30 Free SEO Tools for Driving Traffic to Your Website

A working knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) is useful for more than just search advertising and getting your site found for relevant keywords.

Search engines offer a window into our collective wants, questions, concerns, and curiosities. Knowing the basics of SEO can help you become a more effective entrepreneur overall, from using search volume to evaluate the demand for a product idea to establishing the empathy you need for effective copywriting.

Unfortunately, many of the best ecommerce SEO tools run $100 per month or more, which isn’t ideal if you’re a bootstrapped entrepreneur or still trying to wrap your head around SEO.

That’s why we’ve put together this list of free SEO tools to use for anything from keyword research to backlink analysis.

30 Free SEO tools for driving traffic to your website

Driving traffic to your website is a constant priority and challenge for many ecommerce businesses. These free tools for search engine marketing can help you drive traffic to your site by optimizing for search.

1. MozBar SEO toolbar

MozBar, a free Chrome extension you can use after creating an account, will tell you any page or site’s Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score. This is particularly helpful when checking out the competition, which will tell you how hard it might be, and how many quality backlinks you might need to build, to get a good ranking. MozBar also gives you other tools for conveniently analyzing on-page SEO and evaluating how useful a backlink from a certain page might be.

2. Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools offer a breadth of SEO features, including backlink tracking, keyword research, and site audits. You can use the free SEO tool to run reports as well. The Bing URL Submission Plugin for WordPress also automatically submits new URLs from your site to the Bing index so they’re more visible.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a suite of free and paid SEO tools for all sorts of things.

4. SEO Review Tools

SEO Review Tools is one of the most comprehensive collections of free SEO tools in a single place. It has more than 60 different tools with specific features, including technical SEO tools, content SEO tools, and SEO authority tools.

5. SEMRush

SEMrush is a comprehensive SEO tool with a wide range of features. Though you’ll need a paid account to access most of them, SEMrush offers the following free tools:

SEMrush also offers a seven-day free trial.

Free SEO keyword research tools

Keyword research is a big part of SEO, as it informs your content strategy. Free SEO keyword analysis tools help you identify which words and phrases to target.

6. AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic has both a free and paid option. With its free tool, you enter a keyword or URL. AnswerThePublic will then provide a list of related keyword ideas in the form of phrases and questions—these make great headers for content marketing in blog posts and on FAQ pages. Download a CSV with the keywords or look at the visual analyzer.

7. WordStream by Local IQ Free Keyword Research Tool

The WordStream free keyword tool also provides recommended target words and phrases to incorporae into your SEO strategy. Enter a keyword or your website URL to receive a list of recommendations and keyword difficulty. It’s a great tool for coming up with both short- and long-tail keywords to target, filtered by industry and location.

8. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is another great keyword research tool for search engines like Google and Bing, as well as YouTube, Amazon, and social media platforms including Twitter and Pinterest. A free account will get you lists of recommended keywords while a paid subscription will also tell you things like search volume and keyword difficulty.

9. Seed Keywords by Red Evolution

Seed Keywords is another keyword research tool, except this one works differently from the others. Rather than providing keywords and their search traffic and volume metrics, Seed Keywords leverages crowdsourcing. You prompt people to picture themselves in a hypothetical scenario and ask what they would search if they were in that scenario.

10. Ubersuggest free keyword suggestions

Ubersuggest is a free tool that provides keyword suggestions based on a URL or a target keyword of your choice. You get three daily searches with a free account, and anything beyond that will require a paid subscription. Ubersuggest will offer you a long list of keyword ideas you can use to generate product ideas, angles for capturing more organic traffic, your next blog post, and more.

Free local SEO tools

Local SEO should be a priority for every business that maintains some sort of physical presence, be it a permanent brick-and-mortar store or a weekly table at your local farmers market.

11. Synup Listing Scan

The Synup Listing Scan is a complete audit and review of your local listing profiles. Enter basic information and the free SEO tool will scan your digital presence and check your Google listing, as well as third-party listing sites like Yelp and your local chamber of commerce. You’ll also see your reputation via reviews.

12. BrightLocal

BrightLocal offers a host of free local SEO tools for small businesses to use. Some of those tools include:

Free website checker and content optimization tools

A major cornerstone of every SEO strategy is content. Content includes more than just your blog—we’re also talking about metadata, product pages, support articles, and even your homepage. These free SEO tools can help you analyze your content to optimize for clicks and user engagement.

13. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a free SEO tool that runs an analysis on your website to find broken links and other SEO issues that might harm the user experience and, thus, your rankings. Screaming Frog will audit up to 500 URLs for free and tell you which pages need attention. You can also pay for more URLs.

14. Yoast SEO WordPress plug-in

Yoast SEO is a free plug-in for WordPress and Shopify users. It helps you add structured data to your website pages. Essentially, this makes sure you’re using your keyword in the right places, such as in headings, meta tags, meta descriptions, and so forth. Yoast provides content grading in real time.

15. Rank Math WordPress SEO plug-in

RankMath is an all-in-one SEO plug-in for large and small businesses on WordPress. You can use a free account, which comes with 18 predefined schema types and complete integrations with Google Search Console, Divi, and Elementor. You can also do basic SEO audits. Paid accounts get more functionality including Google Analytics integration, rank tracking, and SEO reports.

16. GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a free SEO tool that runs an analysis on your website to check for issues like site speed and performance and the structure of your website. Create a free account to see video recordings of your site loading so you can identify issues.

17. HigherVisibility Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

The Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool is a real-time editor to help you write optimized meta titles and descriptions. As you enter the text in the form field editor, the free SEO tool will show you what it would look like in an actual Google search.

TIP: SERP stands for search engine results pages.

18. Merkle

Merkle also has a couple of free SEO tools, these ones targeted at ensuring your site content is optimized for traffic via organic search.

Free Google SEO tools

19. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful site analytics tool that includes SEO metrics to give you real-time insight into your website’s performance and visibility in search. Install the HTML code in your website’s code to start taking advantage of Google Analytics for free.

20. Google Search Console

Formerly Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a free website analytics tool dedicated specifically to your website’s performance in Google searches. With it, you can dig deeper into your data, finding out click-through rates and which keywords you rank for, and submit XML sitemaps and individual URLs for ranking.

Learn more:

21. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner has two core functionalities: find new keywords to target and research estimated search volume and forecasts for the keywords of your choice. It will tell you search volume, related keywords and phrases, and how competitive each keyword is for paid campaigns.

22. Google Trends

Google Trends is another great keyword research tool to inform your SEO strategy. Enter a topic or phrase and Google Trends will show you line graph charts depicting peaks and dips in search volume for that phrase. It will also tell you where in the world the phrase is trending, as well as trending related keywords.

23. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is an important free local SEO tool. With it, you can create and manage your Google listing that pops up when someone searches for your business. This is also what shows up in Google Maps. Note you’re required to have a physical business presence to use this tool, so online-only brands may not find as much value in it.

24. Google PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a diagnostic tool that will help you identify SEO issues with page load time. If your site takes too long to load, your SEO rankings will fall. Simply enter your URL to receive an SEO audit and list of recommendations to optimize your site for better performance. You can run both desktop and mobile-friendly tests and SEO analysis this way.

Free SEO tools for link-building and backlink checkers

Search engines also like websites that appear legitimate. One way to increase your legitimacy is by earning backlinks—in other words, links from other sites, ideally with high domain authority.

25. Monitor Backlinks Free Backlink Checker SEO Tool

Enter your website URL into the Free Backlink Checker SEO Tool to find out which sites link to yours. You can also pay to upgrade for more advanced features.

26. Help A Reporter Out (HARO)

HARO is a website aimed at connecting journalists with sources. As such, it’s a great place to build relationships with the press, who can provide not only publicity for your brand but also backlinks to your website. View requests and pitch your submissions to those that are relevant.

27. Qwoted

 

Qwoted is a free SEO tool that functions similarly to HARO. With it, you create a profile to become an expert in the database. Qwoted will then match you with journalists seeking sources that fit your profile—a great way to develop press relationships and backlinks.

28. Help A B2B Writer

While HARO and Qwoted span pretty much every industry, B2B companies in particular may want to check out Help A B2B Writer. Journalist requests are only sent to qualifying sources, so you won’t have to sift through a bunch of requests not relevant to your business.

Free SEO tools for Amazon

Amazon is also a top search engine for ecommerce shoppers. While some of the tools above also offer features for Amazon SEO, these tools are specifically designed to help sellers optimize on the third-party marketplace.

29. Sonar by Sellics

Sonar is a paid tool with free Amazon SEO keyword and ASIN research functionality. Find recommended keywords related to your product along with estimated search volume and relevant products already on Amazon.

30. Amazon Keyword Research By Helium 10

Amazon Keyword Research also offers keyword- and ASIN-based SEO research. In addition to search volume, this tool will also tell you an estimated number of competing products, match type, and frequency of related words.

Bring more traffic to your website with these free SEO tools

There are several paid software suites that offer robust features that cater to most SEO needs—from keyword research to backlink analysis—in much greater depth. But the tools above can prove pretty useful for the price (free).

Still, there’s bound to be handy tools we didn’t cover. What would you recommend? Share it in the comments below!

If you’re a Shopify store owner, check out the Shopify App Store for SEO apps to optimize your site for search.

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