11 free SEO tools for creators
SEO can be confusing and time-consuming -- but it doesn't have to be. These are the top SEO tools to help optimize your website and bring in more traffic.
SEO can be complicated and confusing, particularly if you're new to it. Keywords, both short and long-tail anchor text, the txt file, as well as link building and backlinking . . . It's enough to cause your mind spin.
The best part? There are a lot of simple-to-use, inexpensive (sometimes even free) -- tools out there that can do a lot of the SEO work (and algorithm analyzing) on your behalf.
We've rounded up 11 simple SEO tools to help you optimize your website and get increased attention for your online merchandise. And as an added bonus each tool in the list is free.
Then, firstly, what are SEO tools?
What are SEO tools? (And why you should make use of SEO tools?)
SEO tools make it easy to anyone who has a website to optimize their content for search engines.
The content that has been optimized is more prominent in search results for relevant keywords and phrases. The more you optimize your content, the easier it is for new people to locate it via searches.
In addition, with organic searches accounting for five-thirds of the total web traffic getting one of the highest spots in the result page can be crucial -- especially in light of the fact that the first five results of any Google search make up 67.6% of all clicks .
What exactly does SEO appear like when it is in use?
If I'm a mom with a full schedule with a difficult time keeping the family budget I could search Google for a phrase like "budgeting for busy moms".
When I go to your page, I'll discover your blog, and see that you've got the knowledge I'm seeking or perhaps sign up for your course.
The snippet of text that is featured for the phrase "budgeting to help busy mothers" shows this post taken from Simplified Motherhood, which is a site dedicated to providing educational content- including online courses and digital downloads -- to help busy moms to stay on top of their schedules.
SEO tools can help you get that coveted top spot in the search results -- even if you don't have the resources of a dedicated team for digital marketing (or any team in all). They can level the playing field for solopreneurs and small businesses to be able to compete against big corporations with bigger budgets.
This is why: SEO is much cheaper than cost-per-click (CPC) advertising and more effective. An Databox study found the fact that 70% of advertisers say they believe that SEO is better than PPC ads in generating sales.
And just a few simple SEO modifications can create an enormous impact on the amount of organic traffic that you get and also sales. It's the reason nearly 64% of marketers spend time on SEO.
(If you don't have a website to optimize then you could create one by using . Sign up for a free 14-day trial , and start selling your digital products through your website.)
Before diving into our selection of the most effective SEO tools to help entrepreneurs, let's take a look over the most common kinds of SEO tools.
The types of SEO-related tools
Certain SEO tools are akin to Swiss army knives -- they have several tools and features that can assist in a variety of SEO tasks -- while others are concentrated on one particular piece of SEO. SEO puzzle.
Here are some of the most common kinds of SEO tools.
Keyword research Tools: These tools help you identify popular words and phrases people enter into the search engines.
They also tell you keyword difficulty -- how hard it is to get your content to rank on a particular keywords -- as well as monthly keyword volume -- the many times keywords are used in a month- to figure out the ideal keyword .
Tools for tracking rank: Rank-tracking tools tell how your website is ranked for the keywords you want to rank which means you are able to modify the content to suit.
Tools for building links: Link-building means earning backlinks -- links to your website from websites -- in order to boost your site's reputation in search engines, and it's an essential element of a well-constructed SEO strategy.
Links-building tools will help you identify backlink opportunities and find out which sites connect to your site.
Technical SEO tools Technical SEO tools get to the core of SEO. The backend of your site, technical SEO ensures that your web pages are structured for people as well as crawlers, which are the search engine robots responsible to indexing the latest and fresh content.
Tools to analyze: SEO reporting and analytics tools will show you the performance of your site with regard to a range of indicators, including visitors, conversions and the duration of time on the site and many more.
So, with no further delay, let's get to our best SEO tools for information entrepreneurs.
11 . The best SEO-related tools available for free to infopreneurs
1. Ahrefs' free SEO tools
Though the priced plans start with $99/month , Ahrefs offers a variety of free SEO tools. Below are a few of their most popular tools:
Webmaster Tools : Ahrefs webmaster tools are free for all website owners. They are technically "free restricted access for Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " however, they provide a number of very helpful tools, such as:
An SEO audit and backlink study of your website
Analyzing the competitiveness of websites" SEO
Relevant SEO metrics for the business, such as organic traffic and keyword positions
Keyword generator : You can enter up to 10 words or phrases and Ahrefs will give you 100 related keywords that include the word you're looking for as well as the difficultness of the first 10.
keyword rank test : Find out how your site is ranked on any particular keyword.
Backlink checker : You can enter any domain, and view its rank on the domain (the importance of a website's backlink profile) as well as the number of backlinks are there, as well as the number of websites which connect to the site.
If you like Ahrefs toolkits for free and are looking to become deeper into the information You can test a 7-day trial of their full platform for $7.
If you decide to sign up for the paid account, I recommend checking for their SEO toolbar which is a no-cost Firefox and Chrome extension that provides instant SEO metrics for any webpage you visit.
2. Moz's SEO tools are free.
As with Ahrefs, Moz has a robust paid platform but also has several free software tools . Here are some of the top:
Keyword SEO Analysis Tool Use this tool to enter a domain and see the SEO metrics of that domain, such as:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
Pages that rank top based on "Page Authority" Moz's algorithm for link metrics
Clicks per click estimates for the top keywords
Recent new links to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that displays instant SEO metrics while viewing any website or search results pages (SERP).
Keyword Explorer : Enter a keyword and get access to:
Monthly search volume
Exportable keyword research data as CSV and Excel spreadsheets
Keywords with long tails -- words with higher relevance and less search volume
Keyword difficulty scores
Analysis of SERPs, including information for each result appearing on the first page of search results
Keyword suggestions for countries
If you have a free Moz login, users are only limited to 10 queries for keyword analysis each month. If you want full access to Moz's services, which include the Keyword and Site Explorers, Moz Pro plans cost $149/month however, you are able to 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 out which keywords people are looking for in your field. You can see monthly search volume and predicted search volume. It can also help you discover keyword ideas to aid you in reaching the right audience.
It's completely free for all users with an Google account. (That however, it may sometimes be tricky to access -- if you run in trouble, this guide from Ahrefs offers some excellent solutions to troubleshooting.)
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is another tool available for free provided by the search engine masters of Google. GSC offers tools and reports to help you evaluate the performance and traffic of your site -- specifically in terms of what and how it will show on Google searches.
A few of the most important features of GSC are:
Verifying the fact that Google can find and crawl your site.
Fixing indexing problems and requesting re-indexing of new or updated content.
The ability to view Google searches data on your website, such as how frequently your site is featured in Google results, what search results show your website, and how frequently users go to your website through those searches.
Receiving alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam or any other issue with your site.
Showing you which sites have links to your website (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC can have a steep learning curve, but there are various resources available for you to navigate GSC, such as the free videos for training 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 understand how customers engage with your site. For SEO purposes include a google Analytics tracking code to your website , and then connect the site to GSC.
GA provides free reports on SEO metrics like:
Organic traffic (on desktop and mobile)
Organic conversions
Top landing pages
Top exit pages (the last page that people are able to visit prior to leaving your website)
Bounce rate
Time on site
Pages per visit
Plus a lot more . . .
The only downside of GA is that, just like GSC it's robustness can lead to a steeper learning curve. That said, there are tons of great training resources available, such as Google Analytics Academy as well as this article of Ahrefs on the use of GA to improve SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly tester
Google's mobile-friendly tester is the final free software that comes from Google on our list. Although it's technically component of GSC however, it's crucial enough as well as simple to utilize to warrant its own place in the list.
When you enter the URL for your site then Google informs you whether or not your site is optimized for mobile. The site also displays an example of how your site looks like in a mobile phone.
What is the reason this tool is so useful?
Mobile optimization is a crucial factor in your site's search engine optimization and user experience.
Mobile devices account approximately half the web traffic in the world , and visitors are five times more likely to leave your site in the event that your website is not mobile-friendly.
Furthermore, Google announced in 2018 that they're increasing the positions of mobile-optimized websites in their mobile search results therefore optimizing your site's mobile-friendlyness can benefit your search engine optimization, too.
Similar to all tools available in GSC Mobile-friendly tester is completely free.
7. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a web crawler. That means it examines and reviews both technical and on-page SEO issues. SEO Spider is "trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits".
A web crawler like SEO Spider can help you find broken links, discover redundant content that is on your site, and analyze your page title and meta data to make sure that your SEO works exactly how it should, both on the front-end and in the back.
SEO Spider's free version SEO Spider lets you crawl up to 500 URLs, that, unless your site is more than 500 pages will be enough. If you have a ton of content or run several websites, the paid version costs PS149.00 annually.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix analyzes the loading speed of your websites. If it determines your site's loading time is lower than it should be, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing down your website and provides actionable suggestions to speed up loading times.
Similar to mobile optimization, loading time and speed of your website are crucial to the user experience of your site's visitors.
26.9 Percent of website visitors are waiting less than four seconds the page to loadas well as 45.4 percent of those who visited said they would be less likely to buy items if page loading speeds were slower than expected.
Load time plays a role on the SEO side, too. According to the SEO experts of Moz , "Google has indicated site speed (and consequently the speed of pages) is among the indicators used by its algorithm to determine the rank of pages."
The free version of GTmetrix allows users to monitor just one website per day and upgrading to GTmetrix PRO costs $10 per month. If you'd prefer to stick with the free version, Google's PageSpeed Insights tool can be a good, but not as robust choice.
9. Yoast SEO
If you own a WordPress blog Yoast is the SEO tool you need. Yoast is an WordPress plugin that can help you optimize your content right in your WordPress website editor.
Enter the phrase or keyword you want your webpage or blog post to be ranked for, then Yoast checks your content and informs you if you're using keywords in the right amount (or excessively), and in the correct places like the headers.
Yoast also lets you preview how your page or article will appear in a Google results page.
On the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures as well as structured data that "helps search engines determine what each part of your website is and who it is for, and how everything connects".
Yoast's free version Yoast offers nearly every feature that is available in the premium version. It costs $89 per year for only one WordPress site.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is an online competitor research tool. It allows you to search the sites of your rivals and view their statistics related to traffic, including:
Pages at the top
Total visits
Sources of traffic
Top sites for referring to
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Bounce rate
SimilarWeb provides a no-cost choice, but it limits you to five outcomes per measurement. 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 use.
11. SERPsim
The company claims it is "the most accurate SERP snippet generator," SERPsim is a search results preview generator with desktop and mobile views.
This free tool lets you check your Meta description -- an HTML attribute that provides a brief summary of your site's content to determine how they will appear in the Google SERP.
You are able to import your current metadata into the system or simply paste it in. This is a fantastic method to ensure that your metadata won't be deleted from results for being excessively long.
Make sure that your info products with these SEO tools that are simple to use
SEO is an excellent method to increase visitors to your site as well as bring your product information the eyes of more customers. However, it is a complicated and time-consuming process to handle on your own.
Luckily, there are tools that can help with almost every aspect of SEO (and all are free. version.
In case you're wondering, here's 11 of the most effective SEO tools available for Infopreneurs for free:
Ahrefs' free webmaster tools Keyword generator, keyword rank checker and backlink checker.
Moz's no-cost SEO tools, which include the Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Mozbar Chrome extension, and Keyword Planner.
Google's free tools, including Keyword Planner for keyword research, Google Search Console and Google Analytics for in-depth data as well as reporting, and the Mobile-friendly test.
"Screaming" Frog SEO Spider to check your website to identify SEO technical and on-page issues.
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 lets you enhance your content when you publish it.
SimilarWeb for competitive analysis that 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 one of these SEO tools or combine the two, having them included within your toolbox for marketing is a step toward reaching many more customers and making more sales.