Any step of optimising a website is easier to achieve with the help of the right SEO tools, starting from keyword research to on-page SEO, off-page SEO and even to monitoring results and/or reporting them. Below, we present 19 such free SEO tools that any marketer should know and use for a faster and more efficient SEO process.

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows free analysis of your website or websites. All you have to do is to install a code to begin the detailed tracking of traffic, including where visitors come from, their site behaviour and even financial indicators such as the conversion rate. It is one of the best tools for analysing the effectiveness of a SEO campaign and to find new optimization opportunities.

2. Search Console

Search Console is another free Google tool that fills in the traffic information offered by Analytics with information about indexing and positioning your site, recommendations and other help functions. Through Search Console, you will receive notifications about whether your site violates Google policy or if the number of site error pages has risen sharply.

3. Link Explorer – MOZ

Link Explorer is a tool used to identify the best links and best pages of a site. It also allows you to check common indicators such as Page Authority or Domain Authority. The tool helps you find and analyse all the links that lead to your site or competitors’ sites and identify the best ways to increase the number of backlinks.

4. Backlinkwatch

Backlinkwatch.com is a free link analysis tool especially used to find an approximate number of links to a page, unfiltered, such as open site explorers based on best links, but also to identify problematic links (with high external links, no-follow attribute) and tracking their evolution.

5. SEMRush / SpyFu

When you need information about competing sites on Google, these tools can give you a valuable insight into the keywords that bring them visitors, organic but also paid, which you may also need to include in your content strategy. These are referrals which offers them traffic and links, as well as an estimate of their budget for paid promotion.

6. Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO plugin helps WordPress site and blog administrators to make sure their pages are indexable and well-optimised for the keywords on which focus is placed. The tool offers an easy way to edit the title and meta description of each page, as well as an easy-to-check checklist for on-page SEO attribute.

7. WooRank / QuickSprout

These tools provide an insight into the level of optimisation of the page you have put in the analysis, as well as a checklist of things to be improved, especially for optimising the on-page SEO. As you figure out what was originally found to be wrong, you’ll enjoy seeing the mark for optimising your site, even from day to day.

8. Keywordtool.io

If you want to know what people are looking for on Google about your key phrase, Keywordtool.io is the tool you need. It offers a lot of suggestions and is very simple to use: enter the basic word or phrase, the language and country from which you want suggestions and you instantly find out what people are looking for online about your phrases.

9. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome addon that once installed, let’s you see the volume of searches for anything you type in Google, but also on Youtube and other websites. Plus, on the right side of Google’s results you can also see related searches, what people also search for related to the keyword you’ve entered.

10. Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a tool for the Google Ads platform that allows you to analyse monthly searches and search trends for a single phrase or for hundreds of hundreds of keywords to be used in SEO or PPC campaigns. Without an active Google Ads campaign, this tool only shows estimates of the search volume at this time.

11. Letter Count

The number of characters is an important element of the content, especially considering the different minimum and maximum limits recommended for a good site representation in search engines or even in writing articles. Counting each character is not practical at all, so tools such as Letter Count help us instantly telling the number of characters but also the number of words in a text.

12. Copyscape

Copyscape is one of the most popular plagiarism detection tools online. Most site administrators around the world use it to find copies of existing texts on their site, prevent duplicate content, or check the originality of newly created content. If you want to see who copied your text you can use this tool.

13. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo helps you find different kinds of popular content related to your key phrases as well as influencers that can help you promote your content. Just like the other free and paid version, the free version is limited but is good enough to find good ideas for your content strategy.

14. Google Trends

If you want to know what words are becoming more and more searched for within your interest area or the current trend of searches for your key phrases, Google Trends is one of the most authoritative tools in the industry. This tool can show you what expressions and keywords might attract traffic and links and what words become more popular in search results (breakout), using recent Google registration data.

15. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is another free tool offered by Google. It is ideal for monitoring your brand names or online keywords, as well as for getting notifications whenever there is an online opportunity to build links. It is important to enter the option area when setting alerts and personalising them so that you get relevant results.

16. PageSpeed Insights

As an internet user you know you love fast-loading sites, so as a site owner it is your responsibility to ensure that you have a site where the navigation is enjoyable and easy, especially as a site that takes a long time to load can lead to a loss of customers. The PageSpeed Insights tool helps you to check and improve the upload speed of your website.

17. Mobile-Friendly Test

More than half of the Internet users are currently browsing on smartphones, tablets, etc and therefore it is understandable why the experience of visitors that use mobile devices is not only important but also an SEO factor. The Mobile-Friendly Test tool helps you to check and improve this experience for free.

18. Brokenlinkcheck.com

Brokenlinkcheck.com tool helps you find the links on your site that, when you click on them, lead you to a 404 or another error page. Some of the causes of these links appearance are: the destination page has been deleted, its link has been modified or the site on which it is located is dropped. Use this tool to identify the broken links on your website.

19. XML Sitemaps Generator

This tool simplifies the process of generating an XML map of the site, that map that can then be used in Search Console to facilitate the index of new pages or new changes bought to existing pages. The advantage of tools such as XML Sitemaps Generator is that it does not require any programming experience.

20. SE Ranking

SE Ranking tool helps you see your site’s position in Google results for a keyword list and track the evolution of the positions, besides many other useful functions. As Google’s results that we normally see are personalised according to our search history, this kind of tools give us a more “objective” position of our site in comparison with those who are considered competitors.

 

Of course, this is just a selection of the most important tools. To find more tools that can improve your SEO performance and to learn how to use them, we look forward to seeing you at one of the SEO and Digital Marketing courses that we organise periodically in form of group classes in London, or on-demand at the company headquarters or even online, live on Skype.