Greetings to SCORE members – and everyone else – who’d like to learn about some great SEO tools – many of them free – that will help you on your SEO journey. (Note: while some of these tools require you to upgrade to paid versions to unlock their full power, the free versions provide plenty of value on their own, especially if you’re just getting started with SEO).
By the way, if you missed my recent talk on SEO for SCORE, you can view it here:
https://www.score.org/event/seo-marketing-small-business-websites
Free SEO Tools from Google
Google makes its powerful SEO analytics and diagnostic tools available to the business community without charge. The logic is that by providing webmasters better tools, everybody wins: Google (whose search spiders have crawling budgets and limited patience for slow sites), and the webmaster, who is rewarded with improved organic visibility on Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Google Analytics (https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/)
Google Analytics has been with us for a long time (it started out as “Urchin” and was acquired by Google in 2005). You can no longer get keyword data from Google Analytics, but it’s still a must-have SEO tool. It provides you up-to-date, real-time intelligence on your website’s traffic, audience, and effectiveness. You can also add tags that track business goals on your site (for example, visits to your “contact” page) and tie in directly with your e-commerce software if you have an online store. Setting up GA is easy – just add tags to every page on your site (super-easy if your CMS allows you to modify one template affecting all pages) and you’ll quickly see usage results displayed in the GA UI.
Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console/about)
Search Console, like Google Analytics, reports on your site’s traffic, but goes beyond GA in terms of providing a more complete view of your site’s performance. Use Search Console to identify problems on your site — and also look at keywords used by your audience to find it.
Keyword Planner (Google Ads) (https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/)
Google’s Keyword Planner gives you timely insight into keywords being used by searchers, their approximate volume, the degree to which they’re being competed for, and price range in the keyword auction market. Even if you’re not running any paid Adwords campaigns, you can learn a lot about how your audience is searching for topics that your business may be relevant to.
Google Search Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/)
This free tool –both enlightening and entertaining — uses Google’s current data about global searches that lets you quickly see which keyword phrases are rising, falling, or holding steady. You can select different time windows and different geographical regions to zero in on changes happening locally.
Google My Business (https://www.google.com/business/)
While Google My Business isn’t an SEO tool per se, paying attention to this free tool and completely filling out your business profile is very important. Information you put into Google My Business will be used to populate your business profile in search and also in Google Maps, which may boost your visibility over businesses failing to create a lively, data-rich business profile.
Free SEO Tools from Microsoft
Bing Webmaster Tools (https://www.bing.com/webmasters/tools/)
Microsoft’s Bing gets more than a billion visits each month — about 7 percent of global search traffic — so it’s a mistake to ignore it. Like Google, Microsoft makes its diagnostics tool — Bing Webmaster Tools — available for free. If you’re already using Google Search Console, you can get the tool working by simply verifying your GSC ownership, rather than having to add a tag to your site.
Third-party SEO Tools (many with trial or limited-feature options)
While the SEO tools below typically have subscription plans that unlock their full feature sets, some provide trial periods (usually 1-week) allowing you to test-drive them. Many of these tools can be programmed to connect directly to Google Analytics and Google Search console, making it easy to view all your important SEO metrics in one place.
Ahrefs (https://ahrefs.com/)
Ahrefs provides an all-in-one, Swiss-army style suite of tools that can do everything from auditing your website to keyword generation and competitive analysis. While you must subscribe (and pay) Ahrefs to unlock the full toolset, you can access its Webmaster Tools – a diagnostics tool — for free here: https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools
BrightEdge (https://www.brightedge.com/)
This powerful set of SEO tools provides keyword analysis, backlink management, competitive analysis, SEO recommendations, site auditing, and more. BrightEdge’s tools also let you measure your content’s engagement across multiple digital channels, including search, social, and mobile. BrightEdge is strictly a paid tool; no free or low-priced tiers are currently available.
Conductor (https://conductor.com)
Conductor provides a range of powerful SEO tools, including keyword research, rank tracking, site optimization, and content creation tools. Used by teams in many large organizations, Conductor doesn’t currently have a free tier or a pricing plan designed for small business.
Ispionage (https://www.ispionage.com/)
Ispionage’s tools let you analyze your competitors’ websites, how users journey to their sites, keywords used in their PPC campaigns, and other key data. It’s a great way to Identify key competitors and benchmark their SEO performance against top competitors within your business niche. While Ispionage is a paid toolset, it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee to all first time customers who don’t download more than 1,000 keywords.
Moz’s Free SEO Tools (https://moz.com)
SEO expert Rand Fishkin started Moz many years ago and today it’s packed with powerful free tools — including keyword research, backlink analysis tools, and site audits – that can help you increase search visibility for your site. A subscription plan is available for advanced users.
Raven Tools (https://raventools.com/)
An industrial-strength all-in-one SEO toolset providing rank tracking, keyword analysis, competitor analysis, site auditing, backlink analysis, and more. A small business plan currently costs $39 a month, but the site offers a 1-week trial period to let you give it a test drive.
Screaming Frog (https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/)
This highly-rated toolset, developed by a UK-based SEO agency, is primarily a paid tool, but some features, including its log file analyzer, are free. Use this tool to identify on-site technical SEO issues that may be hurting your rankings.
SearchEngineLand.com’s SEO Periodic Table (https://searchengineland.com/seotable)
Searchengineland.com’s SEO Periodic Table – created in 2011 and updated yearly — breaks down all the “elements” – on-page (content, structure, HTML) and off (backlinks, users, trust) – factoring into your site’s current search profile. The table is free but you’ll need to share your email address with searchengineland.com to download it.
SEMrush (https://semrush.com)
An excellent all-in-one suite of tools providing traffic, usage, competitive data, and backlink analysis. SEMRush also provides site auditing — a recommended step for you when assessing the competitive strength of your website. Another great way to use SEMRush is to do a keyword “gap” analysis that lets you see where your competitors are winning – or losing – on keywords you’d like to rank for so you can develop content that has a good chance of ranking.
SpyFu (https://www.spyfu.com/)
SpyFy is an excellent all-in-one SEO toolkit providing competitor analysis, backlink analysis, rank tracking, keyword research, PPC spend, and more. It’s also very affordable – its basic annual plan is just $16/month, a sum well within the range of most small business budgets.
Ubersuggest (https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/)
Ubersuggest — from SEO expert Neil Patel — provides competitive rank tracking, keyword research, site auditing, and also an incredibly useful toolbar that plugs right into your Chrome browser that lets you see SEO metrics (keyword volume, usage, price), plus suggestions about related keywords. It’s great for competitive research, keyword ideation, and diagnostics. A free trial subscription is offered (prices start at $29/month for 1 site/1 user).