata doesn't get removed from search results due to being excessively lengthy.
Get more eyes on your information products using these easy SEO tools
SEO is an excellent method to increase organic traffic to your website -- and bring your product information to the attention of potential buyers. SEO is a complicated and time-consuming process to handle by yourself.
There are tools that can help with almost every aspect of SEO -- and many are free. version.
To recap, here are 11 of the best free SEO tools for infopreneurs:
Ahrefs' free webmaster tools, keyword generator, keyword rank checker, as well as a backlink checker.
Moz's completely free SEO tools include their Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Mozbar Chrome extension, and Keyword Planner.
Google's free tools, including Keyword Planner for keyword research, Google Search Console and Google Analytics to provide in-depth information and reports, as well as the mobile-friendly tester.
"Screaming" Frog SEO Spider to audit your site to identify SEO technical and on-page issues.
GTmetrix to make sure the load speed is as quick as it gets.
Yoast SEO is an WordPress plugin which lets you improve your content every time you publish it.
SimilarWeb provides competitive analysis that shows you how your site compares to your competition'.
Search Engine Results Simulator for a basic preview of your title and meta description in SERPsim's search results.
Overall, no matter whether you use any one of these SEO instruments or any combination of these, including them in your marketing toolbox is a step toward reaching many more customers and selling more products.