SEO doesn’t have to be expensive!
Because there are tons of awesome free SEO tools for you to choose from.
The problem is knowing which free SEO tools are worth using and which ones you should avoid.
So I’ve created a list of 70 of the very best free SEO tools that I use to grow my own search traffic below:
What Will I Learn?
If you want a complete list of free SEO tools, please keep scrolling.
But:
If you want to know which are the best free SEO tools, pay attention.
Claude is arguably the best Free AI tool for SEO right now.
Why?
Because you can use its powerful AI models to improve almost every aspect of your SEO. I’ve tested against other popular AI models and Claude is by far the best.
It has a significantly larger context window (200,000 tokens vs ChatGPT’s 32,000 tokens) which allows it to analyse larger amounts of text and provide more specialised recommendations for SEO.
And the free version will be enough for most users.
Here’s how to use Claude for SEO:
Start by copying your content into a new Claude Chat. Make sure you have the 3.5 Sonnet on.
Explain to Claude what your content is about and provide the target keyword.
Then, ask Claude to:
Claude will then give you a full breakdown of your content and where it can be improved.
This is the first part of the output that Claude gave me:
Pretty good, right?
Implementing the practical analysis from Claude will already improve your content’s standard. But we are just getting started…
Next, you can get Claude to do a lot of the heavy lifting for content enhancements.
Use these types of prompts-
You get the point! You can essentially start tackling key SEO issues Claude identified to enhance the content.
Remember that Claude is not 100% right all the time, so don’t just follow what it’s saying blindly. Use your own judgment to make good decisions.
Made all the changes? The last step is to do a final review…
Re-upload the content into the Claude chat and ask the AI to:
Make any final adjustments before uploading the new content to your site.
Claude isn’t just a writing tool – it’s like having an SEO expert review your content in real time.
Last updated in January 2025, the free backlink blacklist is a database of known public blog networks, guest post farms & links sold via cold outreach or marketplaces like Fiverr.
So far, there are over 60,000 domains on the blacklist that you absolutely do not want a link from:
You can see precisely why a domain is on the backlink blacklist.
And you can click on that reason to see a screenshot of the evidence:
On top of that, you can also export the reports into a handy CSV file making this one of the best free SEO tools available right now. This is a no-brainer to ensure you only have quality backlinks.
Check if you’re using blacklisted backlinks now
The Quick win SEO strategy builder is an exclusive tool and free video series that shows you how to find all of your current available SEO opportunities and then act on them.
We built it ourselves so you can’t get it anywhere else!
This strategy is easy to learn, simple to execute and delivers results quickly!
Download the free tool now and I’ll guide you through the process step by step.
Just when you thought Ahrefs couldn’t get any better…
They go and release a free version of their tool-
Let me show you exactly what you get:
Site Audit gives you a-
What’s more?
Site Explorer takes it up a level, providing-
And you can add every website you own!
These are two very powerful tools that give you a wealth of data that can be used to analyse and build a strong technical foundation for your site.
It doesn’t get much that, right?
Learn how to push this free version to its limits in my full Ahrefs Webmaster tools review.
Google Search Console is a tool that every SEO should have as part of their arsenal.
You can manage a lot of the back of house for your site and find problems that are holding back your search progress.
For example, you can use the Crawl Errors tool to find problems:
And you can even monitor your Core Web Vitals, which means you can track all of your page experience signals in one place.
This means you essentially look at your website performance through the eyes of Google. GSC lists all the issues it finds, so you know what needs fixing.
But that’s not all…
Google Search Console gives you access to a full breakdown of your backlink profile that is just as useful as some of the data you get with expensive tools:
It is also perfect for managing actions taken against your site, especially if you’ve been penalised for webspam or malware at any point in the past.
And don’t forget the most powerful feature of all!
Search Analytics.
That will allow you to see how your site is performing in Google right now.
You can track the total number of impressions your pages have in the SERPS along with the average ranking position and click-through rate data.
You can also find a list of keywords and you can filter by page to find out exactly which page is ranking for which keywords.
This is one of the most powerful hidden features of Google Search Console which makes it one of the best free SEO tools by far.
Rank Math is an SEO plugin for WordPress that helps people optimize their content with built-in suggestions based on widely-accepted best practices.
It has a clean and simple interface:
Rank Math allows you to:
RankMath has also released its own AI Content assistant.
How does it work?
You simply type a double slash (//) and prompt the AI assistant inside the WordPress editor. It immediately starts writing content for you, using the surrounding content as the context of what to write.
The free version gives you limited AI credits, and the output quality isn’t great. You’ll definitely need to edit the content heavily if you choose to use it.
RankMath also integrates with platforms like-
And the best part is, it’s 100% free! Personally, I think it’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress. Read my full RankMath review to find out why.
Keyword Surfer is a 100% free Chrome extension that allows you to generate keyword ideas and see search volumes directly in Google’s search results.
Just install the extension, and that’s all there is to it.
Now when you search in Google, you’ll get valuable like:
You can find search volume and similar keywords in 70 countries.
Keyword Surfer also integrates with ChatGPT, allowing you to humanise AI-generated content with just one click.
After installing the extension, you’ll see the Surfer widget inside ChatGPT.
Once you’ve generated content, click the humanise button. Surfer AI will immediately rewrite the content to sound more human.
It even gives you a percentage score of how likely your content will be detected as human vs AI.
Google Analytics 4 shows you everything you need to know about your sites data.
It shows you the real-world results of every action you take on your site. How it impacts your traffic, how it increases your conversions, who it attracts to your site.
And, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The main reason I’d suggest you use Google Analytics 4 is so you can track your progress and consistently strive to improve on it.
You can track how much of your traffic comes from different sources and dig even deeper to see where is bringing you the most traffic month on month.
But most importantly you can see which traffic converts:
Now, it can be easy to get caught up in the Vanity Metrics (stuff that looks and sounds good but doesn’t really mean anything) that’s often provided by Google Analytics 4.
That’s why it’s important to use the tool to track results.
Don’t trust Google? Check out my list of Google Analytics alternatives!
Screaming Frog is one of the most commonly talked about SEO tools on the planet.
This SEO spider based tool’s main objective is to save time on finding SEO problems and completing SEO audits. And, boy, they’ve succeeded in that.
Enter your (or your competitors) site’s URL and it’ll crawl. Once it’s finished you’ll get a complete look at the site, and in-depth information about each page.
It breaks down every known technical and on page SEO Google ranking factor there is. Screaming Frog is also considered as the best site auditing tool you can get.
The free version is limited to 500 URL/s which is fine for most small to medium sites!
Your site speed is a huge ranking factor.
The faster your page loads the more likely your site is to rank highly, and have a better user experience to go with it.
Google PageSpeed Insights can help you track it.
Crazy, right?
It then suggests improvements based on the results and Google Search Essentials best practices.
Meaning you can create a much faster, more streamlined site, without negatively changing your search results.
You can fix most of these problems without spending any money by following my tutorial to increase website speed.
Last year I released the free FAQ schema generator tool.
If you don’t know why you should be using this, watch this video:
The tool is really easy to use.
All you have to do is fill out the first question & answer and then, click on “+Add another question” to add more. You can add as many as you want (4-6 is perfect).
Just follow the tutorial on this page to deploy the code.
And… don’t forget to check your schema with a schema tester!
Ready to supercharge your SEO with AI?
Below are the best AI-powered SEO tools.
Keep in mind that Claude.ai has already been covered in my top 10 free SEO tools.
Here are the free AI SEO tools that are worth your time.
ChatGPT can be turned into your secret weapon for SEO.
And I am talking way more than just writing generic AI content for a website or blog.
Here’s everything you can do with ChatGPT for SEO:
With that in mind, Let me show you my top three ways to use ChatGPT (plus I’ve included the prompts as well).
All of this can be done on the free ChatGPT plan.
First up is Content Creation Ideas.
If you’re struggling to come up with ideas, plug this prompt into ChatGPT:
“I need content ideas for a blog targeting [industry/niche]. The goal is to rank for the keyword ‘[primary keyword].’ Please provide 10 engaging blog titles with a specific focus on search intent and value to readers.”
Pro tip: Add “including LSI keywords” to the end of the prompt to get content ideas that cover related topics too.
Next up is On-Page SEO Suggestions.
Use this prompt to get ChatGPT to do a thorough on-page SEO audit on your content:
“Review the following webpage content: ‘[paste content].’ Provide detailed and thorough on-page SEO recommendations, including keyword usage, heading structure, internal linking, and alt tags for images and more.”
ChatGPT will analyse your content and give you actionable steps to improve it.
Now, this last one can save you a lot of time in link building…
Personalised Outreach Emails.
Here’s the prompt:
“Create a personalised outreach email template for requesting backlinks. The target website is ‘[example website],’ and the goal is to promote our article titled ‘[article title].’ Crawl the website and personalise the message. Keep the tone professional and persuasive. The email should be short and straight to the point.”
You will need to customise the prompt to fit your business, niche, and target websites. But the output will enable you to do much more personalised link-building outreach.
More personalised = more links.
Who doesn’t want that, right?
The truth is ChatGPT has many powerful SEO applications. It all comes back to your creativity and prompting skills!
SEO.ai gives you access to 46 AI-powered SEO tools without spending a penny.
It’s a massive collection of SEO tools that will help you with everything from keyword research to content creation.
These are some of my favourites:
The best part is that all the tools are completely free to use, and you don’t need an account to take advantage of them.
It’s one of the best applications for AI that I’ve seen in the SEO software industry so far! Have some fun browsing through all the tools and level up your entire SEO workflow.
The new DeepSeek R1 model was released recently and is so powerful, it triggered the biggest US stock market loss in history with Nvidia stock losing $589 billion in a day.
Why is DeepSeek a great SEO tool though?
Because quite simply, what ChatGPT can do – DeepSeek can do better (and cheaper):
However we still don’t think it’s as good as Claude for most SEO tasks yet but we are certainly keeping an eye on it.
It’s certainly better than ChatGPT anyway, but so is Claude.
Keyword research is one of the most important tasks in SEO.
Good keyword selection can bring you organic search traffic and help you grow your business. But bad keyword selection will drain your resources!
Below you’ll find a list of free keyword research tools that can help you find profitable keywords with high search volume.
Keyword research is hard work, so I built a free tool that helps you to find all of your competitors best keywords.
Then it tells you which of those keywords are the easiest to rank for with the highest search volume – simple!
To see how it works, just watch this tutorial:
Why go to the hard work of creating an SEO strategy when your competitors have already done it for you?
Download my keyword research tool now! It only takes a few minutes to implement and it’s 100% free!
Ahref Keyword Difficulty Checker is a free SEO software that helps you find out the ‘ranking difficulty’ of the keyword you want to rank for.
Just enter your keyword and choose the country you want to rank in.
It gives you a score that fluctuates between 0 and 100.
The higher the number, the harder it is to rank.
Bonus: It also tells you approximately how many backlinks you’ll need to rank in the top 10. You can use these link building strategies or link building services or link building oackages if you need help with that.
But that’s not all. It also gives you a SERP overview for your keyword.
You can do as many searches as you want for free!
My full Ahrefs review shows you a bunch of other cool things you can do.
In my opinion, this is one of the best free SEO software available right now.
Answer The Public is a great tool to find out what problems your target audience faces.
It’s a huge searchable database of questions which you can use to create and fine tune your website content.
The results appear like this:
But I always download the free CSV report that includes:
If you sign up for a free Answer the public account, you get 3 free searches per day, including some historical data.
It’s worth having the free account for whenever you need it!
AlsoAsked is a freemium keyword research tool.
But if you are looking for some quick keyword ideas, it offers a ton of value on the free plan.
Here’s how it works:
AlsoAsked helps you find the questions and long-tail keywords that people are asking related to your topic or niche.
It leverages Google’s “People Also Ask” boxes in real-time and allows you to filter for specific countries and even languages.
You type in a keyword and AlsoAsked creates a visual representation of questions and sub-questions related to your input.
This will help you-
On the free plan, you’ll get up to 100 searches per month which is enough for most people.
You can also export data in a PNG image to quickly share it with others.
It’s a must-add to your free SEO tool list if you want to improve your keyword research and content!
Ubersuggest is one of the best free keyword research tools out there.
It has a ton of great features and even includes some extra SEO tools you will benefit from.
Let’s start at the top…
Just type in your target keyword and get access to:
Ubersuggest will give you a full breakdown of that keyword so you know if it’s worth targeting.
Scroll further down the page and get even more keyword ideas related to your initial target keyword.
If the keyword data is outdated, you can update it on demand!
What’s more?
Track up to 25 keywords for your site and monitor 2 competitors to see how you stack up.
And just in case that’s not enough for free, you’ll even get access to the Ubersuggest site audit tool and backlink monitoring tool.
It’s almost like having a mini Ahrefs in your back pocket!
The free version of the tool allows you to search for up to 3 keywords per day and 200 free credits for other reports – Which is great if you are just getting started. You can also integrate Ubersuggest with Google Search Console to import all that data.
There is seriously so much here that will level-up your SEO game!
Want to find keywords based on what your audience is actually talking about?
That’s where Keywroddit comes in.
It’s a free tool that extracts keywords from any subreddit with more than 10,000 subscribers.
You type in the name of a subreddit, and you’ll get-
You also have the option to export the data as a CSV file and use it later.
Keywroddit is a super simple tool that will uncover unique keywords people are actually using (and your competitors won’t find). That’s a recipe for great content ideas!
Keyword.io let’s you search keywords in a ton of different engines – including Google, Bing, Wikipedia and more.
On their homepage, just select the search engine, root keyword and country you’d like and hit search:
Then you’ll be given hundreds of relevant keywords to choose from almost instantly.
This is great for finding long and short tail keywords that you can sprinkle throughout your site or content.
You can even select the keywords from the list on the left and move them to the list on the right, and then download them to your computer with your free account.
Need ideas for different search engines?
Keyword.io even supports keyword research for YouTube, Amazon, Fiverr and eBay. It really is a powerful research tool!
CanIRank allows you to see how likely your site will rank for a keyword.
It also gives you the steps you need to take to make it happen.
And you’re also able to analyse keywords, your site’s current ability to rank for it and how you stack up against the competition. This includes a difficulty score so you know what you’re up against.
It will also show you relevant keywords to choose from:
And then you can click into any of those to get a closer look at the keywords value:
As well as giving me a complete breakdown of who else ranks for this keyword. Why they rank for it. And, the areas I can focus on to get the upper hand.
The last awesome feature is the content gap analysis. CanIRank gives you a ideas for content based on your site, the competition, traffic and value.
I’d take the results with a pinch of salt, but it can help you find weaknesses in your SEO.
Seed Keywords is a brilliant take on finding keywords.
Instead of researching the keywords that your audience might use, Seed Keywords allows you to ask them for exactly what they would use..
By creating a scenario for your your audience – buying a jacket, looking for a book, finding a new restaurant – you can find the specific search terms that they’ll be looking for.
Let’s say I wanted to find what people would search for to find new SEO tools, here’s the scenario I would create:
You can then share this scenario with your audience, through social media or your mailing list, to find out what search terms they’d actually use.
While this may not provide you with all of the statistics and search volumes, you can start to get an idea for what keywords show up the most.
And then you can cross-reference it with other tools like Google Keyword Planner to get search volumes.
Need to keep track of your SEO efforts without spending lots of time and money in doing so?
Don’t worry, because I have you covered with the best free on page SEO tools right here.
Quetext is a free tool that automatically detects duplicate content and checks if someone is using your text anywhere on the internet.
With Quetext, you can:
Just enter your content and hit ‘check plagiarism’
What makes this better than Copyscape is it also finds near matches of content, so it’s easy to see if writers have plagarised content with synonyms.
And that’s just the beginning…
Quetext is one of the best publicly available AI content detectors you can use right now. Simply paste in the text, and Quetext will check for patterns commonly used by AI writers.
It will also give you an originality score by telling you what percentage of the content is AI-generated.
The free plan doesn’t require an account, and you can check up to 250 words at a time. It’s updated for all the latest AI models, including Google Gemini, Open AI (ChatGPT) and Anthropic (Claude).
You can run as many checks as you want for free!
GTmetrix lets you get a deeper understanding of how your site performs.
Just pop your URL in the box and it’ll do a complete analysis of your page:
You’ll get a complete breakdown of your site speed score, including what’s good and what’s bad. This includes an overview of your core web vitals.
Each point that you need to improve comes with its own information beneath it to help you understand why it needs fixing and how.
And, if you want to dig a little deeper, you can see the Waterfall that shows how your page loads and where your main sticking points are:
If you are struggling with site speed problems, here are 6 free ways to increase your website speed.
Schema markup is an essential part of on-page SEO. But the problem is that implementing schema markup on your site isn’t exactly straightforward.
That’s where the Merkle Schema Markup Generator will help.
This free SEO tool generates perfect schema markup for your site in seconds. It’s so easy you won’t believe that it’s free.
And they’ve just added even more schema types to choose from!
You can now create-
…Schema for your site. Just fill in the required information on the form.
This entire process should take you less than a minute.
The tool then generates a free schema markup script on the right side. You just need to copy and paste it into your page/post on your site.
Plus, they’ve added a new testing framework that checks your schema markup for errors before you implement it. No more worrying about broken schema!
Easy, right?
Some SEOs charge thousands of $$$ to manually do this. But now you can implement the perfect schema on your site for free!
Cloudflare is one of the most well-known web performance and security companies online.
But most people don’t realise that Cloudflare offers many free tools that can boost SEO.
The free plan of Cloudflare includes access to their massive content deliver network (CDN) of 330+ server locations worldwide. That means your content gets served from the closest possible location to your visitors.
That’s a big win for website speed!
There are also a ton of other benefits the CDN offers your site-
Not sure what a CDN is? The image below explains how CDN work.
Plus, Cloudflare has added some other cool new features like:
This is honestly a no-brainer for every site owner!
All you need to do is create a free account with a Cloudflare account and follow the instructions in this article.
In about 10 minutes, you can speed up your site while offering extra protection against bots and hackers – for free!
ShortPixel is my secret weapon for image optimisation.
Images and graphics can take a long time to load on your website because they are big files. That can:
The problem is manually reducing the size of images while maintaining image quality isn’t easy.
This is where ShortPixel comes in.
ShortPixel automatically:
Short Pixel can reduce the size of images by up to 90%, which can significantly speed up your website load times.
The best part is that all you have to do is install the ShortPixel WordPress plugin and let it get to work. Every time you upload an image to your site, ShortPixel’s automated compression system does all the work for you.
It doesn’t get much easier than that, right?
The ShortPixel free plan comes with 100 credits per month which means you can reduce and compress the size of 100 images every month for nothing!
SpeedVitals TTFB Test is a free but powerful website speed test tool.
TTFB (Time To First Byte) is a metric that measures when a request for a website is made and when the first byte of response begins to arrive in your browser.
It essentially measures how long it takes for the first piece of the website to load.
Why is this important?
Two words – website speed.
You want your website to load as fast as possible and SpeedVitals TTFB test will show you what to optimise.
Type in your website in the TTFB test.
SpeedVitals then shows you how fast your TTFB is across a range of locations worldwide.
Is your TTFB score low? It’s time to get to work and improve it.
Link Building is one of the most highly-regarded ranking factors by SEOs around the world.
So these are the best free link building tools you can use in your campaigns.
Remember that we selected the Backlink Blacklist as our favourite free link building tool in our best free seo tools list above.
To help you take control of your search traffic, I released a link building strategy builder.
This intelligent sheets allows you to steal your competitors best backlinks.
Once the analysis is complete, you’ll know precisely which backlinks you should focus on building to your site first.
Watch this video to see step by step how it works:
Download my intelligent sheet now to find all your competitors best backlinks!
It doesn’t get much easier than that.
Open Link Profiler is a nifty little tool that gives you a ton of data about your backlink profile.
All you have to do is head to their website and enter your domain name:
You’ll then get a look at your sites backlink profile along with tons of handy information:
You can also see a full breakdown of the links that the site has, the quality of those links, and where each link is coming from:
Don’t forget that you can also use this tool on your competitors.
Learn more about why that is important with my backlink analysis tutorial.
You can export up to 1000 links from the tool for free.
ImageRaider is a reverse image search that finds where your images have been used around the internet.
Basically, that means instead of using words to search for an image, it uses images to search for where they’ve been published in the web.
You just upload the file, or paste in the image URL, hit Search Uploaded Image and it’ll scour the internet to see where your image is being used.
You can then get in touch with them and request that they add a link for using your infographic or image.
And, that’s a request they can’t really say no to!
SEO Auto Linker is a WordPress plugin that takes care of all of your internal link building needs.
Just add your URL, and the keywords you want it to automatically insert links for, and you’re all set:
The plugin hasn’t been updated in years and I’m surprised it still works, but for now it does everything you need to execute an effective internal link building strategy.
And, if you want to get clever with it, you can add affiliate links to SEO Auto Linker too.
WikiGrabber allows you to find those all-important broken Wikipedia Links and Citations that you can capitalise on.
See my Wikipedia link building tutorial if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Let’s say you’re working on a blog about Organic Food. You can go to WikiGrabber and search for that keyword:
That will bring up all of the relevant pages that have dead (broken) links on them.
You can then go in and find the links and see if they fit your content:
Clicking on any of the results will take you to the Wikipedia page you need.
Take a look at my Wikipedia link building tutorial to learn how to capitalize on that in the RIGHT way (not the spammy way!).
Hunter.io can make your link building campaigns 100 times easier.
It’s a simple search engine that allows you to find the email addresses for a large number of websites. And, it goes beyond just the contact@website.com most of the time.
It gives you direct access to real people’s email addresses.
Enter the name of the site you’re looking for, and it’ll come up with a list of all the email addresses provided for that site:
Now, this might not work for every site. But you can perform 25 domain searches per month and 50 domain verifications per month completely free.
That should be more than enough to kick start any link building campaign. Hunter has also brought out some big updates to enhance email verification accuracy.
It’s easily one of the most accurate email verification tools available right now.
The tool also comes with a browser extension:
This is a great tool to use if you are running a broken link building campaign.
Qwoted is a free PR tool that acts like a bridge between journalists and experts.
Think of it like a free version of HARO (Help A Reporter Out).
You sign up and become an expert on the platform. You’ll then receive relevant media opportunities related to your business or niche expertise.
Inside the platform, you can respond to any journalist’s questions or queries.
Responses might include a:
Anything the journalist is requesting. If the journalist uses your story or expertise in their article, they’ll likely mention you as the source.
That means you end up with a high-quality backlink!
Do this repeatedly, and it’s possible to earn hundreds of quality backlinks from major media sites that boost your own domain authority.
If you want to go deeper into SEO, check out this list.
It includes several free technical SEO tools that you can use without spending a dollar which is especially handy when running an SEO audit.
SEO Log File Analyser is developed by the Screaming Frog team.
It allows you to upload your log files, verify search engine bots, identify crawled URLs and analyse search bot data and behaviour for invaluable SEO insights.
Here is what you get for – free:
Not bad, right?
This tool is able to process, store and analyse millions of lines of log file event data and make it relevant to SEOs. What this will really help you do is optimise your crawl budget and ensure Google crawls your entire site more regularly.
You can learn more about how to use it in this video.
The Ahrefs WordPress SEO plugin was built to help you improve your search engine rankings for free.
This tool can:
…so you can get more organic traffic to your website!
The best part?
You don’t need an Ahrefs subscription to use it! Just grab a free authorisation code and you’re ready to go. The only catch is you’ll need to reconnect every few weeks – but that’s a small price to pay for this much value!
It has some unique ‘Ahrefs features’ that you can’t find anywhere else.
The truth is that I don’t think this plugin get’s the recognition it deserves. You can download the plugin here.
SEO Powersuite has been at the heart of my business for a long time (read my full SEO Powersuite review)
And, although I use the paid version right now, the free version is still one of the most effective SEO site tools (and suites) you can get your hands on.
With the free download, you’re able to access these great tools:
If you can’t start an effective campaign with all of these at your fingertips, I don’t know what you will be able to use.
Copyscape is a tool which lets you detect plargarised content by seeing if similar text appears elsewhere on the web.
We all know the importance of having unique content on your site from an SEO perspective and Copyscape allows you to stay on top of that easily.
It is a helpful tool when you want to find out…
Simply enter the URL for a website or blog post and Copyscape can tell you where else that content exists online.
A quick and easy way to make sure your content is unique.
Browseo is a nifty little tool that shows you what search engines see when they crawl your site. It consolidates all the important info together and displays it in an easy-to-read format.
Simply input the URL of the page you want to view and hit Browse.
Then you’ll see a breakdown of things such as:
The tool now includes a powerful JavaScript analysis framework that shows you how search engines render your JavaScript, and which content loads after initial page load.
Browseo also has the capabilities to point out if any JavaScript is blocking important content. That means it can help you spot content that Google might miss during indexing.
Being able to see what the search engines can see is a huge advantage which makes this a must-have tool for any SEO toolbox!
With all of these images on your site, you’ll find that it can have a significant impact on how fast your site loads. Keep in mind that website load speed is a known Google ranking factor.
WP Smush compresses your images, reducing the time it takes for them to load.
All you have to do is upload the WordPress Plugin to your site and you’re ready to start smushing.
The plugin comes with its own dashboard that you can use to smush images, and other attachments, without impacting their quality. WP Smush also converts images into WebP files to enhance delivery optimisation on your site.
And it can all run in the background while you work in other tabs.
This tool is an absolute no-brainer for anyone looking to increase their site speed for free.
Animalz Revive is your new best friend when updating old content.
This free SEO tool analyses your Google Analytics data and provides a list of posts that need to be refreshed.
The truth is that refreshing and updating content takes a lot of time. Most of that time is spent analysing your content and comparing it to competitors’ content.
Animalz Revive automatically:
It essentially detects content decay based on organic traffic loss. Then all you need to do is update, refresh and expand your content.
Anamalz has already done a lot of the heavy lifting by telling you where to focus your attention.
Checking your website search ranking position is critical if you want to be able to make plans and take decisions to improve your search traffic
Bellw, you’ll find a list of free rank tracking tools that can help you with this!
SERP Checker is developed by the AccuRanker team.
It is a free tool that allows you to get accurate search results for any country or location.
Just enter your keyword, select the country, enter a location, select the device and that’s it!
Then, you’ll get:
In fact, it’s one of the best mobile rank tracking tools and Bing rank tracker tools on the market right now.
SERP Checker gives you 5 searches per day for free and I suggest you read my full Accuranker review because it is AWESOME!
SERP Robot is a free Google rank checker that you can use to find your websites Google search positions instantly.
Not only that but you can use this tool to accurately report how your site ranks on Google for different keywords.
Then just wait for your rankings to be displayed.
You can also use the ranking checker tool to have a crafty look at what your competitors are doing but shhhhhh.
The Rich Results Test is a free tool by Google.
It has a simple interface to test if your pages support rich results. Just enter the URL you want to test and hit ‘TEST URL’ and voila!
Google Rich Results Test also allows you to test raw code before implementing it on your website. That means you can test the code to ensure there aren’t any errors before adding it live to your site.
Pro Tip: Use ChatGPT or Claude to generate schema markup for your site, then just paste the code to validate it before implementing.
You can run as many tests as you want for free!
Slerpee shows you exactly how your website looks on Google search in real time.
You can also edit your title tag and meta description to see how it looks in SERPs. Just a handy tool to have in your back pocket when building your website, launching a new post or showing a concept to a client.
Whether you need to create a quick report for a potential new client or audit your own site, there is a free SEO reporting tool for you!
Google Stuido Studio is a free data visualization and reporting tool that helps you build interactive SEO dashboards as well as customized reports.
It is very easy to use and it integrates with Google Analytics and a ton of other tools in a few clicks.
Google Looker Studio allows you to:
With the free version of Google Looker Studio, users can create up to five multi-page reports that can be shared with and edited by an unlimited number of users.
Not bad for a free tool!
Bing is often left aside because everyone is focused on Google.
But they developed their own SEO platform called Bing Webmaster Tools, which has had some serious upgrades in 2020 if you haven’t seen them:
They’ve recently updated the backlink analysis features, giving you more insights about your backlinks, referring domains and even the anchor text. This is a honestly a very powerful free tool to have!
The interface is simple and clean, so you can find all the data you need quickly.
And the best part is, it’s 100% free!
Look at my article ‘bing SEO’ to learn how to increase your traffic with Bing.
If you do any kind of reporting – whether for clients or yourself – SEO Tools for Excel can save you hours of time.
For example, if you track data in Google Analytics, it can instantly be exported to an Excel document using the tool.
That means you never need to worry about hand-entering your data ever again.
SEO Tools for Excel also has “Connectors”. This is essentially API access between Excel and other tools that allows you to pull data directly inside the Excel sheet
There are a ton of Connector integrations like Majestic, Google Analytics, Search Console, Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, Rank Ranger, and the list goes on and on. Essentially, every major SEO tool is on the list of Connectors!
And, that’s not the only useful extension that it comes with either. Just look at this list from the documentation and function library you have free access to (this is just over half of it):
This is a must have tool from this list. And, it’s probably the best reporting tool you’re going to get for free.
The Wayback Machine lets you look back and see the archived versions of any website.
So if a page begins to drop in its organic ranking over the course of 6 months, you can use this tool to see the old content that used to be on the page!
Simply put in your URL and select the date you wish to view.
Every page on every website has a history, and this tool allows you to see it all unfiltered! The blue and green dots track the level of content changes so you can quickly see when the biggest changes were made.
Go Auditor is a free SEO audit tool that gives you important information about your SEO.
Simply paste your URL into the search bar and hit ‘Audit’
You’ll get an overall score and if you scroll down you will find a break down of the results…
You can expand each point to learn either what you have done well or what you need to improve your SEO. Everything is broken down into 3 different categories (Pass, Warning, Fail) and is listed based on priority scoring.
Go Auditor also does a great job at diagnosing technical SEO issues, including performance optimisation recommendations.
You can download your results into a handy PDF to review at a later date if needed.
Imagine you could get just a glimpse of what your competitors were doing. How much different would your analysis and strategy be then?
These free competitor research tools let you take a look at what they’re up to, so you know when to zig when they’re about to zag.
SEMRush is one of my favourite tools and this exclusive free trial is a great way to get all the benefits of a premium tool without spending any cash!
You’re able to access important stats like: what keywords competitors are ranking for, how much traffic they’re getting and who their search competitors are, too.
That’s access to a lot of data for free.
Take the name of one of your known competitors and place it into the search box to see the magic live.
You’ll be directed straight to a dashboard that shows you all of the major stats about this site in the database you’ve chosen:
Everything you see on this page is already more valuable than most tools will give you for free. Because, as you scroll down, you’re able to find out more information.
For example, you can see the exact keywords they’re ranking for and the level of traffic each of them brings:
And you can take a look at who their direct competitors are so you can start assess them and beat them in the rankings, too.
Last, but not least, you can check out their entire backlink profile and see where they’re getting that good link juice from. That includes an overview of their profile:
As well as specifics of their backlinks, like the anchor text and the source:
Highly recommended and does much more than what I’ve shown you here, too. Check out my full Semrush review to see how I use it to execute complete SEO campaigns.
You’ve got nothing to lose so take advantage of this exclusive free trial now!
Similar Web is the ultimate competitor research tool.
Simply type in your competitor’s domain and see:
And so much more!
You can even see the demographics of their site visitors and the interests that their site visitors have.
It’s worth noting that Similar Web uses advanced modelling to get the data about most sites, so take it with a grain of salt.
But if you want to lift the hood on any competitor’s site, Similar Web is a great free tool to take advantage of!
BuiltWith is a great tool that allows you to see all the technologies used to build the frameworks of any website and any services they are using.
This is for people who want to know what peers, competitors, or interesting websites are using. It could mean the difference between using Squarespace, Shopify or WordPress or exposure to something completely new.
You can even see what plugins or apps they use to power their website.
If you ever wondered how a competitor was doing something on their site, this tool will help you figure it out!
Ever wanted to know what plugins, tools and services your competitors are using behind the scenes?
Well, now you can.
Theme Detector tells you much more than just what theme or plugin a site is using:
You can find out lots of interesting information:
As well as being able to find all their tools of the trade so that you can use them to get ahead, too.
Just type the name of the site into the search bar and hit enter:
It doesn’t get much easier than that!
Those pesky Google updates usually cause more trouble than they are worth!
But it’s important you stay on top of the changes and turbulences in the Google Algorithm and these are the best free tools to do that.
Remember that the Panguin Tool is our favourite penalty diagnosis and is listed in our top 10 free SEO tools above.
MozCast is developed by the Moz team to detect “turbulences” in the Google algorithm.
It looks like a “weather report” that tracks changes in Google daily.
The hotter the temperature, the more change has been observed in Google rankings in the previous 24 hours.
Each temperature also gets converted into one of five severity levels:
If it’s a stormy day, then something big happened.
Moz uses enhanced algorithm tracking features that make it one of the most accurate SERP trackers available. It also includes industry specific analysis and correlates historical algorithm changes so you can get a better idea of what Google is doing.
The report is updated every morning (~7:30 am Pacific Time) and is great to pick up on early movements.
The Semrush Sensor tracks and measures the volatility of Google’s SERPs based on daily changes in rankings.
It is able to monitor any signs that could indicate an update to Google’s algorithm.
The daily report shows a score that fluctuates between 0 and 10 just like this:
A ‘high’ or ‘very high’ score indicates a big probability that your website’s rankings and search traffic could fluctuate.
The best part is that the Semrush Sensor even breaks down fluctuations into different:
And more! That means you can get very specific to see if your site is likely experiencing volatile SERP updates.
You can even subscribe to get custom alert notifications whenever your niche is getting hit.
Read my full Semrush review to learn more about their full suite of tools or claim you exclusive free trial now.
This is one of the coolest tools I use. It’s a little cheesy in the way it’s branded, but that doesn’t detract from how good the tool is.
Google Grump Detector (see my full Accuranker review) is like a weather forecaster for Google. It senses changes in Google’s ‘mood’ (algorithm) and gives you warning about the fluctuation in rankings.
Select your country and the device you’re interested in (mobile/desktop or both) to see whatever todays rating is.
It’ll then share with you the data for that specific database over the last month, so you can see the fluctuations:
If you’re not sure what levels of Grump there are, it also comes with a handy key:
Worth checking once or twice a week, just to see what Google is up to right now.
Not every SEO tool needs its own space to run.
These free SEO browser extensions can be used while you’re browsing the web which saves tons of time and money using other tools.
Remember that we selected the Keyword Surfer extension as one of our top 10 free SEO tools above which is not repeated in the list below.
SEO Quake is a mini Semrush plugged into your browser.
If you’re on the hunt for competitors, or find a site that you’d like to know more about, SEOQuake lets you check vital stats from your browser.
You can-
This is a tonne of data right at your fingertips, and it’s a nice tool to have around, so I’d recommend sticking it on to your extensions list!
MozBar is one of the original SEO toolbars. And although the competition is getting bigger and better every day (see above) it’s still worth grabbing.
In Google Searches it gives you instant insights into the page, with a focus on Page and Domain Authority:
When you click on the link analysis tool, you can access every link that makes up their PA and DA for your own personal use:
There is also a tonne of other metrics you can pay attention to as well, like Spam Score. With the latest updates you also have the power to customise MozBar and configure certain metrics that are important to you.
A great addition that works best in conjunction with other toolbars for best results but they are far from being the best backlink checker.
Check My Links is a really cool tool that allows you to check all of the links in your content – new and existing – to make sure that they’re valid.
That means you can easily find broken links, and repair them, to get almost instant SEO benefits. That’s a powerful free tool if I ever saw one.
Once installed it will crawl through a particular page and it will find the valid links and highlight them in green:
You’ll see all of the warning links in yellow; and all of the links you need to fix or change, in bright red:
All of this is crawled in just a few seconds, and because it’s visual it makes a great aide to show potential new clients some of the issues with their site. Keep in mind it has been updated for ages, but take advantage of it while can.
You can even use it for broken link building. Win win win!
NoFollow is a simple tool from IgorWare that highlights all of the No Follow links on a website.
Simply download the extension and you’re ready to go. It’ll start to show you all of the no follow links on any page with a red box around them.
Just like this:
NoFollow also shows sponsored and UGC links in content.
It’s not a tool that’s going to win any awards. But, it can be really helpful in making sure you get the links you want, and aren’t hit by any nasty surprises right in the middle of your campaign.
I also like to use it when auditing links to look any correlations between different types of links and rankings of a specific page.
Google’s tools are often overlooked by new SEOs. And, I get it – you want the shiny new third party tool that promises the earth.
But, some of the most established SEOs I know use these tools to form the backbone of their campaigns.
Google’s tools are free and you can extract valuable data in just a matter of seconds. Don’t forget I added Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4 and Google PageSpeed Insights to my top 10 free SEO tools.
Keyword Planner still remains one of the most popular keyword research tools.
And, for good reason – it’s still one of the most accurate free SEO tools available for search volume.
And it’s not just great for search volume.
You can also find suggested keywords that relate to your terms and all of their metrics, too:
There is so much free data inside Keyword Planner that it’s a must use tool.
It has a bunch of great features like:
You can use the tool to research thousands of keywords straight from the horse’s mouth; as well as create plans that you can execute upon.
Take a look at my Google Keyword Planner tutorial to learn more.
Google Trends has a ton of applications for SEO because of the amount of data it provides.
If you know how to use it properly, it’s one of the best free SEO tools you’ll find.
These are the top 3 things you should be using it for:
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you run an ecommerce store that sells organic skin care. You want to find trend topics and keywords to create content about.
This is where Google Trends is invaluable!
Simply enter a related keyword and let the tool do its magic. First, it will show you how the keyword/topic is trending.
Don’t forget to use the filters at the top to select the country, region and dates.
Now, scroll to the bottom.
Here you’ll find a list of related topics and search queries that are currently trending.
This will provide you with a huge amount of content ideas that you know are trending in your niche right now.
Easy, right?
Google Trends is one of the most underrated complete free SEO tools. They’re constantly improving and updating to enhance the trends predictions and data.
The only limitation is YOU and YOUR imagination.
Want more Google tools? Check out my list of Google tools.
These next free writing tools will help you craft content that both search engines and readers will love.
From AI-powered writing assistants to readability checkers, these tools make it easy to create high-quality content without spending a fortune on software.
Want to make your content easier to read?
Hemingway Editor is a free tool that analyses your content and highlights problems like:
It’s super easy to use. Just paste your content into the editor, and it colour codes any issues it finds.
This includes giving your feedback on your writing and where to improve.
What’s cool about Hemingway is that gives you a readability score and tells you what reading level grade your content is. It also highlights difficult sentences to read so you can change them quickly.
The free version has tons of great features, including a desktop app that you can use to write and edit entire blog posts.
This isn’t just a free tool to find spelling and grammar issues…
It will improve your writing as a whole.
If you want to ensure that your content is error-free…
It doesn’t get much better than Grammary.
Think of it like having a personal editor that checks every word you write. It’s perfect for creating high-quality SEO content that keeps readers engaged.
The free version of Grammarly gives you-
Google loves well-written content, and Grammarly helps you create exactly that.
Grammarly also has a browser extension to check your content directly in WordPress, Google Docs, or anywhere else you type.
That means you can take advantage of Grammarly’s power anywhere online.
It’s one of those free SEO tools I use daily.
Ahrefs’ free AI title generator creates optimised blog titles in seconds.
Just enter your keyword and choose your style:
This is the perfect tool to boost your click-thru-rates from the Google organic search results.
Ahrefs Meta Description Generator will write and optimise your meta descriptions in one click.
Just enter your content topic, and it generates different versions to choose from.
You can choose the writing style (formal, casual, fun, custom, etc) and select the number of variants you want it to write. I found that 3 generates the best results.
If you need help writing compelling descriptions that get clicks, this is for you.
If you own a local business…This next section of tools is for you.
They will help you dominate the local SERPs and get more 5-star Google Business reviews for even more exposure online.
Run a local business?
WhiteSpark’s Google review link generator will help you get more 5-star Google reviews.
Here’s how it works:
Type in your business name, select your business from the list and click Generate review link.
The generator will create a custom link that takes users directly to your Google Business Page to leave a review.
You can even customise the link name to make it more appealing. WhiteSpark also provides a custom QR code to print out and place in your business for users to scan and leave a review.
It’s completely free to use and works for multiple business locations.
If you need a quick overview of the local Google search results, this tool will speed up the process.
BrightLocal’s Local SERP Checker shows you the SERPs for any keyword and location.
Input your target keyword, add a location and choose your country.
The SERP checker will list all the local search results pages, and you can click to see each one.
It works for both Google and Google Maps, depending on the type of local SEO you’re doing. It’s the best free tool for viewing localised search results.
LocalFalcon is one of the best local rank trackers you can get.
Think of it like a spy camera for your local rankings – you can see exactly where your business appears in Google Maps from different locations.
The free plan gives you 100 credits to-
Use your free credits to check your most important keywords first. It should give you enough usage to see the key rankings for your business.
So there you have it.
This is the complete list of free SEO tools that are actually useful!
But don’t forget, these are the 10 best free SEO tools.
Did I Miss Any Free SEO Tools?
If there are any free SEO tools that I’ve missed then please let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to the post!
(Psss, if you don’t want to waste your time picking and trying SEO tools, you should partner with a link building service or even a white label SEO agency that offer white label SEO services – then you can stop worrying about SEO tools altogether)
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What a great list. Helps me learn and optimize. Many thanks for sharing. I appreciate it.
No worries!
Hi, what do you think about adding Marketing Miner SEO tool? Have you ever tried it 🙂
Haven’t tried it yet. Thanks for the suggestion!
Best Article to digital marketers, to analyze and work.Expecting more blogs like this.really great article thanks
Thank you, Sakthi. More blogs are coming!
Hi Dear Matthew Woodward, I am using Ahrefs and This Tool focuses on link analysis. Users enter a URL to view how many backlinks it has, as well as the types of backlinks (text, no-follow, redirect, image, or frame), referring IPs, and domains. What’s your opinion about this.
Ahrefs is the best tool for link analysis and link building in general. I use it pretty much every day! I even wrote a review about it: https://searchlogistics.com/seo/reviews/ahrefs/
Highly useful content, thank you MathewI’ve been floating between Twinword and KeywordChef (and a few in your list), just wondering if you have experimented with either of those, and if you have an opinion?It’s pretty wild that tools intended to do the same thing can have such a variance, it gets hard to know which ones are the most accurate (regardless if they’re free or paid)
Hi Ross! Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with any of the tool you mention so I can’t give you my opinion on them.
Thank you for sharing these free Seo tools, it helped me a lotThank you for this amazing post:)
Glad it was helpful! Which tool is your favourite?
Outstanding article
Thanks! Cheers 🙂
This articles going to save plenty of time for a lot of people.
Hope so! Cheers!
Outstanding article. These free SEO listed tools will help me out. I am looking for more because having more SEO tools are more beneficial for us.
Thanks! Keep it up, Roger!
Thank you, Matthew.
Really your Article is nice. I really appreciate your work in this Article. I read your Article and I learn lots of things. thanks for this information.
No worries!
This is very informative!!
Thanks Peter!
thanks for this amazing list.. i have tried the backlink-shitter and liked it.. The keyword io is also a great tool..Thanks Matthew for this amazing list.. I will definitely try the others listed here..
Way to go! Glad you are trying the tools so you can find the one that suits better to your business! Keep it up 🙂
This is really a great list. Thank you for this guide.
No problem! 🙂
Thank for share articles this is awesome post.
Thank you! Hope you found the tool you needed/wanted 🙂
God bless you! Your content is better then many udemy courses.
Thanks! Always happy to share my tips with my readers!
I really like to read new articles about SEO, I’m trying to learn more about it every day and this post help me to know more about it, thank you Matthew for this great article
No worries!
Thanks for sharing this it is so helpful, Please do share more information like this.
No problem, Ravi 🙂
This is really a great list. Thank you for this guide.
No worries! Enjoy the list!
Thanks a lot for sharing this informative post, keep sharing it with us.
Thanks, Maulik!
What a fantastic post! good for all movers
Thanks!
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools are my absolute favourite of the list. It is an exceptional source of wisdom and opportunities for in-house SEO. And you can have it free – amazing!
I couldn’t agree more with you!
Hi Matthew, Great work with helpful free SEO tools. I really appreciate your work for gathering all tools together so that we can find all in on. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and hard work.
No problem Sam, always happy to share tips with my readers!
These seo tools helped me out to increase my community.
Glad to hear that – Keep up the good work!
Your blog is so great and it is very relatable. I love how you put things down in a simple and fun way
Thank you Victoria! Happy to help!
Amazing Post It help in my SEO ordersBut It give limted search
Yes, some of them have limited features but… well, they are free!If you need to get access to more features, you can upgrade your account for a premium version.
Free SEO tools that actually work can be one of the biggest assets for your site.
I couldn’t agree more!
Hi Matt What an amazing list of tools. Founds some grate new tools from here. Have you heard about https://rankchecker.io/It's a new free rank checker tool, you should check it out and maybe can also add to this list.
Thank you Kelly – I’ll check it out!
These tools are very important to do SEO of any project but the problem is they offer limited searches free queries accordingly.
True, but it’s enough if you’re just getting started. It still helps save money for people who are on a budget.
Thanks Matt, SEO is now much more complex than its ever been, and its cool that you still have the same degree of passion for it that you’ve always shown. didn’t even know Bing had webmaster tools. Their results are not too bad these days.
You’re so right, Jide! That’s why it’s crucial to stay up to date! Yep – Bing should not be left behind when it comes to SEO!