Free To Use Best SEO Tools to Improve Your Ranking

Choosing the best SEO tools for the job can be a daunting task. There are so many free and paid options out there so it’s natural to think “where do I start?”

From getting the best features, to ensuring the maximum outcome for your website to everything in between, it’s easy to become lost and confused.

There are literally hundreds of tools out there that are useful for Internet marketers and SEO experts. However, most of the good ones are part of premium packages that can burn through some serious cash. That is why we created this growing list of free SEO tools! Here you can take a glance at our favorite list of SEO tools, or if you really are looking for something specific, look it up in our search box!

Find the Right Tool for the Job

There is never a time while performing tedious and mundane tasks that you don’t wish there was a tool that would do it all for you. Sometimes there is, but you might just not know it. That’s why you should always do a quick look for a tool that might in fact save you hours of work.

To help you do your due diligence before selecting the search engine optimization (SEO) tool, we’ve put together an amazing list of free SEO tools with all the information you’ll need to make the right choice.

Google Keyword Planner
https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner
Keyword Research
The tool to replace Google’s popular keyword tool has been derided by some, but still offers data not available anywhere else.
Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics
Analytics
The most popular of all the analytics tools available, Google Analytics continually innovates and sets the standard.
Google Analytics API
https://developers.google.com/analytics
API, Analytics
The Google Analytics API is great for building custom reports and tools, and also for pulling data straight into Excel or Google Docs.
Google PageSpeed Insights
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Speed
Tools, data, and insights to improve your page speed. Page speed is correlated with better rankings and user engagement, so this matters.
Google Public Data
http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
Content
Drawing on vast public databases, Google public data offers a great starting point for content research, infographics, and more.
Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool
http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
Technical SEO, CRO
That SEO Mofo! Use this tool to see how your snippet may appear in Google’s search results. Add structured data, review stars, and more.
Google Structured Data Testing Tool
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Structured Data, Technical SEO
If you use Schema.org 1 micro formats or any other type of structured data, this tool will verify your markup.
Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends
Keyword Research
See what’s trending in Google search results and view keyword search popularity over time. A must for trends.
Google Webmaster
http://www.google.com/webmasters
Tools Suite, Diagnostic
The interface recently received an overhaul, and Google Webmaster remains a must-have resource of diagnostic and health tools for site owners.
Social Mention by BrandMentions
https://brandmentions.com/socialmention
Social
Free real-time social mentions search & analysis
Social Mention finds who’s talking about your brand or competitors in the news & social media
It also offers real-time social media search and analysis. Enter a search term and see who’s sharing what, right now.
Bing Webmaster Tools
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Tools Suite, Diagnostic
Similar in function to Google Webmaster Tools, Bing offers a suite of interesting research tools and resources for webmasters.
Bitly
https://bitly.com
Social, Analytics
Most people use Bitly for URL shortening, but the real power of this platform comes from its analytics.
Boomerang
http://www.boomeranggmail.com
Email, Productivity
Boomerang lets you follow up on emails, even when you forget. Great for link building or any time you send a lot of emails.
Buffer
https://bufferapp.com
Social
Optimize your online social media sharing. Buffer allows you to share with your audience at the optimal times for greater visibility.
BuiltWith
http://builtwith.com
Competitive Intelligence
Use BuiltWith to discover what technology nearly any website was, well, built with. Great for competitive intelligence as well.
Buzzstream Tools Suite
http://tools.buzzstream.com/link-building
Link Building, Tools Suite, Email
Most people know Buzzstream as an outreach platform, but they also offer a number of free link-building tools. This company gets it.
Caption Tube
http://captiontube.appspot.com
Video
Free and easy resource used to create captions for YouTube. Helps with usability and offers viewers a readable transcript.
CircleCount
http://www.circlecount.com
Social, Analytics
Google+ analytics ramped up. Free resource to track your followers and analyze your shares. See how many followers you’ve gained over time.
Content Strategy Generator Tool
http://seogadget.com/content-strategy-generator-tool-v2-update
Content
This tool from SEO gadget helps you plan your content strategy intelligently, using keyword research and estimating your audience size.
Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML
http://word2cleanhtml.com
Content, Productivity
Despite the rise of Google Docs, Word still dominates much of the world. Copying and pasting has always been a hurdle, but this tool makes it easy.
Copyscape
http://www.copyscape.com
Content
Copyscape serves both as a plagiarism checker and a duplicate-content checker. Great to use if your content has been distributed across the web.
Domain Hunter Plus
http://domainhunterplus.com
Link Building
This magic extension for Chrome not only helps you find important broken links, but also tells you if the links point to an available domain.
Easel.ly
http://www.easel.ly
Infographics
Free tools for creating and sharing inforgraphics. The templates allow anyone to create a professional-looking graphic.
Email Format
http://email-format.com
Email, Productivity
Email Format helps you find the proper structure for thousands of companies and organizations across the web.
FindPeopleonPlus
http://www.findpeopleonplus.com
Social
The ultimate Google+ directory that’s great for research, outreach, and link building. Sort by keywords, profession, country, and more.
Robots.txt Checker
https://sitechecker.pro/robots-tester
Robots.txt, Technical SEO
Many robots.txt files contain hidden errors not easily visible to humans. Run your file through this tool and you never know what you’ll discover.
GetListed
https://getlisted.org
Local, Moz
This awesome local SEO tool scores your local SEO visibility and gives you actionable next steps to raise your score.
IFTTT
https://ifttt.com
Productivity
IFTTT stands for IF This, Then That. The tool allows you to create automatic triggers between various apps, like Gmail and Twitter.
Infogram
https://infogram.com
Infographics
A great free Infographics resource that allows you to easily create graphics and data visualizations.
Internet Marketing Ninjas SEO Tools
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/tools
Tools Suite
The Ninjas are some of the best SEOs and online marketers out there, and they’ve put some of their best tools online for free.
Linkstant
http://www.linkstant.com
Link Building
This nifty analytics tool alerts you anytime someone links to your website. Great for outreach and intelligence gathering.
MailTester
http://mailtester.com
Email
Need to send an email to an untested address, but you don’t want to spam them? Check it first with this mail tester to verify.
MozCast
http://mozcast.com
SERP Tracking, Moz
Want to know if Google is testing its algorithm this week? MozCast gives you a daily weather report to track changes in the SERPs.
Pingdom
https://tools.pingdom.com
Speed
Pingdom offers an entire suite of speed tools to help analyze page load, DNS issues, and connectivity.
Matomo
https://matomo.org
Analytics
The Google Analytics alternative that protects your data and your customers’ privacy, Take back control with Matomo – a powerful web analytics platform that gives you 100% data ownership.
Rank Checker for Firefox
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker
Rank Tracking
This light and easy desktop tool checks rankings with the click of a button. Quick, easy and free.
Schema Markup Generator & Structured Data Testing Tool
https://seoscout.com/tools/schema-generator
Structured Data, Technical SEO
Everyone loves using Schema.org 1, but the microformats are difficult to write by hand. This generator from the folks at Raven simplifies the task.
Seer Toolbox
https://www.seerinteractive.com/labs/seo-toolbox
Tools Suite, Analytics, Link Research
SEER opened up its internal toolbox for everyone in the world to use. These are the same tools used in-house at SEER, and they rock.
SEO Toolbar For Firefox
http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar
Tools Suite, Toolbar, Technical SEO, Firefox Extensions
On of the most popular tools available, The SEO Toolbar puts a ton of information at your fingertips including backlinks and competitive research.
SEO Tools for Excel
http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools
Tools Suite, Analytics, Social
You don’t need to be an Excel ninja to use Niels Bosma’s SEO Tools for Excel. This plugin does so many things many SEOs won’t work without it.
SEOQuake
http://www.seoquake.com
Toolbar, Tools Suite, Technical SEO
More raw data than any other SEO toolbar out there.
SharedCount
http://www.sharedcount.com
Social, Analytics
Want to know how any piece of content was shared socially across the major services? This is the tool to use.
Similar Page Checker
https://www.webconfs.com/seo-tools/similar-page-checker
Content, Technical SEO
Use this tool to check for duplicate content issues. The Similar Page Checker will give you a score of how closely the HTML of two pages resemble each other.
Social Authority API
https://followerwonk.com/social-authority
API, Social
How much reach and social authority do your followers have? How about the people you’re trying to connect with? The free Social Authority API will tell you.
Anchor Text Over Optimization Tool
http://www.removeem.com/ratios.php
Link Research, Technical SEO
Worried about Google’s Penguin algorithm hitting you for over-optimized anchor text? Simply type in your URL for a full report of which links might raise flags.
Text Cleaner
http://www.textcleanr.com
Content
Some of the best tools solve the simplest problems. Text cleaner cleans up all kinds of text formatting when copying and pasting between aplications.
Ubersuggest
http://ubersuggest.org
Keyword Research
Every SEO loves Ubersuggest for its ease of use and wealth of keyword research ideas. Utilizing the power of Google Suggest, it returns hundreds of potential results.
URI Valet
http://urivalet.com
Technical SEO
A great tool for digging into server headers, canonical information, analyzing redirect problems and more.
WebPagetest
http://www.webpagetest.org
Speed
Quick and easy website speed tool. Offers suggestions for improving performance.
Wordle
http://www.wordle.net
Content
Create beautiful word clouds. Great for visualizations, graphics, and research.
Wordstream Free Keyword Tools
https://www.wordstream.com/keywords
Keyword Research, Tools Suite
In addition to its paid offerings, Wordstream offers a suite of free keyword tools offering access to thousands of keyword suggestions.
Xenu’s Link Sleuth
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Diagnostic, Technical SEO
Winner of the ugliest-SEO-tool-on-the-planet award, Xenu is also one of the most useful. Crawl entire sites, find broken links, create sitemaps, and more.
XML-Sitemaps.com
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
XML Sitemaps Generator
XML-Sitemaps offers probably the easiest sitemap creation solution anywhere. Great for smaller sites when you need a sitemap in minutes.
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Technical SEO
If you could only choose one WordPress plugin for you site, the first would be from Yoast, and so would the second. This one sets the standard.
Ahrefs
https://ahrefs.com
Link Research, Link Building
One of the more popular link research tools, Ahrefs offers a large index and nice anchor text distribution charts. Mostly a paid tool, but they offer some free data.
Banana Tag
http://bananatag.com
Email
Banana Tag allows you to track your emails after you send them. For example, check your email open rates from Gmail.
CloudFlare
https://www.cloudflare.com
Speed
How do they make CloudFlare free? It works both as a CDN and a security service to provide your website with speed and safety.
Followerwonk
https://followerwonk.com
Social, Analytics, Moz
Perhaps the coolest thing about Followerwonk is the ability to track your followers. Smart SEOs also use it for outreach and research.
Keyword Eye
http://www.keywordeye.com
Keyword Research
Keyword eye adds a twist to keyword research by adding rich visualizations — essential when you want to move beyond keywords to valuable concepts.
KnowEm
http://knowem.com
Social
KnowEm allows you to check 100’s of social profiles at once to check availability. Looking for the perfect brand name? Check KnowEm first.
Majestic SEO
http://www.majesticseo.com
Link Research, Competitive Intelligence, Link Building
You’ve probably seen Majestic SEO link charts all over the Internet. Great crawling technology combined with several free options make for great link research.
MozBar
https://moz.com/products/pro/seo-toolbar
Tools Suite, Toolbar, Moz
The standard SEO toolbar for legions of marketers, the MozBar allows you to perform over 50 key tasks right from your browser. Highly recommended.
Mozscape API
http://moz.com/products/api
API, Link Research, Moz
Companies everywhere incorporate the Mozscape API into their own products, but it’s also available to individuals, and much of the data is free.
nTopic
http://www.ntopic.org
Content
nTopic is one of the few proven methods for giving your content a relevancy score and offering keyword suggestions to improve it.
Open Site Explorer
https://moz.com/link-explorer
Link Research, Moz, Competitive Intelligence, Link Building
When Google and Yahoo started removing backlink data from the public, Moz built Open Site Explorer to fill a huge need. See backlinks, anchor text, popularity metrics and more.
Piktochart
http://piktochart.com
Infographics
A cute and easy infographic generator. No experience required. Your all-in-one visual communication solution, Easily create reports, presentations, infographics, social media graphics, and prints. You can turn any text-heavy content into a visual story that sticks with Piktochart’s collaborative design platform.
Screaming Frog
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk
Diagnostic, Technical SEO
A powerful website crawling tool with a ton of features and customizations. A must-have for most serious SEOs.
Searchmetrics Visibility Charts
http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research
SERP Tracking, Competitive Intelligence
Track the search visibility of any website, in addition to tracking winners and losers in Google’s search results.
SEMrush
http://www.semrush.com
Tools Suite, Keyword Research, Competitive Intelligence
The paid and organic keyword data offered by SEMrush is often scary good and comprehensive. Also great for researching competitors’ ads.
SimilarWeb
http://www.similarweb.com
Competitive Intelligence
Impressive competitive intelligence across a number of online industries. Competitor website stats are hard to come by, but Similar Web does a good job.
Visitor Analysis
https://www.flagvisitoranalysis.com
Analytics, Visitors Analysis, web tracking system
Free Visitors Analysis for your Webpage Easy to create and fully customizable visitor analysis for your website (or) a blog. Interesting fact it provide advance statistics and real-time web tracking system.
StatCounter
http://statcounter.com
Analytics
Free, quick, and lightweight analytics solution. Often used by those who want to avoid using Google Analytics for privacy reasons.
Trello
https://trello.com
Productivity
Project management and tracking made simple. Used and endorsed by Moz.
Whitespark Local Citation Finder
https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder
Local
Finding local citations is key to local SEO. Whitespark offers a number of free and paid solutions to find the local citations to rise above the competition.
Whois Lookup
http://whois.domaintools.com/
Competitive Intelligence
Find registration, contact, and administrative information for any domain.
Wistia
http://wistia.com
Video
The king of online video, Wistia offers SEO-friendly solutions for video hosting. Both free and low-cost options available.
Free Trials
Optimizely
https://www.optimizely.com
A/B Testing, CRO
Easy A/B testing and analytics to help you move toward success in your CRO efforts.
Raven
http://raventools.com
Tools Suite, Diagnostic, Content, Social
Raven offers a classic suite of SEO, content, and research tools popular with many marketers.
Visual Website Optimizer
https://vwo.com
A/B Testing, CRO
Visual Website Optimizer allows you to run A/B tests with a simple online editor that lets you test content without knowing code.
Wordtracker
http://www.wordtracker.com
Keyword Research
A powerful keyword research suite used by many top marketers, Wordtracker offers a generous free trial option.
Bing Webmaster Tools
https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Analytics
While Google Webmaster Tools gets all the glory, folks forget that Bing Webmaster offers a full suite of website and search analytics. Especially useful are keyword reports, keyword research, and crawling data.
Enhanced Google Analytics Annotations
https://context.sweetlabs.io/google-analytics-annotations-extension
Analytics
How do you know if your dip in traffic (or rise) is associated with a Google Algorithm update, or perhaps a major holiday? This is a highly-recommended Google Chrome plugin that overlays additional data on top of your analytics, so you can easily send screenshots to clients showing exactly how outside forces impacted traffic.
Keyword Hero
https://keyword-hero.com
Analytics
Did somebody say (not provided)? Keyword Hero works to solve the problem of missing keyword data with lots of advanced math and machine learning. It’s not a perfect system, but for those struggling to match keywords with conversion and other on-site metrics, the data can be a valuable step in the right direction. Pricing is free up to 2000 sessions/month.
Beam Us Up
http://beamusup.com
Crawling/Indexing
If you need a free, desktop crawler, you can’t do better than Beam Us Up. While it doesn’t have as many features as Screaming Frog, it does offer 100 percent free crawling with no limits. Windows only.
Link Redirect Trace
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-redirect-trace/nnpljppamoaalgkieeciijbcccohlpoh?hl=en
Crawling/Indexing, Chrome extension
A free Chrome extension, lots of SEOs recommend Link Redirect Trace as the “all-in-one redirect path analyzer.” The extension reveals information about HTTP headers, rel-canonicals, robots.txt, and basic link metrics from LinkResearchTools. The “Save Screenshot” feature is super useful too.
Redirect Path
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-path/aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkkebmdll?hl=en-US
Crawling/Indexing, Chrome extension
Similar to Link Redirect Trace, Redirect Path is a nifty tool from the good folks at Ayima that shows redirect paths and header information for every URL you visit. Gotta admit, I’ve used this extension for years and it’s almost “always on” in my browser.
Screaming Frog
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider
Crawling/Indexing
Aside from having one of the best Twitter accounts of any SEO tool maker, Screaming Frog is the most popular desktop-based crawler available today. Many people don’t realize that there’s a free version that allows for up to 500 URLs per crawl. While not as fully functional as the paid version, it’s great for small projects and smaller site audits.
Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/log-file-analyser
Crawling/Indexing
Most folks in the SEO space are familiar with Screaming Frog, but many don’t realize that the Frog also offers a standalone free/paid Log File Analyzer tool. The free version is very robust, though limited to 1000 lines.
SEOlyzer
https://seolyzer.io
Crawling/Indexing
SEOlyzer is a log analysis tool recommended by Aleyda Solis in her very excellent SEO podcast Crawling Mondays. SEOlyzer is a terrific log analysis tool with some cool features like real-time analysis and page categorization.
Answer The Public
https://answerthepublic.com
Keyword Research tool
It’s hard not to love Answer The Public. The interface has an almost “Cards Against Humanity” rebel vibe to it. Regardless, if you want to generate a massive list of questions from any keyword set, this is your go-to tool.
Keywords Everywhere
https://keywordseverywhere.com
Keyword Research tool
An SEO favorite! Install this browser extension for Firefox or Chrome, and see keyword suggestions with volume as you cruise the internet. Works in Google Search Console as well. This one is a must-have for keyword inspiration.
Disavow Tool
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Link Tools
Google makes the Disavow Tool hard to find because most site owners usually don’t need to use it. But when you do, it can be useful for getting penalties removed and some SEOs swear by it for fighting off negative SEO. If you choose to use this tool, be careful and check with this guide on disavowing the right links.
Link Miner
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/linkminer/ogdhdnpiclkaeicicamopfohidjokoom?hl=en
Link Tools, Chrome extension
Link Miner is a free Chrome extension developed by Jon Cooper, one of the masters of link building. Use it to quickly find broken links on each page, as well as see basic link metrics as you search Google. Simple, easy, and useful.
Title Capitalization Tool
https://capitalizemytitle.com
Tools
Not sure which words in your title should be capitalized? This Title Capitalization tool will take care of that for you. It may not sound important to you, but if your titles look off, people may not click through from SERP results to read your content, which can decrease your rankings over time.
Google SERP Tool
http://www.countingcharacters.com/google-serp-tool
SERP Tool
Have you noticed that some listings on Google get cut off because the title is too long? A big misconception is Google uses character counts for meta tags. In reality, they count pixels. Google SERP Tool will tell you how many pixels your meta tags contain and if they will get cut off by Google.
Search Latte
http://searchlatte.com
Search, Tool
If you want to track your rankings manually, you can do so with Search Latte. Just put in a keyword and select the language and country so you can see all of the sites that rank in the top 100. You can then manually find your site and keep track to see if you are improving or declining. You may want to use Search Latte in combination with Excel as you can create a daily log of your rankings.
Backlink Checker
https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
Link Tools
Many people don’t realize that Ahrefs offers a free backlink checker, but they do, and it’s pretty good. It does have a number limitations compared to their full-fledged paid tool. For example, you’re limited to 100 links, and you can’t search by prefix or folder, but it’s handy for those quick link checks, or if you’re doing SEO on a tight budget.
Google My Business
https://www.google.com/business
Local SEO
Basically, this is the #1, must-have tool for Local SEO — especially if you live in a market served by Google. It allows you to claim your business, manage listing information, and respond to reviews — among other things. Claiming your business profile forms the foundation of most other local SEO activities, so it’s an essential step.
Google Review Link Generator
https://whitespark.ca/google-review-link-generator
Link Generator
The Google Review Link Generator by Whitespark solves a simple problem – how do you give your customers a URL to leave a Google review for your business? Reviews drive rankings, but Google doesn’t easily provide this. This generator makes it easy.
Local Search Results Checker
https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker
Local Search , Results Checker
One of the hardest parts of Local SEO is figuring out rankings from any location — especially when Google stubbornly wants to serve results from the location you’re in. BrightLocal solves this with a quick local ranking tool that can virtually drop you into any location on earth to check actual local rankings.