10 Free SEO tools every online marketer needs
This blog post features 10 free SEO tools every online marketer needs to be able to do their daily job efficiently and effectively.
There are so many free SEO tools out there, which make it difficult to choose the best SEO tools online marketers should use as several of these do the same job.
Here are the best free SEO tools which I find useful for looking at my blog metrics:
The Google Keywords planner
The Google keywords planner, formerly the Adwords Keyword Tool, is one of the first free SEO tools that I have ever used.
I was introduced to this great content tool when I started working as a Content Executive at a digital agency back in 2012.
I was working on a “Windows 8 guide” for a well-known retailer. When planning my guide I was searching for popular keywords in the computing category.
Google Trends
This is another must-have free SEO tool that I am used to using on a daily basis.
When writing a blog post, or any content. I use Google Trends because it tells me what everyone is searching for and which topics are the most popular.
Hubspot
I have signed up for this website and I receive free daily SEO advice on how I can optimise my blog.
For those of you who have never heard of or have never been to Hubspot.
This tool helps online marketers create content, optimise it for search engines and share it on social media.
It also helps you to create landing pages, calls to action, personalised email and a personalised website.
SEM rush
This SEO tool was mentioned in my SEO session on the advanced digital marketing course which I’m taking with Shaw Academy.
I have only just used the free SEO tool and I have found it to be very informative because it gives me my blog metrics such as organic search, paid search, backlinks, display and organic keywords.
SpyFu
SpyFu is another free SEO tool that was introduced by the tutor, on my digital marketing course.
This is ideal for getting competitor research without spending any money.
You can even find your competitors keywords and ranking history.
If you haven’t heard of this tool, it doesn’t cost anything to try it and see if it would be a useful daily tool for you.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix is one of the most important things in SEO because it examines the page speed and diagnoses opportunities for improving your website or blog.
The speed of the page affects the user experience and you are more likely to have a high bounce rate if your page speed is too slow.
A Web page should ideally take one second to load to give the users the feeling that they can navigate freely.
If your page speed takes over one second to load, people are more likely to get fed up with waiting and clicking off your website and leaving your site, often going straight to your competitors if there is a specific topic that they are looking for.
I’ve used this free SEO tool since 2012 and have personally found GT Metrix reliable and it gives me very good advice when looking to improve the SEO on my blog.
Wayback
When I started my first role in digital marketing, as a Linking Strategist, my mentor, told me to use the Wayback Machine for seeking out client cases of missing traffic and looking for the age of the blog or website. For this reason, I recommend trying this free tool. It can also help you look back and check how a site has changed over the years.
Keywordtool.io
This spectacular free SEO tool will quickly help throw out lots of great relevant keywords based on the autocomplete feature on YouTube, App store search, Google and Bing.
Keywordtool.io will present you with a dictionary of keyword ideas containing your specific search terms, especially long-tail keywords that won’t show up in the Google AdWords keyword tool due to having very low volumes.
I usually use Keywordtool.io when I need long-tail keywords.
Google Analytics
Most of you who are reading this blog post will have used or been using Google Analytics on a daily basis.
This free SEO tool is the tool that I use the most because it helps me to understand visitors to my blog and it helps me to understand how my audience interacts with my site.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a free website crawler that is designed to get data on every URL on your website or blog. Guess what? It’s also free to just download so make sure you and check it out if you aren’t already using it.
This free SEO tool also features a resources section to help all newbies analyse their data.
Here are the free SEO features you can enjoy with Screaming Frog:
• Find Broken Links, Errors and Redirects
• Analyse Page Titles and Meta Data
• Review Meta Robots and Directives
• Discover Duplicate Pages
• Generate XML Sitemaps
The best way to find out which free SEO tools suits you best is to try each one of the above and look at specialist blogs such as Moz.com and SearchEngineLand for further advice.