11 SEO tools free for creators
SEO is a confusing process and time-consuming, but it doesn't have to be. Here are 11 reliable SEO tools that can help you optimize your website and bring in more traffic.
SEO is often complicated and confusing, particularly when you're not familiar with it. Short- and long-tail keywords anchor text and TXT files, backlinking and link-building . . . It's enough to turn your mind turn.
The good news? There are many simple-to-use, inexpensive (sometimes even free) software tools which can take care of a great deal of the SEO heavy lifting (and algorithm analyzing) for you.
Here are 11 easy SEO tools to help optimize your website and get the attention of more people to your digital merchandise. As an additional bonus, every tool on the list has a no-cost option.
But first, what exactly are SEO tools?
What is SEO? (And what are the reasons to make use of them?)
SEO tools make it easy for any website owner to make their website content more optimized for search engines.
Content that is optimized will show up better in search results for pertinent words and phrases. The more you optimize your content, the easier it is for new people to discover it on the search engine.
And with organic search responsible for 53% of all internet traffic making sure you're able to grab the first spot in the result page can be crucial and is especially important in light of the fact that the first five results of the Google search account for 67.6 percent of all clicks .
What would SEO appear like when it is in use?
If I'm a busy parent with a difficult time keeping the family budget, I might Google a phrase like "budgeting for moms who are busy".
When I go to your site, I'll find your content, see your expertise is what I'm seeking or perhaps sign up for your course.
The most popular snippet from the phrase "budgeting for busy moms" is this post from Simplified Motherhood, which is a site that focuses on offering contentthat includes online courses as well as digital downloads -- which helps busy mothers keep their lives in order.
SEO tools can help you reach that highly sought-after top spot in the search results -even if you do not have an in-house digital marketing department (or even a team). They can level the playing field for solopreneurs and small businesses in order to take on big businesses who have bigger budgets.
This is why: SEO is considerably less expensive as cost-per-click (CPC) marketing and more efficient. A Databox study found the fact that 70% of advertisers say that SEO can be superior to PPC advertisements for driving sales.
A few SEO modifications can create a big impact on the amount of organic traffic that you get and also sales. It's the reason nearly 64 percent of marketing professionals are actively investing time into SEO.
(If you don't have a website to optimize it, you can make one with . Sign up to get a 14-day free trial , and start selling digital goods from your own site.)
Before we dive into our best SEO tools designed to help entrepreneurs, let's take a look over the top kinds of SEO tools.
The types of SEO instruments
A few SEO tools are akin to Swiss knifes -- they have several options and can help with a wide variety of SEO tasks, while some are more specifically focused on a particular part that makes up SEO. SEO puzzle.
Here are some of the most commonly used kinds of SEO tools.
Keyword search Tools: These tools help you identify popular words and phrases that people type into search engines.
They can also provide you with keywords' difficulty -- how hard it is to get your content to be ranked for a specific term -- and the daily searches -- how often a particular keyword gets frequented in a given month- to figure out the most suitable keywords .
Rank-tracking tools: Rank-tracking tools tell the user how your site ranks for your target keywords which means you are able to modify the content to suit.
Tools for building links: Link-building means earning backlinks -- hyperlinks to your website on different websites, to build your site's authority in search engines, and it's an essential element of an effective SEO strategy.
Link-building tools can help you identify backlink opportunities and find out which sites connect to your site.
technical SEO tools: Technical SEO tools go deep into the intricacies of SEO. The front end of your website, technical SEO ensures that your pages are designed for users as well as crawlers, which are the spiders that search engines use for indexing updated and new content.
Tools to analyze: SEO reporting and analytics tools show you how your website is performing in a wide range of measures, including visitors, conversions and the visits to the website, and many other.
Now, without further ado we'll dive right to our best SEO tips for entrepreneurs.
11 of the best SEO-related tools available for free to infopreneurs
1. Ahrefs' free SEO tools
Although the paid plans start at $99/month , Ahrefs offers a number of SEO tools that are free. Below are a few of the most popular ones:
Webmaster Tools : Ahrefs' webmaster tools are free for all website owners. They are technically "free restricted access to Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " However, they do provide some extremely useful options, like:
An SEO audit as well as a backlink study of your website
Competitive analysis of other sites" SEO
Relevant SEO metrics for the business, such as organic traffic as well as keyword positions
Keyword generator : Input up to 10 keywords or phrases. Ahrefs will show you 100 related keywords that include the word you're looking for, including the keyword difficultness of the first 10.
Keyword rank test : See how your website ranks on any particular keyword.
Backlink tester : Enter any domain and see its rank on the domain (the importance of a web page's profile of backlinks) and the amount of backlinks it's got, and the number of websites which hyperlink to it.
If you are a fan of Ahrefs' free tools and would like to be more granular with the data You can test for a seven-day free trial of their complete platform for just $7.
If you decide to sign up for the paid account, I recommend checking the SEO toolbar which is a no-cost Firefox and Chrome extension that provides immediate SEO statistics for every web page you go to.
2. Moz's free SEO tools
As with Ahrefs, Moz has a solid paid platform, but it also provides several free software tools . These are the top:
Domain SEO Analysis Tool Use this tool to enter the domain name and view SEO-related metrics like:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
Top pages are based on "Page Authority," Moz's algorithm of link metrics
The estimated number of clicks on key phrases
New links have been added to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that shows you instant SEO metrics while viewing any website or search results pages (SERP).
Keyword Explorer Search for a keyword and get access to:
Monthly search volume
Data for keyword research that is exportable as CSV as well as Excel spreadsheets
Keywords with long tails -- words which are of greater relevance but with smaller search volumes
Key difficulty scores
Analysis of SERPs, including information for each result appearing on the first page of search results
Keyword suggestions for each country
With the free Moz accounts, you're only limited to 10 keyword analysis queries each month. For full access to Moz's tools, including Keyword and Site Explorers, Keyword as well as Site Explorers, Moz Pro plans begin at $149 per month however, you are able to test a free trial for 30 days before starting a paid package.
3. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is Google's search engine for keywords.
This tool can help you figure the keywords that people are looking for in your field. It lets you see the monthly search volume and projected search volume. You can also find keyword suggestions to aid you in reaching the right audience.
The service is free to anyone who has an Google account. (That is said, it could sometimes be tricky to access -- if you run into trouble, this guide from Ahrefs provides some helpful ways to solve the problem.)
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is another free tool from the search masters of Google. GSC has reports and tools which help you assess your website's traffic and performance especially by determining how and where it shows prominently in Google searches.
Some of the most important features of GSC comprise:
Verifying that Google will be able to find and crawl your website.
Resolving issues with indexing and indexing for new or revised information.
Accessing Google search traffic data for your site, including how often your site appears in Google searches, which results show your website, and how often searchers go to your website in response to those searches.
Alerts sent out whenever Google encounters indexing, spam or any other issue with your site.
Displaying which websites connect to your site (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC is not without its steep process of learning, however there are many resources to help you navigate this platform. For instance, these free training videos from Google.
P.S. If your target audience 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 need to determine how visitors use your site. In order to use it for SEO include Google Analytics tracking code on your site and link your site with GSC.
GA gives free reportage 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 visit before leaving your website)
Rate of bounce
Time on site
Pages per visit
And a ton more . . .
A drawback to GA is that, just like GSC the robustness of GA leads to a steeper learning rate. But, as mentioned it is possible to find excellent training materials available, such as Google Analytics Academy and this guide by Ahrefs regarding the use of GA to improve SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly tester
Google's mobile-friendly tester is our final free software that comes from Google that we've included on our list. And while it's technically a part of GSC however, it's crucial enough (and simple enough to use that it deserves an own space.
You enter your website's URL then Google informs you whether or not your site is optimized to work on mobile devices. Also, it shows you an example of how your site looks like in a mobile phone.
What is it that makes this tool useful?
Mobile optimization is an essential aspect of your site's user experience and SEO.
Traffic from mobile devices accounts approximately half the total traffic on websites worldwide Visitors are five times more likely to leave your site if it isn't mobile-friendly.
Furthermore, Google announced in 2018 that they're increasing the ranking of sites optimized for mobile on their mobile-friendly search results, so optimizing your site's mobile accessibility can aid the search engine optimization process also.
Similar to all instruments in GSC The mobile-friendly tester is completely free.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a site crawler. This means it audits and analyzes both on-page and technical SEO issues. SEO Spider is "trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO audits of websites".
A web crawler like SEO Spider can help you identify broken links, find the existence of duplicate pages on your site as well as analyze your site's titles and metadata to ensure that your SEO works exactly how it should in the front and back.
The trial version of SEO Spider lets you crawl as many as 500 URLs which, unless your website has over 500 pages, will be enough. If you're a plethora of material or operate more than one website, the premium version is priced at PS149.00 for a year.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix evaluates the load speed of your websites. If it finds that your website is slow than what it should, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing the site's performance and gives you actionable tips to speed up loading times.
Similar to mobile optimization, loading time and speed of your website have a significant impact on your visitors' user experience.
26.9% of ecommerce customers are waiting less than four seconds a page to load -- - and 45.4 percent of those who visited stated that they are less likely to purchase things if loading times were less than what they expected.
It is a factor in the SEO part, too. According to the SEO experts at Moz , "Google has stated that speed of site (and consequently the speed of pages) is one of the indicators utilized by their algorithm to rank pages."
The free version of GTmetrix permits users to track one URL per day, and upgrading to GTmetrix PRO is available for $10 per month. If you'd prefer to stick with an unpaid tool or Google's PageSpeed Insights tool can be a good -- if less robust -- option.
9. Yoast SEO
If you've got your own WordPress blog Yoast is the SEO tool for you. It's a WordPress plugin that helps users optimize their content directly in your WordPress site editor.
Input the phrase or keyword you'd like your site or blog to rank for. Then, Yoast checks your content and determines if your content is using the keywords correctly (or too often), and in the right spots, such as headers.
Yoast allows you to see how your website or blog post appears on a Google search result page.
At the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures as well as organized data that "helps the search engines to discover what each element of your website means as well as who it belongs to, and how everything connects".
The free version of Yoast offers nearly every feature of the Premium version. It costs $89 per year for just one WordPress website.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a competitor research tool. It allows you to search the sites of your rivals and see their traffic-related stats such as:
Top of the page
Visits total
Sources of traffic
Top referring sites
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Rate of bounce
SimilarWeb has a cost-free choice, but it is limited to 5 outcomes per metrics. If you like the free software, it is possible to upgrade to "Enterprise" down the way, however the free version gives you plenty of data that you can use.
11. SERPsim
The company claims it is "the most exact SERP design tool," SERPsim is a search results preview generator with both mobile and desktop view.
The tool is free and will allow you to examine your title and meta description -- which is the HTML attribute that offers an overview of your webpage -- to determine how they will appear in a search engine result page.
You are able to import your current metadata or paste in text. It's a great method to ensure that your metadata isn't cut off in search results because it's too lengthy.
Get more eyes on your information products using these simple SEO tools
SEO is a great way to drive more natural traffic on your site and also bring your product information front of more potential customers. But search engine optimization isn't an easy and lengthy process to manage at your own.
Luckily, there are tools that can help in almost all aspects of SEO -- and all of them offer a free version.
In case you're wondering, here's eleven of the top SEO tools that are free for information entrepreneurs:
Ahrefs webmaster tools for free 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 tools for free, such as Keyword Planner for keyword research, Google Search Console and Google Analytics for more in-depth analysis and reporting, and the mobile-friendly tester.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider to check your website for technical and on-page SEO issues.
GTmetrix to ensure that your load time is the fastest it can be.
Yoast SEO, an WordPress plugin that allows you to improve your content every time you upload it.
SimilarWeb for competitive analysis that shows you how your site stands up to the competition'.
Search Engine Results Simulator for a basic overview of your name and meta description in the results of a search.
All in all, regardless of whether you decide to employ one of these SEO tools or combine these, including them in your marketing toolbox will help you reach many more customers and selling more goods.