Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for directing relevant traffic to your website and giving your brand greater exposure. Plenty of SEO tools exist online to help your SEO efforts. Unfortunately, the cost of those tools can be quite expensive so if you are part of a smaller business or a blogger just starting out, you might not be able to afford these fancy platforms.
Thankfully, a plethora of free SEO tools are also available. But with so many options it might be difficult to decide which one is the best fit for you and your business. Below we break down the most effective (and free) SEO tools you should be using for your 2020 SEO strategy.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is great because it has the majority of functions of paid SEO tools but it is completely free. This tool works best for keyword suggestions and comparisons. To use it, you type in a keyword or competitor website and Ubersuggest presents you with data on the keyword’s difficulty and monthly search volume and suggestions for related keywords.
Google Search Console
This tool helps you determine your website’s visibility on the search engine straight from the source. Google Search Console provides information on which keywords are driving traffic to your site, your webpage’s rankings, and how often you are shown in search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the beneficial features on Google Search Console is the Index Coverage Report which shows you which of your webpages aren’t getting indexed so you can fix these issues.
Screaming Frog
Sometimes your site can have technical problems that you aren’t even aware of. That’s where Screaming Frog comes in to assist. This tool crawls your website and identifies errors such as 404 pages, bloated HTML, HTTP header errors, page redirects, javascript rendering issues, and duplicate content.
Google Trends
Google Trends is another Google tool you can use to improve your SEO. Google Trends help you determine the popularity of a specific keyword and track how it trends over time.
Ping Web Crawler and Bulk Authority Checker
Digital marketing company Link Laboratory offers several free tools SEO strategists can take advantage of. One such tool is Ping Web Crawler which uses search bots to crawl your URL so that your websites or webpages appear in search results. Another tool is Bulk Authority Checker which checks page authority and domain authority with one click. Both page and domain authority calculates a search engine ranking score. But the difference is page authority checks the score for a single webpage while domain authority checks the entire domain.
SEMrush
SEMrush allows you to conduct keyword research, audit links, find keywords your competitors are using, and understand your website’s domain authority. With the free version, you are allowed 10 searches per day. If your SEO needs to go beyond that, then you can subscribe to a paid plan at $99.95 per month.
Google Analytics
This tool is one of the more commonly used platforms in the industry. While it isn’t technically an SEO tool, it can be used as one. Google Analytics easily allows businesses to monitor their SEO efforts and see how successful they are or when adjustments need to be made. With it, you can see what sources and search terms are driving traffic to your webpages. You can also keep track of the bounce rate, how long users are spending on a given webpage, and determine page speed.
Linking your Google Analytics account to Google Search Console provides even more useful information for your SEO campaigns. By using these two tools together, you can see your organic click-through rates and which keywords people are using to find your website. With these data insights in mind, you can tweak your SEO tactics for better performance.
