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 site and attract an increase in visitors.
SEO can be difficult and complicated, especially for those who are new to the field. Keywords, both short and long-tail, anchor text and txt files, link building and backlinking . . . This is enough to turn your mind turn.
What's good? There are many easy-to-use, affordable and often free -- tools out there which can take care of a great deal of the SEO work (and algorithm analyzing) to help you.
Here are 11 easy SEO tools to help you optimize your website and get increased attention for your online merchandise. Plus, as an added benefit all the tools on this list has a no-cost option.
But first, what exactly are SEO tools?
What is SEO? (And what are the reasons to use them?)
SEO tools allow to anyone who has a website to improve their site's content to search engines.
The content that has been optimized is more prominent in the search results for pertinent terms and keywords. The more you optimize your content, easier for people who are new to locate it via the search engine.
And with organic search responsible to the majority of all internet traffic , grabbing the top spots in the result page can be crucial -- especially when you consider that the top five results from every Google search are responsible for 67.6 percent of clicks .
What exactly does SEO look like in action?
If I'm a mom with a full schedule trying to manage the family budget, I might Google the phrase "budgeting for moms who are busy".
And if I click on your site, I'll find your blog, and see that you've got the knowledge I'm searching for Perhaps I'll even sign up for your course.
The most popular snippet from the search "budgeting to help busy mothers" is this article taken from Simplified Motherhood, which is a site focused on providing content -which includes online classes and digital downloads -- that helps busy moms stay organized.
SEO tools can assist you to reach that highly sought-after top spot within the search resultseven if you do not have a dedicated digital marketing team (or any team in all). The tools could even level the playing field for small and solopreneurs in order to take on big businesses that have larger budgets.
This is why: SEO is considerably less expensive in comparison to cost per click (CPC) advertising and is more effective. The Databox study discovered 77% of marketing professionals believe that SEO is superior to PPC advertisements for driving sales.
Just a couple of SEO adjustments can result in an enormous improvement in natural traffic and sales. It's the reason more than 64% of marketers spend time on SEO.
(If you do not have the right website for optimization, you can create one with . Join for a free 14-day trial before you can begin selling digital items from your own site.)
Before diving into our list of best SEO tools designed to help entrepreneurs, let's take a look through the most popular types of SEO tools.
Types of SEO-related tools
A few SEO instruments are similar to Swiss knifes that come with several tools and features that can assist in a variety of SEO tasks. However, some are more concentrated on one particular piece of SEO. SEO puzzle.
Here are the most commonly used types of SEO tools.
Keyword research Tools: These tools help you identify popular words or phrases people use in the search engines.
They also tell you keywords' difficulty -- the degree to which it can be for a website to rank for a certain keyword -- and month-long searches -- how often a particular keyword gets used in a monthfor you to identify your best keywords .
Tools for tracking rank: Rank-tracking tools tell the user how your site ranks for your target keywords and allow you to adjust your content accordingly.
Link-building tools: Link-building is the process of gaining backlinks -- links to your website on websites -- in order to boost your site's reputation in search engines, and is a vital element of a well-constructed SEO strategy.
Tools for building links can assist you to locate backlink opportunities and find out which sites connect to your site.
Technical SEO tools: Technical SEO tools go deep into the intricacies of SEO. In the website's back end the technical SEO tools ensure that your web pages are designed for users as well as crawlers, which are the search engine robots responsible for indexing new and updated information.
Analytics tools: SEO reporting and analytics tools show you the performance of your site in a wide range of measures such as traffic, conversions, time spent on site, and many more.
So, with no 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 their paid plans begin at just $99/month , Ahrefs offers a range of SEO tools for free. Below are a few of the most popular ones:
Webmaster tools: Ahrefs' webmaster tools are free for all website owners and are technically just "free limited access for Ahrefs' Site Explorer & Site Audit " However, they provide a number of very helpful tools, such as:
An SEO audit and backlink evaluation of your website
Competitive analysis of other websites' SEO
Actionable SEO metrics, including organic traffic and keywords positions
Keyword generator : Enter up to 10 words or phrases. Ahrefs will provide you with 100 relevant keywords for the phrase or word that you entered as well as the difficultness of the first 10.
Search engine optimization Checker for Keyword rank : See how your website ranks with respect to a specific keyword.
Backlink tester : You can enter any domain, and view the domain's ranking (the quality of the target website's backlink profile) and how many backlinks it has, plus the number of websites that link to that site.
If you like Ahrefs' free tools and are looking to become more granular with the data, you can try seven days of the complete platform for just $7.
If you decide to sign up for the paid subscription I suggest you check out their SEO Toolbar that is a cost-free Firefox as well as Chrome extension that shows you instant SEO metrics for any webpage you visit.
2. Moz's free SEO tools
Similar to Ahrefs, Moz has a strong paid-for platform that provides numerous free applications . Here are some of the top:
The Domain SEO Analysis Tool You can enter an URL and look up the SEO metrics of that domain, such as:
Domain Authority, Moz's version of "Domain Ranking"
The top pages are ranked that are determined by "Page Authority," Moz's algorithm for link metrics
Estimated clicks for most popular keywords
Recent new links to the domain
MozBar : A Chrome extension that provides immediate SEO metrics when you visit any web page or search results page (SERP).
Keyword Explorer Search for a keyword and get access to:
Monthly search volume
Keyword research data that can be exported into CSV as well as Excel spreadsheets
Long-tail keywords -- keywords with higher relevance and lower search volume
Keyword difficulty scores
SERP analysis, with data for each result appearing on the initial page of results.
Keyword suggestions for countries
With the free Moz account, you're limited to 10 keywords analysis queries each month. For full access to Moz's services, which include Keyword and Site Explorers, Keyword as well as Site Explorers, Moz Pro plans start at $149/month and you're 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 helps you find out which keywords people are searching in your niche. You can see monthly search volume and projected search volume. You can also find keyword suggestions that will help you connect with your audience.
The service is free to anyone who has the Google account. (That said, it can sometimes be tricky to access -- if you run through a problem, this guide from Ahrefs offers some excellent troubleshooting tips.)
4. Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is a different tool that's free provided by the search engine masters of Google. GSC provides reports and tools to help you evaluate your website's traffic and performance -- specifically in terms of how and where it shows on Google search results.
The principal aspects of GSC comprise:
Verifying that Google will be able to find and crawl your website.
Fixing indexing problems and requesting indexing for new or revised material.
Viewing Google search traffic data for your site, which includes how often your site appears in Google searches, which queries show your site, and how often searchers click through to your site in response to those searches.
Alerts sent out in the event that Google encounters indexing, spam or any other issue in your website.
Showing you which sites have links to your website (a.k.a. backlinks).
GSC is not without its steep learning curve but there are many resources to help you navigate GSC, such as the free videos for training by Google.
P.S. : If your audience also uses Bing to search, 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 use your site. In order to use it for SEO you need to add an google Analytics tracking code to your website and connect the site to GSC.
GA offers free reporting on SEO metrics 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 are able to visit prior to leaving your website)
Rate of bounce
Time on site
Pages per visit
There's a whole lot of . . .
The only downside of GA has to do with the fact that like GSC the robustness of GA leads to a steeper learning rate. That said it is possible to find amazing training tools available such as Google Analytics Academy and this guide by Ahrefs regarding making use of GA to improve SEO.
6. Google's mobile-friendly tester
Mobile-friendly testing by Google's Google Labs is our last free tool available from Google that we've included on our list. And while it's technically a part of GSC, it's important enough -- and easy enough to utilize that it merits its own place in the list.
You enter your website's URL in the URL field, and Google informs you whether or not your site is optimized for mobile. Also, it shows you a preview of what your website looks like when viewed on a mobile device.
What is the reason this tool is so important?
Mobile optimization is an essential aspect of your site's user experience and SEO.
Traffic from mobile devices accounts approximately half all web traffic worldwide , and visitors are five times more likely to quit your website in the event that your website is not mobile-friendly.
Additionally, Google announced in 2018 that they're increasing the ranking of sites optimized for mobile in their mobile search results Optimizing your website's mobile accessibility can aid in the optimization of your site's search engines as well.
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 web crawler. This means it examines and reviews both on-page and technical SEO issues. SEO Spider is "trusted by hundreds of SEOs and agencies worldwide to conduct technical SEO audits of websites".
An online crawler such as SEO Spider can help you find broken links, discover duplicate content on your site as well as analyze your site's titles and metadata to ensure that your SEO works exactly how it should, both in the front and on the back.
SEO Spider's free version SEO Spider lets you crawl up to 500 URLs, which, unless your website contains more than 500 pages should be plenty. If you're a plethora of material or operate more than one website, the premium version will set you back PS149.00 annually.
8. GTmetrix
GTmetrix analyzes the loading speed of your website pages. If it determines that your site is slower than what it should, GTmetrix tells you what's slowing your site down and offers actionable recommendations to speed up loading times.
Similar to mobile optimization, loading time and speed of your website have a significant impact on your visitors' user experience.
26.9% of ecommerce customers are waiting less than 4 seconds to wait 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.
The speed of loading plays an important role on the SEO side, too. According to the SEO experts of Moz , "Google has indicated site speed (and as a result the speed of pages) is one of the signals that it uses to rank pages."
The GTmetrix free version allows users to monitor only one URL per day and upgrading to GTmetrix PRO costs $10 per month. If you'd rather use a free tool or Google's PageSpeed Insights tool is a similar -- if less robust choice.
9. Yoast SEO
If you've got a WordPress blog, Yoast is the SEO tool for you. Yoast is an WordPress plugin that can help to optimize the content you publish from the WordPress site editor.
You enter the keywords or phrases you'd like your website or blog post to rank for, then Yoast checks your content and informs you if your content is using the keywords correctly (or excessively), and in the correct places, such as headers.
Yoast can also let you see how your website or blog post appears when you visit a Google results page.
On the backend, Yoast generates and applies schema.org structures and the structured information that "helps [search engines] discover what each element of your site means and who it is for and what the connections between everything".
The trial version of Yoast comes with nearly all features of the Premium version. It costs $89 per year for one WordPress website.
10. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is an online competitor analysis tool. You can look up your competitors' websites and see their traffic-related stats such as:
Top of the page
Total number of visits
Traffic sources
The top referring websites
Pages per visit
Average visit duration
Bounce rate
SimilarWeb provides a no-cost choice, but it is limited to 5 outcomes per measurement. If you like the free tool, you'll be able to change to "Enterprise" down the way, however the free version provides plenty of high-level information to utilize.
11. SERPsim
It claims to be "the most exact SERP snippet generator," SERPsim is a search results preview generator with mobile and desktop views.
This tool for free lets you examine your title and the meta description -- which is the HTML attribute that provides an uncomplicated description of your site's content to see how it'll look in the Google SERP.
It is possible to import existing metadata or paste in text. This is a fantastic method to ensure that your metadata isn't deleted from results due to being excessively long.
Make sure that your info products with these SEO tools that are simple to use
SEO can be a fantastic option to boost visitors to your site as well as get your information products in front of more potential customers. SEO can be a confusing and lengthy process to manage by yourself.
It is good to know that there are tools to assist in almost all aspects of SEO -- and all are free. version.
To recap, here are 11 of the best SEO tools available for Infopreneurs for free:
Ahrefs webmaster tools for free Keyword generator, keyword rank checker, and backlink checker.
Moz's completely free SEO tools include their Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Mozbar Chrome extension, as well as Keyword Planner.
Google's tools for free, such as Keyword Planner for keyword research, Google Search Console and Google Analytics to provide in-depth information and reporting, and the Mobile-friendly test.
"Screaming" Frog SEO Spider to check your website for SEO on-page and technical issues.
GTmetrix is a great tool to make sure that the load speed is as fast as can be.
Yoast SEO is one of the WordPress plugin that allows you to optimize your content as you upload it.
SimilarWeb provides competitive analysis that lets you know how your website compares to your competition'.
Search Engine Results Simulator for a basic preview of your title and meta description within search results.
Overall, no matter whether you use any one of these SEO instruments or a combination of these, including them within your toolbox for marketing can help in reaching more people and making more sales.