If you are interested in using SEO to improve your website’s position on the internet, there are plenty of tools that can help you with this. You will find hundreds, if not thousands of them on the internet – both free as well as premium versions – each one just as useful as the last. Undoubtedly, the paid ones have excellent value in terms of advanced features and capabilities. Not only this but you can also get online assistance at any point during their use.
The ones that are free aren’t any less useful, however. In fact, the free tools will suffice for a large majority of tasks that are important from an SEO perspective. Our experts at Digital Hub Solution recommend the following as some of the most useful ones, depending on the type of SEO-related work you are seeking a tool for.
Based on their SEO functions, here’s the list of useful and convenient tools that hopefully, will help you improve your SEO tactics for better website ranking and performance –
This brilliant console for webmasters allows them to carefully observe many aspects of their websites with the help of helpful statistics. It also gives access to various tools and data straight from the search engines, making SEO a lot easier.
What it does: There are at least ten different things that you can do through the Google Search Console (or GSC in short). A few of them include locating the source of your website’s visitors, learning which devices are being used to access your website, checking for broken links, finding out which sites link to your website and many more.
2. Google Analytics
A complete web analytics tool, Google Analytics provides information about how your website’s visitors interact with it. It differs from Google Search Console because the GSC shows how search engines see your website.
What it does: Again, there are many ways of monitoring your website through Google Analytics. These include finding what people are searching for on it, which content has been receiving the most response, finding out which pages are performing well and which ones are not along with identifying online campaigns with the most traffic and conversions.
3. Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console in the sense that they both offer tools for webmasters and SEOS. These are both full of functions and important, helpful information that is sure to benefit every website owner.
What it does: It has got a host of reporting and diagnostic tools to uncover crawling issues or other errors that are keeping your website from ranking higher on Bing. Other features include the Index Explorer that displays all your websites files in a file directory tree format as well as an API that allows users to programmatically gain access to website-related information.
4. Enhanced Google Analytics Annotations
As the name suggests, this Google Chrome plugin allows you to carefully examine every aspect of your website’s traffic such as SERPs, competitor analysis, search performance and so on.
What it does: It helps users detect even the tiniest of dips in website traffic and will enable you to single out the specific reason such changes. With it, you will know why there were fewer visitors on any given day and whether a public holiday or an update in the search engine’s algorithms had anything to do with it.
5. Beam Us Up
The SEO crawling spider software Beam Us Up is a really easy-to-use tool that crawls a website and performs a diagnostic analysis. It then flags up all the issues that you need to resolve. The data collected here can be exported, thereby making it simpler to sort and set up tasks to be completed within a team.
What it does: Apart from diagnosing errors you can uncover duplicate WebPages and perform unlimited crawling as compared to other web crawlers.
6. Link Redirect Trace
This is a great redirect path analyzer tool that is often used as an extension for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. It not only lists all the redirects linked to your website in detail but also allows you to improve User-Experience by fixing slow redirects with the help of redirect timings.
What it does: A variety of tasks can be done through Link Redirect Trace such as determining on-page SEO problems and tracking links from advertisers. Apart from these, you can check your competitors’ links, your own links after website migration and many other things as well.
7. Redirect Path
Redirect Path checks redirects and HTTP Headers to make sure that the ones that are applied are working as expected. This tool is essential from an SEO perspective, because ensuring that all the correct redirect paths are linked to your WebPages, helps improve User-Experience.
What it does: With this tool, you will know what types of redirects have been used and where. Redirect Path also flags up various HTTP Status Codes (301, 302, 404, and 500) and client-side redirects such as the ones related to Meta and JavaScript. This brings any potential unknown problems to your attention quickly.
8. Keyword Planner
This is a Google Ads tool that helps both experienced and new users construct successful search campaigns. Using Keyword Planner, you can determine which keywords to use on the basis of their performance and how much money people are willing to bid on it.
What it does: If you need to add keywords to a new campaign then you can easily perform keyword research based on relevant terms according to your landing page or your services and products. You can also get an idea of how your chosen keywords might perform through traffic forecasts and historical statistics like search volume.
9. Keywords Everywhere
Available as an add-on for popular web browsers like Firefox and Chrome, this one is extensively used by SEO experts around the world, thanks to its time-saving features and seamless operation.
What it does: It shows a number of helpful attributes related to keyword research such as the search volume, CPC, and the amount of competition faced from similar websites. What makes this tool important is it’s simple yet streamlined functioning that includes a real-time comparison of keywords on multiple platforms.
10. Disavow Tool
The Disavow Tool is included in the Google Search Console but is not easily visible to users. However, it can prove to be an effective weapon against negative SEO that is often caused by bad links formed due to any reason.
What it does: It allows websites to prevent link-based penalties by ‘disavowing’ ‘bad’ inbound links from the website. Protecting your website by doing this is important because those bad links can otherwise attack the website’s reputation and harm Search Engine Result rankings too.
11. Link Explorer
Try this one if you are looking for a tool that can help you analyze and work on your website’s backlinks. You can access ten queries, each with fifty rows of data through the free account every month.
What it does: Using this tool, you can discover great potential clients and track the progress of those inbound links too, both of which help in developing sound SEO strategies.
12. Google My Business
Google My Business is an excellent way to let billions of people who search on Google know about your business. You get the chance to show your business, the way you want, to a large audience. This can have a great impact if you are able to make good use of the features provided according to your target audience.
What it does: Having a GMB listing means your business appears in the ‘local 3-pack’ area for every local search. The ‘local 3-pack’ are the three local results that are typically displayed below the map, just after the first three listings that are reserved for Google Adwords advertisements.
Other than gaining this important advantage, you can reach followers and promote offers through Google Posts, answer queries in Google Q&A, and respond to customer feedback in Google reviews, etc. All of these have been known to tremendously affect rankings and click through rates.
13. Google Review Link Generator
As the name suggests, you can have a Google Review link generated in less than a second by this tool. This link is provided to customers so that they can leave a Google review for your business, which in turn boost rankings. There are many websites that do this and they are all available on Google – just type the words ‘Google Review Link Generator’.
What it does: Once you enter certain details to help Google find your business like your business’s name, address, etc. your link is generated. All you need to do now is share this link with your customers.
14. Local Search Results Checker
BrightLocal is one of the most well-known local search results checkers on the internet at present. This tool is specifically for local SEO, especially for those who want search results by location but are facing difficulty while doing this on Google.
What it does: There are two free tools available for use here – Check Local Search Results and Google Link & ID Generator. With the second tool, you can get three links – one that directs people to GMB reviews, a direct link to ask for more reviews from your customers and a SERP with the GMB Knowledge Panel.
15. Moz Local Check Business Listing
Another popular tool for local searches, Moz Local is one of the most recognized names in the SEO world. It enables its users to check their online presence and identify the strengths and weaknesses of their business information that is currently available on local searches.
What it does: Moz Local increases data accuracy using their data cleaning process and then distributes it throughout the search ecosystem.
16. Mobile-Friendly Test
Having a mobile-friendly website is a small but important factor to enhance its search engine rankings.
What it does: Mobile-Friendly Test is a Google website that helps determine exactly how mobile-friendly your website is while pinpointing the problem areas.
17. SEMrush
This tool is so beneficial that you can work wonders even with a free account that gives limited access, as long as you work with just one website. It concentrates on every aspect of SEM or Search Engine Marketing and is ideal for in-depth competitive research.
What it does: Its free account features 10 searches in their Domain Account and Keywords Account databases per day. In it, you get to create one ‘Project’, where you can conduct a basic audit for your website. Other tools include Position Tracking tool, SEO Ideas units, Keyword Magic Tool Lists, Topic Research Queries, and PDF Reports, etc.
18. SEOquake
This is an all-rounder in the SEO toolbar that offers multiple functions and is highly customizable. As a free SEO tool, It is valuable and extremely efficient; it has a large number of configurations that you can adjust as per your specific SEO needs.
What it does: Used especially for performing quick and reliable on-page audits, it can examine links (both internal and external), make a comparison of multiple domains and URLs before exporting all of the data collected to any place.
19. Structured Data Testing Tool
Google’ Structured Data Testing Tool is a resource that can greatly help you increase the potential of the content on your webpages.
What it does: You can use it to determine the flaws in your structured data and compare it with your rival’s structured data via a thorough analysis. This can be done by making changes to the code within the tool itself, which makes it an essential addition to your SEO toolkit.
20. Tag Manager
The Google Tag Manager is convenient to use by both experienced developers as well as non-developers. Although it may seem to serve a singular purpose – inserting tags in the HTML code – advanced users can make excellent use of this tool in many ways pertaining to Search Engine Optimization.
What it does: It lets you control all your tags, track many things like outbound clicks, events and file downloads, use nested variables and custom templates, and make adjustments to User Permissions and Security, all in one place.
21. Page Speed Insights
This Google tool gives a report on your website’s speed and performance. The report includes a performance score that provides valuable insights during an analysis and optimization of your website.
What it does: Your website’s performance is calculated based on both desktop as well as mobile devices and suggestions to make improvements are given accordingly. The performance score is important to consider because of a key added metric – Field Data – which involves statistics collected by the Chrome User Experience Report. Basically, the report shows webpage or website’s performance with real users all around the world.
22. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is a hugely popular website speed test tool that depends on multiple scores and grading systems. It will also show a list of things that could be wrong on your website. All the resulting information might seem totally confusing but understanding it will work wonders for WordPress website owners.
What it does: After running a website through this speed test tool you get a completely detailed performance report. This includes information like Total Page Size, Fully Loaded Time and a Waterfall Chart. Along with these, the scores on different parameters like PageSpeed and YSlow are also displayed for a thorough analysis of overall website results.
23. Yoast SEO
The ultimate tool when it comes to WordPress SEO, this is the singular, most trusted and installed by users worldwide. Although it can only be installed on a self-hosted WordPress website, this tool is absolutely a must-have if you want to constantly track every little thing that goes on in the website.
What it does: This tool focuses on each and every aspect of your website, such as Meta Titles, Descriptions, Keywords, Heading Tags, Image Alt Text and many more. Yoast SEO also ensures that you maintain the readability of your website’s content with a short sentence length, making the right use of transition words, etc.
Final Thoughts
There are many more such tools available online, but the 23 listed in this blog are really practical and necessary for optimizing a website, aside from being some of the most well-known ones.
We hope you found this list useful and that these tools help you optimize your website easily and efficiently. If you have any suggestions about more such super useful tools, feel free to drop a comment or a message!
Note: It is worth mentioning here that while the free options are pretty cool and useful, each of the tools mentioned has pro features that are also quite affordable and definitely worth the investment.
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