Top 10 Free SEO Tools You Should Be Leveraging
We know many SEO tools can be expensive. But did you know there are numerous free SEO tools on the web as well which can be extremely useful? And no, we are not talking about the ‘one free search a day’ type of tools. The tools we are about to go over are a complete game changer.
SEMRush
If you have wondered how much traffic a particular site gets, and what countries that traffic comes from, you can leverage the free version of SEMRush to get 10 free searches a day. SEMRush is also a great tool for analyzing domain authority and backlinks profiles. It compares very closely with Ahrefs, leading us into the next tool.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Ahrefs has a handful of free tools that do not require you to create an account. One of the most popular tools they have is a free backlink checker. This allows you to check any site’s Domain Rating (a metric similar to Domain Authority, but specific only to Ahrefs). You can also see a good amount of backlinks that a site has, and see how many of them are Dofollow and Nofollow links (Nofollow links are not very helpful for improving a site’s rankings, though a healthy site has a balance of both Dofollow and Nofollow links). Super helpful for competitive research!
Answerthepublic
Every wonder what types of questions your audience wants to know about your niche or area of expertise? Look no further than Answer the Public, a site that allows you to search up all the relevant questions regarding your topic. Questions are typically separated by the word they start with, such as ‘Who’, ‘When’, ‘How’ etc. The viewing options for the questions are convenient for easy digestion.
Google Pagespeed Insights
Google has a bucket of great tools, and the best part is that many of them are free. Try Google Pagespeed Insights, a tool that helps you monitor your website’s speed on both desktop and mobile. If your score is decent, you will see green lines for each assessment. However, if your site needs improvement (which it usually will), Pagespeed Insights will present a list of to-dos to improve your site speed.
GTMetrix
On the topic of site speed, you do not want to miss GTMetrix. The biggest difference between GTMetrix and Google Pagespeed Insights is that GTMetrix will give your site a letter grade, while Pagespeed Insights goes straight into the meaty details. Other than that, the two tools are quite similar, and both are free to use.
Deadlinkchecker
This has to be one of our favorites. It’s fast, simple to use, and is extremely useful for finding sneaky dead links that are bringing your rankings down. Just run your site URL through the search bar and ta-da!
Grammarly
When one thinks of SEO tools, Grammarly may not be the first one that comes to mind. However, we all know SEO is all about writing content, and good content. Many of us are not good spellers, but if you know how to leverage free technology to your advantage, you do not have to worry. Just download the writing assistant extension, and you can immensely improve the quality of your writing.
Reduceimages.com
Large image sizes can be a major pain. The worst part about them is that if your images do not load in the first few seconds of viewing a web page, chances are that your audience will navigate to another site. Luckily, resources such as Reduceimages.com can help you quickly decrease the file size of your images without sacrificing too much on the picture quality. Then, all you need to do is replace them with the compressed images. Do not forget your alt tags!
Google Search Console
If you are curious about which of your web pages and articles get the most impressions and views, head on over to Google Search Console. If you have never used Search Console before, you will need to add your domain, which takes only a few minutes through a little bit of verification. You can also track the position of your web pages and see which keywords you are ranking for.
Seed Keywords
Lastly, you are going to love this one. Seed Keywords is a lesser known SEO site that allows you to create a scenario or question, and you can send that scenario or question to your friends to find out what they would type on the web to find an answer to it. This allows you to discover more keywords to add to your list. Once you type in the scenario through their tool, the website will give you a URL which you can share with your contacts. Your contacts then can submit their answers for you to view. Pretty neat, right?