Free SEO Tools

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Free Google tools

Google offers several free tools that greatly help your SEO strategy:

• Google Search Console: This tool provides detailed reports about your website’s visibility on Google. It helps to identify issues with your site, provides insights into how Google crawls and indexes your pages, shows search queries that drive traffic to your site, and provides additional valuable information.
• Google Analytics: This is a comprehensive analytics tool that can help you understand how people use your website. It provides information about the number of visitors, their behavior, the duration of their stay, how engaged they are, and so on.
• Google Keyword Planner: Part of Google Ads, this tool can help you discover new keywords and get search volumes to see how they might perform. Keep in mind, if you’re not a Google Ads customer, the search volumes given are broad ranges, not precise. However, the Keywords Everywhere tool, a Chrome extension, can provide more accurate search volumes for a reasonable fee.
• Google Trends: This tool allows you to see the latest trends, data, and visualizations from Google. It can be a useful tool for identifying trending topics or terms related to your industry. Even though it doesn’t give specific keyword search volumes, you can compare keywords to see which one is more popular. This can be particularly handy if you only have access to broad search volume ranges from the Keyword Planner.
• Google PageSpeed Insights: This tool evaluates the performance of your web pages and provides suggestions on how to improve them. It’s particularly useful for optimizing page speed and Core Web Vitals.
• Google My Business: A free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. By verifying and editing your business information, you can help customers find your business and particularly useful for local businesses.

Ahrefs tools

While there are hundreds of other free SEO tools, each with their own merits, we’re going to focus on five from Ahrefs.

Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a free tool that offers insights into your website’s performance. It provides backlink data, keyword rankings, and technical SEO health checks. Using it, you can identify and address SEO problems and explore opportunities to boost your site’s organic search performance.

Pro tip: This free SEO audit tool operates only with sites verified through Google Search Console. So, it likely won’t be useful for researching the competition, but it’s excellent for identifying potential issues on your site or revealing opportunities, such as trending keywords.

Free Keyword Generator

Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator is a tool for finding SEO keywords. It suggests keywords, estimates their search volume, and shows their competition level. The tool also provides related queries and questions for content inspiration. It’s tailored for specific country results.

The free version of this tool offers a more limited and literal interpretation of your input compared to the paid version (so less keyword ideas). While it requires additional legwork for generating ideas, it provides valuable search volumes for your keywords.

Additionally, while the free version of Google Keyword Planner is excellent for generating keyword ideas, it’s not so accurate at providing search volumes. Therefore, when used together with Ahrefs free Keyword Generator, they form an effective, cost-free solution for keyword research and analysis.

Pro tip: Include plural and singular searches for a keyword separately.

Website Traffic Checker

Ahrefs’ Website Traffic Checker estimates a site’s monthly organic traffic. It lists top keywords attracting visitors, aiding competitor analysis, SEO strategy understanding, and discovering new keyword opportunities.

To quickly locate pages on a competitor’s website, consider using Google’s site command.

Pro tip: This tool reveals the top five keywords for a specific URL, not just for a domain. So, don’t limit yourself to the homepage of a rival’s site. Try adding specific pages from their site to get more than five results.

Free Backlink Checker

Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker provides a quick glance at a site’s backlink profile. It shows the top 100 backlinks, along with the website’s Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR). Although limited, it’s useful for spot checks and swift analyses.

Pro tip: Compare your homepage’s overall backlink performance, including Domain Rating, Backlinks, and Linking Websites, with your competitors’ homepages. This comparison will give you a snapshot of how your site measures up from an off-page SEO perspective.

Free Rank Checker

Ahrefs’ Free Rank Checker will reveal where your website ranks on Google for a specific keyword and from a range of countries.

Pro tip: While researching keywords, check your website’s current ranking for each keyword. If you’re already on the first page or close to it, so within the top ten results, this suggests careful on-page optimization on your website could quickly bring significant improvements.