The Best Free SEO Tools for Beginners
Article Takeaways
- Meta tags are text and code snippets that help Google better understand the content of your website.
- Meta tags can have a big impact on search engine rankings and website usability.
- Tags such as Page Titles and Meta Descriptions aren’t visible on the page, but they may be displayed in Google’s search results, so they should be aligned to user search intent and your keyword strategy.
- The robots meta tag tells Google how and when to absorb information from your website, allowing you to keep certain pages private.
- Language and hreflang tags improve the localisation of websites and ensure your content is shown to people in the right locations.
- Canonical tags help direct Google to the correct web page when you have duplicate or overly-similar content on your website.
In This Article
The Top SEO Tools for Beginners
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the most effective way to grow your business in the long-term.
Running a successful SEO campaign requires data. The more you know about your website and users, the easier it is to make an impact.
There are lots of tools that provide useful data about your website. Unfortunately, some of these tools are expensive, and they may not fit into your marketing budget.
If you’re starting to think about SEO for your website, then you don’t need to break the bank. You can get started with nothing more than your own time and a few free SEO tools that help with analysis and implementation.
This article is by no means an exhaustive list. There are lots of good, free SEO tools on the market. But these are the best free SEO tools we recommend for businesses that want real growth.
Free SEO Tools to Get You Started
Your SEO journey starts here. These free tools provide baseline data about your website that you’ll need to plan an effective SEO strategy.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free must-have tool for your website. Using Google Search Console to check page indexing and other technical issues is a great first step in having visibility across your website’s presence in Google Search.
It offers data on technical issues such as crawl errors and indexing issues, as well as search traffic metrics like clicks and impressions.
Google Search Console is the dashboard for managing and improving the visibility of your website. There’s so much that can be done with GSC, including technical issue analysis, keyword research, traffic insights and more.
GSC has evolved to include audits of your site’s structured data. This includes merchant listings (for ecommerce stores) and website experience metrics like HTTPS status and Core Web Vitals, which measure website performance.
Screaming Frog
We recommend Screaming Frog to everyone in the SEO community. While it seems daunting, Screaming Frog provides an incredible amount of raw SEO data that’s useful in planning your strategy.
Screaming Frog is aimed at SEO professionals. We still recommend it for beginners because it teaches valuable skills for SEO audits and fixes. If you get stuck, Screaming Frog provides an extensive User Guide to help you get started.
The specific tool we’re interested in is the SEO Spider. This spider can crawl up to 500 URLs for free (the Log File Analyser is for more advanced SEOs with bigger site considerations). While all other tools are web based, Screaming Frog is a downloadable program that only needs your website’s URL to get started.
There are almost infinite uses for this SEO tool. The best way to learn is to read their Tutorials and Issues pages, or view their YouTube channel.
Free All-In-One SEO Tools
Much like the best paid SEO tools, there’s free tools that cover a complete range of SEO, such as on-page, technical and backlink analysis. By signing up for free accounts, you get access to a broad range of tools to improve your SEO, without needing a subscription.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Ahrefs is one of the world’s most popular SEO tools. While you can pay for the full version, they also offer a free version called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT).
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools offers two of the best features from the paid version of the program:
- Site audit – When your site is verified, Ahrefs uses its crawler to identify opportunities relating to your SEO health. It makes helpful recommendations you can use to improve on-page and technical SEO.
- Site explorer – The site explorer gives you a glimpse at organic traffic and the profile of any backlinks that point to your website. You can also view how many organic keywords your website ranks for, which keywords are ranking, and what positions they are in the search results.
While there are only two key features, they encompass so much in terms of activities for organic search including keyword research, on-page SEO, technical SEO, backlink audits, and competitor analysis.
Outside of their Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs also offers free individual SEO tools for keyword research, on-page SEO, link building and more.
Free SEO Tools by Semrush
Semrush also provides a free option. Semrush is an incredibly popular SEO tool with features that also benefit the various types of Google Ads campaigns.
If you sign up for an account, you can access a free, 7-day trial to test their Pro or Guru subscriptions.
The free account gives you 10 daily credits across several features. It also allows you to set up one Project, Site Audits and Position Tracking for up to 10 keywords.
A free Semrush account gives you access to:
- Keyword research – You can use Semrush’s Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tools, which are great for determining search volume and clustering keywords.
- Competitor analysis – Review domains and gaps in keywords and backlinks.
- Backlink audit – Review and filter a limited range of backlinks with filtering options.
Best Free SEO Tools for Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of any SEO strategy. There are dozens of tools that can help you identify and target keywords, but these are some of the best free options available.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that’s designed for Google Ads campaigns. While it’s not intended for SEO, it has long been used to find golden opportunities for your SEO efforts.
Keyword Planner pulls data directly from Google. This makes it one of the most accurate sources of keyword data, search volumes, trends and competition.
The benefit of using Google Keyword Planner is you can find search volumes from individual cities (and suburbs in some locations). This feature is rare among popular SEO tools, outside of position tracking.
Find out more with our comprehensive Google Keyword Planning guide.
* Please note that the average monthly searches shown in Keyword Planner display a range rather than an exact number unless your Google Ads spend reaches a certain threshold. While the range is a helpful guide, it can vary significantly.
Backlinko Free Keyword Tool
Backlinko, a well-known SEO resource, offers a free keyword research tool that leverages Semrush’s extensive keyword database, covering the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.
This tool not only provides data on your chosen keyword but also offers insights into related keywords, keyword difficulty (in terms of ranking), cost per click, and the search trend of the term.
Free SEO Extensions
Browsers like Google Chrome provide support for SEO extensions that can help with auditing, keyword research, tracking backlinks, finding broken links and much more.
SEOQuake
SEOQuake provides SEO metadata, internal and external links, and backlink metrics for a website. It also offers Page SEO audits for a given web page, which help determine on-page SEO issues.
You can also measure keyword density and prominence, although this is less important with Google introducing the BERT update in 2019.
If you signed up with a free Semrush account, you can link your account to the extension and it can integrate with Semrush’s traffic analysis and Site Audit Tool.
Redirect Path
Redirect Path is a helpful tool for assessing links that have been redirected.
This is useful for spotting redirect chains and loops, and determining the redirect path so that you can fix internal 301s or other redirect types such as meta refresh, Javascript redirects, 302, and 307 redirects. It also highlights 404 errors so you can address broken redirects.
Robots Exclusion Checker
Imagine building content, optimising the page, and it’s never be found by Google. Don’t let this happen to you!
Robots Exclusion Checker checks the robots.txt file of a website and changes colours for web pages with blocked robots.txt and meta robots directives, ensuring your pages are not marked noindexed.
The extension turns Red for pages that are blocked from search engines. It turns Orange for canonical tags that are not self-referencing. Clicking the extension provides more details about the status and affected URLs.
Keyword Surfer
Keyword Surfer from Surfer SEO is a free Chrome extension that finds related keywords based on your search in Google. The extension provides search volume and overlap based on your initial search query.
Honourable Mentions
SEO META in 1 Click for quick SEO meta data analysis, header analysis and hierarchy on page
Headline Highlighter to quickly view heading tags and what heading type they are (H1, H2, H5, etc)
Broken Link Checker finds broken links, internal 301 redirects, and links with 5xx (server) errors
Bulk URL Opener is not so much an SEO tool, but it’s useful for opening multiple URLs together when clustered under one issue
NoFollow will highlight if a link is “nofollowed” (not passing link equity to its target URL)
Can I Do SEO Without Paid Tools?
Paid SEO tools can quicken your workflow and present opportunities you won’t find any other way, but you can definitely get started in SEO with free tools.
Many industry professionals get their start with free tools, and they play an important role in our day-to-day workload. Using nothing more than the tools we discussed above, you can get started with ranking and generating online traffic organically.
Get Started With Your SEO With Free Tools
You can start SEO today, for free!
If you have spare time and you’re willing to learn how to use these free tools, you can start generating organic traffic right away.
From all in one tools like Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and Semrush’s free offerings, to essential resources like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog, these provide plenty of opportunities for your SEO campaign.
If you’re unsure where to start, or if you’ve taken these free tools as far as they can go, get in touch with the team at Gordon Digital. We’re experts in SEO and long-term business growth. We can build a strategy that helps your business attract the customers you’re searching for.