Imagine an electrician. He has to fix a light switch but without any tools. Would he be able to? Similarly, the current SEO landscape has become too broad for a professional to handle. Without the use of SEO tools, it is near to impossible for an SEO expert to rank high on search engine result pages. Even if you don’t know much about SEO, these tools enable you to work as an SEO expert and yield great results.
Here are the top 20 free tools for SEO:
Tools for Keyword Research:
Keywordtool.io
Generates hundreds of keyword ideas. When you enter a keyword in this tool, it shows an exhaustive list of keyword ideas along with the common questions asked around it. If you’re looking for long-tail keyword ideas, then this one is the right tool.
Google Autosuggest
Shows the most searched relevant terms. Simply open an Incognito window and enter the primary term of your key phrase. You will see a list of suggestions from Google Autosuggest. These are the most popular phrases related to the term. You can also take a look at the ‘Related Searches’ section to find more related ideas.
Google Keyword Planner
Gives you keyword ideas. Google’s own tool for generating keyword ideas, GKP lets you find the most popular keyword ideas for a particular term. It shows you the monthly searches for every idea so you can choose one carefully.
Tools for Checking your Site’s SEO:
Google Search Console
Tells you how to optimize your site for Google. Google Search Console tells you if your website is up to the standards for getting indexed and ranked on SERPs. It’s necessary to be aware of this information.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Tells you how to optimize your site for Bing. Google isn’t the only search engine on the planet. Bing also contributes a portion of searches in the web traffic. This tool informs you if your website up to the standards of Bing or not.
Moz Link Explorer
Gives you a link analysis of all the backlinks directing to your site. This tool tells you which page on your site gets the maximum backlinks. Also, it tells you about the sites you ’re getting backlinks from.
Copyscape
Lets you check the originality of your content. Publishing duplicate content leads to penalties from the search engines. Copyscape examines your content for plagiarism and it is the most popular tool for this purpose.
SEO Site Checkup
Shows you on-page and technical SEO problems of your site. Want to find out where your site lags behind? SEO Site Checkup will show you the on-page and technical SEO health of your website.
Yoast SEO
Suggests improvements for your blog posts. Your site’s blog contributes a lot towards its rankings. But if your blog posts aren’t optimized, you won’t get any results. This tool analyzes your posts and suggests improvements accordingly.
Tools for SEO Planning:
Google Analytics
Shows how your visitors behave on your site. One of the most powerful SEO tools, Google Analytics shows you what your visitors do on your site and where they come from. You can find out which keywords are generating you the most organic traffic.
Google Trends
Shows the rising (or falling) popularity of terms. As the name suggests, Google Trends throws light on whether a keyword is getting popular or falling in popularity. You can get this information on the basis of your demographic.
Ahrefs SEO toolbar
Lets you check the amount of traffic a web page gets and other valuable Google search insights. Shows the amount of traffic a web page gets and the keywords it ranks for. It also shows you how many backlinks the webpage gets and the CPC along with the difficulty of the keywords the page ranks for.
SERP Robot
Check the ranking of your site for five different keywords. This tool shows you the rank of your website on SERPs for a particular keyword. You can also check the ranking of your competitors, due to which, it is a great tool for competitive analysis.
Similar Web
Shows the amount of traffic a website gets and much more. A great tool for competitor research, it lets you find out the traffic sources and the number of visitors a website gets, giving you valuable insight to develop a better SEO strategy.
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
Lets you check the top 100 backlinks coming to any website. With Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker, you can find out the sites linking to your competitors. You can use this information to develop the link-building strategy for your website as well.
Tools for Technical SEO:
XML Sitemaps
Creates the sitemap of your site. Sitemaps are one of the vital technical SEO factors. This tool enables you to create one for your website
Schema Creator
Creates a schema markup for your website. You can create the schema markup for your business’s website through this tool. This markup lets you show your business’s reviews, ratings, opening hours and much other information.
SERP Simulator
Shows how your metadata appears in SERPs. This tool displays how your metadata and description appears in the search results. You can check to see if your meta description is engaging enough or not.
Robot.Txt Generator
Generates a robot.txt file for your site. Like the sitemap, the robot.txt file is essential for your site’s technical SEO. This tool lets you create one for your site.
Browseo
Shows your website the way a search engine sees it. Search engines see websites differently. This tool shows you their perspective so you can see which page has a higher hierarchy and which doesn’t.
Summary
You should start with these tools right away. It might seem a little overwhelming in the beginning but you will get used to this practice soon.
Which tool did you like the most? Feel free to tell us.
