11 SEO tools free for creators
SEO can be confusing and time-consuming -- but it's not necessary to be. These are the top SEO tools to help optimize your site's performance and draw an increase in visitors.
SEO can be confusing and complex, especially if you're new to it. Short- and long-tail keywords, anchor text and txt files, backlinking and link-building . . . This is enough to cause your head spin.
The best part? There are many user-friendly, low-cost -- often even free software tools that can do a lot of the SEO work (and algorithm analysis) to help you.
We've rounded up 11 simple SEO tools to help optimize your website and get increased attention for your online products. And as an added bonus, every tool on the list is free.
But first, what exactly is SEO?
What is SEO? (And why should you make use of them?)
SEO tools allow for any website owner to optimize their content for search engines.
Optimized content shows up higher in the search results for relevant keywords and phrases. If you can optimize your content, the easier it is for new people to discover it on searches.
And with organic search responsible for five-thirds of the total internet traffic , grabbing one of the highest spots in the result page can be crucial particularly in light of the fact that the top five results from the Google search account for 67.6 percent of clicks .
What does SEO look like in action?
If I'm a mom with a full schedule with a difficult time keeping the budget of my family I could search Google for the phrase "budgeting for moms who are busy".
When I go to your page, I'll discover your website, find out that you have the expertise I'm looking for or perhaps enroll in your course.
The snippet of text that is featured for the search "budgeting to help busy mothers" is the article taken from Simplified Motherhood, a website that focuses on offering contentwhich includes online classes and digital downloads to help busy moms to stay on top of their schedules.
SEO tools can help you get that coveted top spot within the search resultseven if you do not have a dedicated digital marketing team (or any team at all). The tools could even level the playing field for solopreneurs and small businesses in order to take on big businesses who have bigger budgets.
Here's why: SEO is considerably less expensive as cost-per-click (CPC) advertisements and is more effective. An Databox survey found that 70% of marketers say they believe that SEO is superior to PPC ads for generating sales.
A few SEO modifications can create a big difference in terms of the amount of organic traffic that you get and also sales. This is why nearly 64 percent of marketing professionals actively invest time in SEO.
(If there isn't a website to optimize, you can create one by using . Register for a free 14-day trial to begin selling digital items on your site.)
Before we dive into our selection of the best SEO tools designed for entrepreneurs, let's go over the top types of SEO tools.
Different types of SEO tools
A few SEO tools are akin to Swiss knifes -- they have several options and can help with a wide variety of SEO tasks -- while others are concentrated on one particular piece of SEO. SEO puzzle.
Below are a few of the most common kinds of SEO instruments.
Keyword search Tools: These tools help to identify the most popular keywords and phrases that people type into search engines.
They will also inform you of keywords' difficulty -- the degree to which it can be for a website to rank on a particular keyword -- and monthly keyword volume -- the many times keywords are used in a month- to figure out your most suitable keywords .
Tools for tracking rank: Rank-tracking tools tell how your website ranks for your target keywords and allow you to adjust your website's content in line with this.
Tools for building links: Link-building involves earning backlinks -- links to your website on other sites -- to increase your website's credibility with search engines. is a vital element of a well-constructed SEO strategy.
Link-building tools can help you identify backlink opportunities and find out which sites link to yours.
Technical SEO tools: Technical SEO tools get into the nitty-gritty of SEO. The front end of your website the technical SEO tools ensure that your web pages are designed for users and crawlers, which are the crawlers that are responsible for indexing updated and new material.
Tools to analyze: SEO reporting and analytics tools show you the performance of your site with regard to a range of indicators such as visitors, conversions and the duration of time on the site and many more.
Without further delay we'll dive right into our top SEO tools for infopreneurs.
The top 11 SEO-related tools available for free to infopreneurs
1. Ahrefs' free SEO tools
Though the priced plans begin at $99/month , Ahrefs offers a variety of free SEO tools. Here are some of the most well-known ones:
Webmaster Tools : Ahrefs' webmaster tools are completely free for all websites owners and are technically just "free limited access to Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " However, they offer some very useful features, including:
An SEO audit as well as a backlink study of your website
Analysis of competitors' sites" SEO
Effective SEO metrics that include organic traffic and keywords positions
Keyword generator : You can enter up to 10 words or phrases and Ahrefs will show you 100 keywords related to the phrase or word that you entered as well as the level of the initial 10.
keyword rank Checker for Keyword rank : Check how well your site ranks with respect to a specific keyword.
Backlink checker : You can enter any domain, and view its rank on the domain (the importance of a website's backlink profile) and the amount of backlinks it's got, and the number of websites that link to that site.
If you like Ahrefs toolkits for free and would like to be 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 would suggest checking the SEO Toolbar which is a no-cost Firefox and Chrome extension that displays immediate SEO statistics for every webpage you visit.
2. Moz's SEO tools for free
As with Ahrefs, Moz has a strong paid-for platform that offers various free software tools . Here are some of the top:
Keyword SEO Analysis Tool : Enter a domain and see SEO metrics, including:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
The top pages are ranked based on "Page Authority" Moz's algorithm of link metrics
Estimated clicks for top keywords
Recently, new links were added to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that displays the SEO statistics in real-time while you browse any webpage or search engine results page (SERP).
Keyword Explorer Type in the keyword you want to search for and gain access to:
Monthly search volume
Data for keyword research that is exportable as CSV and Excel spreadsheets
Keywords Long-tail -- with higher relevance and smaller search volumes
Key difficulty scores
Search engine results analysis with information about each result that appears on the initial page of results
Keyword suggestions for countries
When you sign up for an unpaid Moz accounts, you're limited to 10 keywords analysis queries per month. To have full access to all Moz's tools, including the Keyword and site Explorers, Moz Pro plans begin at $149 per month and you're able to take a trial of 30 days before committing to a monthly subscription.
3. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner Google Keyword Planner is Google's search engine for keywords.
This tool helps you find out which keywords people are looking for in your field. It lets you see the monthly search volume and forecasted search volume, plus find keyword suggestions to help you reach your audience.
It's completely free for all users with a Google account. (That however, it may sometimes be tricky to access If you do run into trouble, this guide from Ahrefs has some great ways to solve the problem.)
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is another tool available for free provided by the search engine masters of Google. GSC provides reports and tools to help you evaluate the performance and traffic of your site particularly by determining how and where it shows on Google the search engine results.
Some of the principal features of GSC are:
Validating the fact that Google can find and crawl your website.
Resolving issues with indexing and indexing for new or revised material.
Viewing Google search traffic data for your website, such as how frequently your site is featured in Google searches, which results show your website, and how frequently users visit your website through those searches.
Alerts sent out whenever Google discovers issues with indexing, spam, or other issues in your website.
Showing you which sites link to your website (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC has a long learning curve but 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 uses Bing to browse, 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 interact with your website. To use it for SEO include google Analytics tracking code on your website , and then connect it to GSC.
GA provides free reports on SEO measures like:
Organic traffic (on mobile and desktop)
Organic conversions
Top landing pages
Pages that are the top exits (the final page people are able to visit prior to leaving your website)
Rate of bounce
Time on site
Pages per visit
And a ton of . . .
One downside to GA can be that as with GSC it's robustness can lead to a higher learning rate. That said that there are a lot of excellent training materials available, like Google Analytics Academy and this guide from Ahrefs about the use of GA to boost SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly test
The mobile friendly tester from Google is the last free tool available from Google in our selection. While it's technically part of GSC, it's important enough -- and easy enough to use -- that it deserves its own place in the list.
You enter your website's URL then Google informs you whether or not your website is designed to work on mobile devices. Also, it shows you an example of how the site will look like on a mobile device.
What is the reason this tool is so useful?
Mobile optimization is an essential aspect of your site's user experience and SEO.
The mobile-friendly traffic accounts around half the web traffic in the world And users who are mobile-friendly visitors five times more likely to abandon your website when your site is not mobile-friendly.
Additionally, Google announced in 2018 that they'd be boosting rankings for mobile-optimized sites within their results for mobile searches Optimizing your website's mobile usability can help the search engine optimization process, too.
Similar to all tools in GSC The mobile-friendly tester is available for free.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a website crawler, which means that it audits and analyzes both technical and on-page SEO issues. SEO Spider is "trusted by hundreds of SEOs as well as agencies around the world for technical SEO audits of websites".
Web crawlers such as SEO Spider can help you locate broken links, identify redundant content that is on your website as well as analyze your site's titles and metadata to ensure that your SEO works exactly how it should be on the front-end and in the back.
The trial version of SEO Spider lets you crawl as many as 500 URLs and, in the event that your website contains greater than 500 page, will be enough. If you're dealing with a lot of material or operate several websites, the paid version will set you back PS149.00 annually.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix analyzes the loading speed of your websites. If it discovers that your site is slower than it should be, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing your site down and offers actionable recommendations to speed up loading times.
As with mobile optimization, load time as well as page speed play a big role in the user experience of your site's visitors.
26.9 percent of online website visitors will wait less than four seconds a page to load -- and 45.4% of visitors reported that they were less likely to buy things if loading speeds were slower than expected.
The speed of loading plays an important role in the SEO part, too. According to the SEO experts from Moz , "Google has indicated site speed (and as a result that page speed) is one of the indicators used by its algorithm in order to rank websites."
GTmetrix's free version allows users to monitor one URL per day, and the upgrade to GTmetrix PRO is available for $10 per month. If you'd prefer to stick with the free version, Google's PageSpeed Insights tool is a similar, but not as robust choice.
9. Yoast SEO
If you have an WordPress blog, Yoast is the SEO software for you. Yoast is a WordPress plugin to help you optimize your content right from your WordPress site editor.
You enter the keywords or phrases you want your webpage or blog post to rank for, then Yoast analyzes the content you've created and determines if you're using the keyword enough (or excessively) as well as in the right spots for example, headings.
Yoast can also let you preview how your page or article will appear on the Google results page.
On the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures as well as structured data which "helps the search engines to discover what each element of your website means and who it is for and the way it connects".
The free version of Yoast offers nearly every feature that is available in the premium version. The latter costs $89/year for one WordPress site.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is an online competitor analysis tool. It allows you to search the websites of your competition and check their stats on traffic which include:
Top of the page
Total visits
Traffic sources
The top referring websites
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Rate of bounce
SimilarWeb provides a no-cost option, which restricts you to just five results per metric. If you are a fan of the tool, you'll be able to upgrade to "Enterprise" down the route, but the no-cost version provides plenty of high-level information to work with.
11. SERPsim
It claims to be "the most exact SERP design tool," SERPsim is a search results preview generator that includes 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 provides a brief summary of your site's content to see how it'll look in the Google SERP.
You can import your existing metadata into the system or simply paste it in. This is an excellent way to make sure your metadata doesn't get cut off in search results because it's excessively long.
Get more eyes on your information products using these SEO tools that are simple to use
SEO is a great option to boost natural traffic on your website and also get your information products in the eyes of more customers. However, it is a complicated and lengthy process to manage by yourself.
There are tools to assist in almost all aspects of SEO (and all are free. version.
To recap, here are 11 of the most effective free SEO tools for infopreneurs:
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for Free, keyword generator, keyword rank checker and backlink checker.
Moz's completely free SEO tools, including their Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Mozbar Chrome extension, as well as 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 check your website for SEO on-page and technical problems.
GTmetrix to ensure that the load speed is as fast as can be.
Yoast SEO is an WordPress plugin that lets you enhance your content when you upload it.
SimilarWeb provides competitive analysis that lets you know how your website stacks up against your competitors'.
SERPsim for a simple overview of your name and meta description in the results of a search.
In the end, regardless of no matter whether you use one of these SEO tools or any combination of these, including them within your toolbox for marketing can help in reaching greater numbers of people and making more sales.