Search engine optimization (SEO) is more important today than ever before.
New trends (e.g., the rise of voice search, the machine learning revolution) mean that if you want to stay afloat today, you need to up your SEO game.
One way to do that is by using SEO tools.
What Are SEO Tools?
SEO tools provide data and alerts about the overall health and success of your website.
They help uncover areas of opportunity and identify weaknesses or issues that may prevent you from ranking and earning visibility in the SERPs.
Just as actual tools each have a specific role, the same is true in SEO.
There are SEO tools that can help you with:
- Analytics.
- Keyword Research.
- Links.
- Local SEO.
- Mobile SEO.
- On-page SEO.
- Research.
- Rank Checking.
- Site speed.
- WordPress SEO.
SEO tools are incredibly useful – but you need to understand how to use them to get the most out of them.
There are even a few toolsets that can help you in more than areas we just mentioned, giving you more of an all-at-once glance of your SEO performance.
Do You Need SEO Tools?
The short answer: yes.
Imagine trying to build a table using only your hands.
You wouldn’t get very far, would you?
No.
You will need tools – saws, a measuring tape, a drill, and screwdrivers, to name a few.
Well, if you want to build a website, you’ll only get so far with your hands.
You can build a website, but without tools, you wouldn’t know:
How many visits your webpages are getting.
Whether traffic has dropped significantly.
If you have any HTML errors
How many links you have.
What keywords you could be using to attract more visits.
And so much more.
What Are the Best Free SEO Tools?
If you’re looking to get started with SEO or want to achieve better results for the low, low cost of $0, here are 109 of the best free SEO tools you should be using.
Free SEO Analytics Tools
1. Google Analytics
Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics is an invaluable resource that is virtually indispensable to any digital marketer serious about SEO.
It provides a lot of handy data about websites such as the number of site visits, traffic sources, and location demographics.
With the detailed information from Google Analytics, digital marketers can tweak their content strategy and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Google Analytics is one of the best free SEO tools that every digital marketer should be using.
2. Data Studio
Google Data Studio lets you merge data from varying sources, such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics, and create sharable visualizations.
3. Keyword Hero
Missing keyword data?
Leave it to Keyword Hero, which uses advanced math and machine learning to fill in the blanks.
This service is free for upwards of 2,000 sessions per month.
3. Mozcast
Mozcast tracks changes big and small to Google’s search algorithm.
With Google making hundreds of changes on a yearly basis, keeping abreast of the latest developments helps you make sure you’re doing everything to have the best SERPs.
4. Panguin Tool
The Panguin Tool lines up your search traffic with known changes to the Google search algorithm.
If you see a drop that lines up with an update, then you’ve likely found the culprit and can get to work on fixing it!
Free Crawling & Indexing Tools
5. Redirect Path
Redirect Path
The Redirect Path Chrome extension will flag 301, 302, 404, and 500 HTTP Status Codes.
Additionally, client-side redirects like meta and JavaScript redirects will also be flagged ensuring any redirect issue can be uncovered immediately.
HTTP Headers such as server types and caching headers as well as the server IP address can also be displayed with the click of a button.
Furthermore, all of these details can be copied to your clipboard for easy sharing or addition to a technical audit document.
6. Beam Us Up
This tool lets you know ways in which your website has fallen short of SEO best practices so that you can take corrective measures.
You can filter data by error type, and export you results to Excel, CSV, and Google Drive.
7. Link Redirect Trace
Use this Chrome plugin to make sure all your link redirects are directing people and crawlers where you when them to go.
8. Quick Click Website Audit
The Quick Click Website Audit is a bookmarklet style extension that links to many of today’s most used online SEO tools.
When a link is clicked, it extracts the current pages URL and feeds it into the selected tool so you don’t need to copy and paste the links into all the tools. It saves a few seconds, dozens of times a day.
9. Screaming Frog
Crawl your website for SEO errors.
Discover HTTP header errors, JavaScript rendering hiccups, excess HTML, crawl mistakes, duplicate content, and more with Screaming Frog.
10. Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer
Upload your log files to Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyzer confirm search engine bots, check which URLs have been crawled, and study search bot data.
11. SEOlyzer
Another SEO log analysis tool that provides data in real-time and page categorization.
12. Xenu
One of the original free SEO tools, Xenu is a crawler that provides basic site audits, looks for broken links, and the other usual suspects.
13. Where Goes?
Track where redirection URLs and shortened links with Where Goes?.
14. Check My Links
Check My LinksCheck My Links is a nifty Chrome Extension that will crawl through your webpage and identify the status code for each link on the page – including broken links.
Each status code is color-coded with 200 status codes returning dark green, 300 status codes light green, and 400 status codes returning red.
Once identified, you can then copy all bad links to your clipboard with one click.
15. Robots.txt Generator
Create a correct robots.txt file in an instant so search engines know how to crawl your website. Advanced users can customize their files with Robots.txt Generator as well.
16. HEADMaster SEO
Checks URLs in bulk for status code, redirect status, response time, response headers, and HTTP header fields with HEADMaster SEO.
Get results in real-time, sort and study your findings, and export your work to CSV.
17. Keep-alive Validation SEO Tool
Check URLs in bulk or one by one to see if their servers support persistent connection, which makes your website load faster, what version of HTTP your server is on, and whether there are any external connections on your URL with this tool.
18. Hreflang Tag Generator
Generate hreflang tags so that Google knows which language particular pages on your website are in so that Google can search those pages in that language.
19. XML Sitemaps
Create a site map of up to 500 pages for free without registration.
Download your sitemap as an XML file or get it via email.
20. BROWSEO
BROWSEO lets you see how your website looks to a search engine.
It basically strips your webpage of any styling and shows you the underlying structure. This helps you figure out if Google’s bot has any difficulty accessing important content on your site.
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