SEO on a Budget: 35 Best Free SEO Tools for Your Website

When tackling SEO tasks, we all want to work more efficiently, without breaking the bank. Luckily, there's a variety of free SEO tools available, ranging from popular Google instruments to freemium software.

Whether you're a freelancer on a tight budget or a business looking for cost-effective ways to increase conversions, there's something out there for everyone. To help you find what you need, I've organized this SEO tools list into categories based on specific tasks.

Keyword research

Keyword research is something that SEOs deal with every day. Thus, it’s important to have SEO tools that can display the correct data and offer relevant keywords. If you're diving into research, these free SEO keyword tools are your go-to companions:

Google Trends

Good for: seeking up-to-date info on trending topics

Google Trends is like your personal trend-spotter, always keeping you updated about what's hot online. It gives you real-time insights into topics people are searching for.

In the Explore tab, you can type any keyword and narrow down your search by location, time, category, and search type. The tool will provide granular insights into the topic of your interest. Plus, by scrolling down, you’ll see the list of related topics and queries to get the full picture.

If you switch to the Trending Now tab, you can also analyze the latest buzz topics.

Google Ads Keyword Planner

Good for: conducting PPC keyword research

Google Ads Keyword Planner is a nice tool to refine your PPC keyword strategy. It allows you to discover new keywords and get search volume and forecasts. By entering keywords or phrases, you'll get the lowdown on monthly search volumes, competition levels, and suggested terms.

However, it’s not a universal Google keyword research tool. You'll need to run an ad campaign to get access to the exact keyword search volumes.

Rank Tracker

Good for: discovering keywords and rank tracking

This step requires Rank Tracker. You can download it now for free. Download Rank Tracker

The Rank Tracker tool from SEO PowerSuite offers a generous toolkit for multiple keyword tasks. Using this free tool you can:

Download Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker lets you check as many websites and keywords as you want, completely free of charge.

Keyword Gap Analysis Tool

Good for: finding keyword and content gaps between you and your competitor(s)

With the Keyword Gap Analysis Tool, you can dive deep into your competitors' strategies and find loopholes to boost your own website's performance.

Curious about the keywords your competitors rank for (but you still haven't added them to your content)? This free keyword tool helps you spot keyword gaps between your website and up to 5 competitors at once.

People Also Search For

Good for: discovering keyword ideas

People Also Search For helps users uncover hundreds of related keywords ranked by importance, monthly search volume, CPC, and other metrics. This data allows you to understand user intent better and create tailored content, ultimately keeping users engaged and satisfied.

Once you log in, you can search by a Keyword to get more ideas on a certain topic or by a URL to spot gaps on a specific page.

SEO Search Keyword Tool

Good for: conducting quick search for long-tail keywords

SEO Search Keyword Tool is a handy Chrome extension designed to streamline keyword research. This tool effortlessly generates low-competition keywords from various search engines and displays their ranks.

Its minimalist interface and seamless integration with Google Chrome make it a nice helper for anyone looking to find fresh ideas and enhance their content strategy.

Soovle

Good for: finding new keyword ideas

Soovle is a free web-based tool that displays search suggestions from various online platforms like Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and Wikipedia.

The tool searches for recent mentions of words related to the keywords you're researching. It allows users to potentially discover related keywords they might not have considered before.

Content creation

Few people would refuse to speed up the content creation process, right? It’s always cool to have a bunch of tools to enhance creativity and ensure the quality of content. Here are a few free SEO tools for content creation:

ChatGPT

Good for: generating any type of content

It’s probably the most popular AI tool that barely needs any introduction. In seconds, ChatGPT crafts content according to your specific needs, whether it's an outline, a meta description, an article, or you just need to rewrite content to match a desired tone.

Remember that ChatGPT is a machine-learning model so its responses are not always correct. Ensure to review the information you receive from ChatGPT for accuracy and relevance.

From an SEO perspective, you can tailor your prompt so that the tool immediately creates texts optimized with keywords.

In addition to generating the content, ChatGPT can also assist in brainstorming new topics, clustering keywords based on search intent, and many other SEO use cases.

Gemini

Good for: creating any type of content

Just like ChatGPT, Google’s new AI model Gemini can be a great buddy for creating SEO-friendly content. By understanding search trends and best practices, the tool can recommend relevant keywords and suggest how to weave them naturally into your writing.

Though Gemini is relatively young in the AI field, it promises to change the approach to crafting informative and engaging content that ranks well in search results.

WebSite Auditor’s Content Editor

Good for: content optimization

This step requires WebSite Auditor. You can download it now for free. Download WebSite Auditor

Content Editor is a cool feature of WebSite Auditor. This SEO writing assistant helps copywriters create SEO-friendly content using SERP analysis.

The tool analyzes the top 10 competing pages for your keyword. It extracts the most common words and gives recommendations on how to improve a blog post, landing page, or any other webpage.

The tool provides the following hints:

Download WebSite Auditor

Content Editor stands among the best on-page optimization tools as it offers handy SEO suggestions for enhancing your texts. You can edit the text directly within the app and watch your optimization score evolve. Plus, you can preview how your meta snippet will appear on the SERP.

Hemingway App

Good for: checking the grammar and readability of your text

Hemingway is a free web-based content editor (offering a paid desktop app, by the way) that checks the correctness and readability of your content. The tool roots out typical errors and gives your text a readability grade.

Hemingway provides copywriting advice to enhance text readability: splitting long sentences, avoiding passive voice and difficult syntactic structures, using simpler alternatives, etc.

Grammarly

Good for: improving grammar and style in your writing

Grammarly is another popular writing assistant that elevates the quality of your written content. This AI-driven tool catches and corrects errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Moreover, Grammarly offers style suggestions to help users refine their tone and voice.

With Grammarly browser extensions, you can get real-time suggestions as you type on Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, and other online platforms. As such, you can make improvements on the fly and confidently create error-free content.

Copyscape

Good for: finding duplicate content on the web

Copyscape is a reliable plagiarism checker tool that inspects pages for duplicates and prevents content fraud and piracy. The tool instantly discovers pages on the web that contain the same content.

The free version allows searching by URL. This is a helpful tool, since duplication on the web may spoil a website’s SEO.

SERP snippet optimization

SERP snippet is the first point of contact between users and your website. Thus, you need to polish elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and rich snippets, so that the user wants to click on them. The following free SEO tools can help you increase the attractiveness of your website in the SERP:

Google SERP Snippet Optimizer

Good for: SERP snippet optimization

Google SERP Snippet Optimizer is a small free tool for webmasters to test what their web page will look like in the Google search results page. A well-optimized snippet can attract more clicks by providing relevant information that entices users to visit the webpage.

So, type in your title, URL, and meta description in the corresponding fields, and you'll see the preview of your search snippet. Extra symbols exceeding the best title or description length will be highlighted in red.

Word Counter

Good for: adjusting content to recommended word count guidelines

In terms of SEO, Word Counter is a nice helper to ensure that your content meets word count limits for optimal SEO performance.

It’s essential for optimizing HTML tags like meta titles and meta descriptions. These SEO elements have strict character limits, making concise wording crucial. By avoiding exceeding characters, you can prevent truncation of your snippets in search results, ultimately maximizing visibility.

Case Converter

Good for: adjusting the text case type

Though Case Converter is not a primary SEO tool, it helps content writers and SEO specialists improve text formatting and consistency. For instance, Case Converter can be used for proper capitalization that enhances readability and user experience. And search engines really like well-structured and formatted content.

Rich Results Test

Good for: checking rich snippets

You may test whether any schema items are present on your page with Google’s free SEO checker Rich Results Test. It allows users to input a URL or code snippet and then provides feedback on whether the page is eligible for rich results, such as rich snippets, rich cards, or other enhanced search results features.

This tool is valuable for ensuring that structured data markup is implemented correctly and effectively. This ultimately improves the visibility and appearance of web pages in Google search results.

Website audit

Regular website audits are super important. They help you assess performance and detect issues that might be holding back your website from proper indexing by search engines. For that, you can use the following free SEO tools for website analysis:

Google Search Console

Good for: continuous monitoring of websites and checking error reports

Google Search Console is probably the most obvious and well-known SEO audit tool. It provides detailed insights into how Google crawls and indexes your website, highlighting any issues that may be impacting its performance.

Additionally, Google Search Console offers performance reports, showing which queries are driving more traffic and how your pages are ranking in search results. This information helps prioritize optimization efforts and ensures that your website is fully optimized for search engines.

Website Audit with Google Search Console Learn more

Google Analytics

Good for: gathering comprehensive website stats and search analytics

When thinking of SEO analytics tools, Google Analytics is usually among the first ones that pop into your head. It gives you all the juicy details about how users are interacting with your site, where they're coming from, and what's working (or not).

Google Analytics displays metrics that showcase the dynamic performance of every individual page: organic traffic, bounce rate, time on page, and conversion rate. This data serves as a valuable foundation for optimizing your website and making informed decisions to enhance performance.

WebSite Auditor

Good for: 360° website audit, on-page audit

This step requires WebSite Auditor. You can download it now for free. Download WebSite Auditor

With WebSite Auditor, users are free to conduct a sitewide audit and monitor the website’s SEO health. This free website SEO checking tool helps you uncover some of the most common “diseases”:

Download WebSite Auditor

Besides, the tool offers in-built webmaster tools to generate an XML sitemap and robots.txt instructions. As such, this SEO analyzer tool is fully enough for general checkups of a website's SEO optimization state.

Wappalyzer

Good for: detecting technologies used on a website

Wappalyzer is like a secret agent for your browser. Being one of the best SEO website analyzers, this Chrome extension quickly detects web technologies behind any website you visit. With Wappalyzer, you'll instantly uncover the tools at play: from the CMS and programming languages to analytics tracking codes, e-commerce platforms, JavaScript libraries, and more.

Add the plugin to your browser, proceed to the website of interest, and click on the extension icon. It will provide the website's technical profile, seen clearly at a glance.

Lighthouse

Good for: a quick check of a page performance

Lighthouse is a powerful extension by Google that helps developers improve the quality of their web pages. It audits web pages for performance, accessibility, SEO, and more.

The tool provides actionable insights and recommendations to optimize web pages for better user experiences and higher performance.

Webpage Test

Good for: webpage speed optimization

Webpage Test allows you to run a free website speed test from multiple locations worldwide, using real browsers and at real user connection speeds. The tool checks webpages’ average scores according to a bunch of factors: security, compression, speed, image optimization, Core Web Vitals, and more.

By scrolling the report a bit down, you will also find a summary of the test and a separate tab for each resource with a detailed explanation.

PageSpeed Insights

Good for: evaluating Core Web Vitals

PageSpeed Insights provides critical data on the performance of webpages on both mobile and desktop devices. By analyzing your page against Core Web Vitals, the tool identifies areas for improvement of page speed and overall user experience.

Moreover, PageSpeed Insights offers actionable recommendations to address any issues identified during the audit. These suggestions may include optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing JavaScript and CSS files. By implementing these recommendations, webmasters ensure that the page meets the requirements of search engine algorithms.

SimpleWebAnalytics

Good for: scanning URLs to check and fix their technical SEO errors

SimpleWebAnalytics is a free web crawler. The desktop software analyzes web pages and gets stats via API of analytics tools from Google and other search engines. The tool lets you check each URL or a bunch of URLs regarding their indexation status, traffic, impression and clicks, and robots.txt rules.

SimpleWebAnalytics lets you check the status of URL indexing in Google and determine the amount of traffic coming to the site's pages. The data can be exported to Excel sheets.

Using the software, you can collect a list of pages receiving less traffic, those with a high bounce rate or low conversion. You can detect unindexed pages and submit them for indexing via Google Indexing API.

META SEO inspector

Good for: analyzing meta data

META SEO inspector is a free Google Chrome extension designed to help webmasters check the HTML elements directly within their browsers. This tool inspects the presence and quality of crucial meta tags like title tags, meta descriptions, and robot meta tags. It highlights any missing or poorly optimized elements and offers solutions for improvement.

The tool also analyzes such elements as structured data markup and headings, and provides an overview of the internal and external links present on the webpage.

Tech files generation

Sometimes webmasters face the need to quickly create technical files that would ensure efficient crawling and indexing of the website content. Here are a few free SEO tools for generating tech files:

XML Sitemaps Online Generator

Good for: creating an XML sitemap for a small website

XML Sitemaps Online Generator whips up sitemaps in a matter of a few minutes. All you need is to enter your website URL and click Start. Once it's all set, you can download the XML sitemap file or have it sent straight to your email.

However, the free online version is only cool for creating XML sitemaps for comparatively small websites (up to 500 pages).

Robots.txt Generator

Good for: creating the robots.txt file for a website

Creating a robots.txt file with Robots.txt Generator is a breeze. Just tweak the options for search engines to your liking, and the tool will create the robots.txt file based on the selected parameters. Yep, it’s as simple as that.

Schema Markup Generator

Good for: creating schema markups

Schema Markup Generator is your go-to tool for crafting various schemas, including articles, breadcrumbs, events, FAQ pages, and how-to sections. Just fill in all the required fields, and the tool generates your schema markup. Once done, you can easily copy and paste it into your page’s HTML code.

Shema Markup Validator

Good for: checking structured data

Schema Markup Validator is designed to help webmasters and SEO professionals validate the implementation of structured data markup on their webpages. Simply enter the live URL or paste the HTML code containing the schema markup into the tool.

The validator will perform a comprehensive analysis and identify any errors, warnings, or potential issues with your schema markup implementation.

Classy Schema

Good for: optimizing for rich snippets with the help of structured data

If you want to analyze existing code for the presence of structured data markup, Classy Schema can help you with that. Go to Structured Data Viewer and provide the code in one of the two ways:

Once you provide the code, the viewer parses it and presents the embedded structured data in a visual easy-to-understand format. This representation includes key details like schema type (local business, product, etc.) and specific properties (name, address, price, etc).

Link management

Link analysis helps webmasters understand the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to their site, which directly impacts search engine rankings. Let’s explore the best free SEO tools to identify valuable backlink opportunities, spot potential issues such as toxic backlinks, and improve the site's link profile:

LinkAssistant

Good for: link-building outreach

This step requires LinkAssistant. You can download it now for free. Download LinkAssistant

For those webmasters doing link outreach, LinkAssistant does an invaluable job of searching for the right prospect to partner with. With the tool, you can discover various opportunities for link building, including:

Download LinkAssistant

Plus, LinkAssistant helps you estimate link prospects’ authority and organic traffic potential, know their titles, and get contacts, if any.

Since LinkAssistant is a link-building tool, it contains an email scraper for extracting emails from web pages and an in-built email client with ready-made templates for sending requests. Besides, there is a link verification tool that keeps all your outreach efforts controlled in a single workspace. You will instantly notice if a link has disappeared or been marked with a nofollow tag.

SEO SpyGlass

Good for: evaluating link profiles

This step requires SEO SpyGlass. You can download it now for free. Download SEO SpyGlass

SEO SpyGlass is a handy backlink checker tool that thoroughly analyzes website backlink profiles. This software enables you to easily assess website authority, monitor referral traffic, and even spy on your competitors' backlinks. With SEO SpyGlass, you can uncover some untapped backlink opportunities that your competitors already capitalize on but you don’t.

Download SEO SpyGlass

Plus, you’ll be able to monitor changes in your website's backlink profile over time by tracking historical backlink data. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO strategies.

Free Backlink Checker

Good for: conducting a quick backlink audit

Backlink Checker offers a plethora of benefits that enhance SEO efforts. With access to the most up-to-date backlink database, you're always in the loop on your website's backlink profile. Plus, the tool gives you live stats and insights into your backlink history as it evolves over time.

Disavow tool

Good for: getting rid of toxic backlinks

Mostly, Google algorithms are taught to ignore spammy backlinks automatically. Still, sometimes you may need a disavow tool to exclude some spammy backlinks that you cannot remove yourself. For example, when you contacted the webmasters of the linking websites but they did not respond.

Remember that the tool has to be handled with caution. Misdiagnosing a backlink or disavowing the wrong ones can significantly hurt your website's search engine visibility.

Google’s Disavow Tool: All You Need to Know Learn more

Conclusion

You really don't need to break the bank to access the best tools for SEO tasks. In fact, there’s a plethora of options at your fingertips that can help you catapult your website to new heights.

Do you have any other favorite items to add? Don’t hesitate to share more top SEO software in our Facebook group!