11 free SEO tools for creators
SEO can be confusing and time-consuming, but it doesn't have to be. Here are 11 reliable SEO tools to optimize your website and bring in more traffic.
SEO can be difficult and complicated, especially if you're new to it. Short- and long-tail keywords anchor text, the txt file, as well as link building and backlinking . . . it's enough to cause your head spin.
The good news? There are plenty of simple-to-use, inexpensive -- often even free software tools that will do the majority of the SEO heavy lifting (and algorithm analysis) for you.
We've rounded up 11 simple SEO tools that can help you improve your site's performance and draw more eyes on your digital merchandise. And as an added bonus all the tools on this list offers a free option.
But first, what exactly are SEO tools?
What is SEO? (And why you should employ SEO tools?)
SEO tools allow for any website owner to improve their site's content to the search engines.
Content that is optimized will show up better on search results that include relevant terms and keywords. The more optimized your content, the easier it will be for users to locate it via the search engine.
In addition, with organic searches accounting to the majority of the total online traffic , grabbing the first spot on the search results page is crucial -- especially in light of the fact that the first five results of any Google search make up 67.6% of all clicks .
What does SEO look like in action?
If I'm a parent with lots of responsibilities who's struggling to maintain my family's budget, I might Google the phrase "budgeting for moms who are busy".
If I visit your page, I'll discover your content, see you've got the knowledge I'm searching for Perhaps I'll even take your class.
The snippet of text that is featured for the term "budgeting to help busy mothers" shows this article by Simplified Motherhood, a site dedicated to providing educational contentthat includes online courses as well as digital downloads that helps busy moms keep their lives in order.
SEO tools will help you get that coveted top spot in the search results -even if you do not have the resources of a dedicated team for digital marketing (or any team in all). These tools can even the playing field for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs to be able to compete against big corporations who have bigger budgets.
The reason is that SEO is much cheaper as cost-per-click (CPC) advertising and more effective. The Databox study discovered the fact that 70% of advertisers say they believe that SEO is superior to PPC ads for generating sales.
A few SEO adjustments can result in a big impact on natural traffic and sales. This is why nearly 64 percent of marketing professionals actively invest time in SEO.
(If you don't have an optimized website, you can create one with . Join for a free 14-day trial before you can begin selling digital goods from your own site.)
Before diving into our selection of the most effective SEO tools for entrepreneurs, let's look over the most common types of SEO tools.
Different types of SEO instruments
Some SEO tools are like Swiss army knives that come with several tools and features that can assist with a wide variety of SEO tasks -- while some are more concentrated on one particular piece of the SEO puzzle.
Here are the most commonly used kinds of SEO tools.
Keyword research tools: These tools help you find popular terms and phrases that people type into search engines.
They also tell you keyword difficulty -- how difficult it is to get your content to rank for a certain keywords -- as well as monthly search volume -- how many times a keyword is frequented in a given monthfor you to identify the ideal keyword .
Rank-tracking tools: Rank-tracking tools tell the user how your site is ranked for the keywords you want to rank which means you are able to modify your website's content in line with this.
Tools for building links: Link-building is the process of gaining backlinks -- links to your site from different websites, to boost your site's reputation in search engines, and it's an essential element of an effective SEO strategy.
Links-building tools will help you locate backlink opportunities and find the websites that link to your site.
Technical SEO tools: The technical SEO tools go into the nitty-gritty of SEO. The backend of your site Technical SEO makes sure that your pages are structured for people as well as crawlers. These are search engine robots responsible to indexing the latest and fresh content.
Analytics tools: SEO reporting and analytics tools will show you how your website is performing in a wide range of measures, including visitors, conversions and the time spent on site, and many other.
Now, without further ado we'll dive right to our best SEO tools for information entrepreneurs.
11 . The best free SEO tools for infopreneurs
1. Ahrefs' free SEO tools
Though their priced plans start with $99/month , Ahrefs offers a range of SEO tools for free. Below are a few of the most well-known ones:
Webmaster Tools : Ahrefs webmaster tools are completely free for all websites owners and are technically just "free access" for Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " However, they offer some very useful features, including:
An SEO audit as well as a backlink analysis of your site
Analysis of competitors' websites" SEO
Relevant SEO metrics for the business, such as organic traffic and keywords ranking
Keyword generator : Input up to 10 keywords or phrases and Ahrefs will give you 100 relevant keywords for the word you're looking for and the difficultness of the first 10.
Keyword rank checker : Find out how your site is ranked for any given keyword.
Backlink checker : Click on any domain to see its domain ranking (the strength of a target website's backlink profile) as well as the number of backlinks are there, as well as the number of websites which hyperlink to it.
If you are a fan of Ahrefs toolkits for free and want to get even more specific with your data, you can try for a seven-day free trial of their complete platform for just $7.
And if you do go to a paid account, I recommend checking for their SEO Toolbar which is a no-cost Firefox or Chrome extension that provides the SEO performance of any website you browse.
2. Moz's SEO tools for free
As with Ahrefs, Moz has a robust paid platform but also offers various free applications . These are the top:
Keyword SEO Analysis Tool You can enter a domain and see SEO metrics, including:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
Top pages based on "Page Authority" Moz's algorithm of link metrics
Clicks per click estimates for the key phrases
Recent new links to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that provides immediate SEO metrics when you visit any website or search engine result pages (SERP).
Keyword Explorer Type in the keyword you want to search for and gain access to:
Monthly search volume
Keyword research data that can be exported into CSV as well as Excel spreadsheets
Long-tail keywords -- keywords with higher relevance and less search volume
Keyword difficulty scores
Search engine results analysis with information about each result that appears on the very first page of search results
Keyword suggestions for each country
With an unpaid Moz account, you're limited to 10 keyword analysis queries each month. To have full access to all Moz's tools, including Keyword and Site Explorers, Keyword and site Explorers, Moz Pro plans start at $149/month -- but you can 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 Google's search engine for keywords.
This tool can help you figure the keywords that people are using to search for your product in the market. You can see an annual search volume as well as a predicted search volume. It can also help you find keyword suggestions to aid you in reaching your audience.
It's free for anyone with an Google account. (That is said, it could occasionally be difficult to get access -- if you run through a problem, this guide from Ahrefs offers some excellent troubleshooting tips.)
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is a different tool that's free from the search masters at Google. GSC provides reports and tools that help you measure the performance and traffic of your site -- specifically with regard to how and where it shows on Google search results.
The principal characteristics of GSC comprise:
Verifying the fact that Google is able to crawl and locate your website.
Fixing indexing problems and requesting the re-indexing of any new or modified material.
Accessing Google search traffic data for your site, which includes how frequently your site is featured in Google searches, which results show your website, and how frequently users go to your website in response to those searches.
Alerts sent out when Google encounters indexing, spam and other problems on your site.
Showing you which sites connect to your site (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC can have a steep learning curve, but there are many resources to help you navigate GSC, such as these training videos that are free from Google.
P.S. : If your audience also makes use of Bing for search results, 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 determine how visitors use your site. To use it for SEO include Google Analytics tracking code to your website , and then connect it to GSC.
GA offers free reporting on SEO metrics like:
Organic traffic (on both desktops and phones)
Organic conversions
Top page of landing pages
Top exit pages (the last page that people go to before they leave your site)
Bounce rate
Time on site
Pages per visit
There's a whole lot more . . .
One downside to GA can be that like GSC, its robustness leads to a steeper learning rate. However, there are tons of great training resources available, including Google Analytics Academy as well as this article of Ahrefs about using GA for SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly test
The mobile friendly tester from Google is our last free tool available from Google that we've included on our list. Although it's technically component of GSC but it's so important as well as simple to use -- that it deserves its own place in the list.
Enter the URL of your site in the URL field, and Google will tell you if your website has been optimized to work on mobile devices. It also shows you an example of how your website looks like when viewed in a mobile phone.
What makes this tool so useful?
Mobile optimization is an essential factor in your site's user experience as well as SEO.
Traffic from mobile devices accounts for about half of all web traffic worldwide Visitors are 5 times more likely to quit your website if it isn't mobile-friendly.
Furthermore, Google announced in the year 2018 that they'd be boosting rankings for mobile-optimized sites in their mobile search results therefore optimizing your site's mobile-friendlyness can benefit your search engine optimization as well.
Similar to all tools available in GSC Mobile-friendly tester is available for free.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a web crawler. This means it audits and analyzes the technical as well as on-page SEO issues. SEO Spider is "trusted by thousands of SEOs and other agencies across the globe to conduct technical SEO audits of websites".
An online crawler such as SEO Spider can help you identify broken links, find redundant content that is on your site as well as analyze your site's title and meta data to make sure that your SEO performs exactly the way it should be in the front and in the back.
The trial version of SEO Spider lets you crawl up to 500 URLs and, in the event that your website is greater than 500 page, should be plenty. If you're dealing with a lot of content , or have multiple sites, the paid version is priced at PS149.00 per year.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix evaluates the load speed of your website pages. If it discovers your site's loading time is lower than it ought to be, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing the site's performance and provides actionable suggestions to make things load faster.
Like mobile optimization, load time and speed of your website have a significant impact on your visitors' user experience.
26.9 percent of online customers have to wait for less than 4 seconds to wait for the page to load- and 45.4 percent of those who visited stated that they are less likely to buy things if loading speeds were slower than expected.
The speed of loading plays an important role on the SEO part, too. According to SEO experts from Moz , "Google has stated that speed of site (and as a result, page speed) is among the factors that it uses to determine the rank of pages."
The free version of GTmetrix lets users monitor only one URL per day and upgrading to GTmetrix PRO is available for $10 per month. If you'd rather use a free tool, Google's PageSpeed Insights tool is a similar, but not as robust alternative.
9. Yoast SEO
If you have an WordPress blog, Yoast is the SEO tool you need. It's a WordPress plugin to help users optimize their content directly within your WordPress website editor.
Enter the keyword or phrase that you want your webpage or blog to rank in search results, and then Yoast analyzes the content you've created and determines if you're using the keyword enough (or excessively), and in the right spots like headings.
Yoast can also let you preview how your page or post will look when you visit the Google search results page.
At the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures and the structured information which "helps search engines figure out what every part of your website is, who it belongs to and what the connections between everything".
The free version of Yoast includes nearly every feature of the Premium version. This version costs $89/year to host one WordPress website.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb can be a competitive analysis tool. It allows you to search your competitors' websites and view their statistics related to traffic such as:
Top pages
Visits total
Sources of traffic
Top referring sites
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Rate of bounce
SimilarWeb provides a no-cost option, which is limited to 5 results for each metrics. If you like the free tool, you can always move to "Enterprise" down the route, but the no-cost version provides plenty of high-level information to utilize.
11. SERPsim
It claims to be "the most exact SERP snippet generator," SERPsim is a search results preview generator with desktop and mobile views.
This tool for free lets you examine your title and the meta description -- the HTML attribute that provides an uncomplicated description of your webpage -- to see how it'll look in a search engine result page.
You can import your existing metadata, or copy and paste it into text. This is an excellent method to ensure that your metadata won't be deleted from results due to being too lengthy.
Make sure that your information products using these simple SEO tools
SEO can be a fantastic method to increase visitors to your site as well as put your products and information in the eyes of more customers. However, it can be a confusing and lengthy process to manage on your own.
It is good to know that there are tools available to help with almost every aspect of SEO -- and all have a no-cost version.
To recap, here are eleven of the top SEO tools available for Infopreneurs for free:
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for Free Keyword generator, keyword rank checker, as well as a backlink checker.
Moz's free SEO tools, including their Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Mozbar Chrome extension, and Keyword Planner.
Google's free Google tools include Keyword Planner for keyword research, Google Search Console and Google Analytics to provide in-depth information and reporting, and the mobile-friendly tester.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider to audit your site for technical and on-page SEO issues.
GTmetrix is a great tool to make sure that your load time is as quick as it gets.
Yoast SEO, an WordPress plugin that allows you to enhance your content when you upload it.
SimilarWeb provides competitive analysis that lets you know how your website stands up to the competition'.
SERPsim is a quick preview of your title and meta description that you can see in search results.
All in all, regardless of whether you decide to employ one of these SEO tools or any combination of the two, having them included within your toolbox for marketing is a step toward reaching more people and making more sales.