Most of the tools listed below are classified as freemium and are free at least to some extent. Some of them give limited tool access and require your credit card details to unlock certain features. Despite this, these tools still deserve a place on the list owing to the convenience and utility they offer.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the big daddy of SEO tools which gives you access to world-class enterprise grade analytics free of cost. If you are yet to jump on the bandwagon, I recommend wasting no more time and doing so right away. No other data source or tool provides complete web stats, detailed information and search insights like Google Analytics does.
It not only helps you understand the behavior of your visitors but also lists out practically all essential data about how they interact with your site. In addition to tracking all traffic information you get on your website, analytics also gives insight on what keywords drove traffic to your site. Simply put, Google Analytics is the tool I depend on the most, and if you’re not implementing Google analytics in your digital marketing strategy, you’re going to lag behind the competition, no matter what.
Website: https://analytics.google.com/
Google Search Console
Formerly called as Google Webmaster Tools, Google search console provides comprehensive site analysis, alerts, indexing and crawl error reports and is one of the finest tools coming out of the Google stable. If you’re doing any SEO, this tool is a must-have as every other tool, even paid ones, tends to make use of data churned out by Google search console.
It gives you an insight on what Google thinks of your site and provides similar data, which Google Analytics provides, but in a far more comprehensible and easy-to-decipher manner. Be sure to make use of Google Search Console especially if you want to ensure your site’s always running smoothly while detecting and resolving issues quickly. Google Search Console is thus a must-have tool to effectively communicate with Google about your site.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Taking into consideration the fact that Google considers the loading speed of your site while factoring its rankings, it’s paramount to possess a tool capable of analyzing your page speed while providing suggestions for potential improvement. Google PageSpeed Insights is precisely that tool and can be a very helpful tool to have in your SEO arsenal.
Anything that affects user-experience also impacts SEO. With the able assistance of Google PageSpeed insights, you will be able to understand whether your site is lightning-fast or dead-slow. Additionally, it also diagnoses reasons why your speed is slow, suggestions for improving the speed and usability of your site on multiple devices, and provides recommendations to get your site up to speed.
Google Structured Data Testing Tool
Previously known as the Rich Snippet Testing Tool, Google Structured Data Testing Tool is primarily a tool for testing your sites’ markup validation and diagnose for any errors while also checking for structured data markup. It’s also used for generating previews of rich snippets in Google search results for supported types.
These include validating microformats, schema.org and other structured data marked up in microdata, RDFa, RDFa Lite and JSON-LD by direct input or by fetching an existing URL.
When testing and validating your markup and schemas, there might be a slew of error messages and warnings. But these warnings are only related to the specific data consumer requirement so there’s no need to be alarmed. Furthermore, if there are no error messages, it means your markup is valid, and if there are warnings, it still means your markup is valid, but you can choose to further enhance it by structuring the optional fields as well.
This tool should always be used every time you change the structure of your site to check for its validation. Additionally, it pays to quickly copy and paste URL every time you create new content that is structured using microdata or JSON-LD formats on your website. Use this tool to check how Google views your structured data markup.
Google Trends
Google Trend’s is a unique keyword research tool enabling marketers to be in the constant loop of what people want to know about. It’s a useful tool to keep track of what keywords are being searched for on Google by users and also a great additional tool to check query volume. For marketers, especially in niche industries like fashion and technology, it’s vital to keep track of the latest trends in the market.
Google Trend’s helps you do just that by giving you a detailed analysis of the latest online trends and consumer interests to ensure that you stay one step ahead of the competition at all times. By analyzing changes in consumer search query behavior, marketers can understand the most popular current searches and gain a better understanding of the trending topics. Comprehending whether a particular keyword is currently trending or falling off is an invaluable tool for marketers while creating enticing content for their audiences.
Website: https://www.google.com/trends/
Google Keyword Planner
When it comes to keyword research in SEO, Google Keyword Planner is without a doubt, the de-facto starting point. With the assistance of Google Keyword Planner, you can find out what people search for while furnishing various statistics that will help guide your keyword strategy. Previously called Adwords Keyword tool, this tool provides information from monthly search query volume, your competition’s stats, and even lets you search keyword as per the location.
Furthermore, it also helps to provide suggested terms you might not have considered before. Additionally, it throw’s light on any negative keyword which could hinder your brand’s marketing strategy. Hence, Google keyword planner is a must have tool especially if you’re keyword-centric and rely on keywords to drive your brand’s SEO strategy.
Google.com in incognito mode
Opening up Google.com in incognito mode can indeed help you in your quest for keyword research. Searching google.com Incognito brings up an array of auto fill options which is otherwise not available in the standard mode. Discover how well you’re ranked on the results page while uncovering various auto-fill opportunities. When you’re signed in via the incognito windows, any customized search data Google stores gets duly left out ensuring it doesn’t affect your result in any possible way.
How to use Chrome in incognito mode: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/95464?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
Copyscape
Copyscape is one of the best free tools to scour and find duplicate content on the web. As a heads up, the content you develop and publish on your website should always be original no matter what. Duplicate content can adversely affect your rankings for your targeted keywords or even result in your blog or site getting completely removed if Google happens to find any duplicate content on your site or blog.
To check for duplicate content, all you got to do to is enter the URL for the blog post or website, and Copyscape searches its database against published and unpublished articles. It helps you determine whether that content already exists or not. The tool will search amongst PDF files, websites, forums, and blogs to zero in on the location where the article was copied from. These results thus help get your SEO in order and put an end to duplicate content problems.
SEO Site Checkup
SEO Site Checkup is your very own audit tool which will run a quick audit of your site by scanning your site’s pages and presenting a complete breakdown of the possible errors which is hampering your site or blog from scoring high on rankings.
Moreover, you will also see a bifurcation of the critical fixes which need to be addressed on a priority basis, semi-important fixes and also the gives details about the passed checks. There’s an Improve Your Score button which provides you with site speed recommendations and suggests ways to fix the errors. Higher your score on this, the better your site ranks and scores on SERP’s.
Website: http://seositecheckup.com/
Screaming Frog
Designed keeping SEO oriented people in mind, Screaming Frog is a robust site crawler which needs to be installed locally on your Mac, PC or Linux machine. Within a few seconds, the program crawls through all the sites you list out, and you will be presented vital data about the URL’s entered. From pinpointing on-page issues to listing out common SEO problems, it gives a search spider’s perspective of the website, CSS, Scripts, etc. you inputted.
Manually analyzing a page can be quite cumbersome and problematic. Screaming frog log file analyzer enables you to view information from an SEO perspective as it quickly analyses, audits and reviews a site, thus saving you a lot of time. Besides, you can export your data into Excel and import it to a resource tool like RavenSEO or Moz for further analysis and monitoring of links or rankings for keywords.
Website: www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a helpful tool for competitor research and gives you a solid perspective of your competitor’s traffic statistics, user engagement metric, organic keywords et al. If you are unaware of your direct competitors, it has a brilliant feature called Similar Sites which details out all other websites which are similar to your site.
In case you don’t have similar or direct competitors, SimilarWeb helps you evaluate your industry in detail or the industry of your target audience which helps in product development strategy. Moreover, you can also generate information about your website and customers usefully for determining your online branding strategy or for determining content for your site.
SimilarWeb is not only helpful for finding new outreach opportunities but also gives you a breakdown of your traffic sources in a simple and uncompleted graph format which helps in decision making. View site stats for any domain or only compare traffic between two websites; the possibilities are endless with SimilarWeb.
Website: https://www.similarweb.com/
KeywordTool.io
KeywordTool.io is an excellent keyword research tool as it collects auto search results from Google, Bing, YouTube, and App Store and provides a massive number of the very best long-tail keyword opportunities. If you’re looking to build an exclusive niche site, this is an excellent tool to have as most of the keywords generated are unique and may not be discovered with other tools.
AdWords Keyword tool or any other keyword tool for that matter doesn’t possess such a comprehensive database of long-tail keywords owing to small volumes. Despite Google stating, it will restrict access to autocomplete results, KeywordTool.io has seemingly found an alternative way. With over 700+ keyword ideas based on just a single keyword, KeywordTool.io is undoubtedly the one-stop keyword tool for all your keyword related needs.
Website: http://keywordtool.io/
Moz Toolbar
A firm favorite among digital marketers, Moz toolbar, is a must-have SEO toolbar which is just too good to pass up. This toolbar set the benchmark in SEO toolbars, and despite having several solid alternatives available now, Moz Toolbar remains the gold standard. Primarily a browser toolbar available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, it provides SEO insights of a particular website while displaying essential metrics as well.
Although a toolbar, it is also well-integrated into SERP as well. You can also dig deeper into the data and quickly analyze and investigate client and competitors websites. Besides, the data it provides, help link prospect websites and domains and provides statistics such as page authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) and the number of backlinks.
You can also investigate further by clicking the magnifying glass icon on the left side of the bar, which will expand into a new panel. This panel gives information concerning contents of webpage’s title tag, markup, meta robots, headings, alt text, page speed load and more crucial for SEO.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a backlink analysis tool and it’s difficult to find a link research tool which is better than Ahrefs at the moment. Ahrefs is a great link analysis tool and helps you get an in-depth look at your backlinks while also allowing you to snoop on your competitor as well.
Currently, when it comes to rankings, Google cares about the quality of the content first and links second. With the help of Ahref’s simple user interface and index, you get an understanding on how and where your competitors are earning links and insights and help search traffic of any URL or website quickly.
It also plays well with Buzzstream and other link building CRM software. With over 15 trillion links, which is continually updated, Ahref’s is the most powerful SEO backlink checker tool. You simply won’t be able to find a better link research tool than Ahrefs.
Website: https://ahrefs.com/
Source: GroupBuy SEO tools
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