25 Free SEO Tools

25 Free SEO Tools

Peek behind the curtain of SEO mastery with a curated list of 25 free SEO tools. This guide cuts straight to the chase, offering the key to unlocking your website’s full potential, ensuring every move you make is calculated and every strategy, impactful.

1.  Semrush

The full version of Semrush costs, but, you can use some of the best tools it has to offer for free. A favorite Semrush tools is the Keyword Magic Tool. If you sign up for a free Semrush account you get 10 credits per day for this tool and that’s not all you can do with your free Semrush account.

You also have access to: The symbolic keys and locks within the analytical essence of SEO.

  • The Position Tracking tool
  • The Site Audit tool
  • The Listing Management tool
  • SEO Content Templates
  • The SEO Writing Assistant
  • The On-Page SEO Checker
  • The Social Media Toolkit
  • The Keyword Overview Tool
  • The Domain Overview Too

A free Semrush account is limited to a small amount of credits each day.  You get 10 searches each day for all of the domain analytics and keyword research tools.  However, that doesn’t mean 10 searches per day, per tool.  For example, let’s say you analyzed a domain with the Domain Overview tool and then performed a search with the Keyword Overview tool.  That would count as two out of your 10 credits for the day. If you’re a little confused, Semrush’s free account guide explains it all in great detail.

2.  Answer The Public

Find 150+ keyword ideas in seconds. Most SEO tools get their data from the same place: The Google Keyword Planner. Answer the Public is different. This awesome tool finds questions that people ask on forums, blogs and on social media. And it turns those questions into awesome keywords.

Best Feature: “Vs. Keywords”
You’d be surprised how many people search for “X vs. Y” keywords in Google. And Answer the Public has a section of the results dedicated to “Vs. Keywords”.

3.  Animalz Revive

Improve and update old content.  Animalz Revive helps you find older content on your site that needs an update, an upgrade… or both. This tool tells you exactly which articles on your site need the most attention.

Best Feature: “Traffic Loss Since Peak (Views)”
This feature lets you know exactly how many visitors that a piece of outdated content is costing you.

4.  CanIRank

Quickly answer the question: “Can I rank for this keyword?”.  CanIRank is a super-detailed keyword difficulty tool.  And unlike most free SEO tools, CanIRank doesn’t give you generic advice like:
“This keyword is really competitive”
Or
“This keyword has low competition”
Instead, it tells you whether or not YOU can rank for that keyword.

Best Feature: “How can you better target this keyword?”
CanIRank isn’t just for sizing up the first-page competition. It also gives you suggestions that can help you rank for a specific term.

5.  Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Get your site ready for Google’s Mobile-first Indexing.  Google recently made a big change to its algorithm called “Mobile-First Indexing.
The bottom line is this, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you’re in big trouble.  Fortunately, you don’t need a full-time developer to make your site mobile-friendly. All you need to do is run your site through the Mobile-Friendly Test tool.  And it tells you whether or not Google considers your site mobile-friendly.

Best Feature: “Page loading issues”
This feature shows you how you can improve your site’s code. That way, Google’s mobile crawler can find and index all of the resources on your site.

6.  Seed Keywords

Find completely fresh keyword ideas.  Most keyword research tools work the exact same way, enter a seed keyword into the tool and get a list of closely-related terms. The problem with this approach is this, everyone types the same seed keywords into these tools.  Seed Keywords takes a completely different approach.  Instead of pulling seed keywords out of thin air, you ask your customers how they’d search for you online.  Then, type those seed keywords into your favorite keyword research tool.

Best Feature: “Submit Query”
Once the results come in, you can use SeedKeywords to do a Google search for the keywords that people gave you. That way you can quickly scan the search results… and see how competitive those keywords are.

7.  Exploding Topics

Find popular keywords before they get competitive.  This free SEO tool does one simple thing, It bubbles up topics that are just starting to trend. That way, you can create content around these emerging trends (or optimize your old content around a new keyword).  The tool currently has about 2k topics in its database. And they’re adding more every week.

Best Feature: Categories
Categories let you drill down to a specific topic category that’s important to your business. For example, let’s say you run marketing for a skincare brand. Well, you’d hit “beauty” and get a list of emerging topics in that space.

8.  GTmetrix

GTmetrix is great for analyzing the technical health of your site. It takes just a few minutes to get information about the size of a page and assess its loading time. This allows you to identify areas that can be improved and prioritize your efforts to ensure your page loads faster.  The ‘Waterfall’ view is really useful too.  It displays the order and duration of files loading on your pages.

9.  Schema.org

Schema markup is incredibly important for your site.  It provides structured data that helps search engines understand the content and context of your page.  One of the best options is to use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper as it guides you through the process.  To view all the different schemas, you can browse the full hierarchy in HTML.

You can either click on ‘One page per type’ or ‘Full list of types, shown on one page’.
Or, you can search for a specific term with the ‘TermFinder’.
All you need to do is fill in your information, copy the code and insert it directly into your web pages. When implemented correctly, schema markup can enhance the appearance of your page in the SERP by displaying rich snippets alongside your title tag and meta description. This could potentially increase your click-through rates by enticing users to click on your link.

10.  Seobility

SEObility crawls your entire site and lets you know about search engine optimization issues like:

  • Slow loading pages
  • Blocked pages
  • Sitemap problems
  • Technical SEO issues
  • Lots more

You usually only get this type of stuff from paid SEO tools. So it’s really nice that Seobility gives you this data for free.

Best Feature: Content Report
This report hands you a list of pages that have content-related SEO issues. (Things like: thin content, missing meta titles, keyword stuffing, and duplicate content.)

11.  Ubersuggest

Get keyword suggestions and competition data. Ubersuggest has a lot of features that are usually only found in premium SEO tools, but this is free.  To use it, type in a keyword that you want to rank for (or a competing website that you want to rank above). And Ubersuggest will give you detailed data on keyword difficulty, monthly search volume, and more. Plus, you get a list of suggested keywords that are based on the keyword you typed in.

Best Feature: “Comparisons”
This feature shows you “X vs. Y” keywords.
In my experience, X vs. Y keywords are super untapped.
Sure, they may not get as many searches as traditional keywords. But they’re SUPER targeted and high-converting.

12.  Google Search Console

Get SEO help straight from Google. The GSC is a VERY feature-rich piece of SEO software. And unlike pretty much every other tool on the market, you know the data is legit.  For example, you can use the Google Search Console as a rank tracker to check your site’s rankings in the SERPs.

Best Feature: Index Coverage Report
The Index Coverage Report gives you a list of pages on your site that aren’t getting indexed. You can also see how you can get things back on track.

13.  SERPerator

This awesome tool lets you check the SERPs across different locations and devices. As you probably know, the search results change dramatically depending on where you are and what device you’re using. And this tool lets you see exactly how the results will look for someone searching on a particular phone from pretty much any major city in the world.

Best Feature: Compare Devices
See how the results look on two different mobile devices… side-by-side.

14.  Google Trends

Like Exploding Topics, Google Trends gives you real-time information about trending topics.
You can take a look at the search interest trends for different keywords and see if they’re increasing or decreasing over time.
Simply enter your topic and select the region you’re interested in. The tool will then present you with the search interest for the topic over your selected time frame. If you want to get more granular, scroll down to the “Interest by subregion” section to see how popular the search term is across different locations. On top of that, Google Trends has a feature that allows you to compare 2 or more topics against each other. This helps you identify which topic has more search interest. Google Trends is great to use when doing niche research as well.

15.  Screaming Frog

Find and fix technical SEO issues in seconds. This nifty tool crawls your site using a Google-like crawler. And it generates a report of potential issues (like HTTP header errors, javascript rendering issues, bloated HTML, and crawl errors).

Best Feature: Discover Duplicate Content
and since Google HATES duplicate content, fortunately, you can use Screaming Frog to quickly ID pages with duplicate content.

16.  Soovle

Soovle gathers popular keywords from platforms like Google, YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, Bing, Yahoo, and Answers.com.
It gives you a database of terms that you can use to improve your search engine rankings. By just typing in a keyword, you can see related terms that users are searching for on major platforms. It may be one of the older SEO tools out there, but there’s a reason it’s still so popular. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that you don’t get search volume and keyword difficulty scores with the suggestions.

17.  ShortPixel

If the images on your site have large file sizes then they’re probably slowing down your page load speeds. This can be super frustrating for users and can lead to high bounce rates you definitely don’t want. ShortPixel is an excellent tool that allows you to compress and resize your images allowing for faster page load times. It gives you the option to upload JPG, GIF, and PNG files that are up to 10 MB in size. To remove this size restriction, you just need to sign up for a free account. All you need to do is choose your SmartCompress level and then upload your files. ShortPixel then automatically compresses and optimizes the images without sacrificing quality. ShortPixel also allows you to input your URL so it can analyze your site and optimize the images it finds. This helps to improve your site’s performance.

18.  ChatGPT

The tool is actually really versatile and you can use it to create optimized content, suggest keywords, generate schema markup, create meta titles, and much more. To get the best results, you need to make sure you use detailed prompts.

19.  BrightLocal’s Local SERP Checker

When you’re doing local SEO, it’s important to optimize your pages so they have a good chance of ranking for location-specific keywords.
Luckily, BrightLocal’s Local SERP Checker is a free tool that helps you do just that. BrightLocal’s Local SERP Checker provides valuable insights into local search results. You can use this tool to analyze SERPs at a local level. It allows you to assess your visibility, identify opportunities for optimization, and track the performance of your local SEO efforts. By understanding the local search landscape, you can make data-driven decisions to improve your site’s visibility and attract more local customers.  You input your keyword and location and then choose your country and language.  You can also choose whether you want to see results from Google Search or Google Maps. So, you can ensure maximum visibility and relevance in the locations that matter most to your business.

20.  Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a great way to find email addresses that you can use in your link-building campaigns. Instead of manually finding them yourself, using Hunter.io means you can just enter a domain and instantly find the email addresses associated with it. You can save the email addresses you’re looking for as leads. Plus, you can filter the results by type and department so that you only see the email addresses you need for your campaign. This tool can speed up your link-building outreach effort.

21.  Lipperhey

Powerful website analyzer. Lipperhey is a full-featured SEO analyzer that doesn’t cost a penny.

Best Feature: Keyword Suggestions
Get a list of keywords to add to specific pages on your site. (Which can help you get more organic traffic from long-tail keywords.)

22.  Dareboost

Analyze your site for speed, SEO, security and more. Dareboost isn’t strictly an SEO tool. But it does analyze your site for things that indirectly impact SEO, like your site’s loading speed and security.

Best Feature: Priorities
Let’s you know where to start first. Helpful if you’re strapped for time.

23.  Siteliner

Get a full SEO report for free. Siteliner scans your site for SEO problems (like blocked pages, messed up redirects and broken links).

Best Feature: Comparison with Other Sites
This lets you compare your site’s loading speed and page size to other site’s in Siteliner’s database. Helpful for benchmarking.

24.  KWFinder

No-nonsense keyword research tool. The best part of KWFinder is how easy it is to use.

Best Feature: LPS
LPS=Link Profile Strength. This feature basically tells you how many links you’ll need to rank for that keyword.
So if you find a keyword that has a LPS of 50+, you know that you’ll need to do some serious link building to rank for that term.

25. People Also Ask

This free tool pulls questions that appear in the “People Also Ask” section of Google’s search results.

Best Feature: Related Questions

People Also Ask shows you questions that you’d usually have to get by manually clicking on the PAA box in the SERPs.

Bonus Tips:

  1. Prioritize Efficiency: Not all data deserves your attention. Pinpoint metrics that pivot your strategy in the right direction.
  2. Adapt and Overcome: SEO isn’t static. Adaptability ensures your strategy evolves with search engine algorithms, not against them.
  3. Creative Benchmarking: Use competitive insights not just to match but to outdo. What makes your site unique could be your key to outranking competitors.

Equipped with these tools, you stand on the brink of SEO excellence. Each tool is a step, each insight a leap towards dominating search rankings. It’s not just about playing the game; it’s about setting the rules.

An abstract digital garden, where data visualization and SEO analysis bloom like flowers.