SEO can be complicated, not to mention competitive.
And if you’re running a company and are trying to get some traction online, it can feel like a real uphill battle.
Fortunately:
There are several free SEO tools available today in 2023 that can help make your search engine optimization efforts a whole lot easier.
Keep reading to learn more about the top 11 free SEO tools to use in 2023.
1. Google Search Console
As the preeminent SEO tool for Google users, Google Search Console is the Gold Standard as far as monitoring your organic traffic goes since the tool comes directly from Google.
Benefits of GSC include the following:
(1) Seeing which keywords your site ranks for in Google and how many clicks and impressions those keywords get.
(2) Knowing your website’s average position for a given keyword on the SERP.
(3) Seeing what your CTR is—which, by the way, is super important. Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey and founder of WordStream, presents fairly convincing proof that raising your organic CTR helps to significantly boost your rankings.
(4) Monitoring your site security as well as helping you resolve technical issues, such as site load speed. You can learn more about your site’s loading speed through Google’s Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed Insights.
(5) Allowing you to see what pages of your website have been crawled and indexed by Google—and when.
Our Favorite Google Search Console Feature
The Mobile Usability report under the Experience tab.
The Reason?
With a mind-blowing 15 billion mobile devices operating worldwide, having a website that works well on mobile is not only helpful but is overwhelmingly important.
The power of GSC’s Mobile Usability report is that it allows you to see which of your pages are usable on mobile and which ones aren’t.
The report also explains why your unusable pages don’t work properly, which gives you the feedback you need to fix those pages.
Free SEO Tools: Is Google Search Console Completely Free?
Yes, it is!
Unlike many other SEO tools, Google Search Console is 100 percent free and is provided as a service by Google to improve the quality of your website—and consequently, the quality of their search engine results pages.
2. Animalz Revive
Animalz Revive is an amazing resource for website owners who want to fix their issues with content decay.
Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of outdated or ineffective content on your website, but the good news is there is a solution.
Animalz Revive helps you keep track of what you should update, optimize, or expand on your site so that your content is compelling and relevant.
Benefits of Animalz Revive include the following:
(1) Keeping track of your content that hasn’t been updated according to the latest SEO trends and thus needs what’s known as a “defensive” content refresh.
(2) Tracking your content that used to perform well but is currently declining.
(3) Finding out what your “mis-hit” content is—i.e., any content that has big potential but never saw substantial results.
(4) Receiving helpful content suggestions to improve your decaying content, such as learning what articles to promote, whether you should merge any pieces of content together, which of your posts need to be expanded, and so on.
(5) Sharing content reports with your team.
Our Favorite Animalz Revive Feature
Our favorite part of this tool is the “traffic loss since peak” stat, which shows you a percentage of how much traffic your posts have lost since they were at their strongest point.
The Reason?
Knowing specifically how much traffic your posts are losing is important since it tells you what to focus on and improve.
Free SEO Tools: Is Animalz Revive Completely Free?
Yes, it is!
To use the tool, though, you will need to submit your email address to Animalz Revive and also allow them to access your Google Analytics. Website owners may not feel comfortable with this, which is one of the potential downsides of this tool.
3. SEOquake
SEOquake is a browser plugin that allows you to analyze web pages and benefit from insightful SEO data.
Benefits of SEOquake include the following:
(1) Easily access SEO data about any web page you visit, including your own. All you have to do to use SEOquake is to install the SEOquake Chrome extension, visit a web page, and then open the extension.
(2) Seeing the keyword difficulty for any keyword you search for in Google. SEOquake populates it as a percentage.
(3) Getting a page overview of any web page you visit, along with domain parameters, traffic analytics, and more.
(4) Checking your mobile compatibility with an SEO audit.
(5) Learning more about your competitor’s links with the tool’s internal/external link analysis.
Our Favorite SEOquake Feature
The Keyword Density tab.
The Reason?
Keyword research can be a challenge if you are having trouble finding keywords that will strengthen your page and make it more attractive to Google.
Luckily, there are tools like SEOquake that give you a window into your competitor’s keyword density so that you can see what keywords they are using and how often.
That’s what the Keyword Density tab is for.
Free SEO Tools: Is SEOquake Completely Free?
Yes, it is.
However, to benefit from all its capabilities, you do need to link your SEOquake Chrome browser extension to your free SEMrush account. If you don’t have a SEMrush account, then you’ll need to make one.
4. Bing Webmaster Tools
If you want your website to rank in Bing, which is a good idea since it is the second largest search engine in the world, then you need Bing Webmaster Tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools allow you to add your website to the Bing crawler and ensure that it is available on Bing Search.
Bing WMT is Bing’s version of Google Search Console.
Benefits of Bing Webmaster Tools include the following:
(1) Allowing Bing to crawl and index your website. You can add your XML sitemap.
(2) Seeing which keywords your site ranks for in Bing Search as well as tracking other performance metrics (Total clicks, Average CTR, etc.).
(3) Keeping track of your backlinks with the Bing WMT Backlinks tool.
(4) Importing your properties from Google Search Console to Bing Webmaster Tools.
(5) Benefiting from Bing WMT’s SEO Reports, which point out common errors that can mess up your on-page SEO.
Our Favorite Bing Webmaster Tools Feature
The Backlinks tab.
The Reason?
Being able to track the health of your backlinks on a search engine as prominent as Bing is very helpful.
The Bing WMT Backlinks tab is intuitive and presents the most important backlink information to you upfront so that you can make strategic decisions on how to improve your backlinks.
Free SEO Tools: Is Bing Webmaster Tools Completely Free?
Yes, it is!
5. Yoast WordPress Plugin
With millions of Yoast SEO users (the plugin has over 5 million active installs to date), the tool appears to be well on its way to accomplishing its mission, which is providing “SEO for Everyone.”
Yoast comes with a range of features that individuals and businesses alike will find conducive to improving their search engine optimization.
Benefits of Yoast WordPress Plugin include the following:
(1) Automated improvements to your technical SEO, such as meta tags.
(2) Previewing how your meta titles (title tags), URL slugs, and meta descriptions appear in Google with mobile and desktop view.
(3) Enjoying faster loading times, up to 5-10%, thanks to indexables.
(4) Having advanced XML sitemaps.
(5) Adding structured data markup to your site through integration with Schema.org.
Our Favorite Yoast WordPress Plugin Feature
The RSS tab….And RSS feed settings.
The Reason?
RSS feed settings allow you to claim your content and keep scraper sites from stealing it, which is important in a competitive digital environment.
Yoast SEO allows you to add post links, blog links, and author links to your RSS feed so that you can receive the appropriate attribution for your content.
Yoast offers two boxes:
(1) The “Content to put before each post in the feed” box.
And (2) the “Content to put after each post in the feed” box.
You can post your links in these boxes with an attribution, such as “Written by (insert author’s link) to ensure that a content scraper can’t swipe your work and then run off and claim it as its own.
Free SEO Tools: Is Yoast WordPress Plugin Completely Free?
No, it is not completely free….BUT it does have a very useful free version that comes with substantial capabilities.
Just to clarify, Yoast SEO is free, but users do have the option to upgrade to two different paid Yoast plans.
One is called Yoast SEO Premium Plugin and costs $99/year, and the other is Yoast Plugin Subscription, which costs $229/year.
Yoast Premium offers advantages like social previewing for social media postings, automatic redirects of web pages that you remove, and internal linking suggestions that help Google know which of your pages are important.
Yoast’s Plugin Subscription plan includes all of what Yoast Premium offers, plus four additional Yoast plugins— for WooCommerce, Video, News, and Local SEO.
6. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is an SEO Spider tool that crawls your website and analyses it for SEO issues. The tool can be used on both Mac and Windows.
Benefits of Screaming Frog include the following:
(1) Allowing you to quickly audit your web pages rather than go through them one by one. Being able to check your web pages all at once makes it much easier to spot duplicate content and other issues.
(2) Compiling your SEO recommendations into an easily digestible list. The recommendations you receive may include reviewing your redirects, looking at broken links, and analyzing your meta titles and meta descriptions.
(3) Helping you enhance your technical SEO by giving you insights about your site architecture.
(4) Performing content audits as well as link audits.
(5) Generating XML sitemaps.
Our Favorite Screaming Frog Feature
The Canonicals tab.
The Reason?
Canonicals play an important role in SEO since they are the pages that Google shows in search results. When you add a canonical tag to a web page, you are signaling to Google that the page is a master copy of a set of duplicate pages.
Being able to track the status of your canonicals helps to ensure that your site remains indexable and also helps you solve the problem of having too many duplicate pages.
Regarding duplicate pages:
Search crawlers view URLs much differently than humans do, which is why one page on your website (with seemingly one URL in your eyes) may have multiple URLs in the eyes of a search crawler.
Using a tool like Screaming Frog to see all your canonicalized pages in one place is rather useful due to this fact.
Free SEO Tools: Is Screaming Frog Completely Free?
No, it is not.
But the free version is very useful and offers a ton of value, which is why it is on this list.
With the free version of Screaming Frog, you can crawl up to 500 URLs.
Plus:
You get to benefit from excellent free features, which include finding broken links, generating XML sitemaps, and analyzing meta titles and meta data.
The paid version of Screaming Frog, meanwhile, allows for unlimited URL crawls and comes with additional capabilities, such as Google Analytics integration, finding near duplicate content, checking your structured data, and much more.
The paid version of Screaming Frog costs around $170.
7. Google Analytics
This list wouldn’t be complete without Google Analytics, which is a highly useful SEO tool that analyzes your website’s traffic.
Benefits of Google Analytics include the following:
(1) Knowing what countries your website is getting traffic from and what your website’s visitor demographics are.
If you’re a website owner, using Google Analytics will help you focus on creating content that is contextually relevant to the culture and demographic you are primarily making content for. Naturally, this will help you sell your products and services better.
(2) Seeing which of your keywords are bringing users to your website…and to what pages.
(3) Lowering your website’s bounce rate by helping you analyze the behavior of visitors on your web pages and making improvements as necessary.
(4) Monitoring your visitors’ average time on page (individual pages) in addition to the session duration (time on your website as a whole).
(5) Seeing what devices visitors to your website are using, i.e., desktops, smartphones, or tablets. Knowing what device types are being used to visit your website will help you create content tailored to different screen sizes.
Our Favorite Google Analytics Feature
The Google Analytics Home page.
The Reason?
Google Analytics Home summarizes important information about your website in one place.
Rather than having to dig for your user traffic, your revenue, and other insights, you can find what you need at a glance, which makes managing the health of your website easier.
One of the problems with many SEO tools out there is that they are too complicated and cause website owners to get bogged down by superfluous details (not everyone who owns a website will want to look at hundreds, if not thousands, of complex data points.)
Google Analytics helps mitigate this problem by giving you a fairly straightforward window into your website’s SEO so that you can take concrete steps to improve your site.
Free SEO Tools: Is Google Analytics Completely Free?
Google Analytics has both a free version and a paid version.
You can use the free version as much as you want without hitting a use limit.
And of course:
You can enjoy the benefits of the free version, such as keeping track of your most popular web pages, seeing who is viewing your website in real-time, and monitoring your conversion rate.
Meanwhile:
The paid version of Google Analytics, which is called Google Analytics 360, offers you greatly enhanced capabilities.
These include but are not limited to integrating with Google BigQuery, benefiting from advanced analysis and integrations (Segment Overlap, Exploration, Google Cloud, Google Ad Manager, etc.), and having access to highly skilled Google Analytics support experts.
Google Analytics 360 costs a whopping $12,500 per month or more, depending on the contract!
8. Keyword Surfer
Keyword Surfer, which was created by the SEO company Surfer, is an amazingly useful tool that shows you the traffic volume for keywords that you search for on Google.
This is one of our favorite tools, thanks to how easy it is to use.
Benefits of Keyword Surfer include the following:
(1) Typing a search into Google and instantly seeing the traffic volume for that search.
(2) Getting a list of keyword ideas that are related to your search query.
For instance, if you searched for “Kitten” on Google, Keyword Surfer would populate a list of related keywords like “Cats for adoption,” “Adopt pet,” and “Kitten adoption.”
(3) Seeing the traffic volumes for keywords related to your query—plus seeing how similar Keyword Surfer’s suggestions are to your original query.
For instance, if you search for the word, “Apple,” and one of the suggested keywords from Keyword Surfer is “Watermelon,” the similarity won’t be very high and will be marked with a percentage—perhaps around 5%.
If, on the other hand, one of the suggested keywords is, “Apple sauce,” the similarity percentage that Keyword Surfer populates will be higher, perhaps around 50%.
(4) Getting free AI-generated post outlines for your search queries.
Once you search for a keyword, Keyword Surfer gives you the option to generate a content outline for it. If you choose to use their content outline, the one you receive from the Surfer website will include subheadings that contain popular relevant keywords.
Our Favorite Keyword Surfer Feature
The Keyword Surfer Google Chrome extension.
The Reason?
The Keyword Surfer Google Chrome extension gives you valuable feedback on search query volumes without all the hassle you’d normally encounter with a heavy-handed keyword tool.
It’s convenient to use and really is the perfect, simple tool for keeping tabs on what search queries are popular while you browse the internet or do your SEO research.
Free SEO Tools: Is Keyword Surfer Completely Free?
The Keyword Surfer Chrome extension is 100% free.
However:
Surfer, the SEO company behind the tool, does charge users for some of their other offerings.
9. Reddit Keyword Research Tool
If you’re looking to source popular keyword searches from Reddit and tailor your content accordingly, then we suggest using the Reddit Keyword Research Tool.
Benefits of the Reddit Keyword Research Tool include the following:
(1) Quickly finding the top keyword phrases for popular subreddits. The top phrases populate in a list produced by the Reddit Keyword Research Tool.
(2) Seeing a monthly traffic volume amount for every popular keyword in a given subreddit.
(3) Receiving a link to related Reddit posts for a given keyword so that you can follow some of the discussions in which the keyword is being used.
(4) Exporting your lists of populated keywords into downloadable Excel sheets.
Our Favorite Reddit Keyword Research Tool Feature
The Reddit Keyword Research Tool’s main page.
The Reason?
The tool only has one page.
Those who prefer free SEO tools with a short learning curve will appreciate this one.
Free SEO Tools: Is Reddit Keyword Research Tool Completely Free?
Yes. It is 100% free.
10. Chrome DevTools
Chrome DevTools is a web developer toolkit that allows you to test your website’s code, spot problems with your website, or build a new website faster and better.
Although not strictly an SEO tool, Chrome DevTools can help you improve your SEO significantly, which makes it too valuable not to mention here.
Benefits of Chrome DevTools include the following:
(1) Making sure your website doesn’t inadvertently block Google’s web crawler, which can help solve certain indexing issues.
(2) Checking to see how Google views your website, which can also help solve certain indexing issues you might be facing.
If you update your meta description, for example, and Google doesn’t register the change, you can use Chrome DevTools to see how your site is communicating with Google and potentially find out what the problem is.
(3) Deepening your understanding of Google’s Core Web Vitals with the Chrome DevTools Performance tab.
(4) Gaining insights into your website’s performance via the Performance Insights panel.
Our Favorite Chrome DevTools Feature
The Performance Insights panel.
The Reason?
Chrome DevTools Performance Insights panel allows you to test your website’s page load performance.
The better your page load performance, the more Google will smile on your website and the more appealing it will be to your users.
Free SEO Tools: Is Chrome DevTools Completely Free?
Yes, it is.
11. BROWSEO
Browseo is a helpful SEO tool that allows you to view a website in its barebones form. If you’ve ever wanted to view a website how a search engine does, then you’ll find this tool to be quite interesting.
Benefits of BROWSEO include the following:
(1) Seeing a website “as is” rather than its embellished version. This will help you understand the website’s structure better.
(2) Knowing how many words there are on a page—plus what the H1 through H6 subheadings are.
(3) Getting a number for how many external and internal links are present on a given page.
(4) Checking a website for cloaking.
Please Note: Browseo’s cloaking-attempt checker is still in the beta phase of development.
For those unfamiliar with cloaking, it is when a website owner shows search engines one thing and its users another…for the exact same page.
This is done to mislead search engines (for instance, by adding stuffed keywords) and to boost a page’s ranking.
Our Favorite BROWSEO Feature
The Headings section.
The Reason?
When you input a URL into Browseo’s browser, it produces a helpful overview of the website’s subheadings and the keywords that are being used.
As you can imagine, this is very beneficial for your keyword research. It’s not hard to input a competitor URL in Browseo, see what keywords they are using, and emulate.
If you don’t want to pay a substantial monthly fee for a tool like Ahrefs, we recommend trying Browseo.
Don’t get us wrong. We love Ahrefs (it’s our preferred tool), but we understand that many new SEOs may not have the budget for a more advanced tool, so we hope you have found this list helpful.
Free SEO Tools: Is BROWSEO Completely Free?
Yes, it is. You can use it as much as you like.
Free SEO Tools: Honorable Mentions
12. Local Search Results Checker from BrightLocal
Want to know what a Google search looks like when you search from a location other than your own? If so, then check out the Local Search Results Checker tool by BrightLocal.
This tool is amazing for improving your local SEO. The only downside is that you only get 10 free daily searches!
13. Woorank’s SEO Analysis & Website Review Tool
Woorank’s SEO Analysis & Website Review tool allows you to review onsite and offsite data for a given website.
The tool, which can be installed as a free Chrome extension, points out elements that impact a site’s findability and usability.
While the tool is mostly free, you do have to pay for some of its more advanced features, such as seeing the number of mobile visits that a website gets every month or syncing the tool to your Google Analytics account.
Further Reading: Free Bonus SEO Tools
Additional Free SEO Tools – Google
Google Trends
Google Data Studio
Anything by Google is going to be one of the better free SEO tools that you can find ^
Excellent Partially Free SEO Tools
Answer The Public
Keyword Hero
These are helpful, partially free SEO tools, but they do come with substantial price points if you’re looking to upgrade their capabilities.
Those who are reading this and want to save by using 100% free SEO tools will benefit greatly by looking at Google’s offerings as well as some of the other suggestions in the 11 top free SEO tools list above.
An Unconventional SEO Tool
Wayback Machine – You can use this site to track changes to competitor websites and see if those changes have resulted in an increase in traffic.
Need Help With Your SEO?
If free SEO tools aren’t cutting it for you, and you want to work with a reliable team to boost your SEO instead (or if you are in the market for an experienced web designer), call us today.
To learn more about who we are and what we do, check out our short 5-step Process video and get to know our company founder, Alex!
