by 
Taking absolute control over Search Engine Optimization can be hard.
It’s even tougher when you have just started out.
But hey! Don’t forget, we are living the best times of our lives – we have the free world of the Internet!
You can find hundreds of free online SEO tools that can help you achieve your goals and track them at the same time.
But to make it easier for you, we have found the best free SEO tools and compiled them here on this list.
We won’t just list the SEO tools; we will also share what the SEO experts have to say about them.
You don’t have to try all of these SEO tools, you just need to figure out the ones that work best for the goals you have in 2020.
Before going all the way in, let’s first understand what SEO or Search Engine Optimization is all about.
What is SEO in Digital Marketing?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
It is one of the most important parts of Digital Marketing which involves improving a website to rank higher on a search engine.
The higher a website ranks in a search result, the higher are the chances of it getting clicked by the potential visitors.
The first link on a Google search result gets 30% of the visitor clicks, the second link gets 15% of the clicks and 10% goes to the third link.
How does SEO work?
Search Engine Optimization involves creating valuable, user-friendly and highly informational content that will help the users on the internet.
Making your website mobile-friendly and providing it a better logical structure comes under SEO.
Backlinking, a quest to receive links to your website from websites with high domain authority is an important part of SEO.
When a user conducts a Google search for a particular keyword of your niche, you want your website to rank on top of your competitors.
All these techniques we mentioned above help to do the same.
What are the types of SEO?
Here are the types of SEO:
1. Product Page SEO
A Product Page SEO entails the fundamental rules of search engine optimization.
This involves preventing keyword stuffing or adding way too many links on a website. Instead of that, Product Page SEO focuses on creating original content that engages the user.
If you want your website copy to sell your products and services, then you can’t escape the world of SEO.
2. Content SEO
This involves extensive keyword planning and taking proactive SEO efforts. Creating content that attracts the audience is the topmost priority here.
Brands can use multiple ways to use the content to improve SEO.
- They can create highly shareable content to generate traffic.
- Useful guides or ebooks can help create more backlinks.
- Reaching out to blogs or influencers that have high domain authority in your niche and request to guest blog.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO addresses the back-end elements of SEO which are highly important in improving your search rankings.
Technical SEO shows how important it is to involve the IT department in the SEO discussion.
Without definite guidance and suggestions for improving a website, even the best content will be ignored due to poor technical SEO techniques.
4. Local SEO
We have seen a surge in the number of users who are searching for local results, which generally means that user wants to purchase a product or avail a service that very day.
Local SEO is very important for the brands that have a regional customer base or have a retail outlet.
Working on Local SEO can help get leads that are more than willing to convert.
5. Voice Search SEO
As a matter of fact, more than one billion voice searches happen in a month and nearly 40% of the adults in the world use voice search daily.
This is a big development in the field of SEO that no advertiser should ever skip.
Customers use voice search are willing to seek out your business immediately.
It’s important to optimize the content on web pages to facilitate Voice Search.
Related Reading: 7 SEO Trends That Will Matter Most in 2020
Here are the Best SEO Tools that you must use in 2020:
Ahrefs: SEO Keyword Tool
Being one of the most recommended SEO tools online, SEO experts have all the best things to say about Ahrefs.
It is the second-largest website crawler after Google. Its Site Audit feature is considered as the best SEO analysis tool around.
The Site Audit feature by Ahref helps you highlight the parts of your website that requires improvements and updates. This immensely helps you to achieve better search engine ranking.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”With 16 TRILLION known links, 176 MILLION unique domains and 6 BILLION pages crawled each day Ahref has become one of the most dependable SEO tools on the internet.” quote=”With 16 TRILLION known links, 176 MILLION unique domains and 6 BILLION pages crawled each day Ahref has become one of the most dependable SEO tools on the internet.”]
The way to use Ahrefs is straightforward.
Just enter the URL you want to test.
Enter the keywords you want to search.
You can also use Ahrefs to sneak into your competitor’s backlinks. This provides you with a starting point when launching your own brand.
Marketers use Ahrefs to determine the most linked to content within a particular niche.
Syed Irfan Ajmal, Growth Marketing Manager at Ridestar claims that Ahrefs is the best free SEO tool when it comes to keyword research, rank tracking, competitor analysis, SEO audit, viral content research and much more.
Google Search Console: Top Google SEO Tool
Search Console by Google allows the users to monitor and report on your website’s presence in Google SERP.
It is a suite of helpful SEO tools that aid the users to identify duplicate metadata, number of indexed pages, security issues and more.
All you have to do is go to ‘Search Traffic’ and then ‘Search Analytics’ to get a keywords list for which you currently rank.
With Search Console, you are in control of what gets indexed and how your website is represented with this account.
It is fairly easy to use and provides helpful data and information you can use to achieve your goals.
Search Console allows you to understand how your audiences view your website and eventually provides an opportunity to optimize it for better performance on SERPs.
Search Console mobile usability report is an amazing way to highlight the URLs that have usability issues for a mobile user.
The report consists of the issues, URLs where the issue exists and actionable insights to resolve the usability problem.
SEMRush: Marketing SEO Tools
SEO community has loved using the SEMRush marketing SEO tools. It has been the fan favourites and experts to have praised it for the incredible features.
You can easily assess your rankings, changes in the rankings, and new opportunities to capture better rankings.
The Domain Vs Domain feature provides you with an in-depth analysis which allows you to compare your website to competitors.
Analytics report from SEMRush helps you to better understand the website’s traffic, search data, or even your competitor’s website!
It allows you to compare domains and keywords you are trying to rank for.
The On-Page SEO Checker tool allows you to easily monitor your rankings as well as find some recommendations on how to improve your website’s performance.
Liraz Postan, a Senior SEO & Content Manager at Outbrain recommends every marketer and SEO expert to use SEMRush.
The organic traffic insights feature lets the users see all leading web pages on a single dashboard, with related keywords, social shares, and word count.
It gives a great overview of what’s working and where to optimize. Liraz claims that she has increased her conversions by 15% from her content pages.
KWFinder: SEO Keyword Tool
One of the greatest features that KWFinder provides is it helps the users to find long-tail keywords that have a lower level of competition.
KWFinder is a great SEO tool when it comes to finding the best keywords and run analysis reports on backlinks and SERP.
The Rank Tracker tool easily determines your website’s ranking and also tracks your improvement based on key metric.
It also suggests a ton of keyword ideas which you can use and make your website to rank for.
George Perry, an SEM Specialist at Bandwidth recommends SEO experts to use KWFinder.
He claims that the tool not only shows him the information on keywords that he was searching for but also provides great keyword suggestions.
It compares the suggestions based on metrics like volume, CPC, difficulty, etc.
MOZ: SEO Software
Founded by the great Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004, Moz has come a long way from just a blog and online community to a giant in the world of SEO and Digital Marketing.
The online world raves about how Moz always keeps itself up-to-date with the latest Google algorithm changes.
Its chat portal is highly advanced as it provides an insightful response to every question asked.
Moz is an SEO powerhouse – keyword recommendations, site crawls, performance sights and what not – you get it all on Moz.
The MozBar toolbar can be downloaded for free. This allows you to see your store’s metrics while browsing any page.
The Page Optimization feature tells you exactly what steps are required to improve the SEO of every single page of your website.
Moz’s SEO tool improves business as it provides increased transparency. Comparing your website to competitors on the basis of traffic and optimization has never been so easy.
Keri Lindenmuth, a Marketing Manager at Kyle David Group claims that Moz is the be all and end-all of all SEO related tools.
She says that without Moz, SEO becomes a guessing game, a situation where no marketer wants to be.
Yoast SEO: Best free SEO tool
Are you running WordPress?
Yoast SEO is the best SEO plugin for you. You can use it to optimize meta tags and content, generate sitemaps and much more.
Yoast SEO is very user-friendly and can easily help you to make your content SEO-ed. It helps you to optimize your title, description, URL and whatnot.
It has the most advanced XML sitemaps functionalities at the push of a button. It allows the users full control over site breadcrumbs.
The snippet preview shows you how your post or page will look in the search results.
Answer The Public: Free SEO Tools
Want to find topics for your next blog? Use this free SEO tool to create content around specific keywords.
This gives you an immense edge when trying to rank better online.
Not only this, but it is also great for finding featured snippets.
Let’s say you want to start a new blog for your business and you hired freelancers to create content. Now all you need to do is use this tool and download a list of different spectrums in the same niche.
Send the list over to them and your work is done.
It takes a maximum of 5 minutes of effort to make one of the most efficient lists of SEO topics that will help your blog to grow.
Matt Jackson, Head of Content at Wild Shark has all the good things to say about AnswerThePublic.
For him, it is by far the best tool to compile SEO content for a site.
AnswerThePublic provides the featured tool wherein it presents a list of questions/queries people make about a particular keyword.
When you are running out of ideas, you can easily frame content structure around these queries.
For example, say you are in the ‘coffee’ niche, you can use AnswerThePublic SEO tool to create content around the many brilliant ideas!
when espresso
- when to drink espresso in Italy
- when was espresso martini invented
- when was espresso discovered
- when does espresso wear off
- when does espresso expire
- when do espresso shots expire
- when does espresso kick in
- when does espresso go bad
- when is espresso done
- when did espresso start
- when was espresso machine invented
- espresso when invented
- espresso when to stop shot
- espresso when breastfeeding
- espresso when to start timing
- espresso when to stop
- espresso when to drink
- espresso when sick
- espresso when pregnant
- when espresso tastes sour
This provides invaluable guidance as it provides critical information like what people are searching for!
It gives you a great opportunity as a business owner to answer the queries and provide value to the community.
This also helps to reduce the number of customer service related calls as a majority of the queries has been solved and compiled as FAQs on websites.
SpyFu: Free SEO Tools
If you’re just starting out with trying to optimize your website, then here’s where you can ensure success.
With SpyFu, users can very easily view the number of times a particular keyword gets searched every month.
The tool provides the competition and difficulty to rank for the keywords you want to target.
Competitor’s keywords and ranking analysis can be done easily using SpyFu.
Users get to know the number of clicks, paid and organic competitors, ads created on Google Adwords and so much more on a single platform.
It is by far the most detailed SEO tool on the market for analyzing and reporting.
Adele Stewart, Senior Project Manager at Sparq Designs praises SpyFu’s SEO Research feature. This feature allows users to put in a competitor’s domain and pull out information on their own SEO strategy.
It has never been easier to find what keywords your competitors are paying for and what are their organic standings.
You can review their core keywords which provide you with an idea to create an actionable seo strategy that works
Siteliner: SEO Analysis Tool
Worried about the originality of the content you use on your website?
Siteliner helps you find the content on your website which is duplicate. It’s recommended to all website owners to have content which is original.
Google punishes the websites which have identical content. Therefore, one should make sure that content on the website is drafted carefully and only after a good research.
With Siteliner, you can easily scan your website for duplicate content, broken links, average page size, speed and a lot more.
Not just that, Siteliner also compares your business website to all other websites checked on Siteliner. This provides a great insight into where your website stands.
Tieece Gordon, a Search Engine Marketer has highly recommended SEO Tool Siteliner. For him, it is a go-to SEO tool when presented with a new website.
It almost automatically improves the site’s quality and provides context to the pages.
The Duplicate Content table on Siteliner is by far one of the best SEO tools for small businesses that match URL, website content and pages.
It provides a percentage of the duplicity on websites. Since Siteliner is smart enough to skip the pages with noindex tag, content with high percentage needs to be dealt with.
Tieece confirms that producing content that is unique and adds value to the customer’s searches always help to improve website ranking.
Screaming Frog: SEO Tools Online
Screaming Frog is by far the most recommended SEO tool by experts.
Experts are surprised to see how much time Screaming Frog saves when it comes to auditing a website for the SEO performance.
Almost every expert has the best compliment when it comes to the speed at which this tool works.
The tool is incredibly reliable when trying to fix issues related to content, redirections and link building.
The SEO Spider tool they provide has gained great acclaim in the SEO world.
With Screaming Frog, you are able to crawl through your and competitors website and get interesting insights you can leverage.
You can see which pages are returning 404 errors, list all the H1 and title tags, get a complete word count and all-important analytics data in one place.
With Screaming Frog, it’s really simple to extract certain data out of the website pages.
Screaming Frog works exceptionally well when it comes to doing a quick audit and also, a complete in-depth understanding of the website.
When you are done with this, the tool provides you with actionable insights that you can work upon and make your website better.
Bonus Tool: Fat Rank
Want to know where your website ranks for a particular keyword?
Fat Rank is at the rescue!
Blake Aylott’s, an SEO expert is surprised why no one really talks about Fat Rank. It is a free keyword tool that lets you know the ranking of the keywords you are using.
All you have to do is add keywords you are trying to rank for, and it will search for the first 100 results.
If you don’t rank within the top 100 results, it will tell you are not ranking for the keyword.
It is the best SEO tool for small business when it comes to finding their rank on Google’s SERP.
This provides you with an opportunity to optimize your website for a particular keyword you are trying to rank for.
Fat Rank is a chrome extension and is extremely accurate and live.
The tool is absolutely free and should be a part of every SEO expert’s arsenal in 2020.
Final Thoughts
Let’s face it. These SEO tools only help you to ease the process of optimizing your website for search engines. These tools are always there, but what really makes a difference is the effort you put in to make your website the greatest.
You’ll need to put in the work to get the best out of these SEO tools. Creating exceptional content, rewriting the previous copy, redesigning the web pages – all this to make your website highly SEO optimized.
You need to find the best SEO tools for competitor analysis to get ahead of the competition.
You will have to try these tools to understand what works for you. If you are on a budget, each of the above tools has a free trial version you can use and see if it’s worth it.
Now the ball is in your court. Play with it and score!
And since you are here, help us make this interaction convert into a healthy relationship.
Sign up for our newsletter and get the best tips, tricks, techniques, and strategies you can practically apply and get tangible results!
We only provide truly valuable content which you need – nothing more, nothing less.