11 SEO tools free for creators
SEO can be confusing and time-consuming, but it's not required to be. We've compiled a list of 11 SEO tools to optimize your site and attract an increase in visitors.
SEO is often difficult and complicated, especially when you're not familiar with it. Keywords, both short and long-tail anchor text and the txt file, as well as link building and backlinking . . . This is enough to cause your head turn.
What's good? There are a lot of simple-to-use, inexpensive -- often even free -- tools out there that can do a lot of SEO-related heavy lifting (and algorithm analyzing) on your behalf.
Here are 11 easy SEO tools to help improve your site's performance and draw increased attention for your online merchandise. As an additional bonus each tool in the list is free.
First, let's look at what are SEO-related tools?
What are SEO tools? (And what are the reasons to use them?)
SEO tools allow to anyone who has a website to make their website content more optimized for search engines.
Optimized content shows up higher in search results for pertinent terms and keywords. The more optimized your content, easier for people who are new to find it through searches.
And with organic search responsible to five-thirds of all online traffic getting the first spot on the results page matters and is especially important when you consider that the first five results for any Google search make up 67.6 percent of clicks .
What exactly does SEO take on in real life?
If I'm a parent with lots of responsibilities with a difficult time keeping the family budget If I'm a busy mom, I'll probably search a phrase like "budgeting for busy moms".
And if I click on your page, I'll discover your content, see you have the expertise I'm looking for Perhaps I'll even enroll in your course.
The snippet of text that is featured for the term "budgeting for busy moms" shows this article taken from Simplified Motherhood, a site focused on providing content -which includes online classes and digital downloads which helps busy mothers to stay on top of their schedules.
SEO tools can help you reach that highly sought-after top spot on the results pageeven if you do not have a dedicated digital marketing team (or any team at all). These tools can even make it easier for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs in order to take on big businesses who have bigger budgets.
Here's why: SEO is considerably less expensive as cost-per-click (CPC) marketing and more efficient. The Databox study found that 70% of marketers believe they believe that SEO is superior to PPC ads in generating sales.
A few SEO adjustments can result in huge difference in terms of organic traffic and sales. This is why nearly 64 percent of marketing professionals spend time on SEO.
(If there isn't the right website for optimization it, you can make one with . Join to get a 14-day free trial , and start selling your digital products through your website.)
Before we get into our top SEO tools for entrepreneurs, let's look through the most popular types of SEO tools.
Types of SEO tools
Certain SEO instruments are similar to Swiss army knives that come with several options and can help with many SEO tasks, while certain tools are specifically focused on a particular part in the SEO puzzle.
Below are a few of the most commonly used types of SEO instruments.
Keyword research tools: These tools help to identify the most popular keywords and phrases people enter into search engines.
They also tell you the keyword difficulty -- how hard it is to get your content to be ranked for a specific keywords -- as well as monthly searches -- how many times keywords are frequented in a given monthfor you to identify your most suitable keywords .
Rank-tracking tools: Rank-tracking tools tell the user how your site is ranked for the keywords you want to rank, so you can adjust your website's content in line with this.
Tools for building links: Link-building means earning backlinks, which are links to your website on other sites -- to build your site's authority on search engines. it's an essential element of a well-constructed SEO strategy.
Tools for building links can assist you to identify backlink opportunities and find the websites that connect to yours.
technical SEO tools: The technical SEO tools dive to the core of SEO. On the front end of your website Technical SEO makes sure that your pages are designed to be readable for humans and crawlers, the spiders that search engines use for indexing updated and new information.
Analytics tools: SEO reporting and analytics tools show you how your website is performing in a wide range of measures, including the amount of traffic, conversions, and visits to the website, and many more.
Without further delay, let's get to our best SEO tools for information entrepreneurs.
11 of the best free SEO tools for infopreneurs
1. Ahrefs' free SEO tools
Although the priced plans begin at just $99/month , Ahrefs offers a variety of free SEO tools. Here are some of their most popular tools:
Webmaster tools: Ahrefs' webmaster tools are free for all website owners, and technically are "free limited access to Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " however, they provide a number of very helpful features, including:
A backlink audit and SEO audit study of your website
Analyzing the competitiveness of websites" SEO
Actionable SEO metrics, including organic traffic and keyword ranking
Keyword generator : You can enter up to 10 words or phrases, and Ahrefs will provide you with 100 relevant keywords for your word or phrase and the difficulty of the first 10.
keyword rank test : See how your website ranks on any particular keyword.
Backlink checker : Click on any domain to see its rank on the domain (the quality of the target web page's profile of backlinks) and how many backlinks it's got, and the number of websites that link to that site.
If you are a fan of Ahrefs toolkits for free and want to get even deeper into the information it is possible to try a 7-day trial of their entire platform for $7.
If you decide to sign up to a paid account, I recommend checking for their SEO Toolbar that is a cost-free Firefox or Chrome extension that displays immediate SEO statistics for every website you browse.
2. Moz's SEO tools are free.
Like Ahrefs, Moz has a strong paid-for platform that provides several free software tools . These are the best:
The Domain SEO Analysis Tool Use this tool to enter an URL and look up the SEO metrics of that domain, such as:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
Top pages that are determined by "Page Authority" Moz's algorithm for link metrics
Estimated clicks for key phrases
New links have been added to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that shows you immediate SEO metrics when you visit any website or search engine result page (SERP).
Keyword Explorer : Enter the keyword you want to search for and gain access to:
Monthly search volume
Exportable keyword research data in CSV and Excel spreadsheets
Keywords Long-tail -- that are more relevant and have 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 countries
If you have the free Moz account, you're limited to 10 queries for keyword analysis each month. To have full access to all Moz's tools, including the Keyword as well as Site Explorers, Moz Pro plans cost $149/month -- but you can take a trial of 30 days before committing to a monthly subscription.
3. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is the Google's tool for researching keywords.
This tool can help you figure out which keywords people are searching in your niche. The tool lets you view monthly search volume and projected search volume. You can also discover keyword ideas that will help you connect with the right audience.
It's completely free for all users with the Google account. (That is said, it could occasionally be difficult to get access in the event that you get in trouble, this guide from Ahrefs has some great 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 the performance and traffic of your site especially with regard to the way it appears and how often it pops prominently in Google searches.
Some of the most important features of GSC include:
Verifying that Google is able to crawl and locate your website.
Repairing indexing problems, and asking for the re-indexing of any new or modified content.
Accessing Google search traffic data for your website, such as how frequently your site is featured in Google searches, which search results show your website, and how frequently users visit your website in response to those searches.
Notifying you in the event that Google encounters indexing, spam and other problems on your site.
The ability to show you the websites that have links to your website (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC can have a steep process of learning, however there are many resources to assist you in navigating this platform. For instance, these free training videos on Google.
P.S. If your target audience utilizes Bing to search, Bing Webmaster Tools is the (free) Bing equivalent of GSC.
5. Google Analytics (GA)
Google Analytics gives you all of the data you need to determine how visitors engage with your site. For SEO purposes include Google Analytics tracking code to your site and link it to GSC.
GA gives free reportage on SEO parameters like
Organic traffic (on both desktops and phones)
Organic conversions
Top landing pages
Pages that are the top exits (the the last page that visitors 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 has to do with the fact that like GSC, its robustness leads to a more steep learning process. That said it is possible to find great training resources available, such as Google Analytics Academy as well as this article of Ahrefs on making use of GA for SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly test
Mobile-friendly testing by Google's Google Labs is our final free software that comes from Google on our list. While it's technically part of GSC, it's important enough as well as simple to use that it merits its own spot.
You enter your website's URL, and Google will tell you if your site is optimized for mobile. It also shows you an example of how the site will look like in a mobile phone.
What is the reason this tool is so important?
Mobile optimization is a crucial aspect of your site's search engine optimization and user experience.
Traffic from mobile devices accounts approximately half the total traffic on websites worldwide Visitors who are mobile-friendly visitors 5 times more likely to leave your site when your site is not mobile-friendly.
Plus, Google announced in 2018 that they'd be boosting rankings for mobile-optimized sites within their results for mobile searches therefore optimizing your site's mobile usability can help the search engine optimization process also.
As with all the other tools in GSC Mobile-friendly tester is available for free.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a website 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 locate broken links, identify redundant content that is on your site, and analyze your page descriptions and metadata to be sure that your SEO is working exactly as it should, both at the front end and the back.
The trial version of SEO Spider lets you crawl as many as 500 URLs which, unless your website is over 500 pages, will be enough. If you have a ton of content or run more than one website, the premium version costs PS149.00 for a year.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix analyzes the loading speed of your website pages. If it finds your site's loading time is lower than what it should, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing the site's performance and offers actionable recommendations to make things load faster.
Like mobile optimization, load time and speed of your website play a big role in your users' experience.
26.9 Percent of site visitors will wait less than four seconds for loading a webpage -- - and 45.4 percent of those who visited reported that they were less likely to purchase items if page loading speeds were slower than expected.
It is a factor on the SEO part, too. According to the SEO experts of Moz , "Google has indicated site speed (and as a result that page speed) is among the signals utilized by their algorithm to rank pages."
The free version of GTmetrix permits users to track just one website per day and upgrading to GTmetrix PRO costs $10 per month. If you'd prefer to stick with an unpaid tool or Google's PageSpeed Insights tool offers a comparable -- if less robust alternative.
9. Yoast SEO
If you've got an WordPress blog Yoast is the SEO tool you need. It's an WordPress plugin that helps to optimize the content you publish within your WordPress website editor.
You enter the phrase or keyword you want your webpage or blog to rank for, then Yoast analyzes the content you've created and informs you if you're using the keyword enough (or too much), and in the appropriate places like headers.
Yoast can also let you see how your website or post will look in a Google results page.
At the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures and organized data that "helps the search engines to discover what each element of your website is, who it belongs to and the way it connects".
Yoast's free version Yoast includes nearly every feature that is available in the premium version. The latter costs $89/year for just one WordPress site.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a competitor research tool. You can look up your competitors' websites and view their statistics related to traffic which include:
Top pages
Total number of visits
Traffic sources
Top referring sites
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Rate of bounce
SimilarWeb provides a no-cost alternative, that restricts you to just five outcomes per metric. If you like the free tool, you'll be able to change to "Enterprise" down the route, but the no-cost version gives you plenty of high-level information to work with.
11. SERPsim
The company claims it is "the most exact SERP design tool," SERPsim is a search results preview generator with desktop and mobile views.
The tool is free and will allow you to examine your title and meta description -- the HTML attribute that gives a brief summary of your webpage -- to determine how they will appear in a search engine result page.
You can import your existing metadata, or copy and paste it into text. This is a fantastic option to ensure your metadata isn't deleted from results due to being too lengthy.
Make sure that your info products with these simple SEO tools
SEO is a great method to increase visitors to your website as well as bring your product information to the attention of potential buyers. But search engine optimization isn't an easy and lengthy process to manage at your own.
It is good to know that there are tools available to help in almost all aspects of SEO -- and many of them offer a free version.
For a recap, here are eleven of the top free SEO tools for infopreneurs:
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for Free, keyword generator, keyword rank checker and backlink checker.
Moz's free SEO tools include their Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Mozbar Chrome extension, as well as Keyword Planner.
Google's free tools, including Keyword Planner for keyword research, Google Search Console and Google Analytics for more in-depth analysis and reports, as well as the Mobile-friendly test.
"Screaming" Frog SEO Spider to audit your site for SEO on-page and technical problems.
GTmetrix is a great tool to make sure that the load speed is as fast as can be.
Yoast SEO is an WordPress plugin that allows you to improve your content every time you upload it.
SimilarWeb to conduct competitive analysis which shows you how your site compares to your competition'.
Search Engine Results Simulator for a basic overview of your name and meta description in SERPsim's search results.
All in all, no matter whether you use any of these SEO tools or any combination of the two, having them included within your toolbox for marketing can help in reaching greater numbers of people and making more sales.