What are 7 Free SEO Tools That Can Kick Start your SEO Strategy?

SEO is a long-term process, which requires time, cost & lots of patience. In order to manufacture a well-rounded organic search strategy, marketers typically execute three types of SEO strategies i.e. On-page, off-page & technical SEO.

You can implement your SEO strategy successfully if you gain deep insights of your website performance, competitors’ website performance, backlink profiles, keyword selection & content marketing strategy.

Whether you are an SEO company or an in-house expert, you need to invest a lot of time & cost in auditing websites, keyword research, competitor website ranking etc.

SEO tools are key to accurate solutions right from keyword optimization, backlinks, website audit to keeping an eye on competitors’ SEO tactics.

SEO tools can help you with:

SEO tools are expensive however there are many free SEO tools that a beginner or a seasoned SEO expert can use to execute SEO tactics. This article will let you review the features & benefits of 10 free SEO tools you should use to boost your SEO strategy.

1. Google Analytics       

Google Analytics is a comprehensive web analytics tool specially designed to track & generate data such as web activity, customer behavior, lead source & conversions. It generates daily, monthly or real-time reports for web activity such as bounce rate, session duration & page per session.

It can identify the best & the worst performing pages of your website. It can segregate traffic from all sources organic, referral, or direct. Google analytics advance features offer segmentation according to demographics, buying behavior, interest, technology & mobile use.

An SEO company or an in-house SEO expert avail this free digital analytics tool to measure the effectiveness of their SEO campaigns. This is easy to install, user-friendly & accurate tool that can monitor your content’s performance.

Google Analytics is a free tool by which small business owners can benefit without paying monthly subscriptions.

Google also offers training to SEO enthusiasts who want to use this free digital analytics tool. You can visit this link to explore:

2. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free website that provides data and graphs on the popularity of specific search terms used on Google & YouTube.

You can use Google trends to:

• Identify trending topics within the industry or overarching theme.
• Find out which searches are trending
• Discover geographic search trends local to your area.

Google Trends is the graphical manifestation of the trending most popular search terms & topics. You can conduct free keyword research on Google trends. This unique tool allows you to optimize your keywords according to the recent, past or history of trends in a particular category.   The keyword research feature helps to recognize keywords that are growing in popularity and to avoid keywords that are becoming less popular over the period of time.

Google trends will not only provide the search trends of the particular search term or search topic but recently trending news items, political, business & sports events.  Google trends help you to understand the recent & past trends location-wise, plan & implement PPC campaigns, content marketing & social media strategy accordingly.

An SEO company can use Google Trends to show clients the upswing or downswing in their market over time and it helps to show where you need to focus and also keeps the client in check as to what they can expect in a declining or growing market. Since keywords research & trend analysis are the main pillars of SEO strategy, Google trends are a must for every SEO professional.

3. Google My Business

Google Search is a classic choice, no matter which stage of buying cycle a customer is in. Consumer starts in-depth google search before even considering to buy your products or services. Google has reported that nearly 50% of all searches have local intent, with business location being the main focus of the local search.

The question every local business owner should ask is how can my business pop up in the search results with relevant information across all devices?

Google My Business is a free of cost one stop solution, to empower your Local SEO strategy. Google my Business (GMB) is a local marketing tool capable of boosting businesses of all shapes & sizes, especially brick & mortar businesses.

GMB is not just an ordinary business listing, nevertheless it is an influential instrument that enhances your business visibility & reach consequently leading to increase in customer & sales growth. Google my business (GMB) when optimized can lead to quick business wins, customer retention, beat the competition & revenue growth rapidly.

SEO agency or in-house SEO team can use GMB to manage how their business is displayed on Google search or Google maps. Its shows business name, contact information, website link & operational hours. GMB profile will help you appear

in the local search & let your customer access your pictures, reviews, offers & ratings. Relevant information appearing in the search result will build trust & credibility among visitors even before availing the product & services.

Let’s explore the key features of Google My business:

• Create Free Business profile (Product info, address, working hours etc)
• Publish Promotional Posts, Photos & Respond to customer reviews.
• Monitor bookings via online, calls & SMS
• Get Free website & email addresses for the team.
• Create Ads for free
• Track Business Analytics

Hurry up! Don’t waste time

Get your business data (name, address, category) verified by google or claim an existing profile, make sure the information is complete, correct & thoroughly optimized.

Use Google my business (GMB) tool, quickly optimize your local SEO strategy subsequently boost your branding, engage with your customers & get new customers free of cost.

4.  Google keyword planner

Keyword research is fundamental to pay-per-click marketing and SEO practices. Keywords can range from single word search term to complex phrases added into a website to increase quality organic traffic. Audience uses keywords when they search for anything related to your product & services. Marketers create a channel between the brand & target audience by adding well-researched & optimized keywords in their content.

You need to create web pages & content by using right keywords which translates a customer’s intent. Whether you are discovering new keywords or fixing the gap between existing keywords, you should use this extensive free tool Google keyword planner.

(Keyword research is like fishing in an ocean, you can catch fish if you place your net at the right place at the right time)

One of the best tools for SEO professionals to discover quality keywords for website or PPC campaigns. So, whether you’re an SEO agency or a ppc company in India you’ll anyway require keyword planner in one way or the other.

Start by adding a list of seed keywords, check how many people are searching for those keywords, check the competition for advertising. Explore what are the alternative keywords you can choose to avoid competition. Finally, expand on them to find similar keywords, afterwards integrate web pages with the final keyword list to attain higher ranking on SERPs.

Key operations you can do on Google keywords planner:

1. Discover New Keywords
2. Upload your existing Keyword list & get search volume & forecast.
3. Get new suggestions
4. Create a keyword list for PPC campaigns
5. Access real time & exact data directly from Google search

Google keyword planner is a user-friendly with friendly user interface & a great too to discover the potential of your primary & secondary keywords. Create an account on Google Ads and start keyword optimization for your SEO or PPC campaigns.

5. Google Search Console

Google Search console is a free tool that helps website owners, SEO specialists & developers how their website is performing on google search. Google Search console helps SEO specialists to figure out what they can do to improve website appearance & how to bring more relevant traffic. Please note that Google search console is not a requirement of your website to appear in the organic search results nevertheless it can definitely help you to monitor & optimize how google crawls, indexes & presents your website to users.

You should be asking your self how you can use Google search console.

Here are some things you can do on Google search console

1. Learn about Google crawling, indexing & discovering your content.
2. Fix errors which google finds on your pages.
3. Submit updated content to the google index.
4. Monitor your search performance by trends, queries & countries.

Google Search console is a free service offered by google that provide intelligent data that will support you in website monitoring technical SEO or content development. It generates date wise performance reports on website, image, video & news on metrics such as total clicks, impressions, average CTR & average position in the search. You can also compare your website is performing on mobile & desktop.

The information derived from the Google search console is not just confined to technical decision making with regards to your website however it can-do cutting-edge marketing analysis by successfully partnering with tools like Google analytics, Google Trends & Google ads. Google Search console benefits helps you to monitor your website & resolve server errors, loading & security issues.

This free tool can make life easier for time & cash strapped small business owners who works as an SEO expert & site administrator at a same time for their business. Hence, you should be asking yourself how you can use Google search console to boost my brand.

6. SEO Quake

Typically, SEO experts spend invest vast majority of time in researching for questions like these, before formulating an SEO strategy.

• “For which keywords are my competitor is ranking for?”
• “How many backlinks does my competitor has?”
• “Which high domain authority websites are giving him backlinks?”

Trust me it is a daunting task to discover & amass, this sort of information. One method is to retrieve the data manually and the other is install a tool like SEOquake plugin save time & enhance your efficiency.

SEOquake  is a free plugin for your browser that conducts instant SEO audit, examine external & internal links & compares domain in real time. SEOquake plugin is recommended for all beginners, advanced & expert SEO professionals because it provide comprehensive information such as page SEO audit, website audit, compare competitor’s domain, analyses keyword density, detailed report on internal & external Links, checks statistics from social media platform. (Facebook Likes) This plugin can be installed in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera. 

Explore SEOquake’s features below:

• SEO bar: Customizable Bar switch on & off when required
• SEO Dashboard: Compact but highly informative dashboard
• SEO overlay: Analysis of SERP
• Vast Data: most data sources available (Semrush, Alexa, yahoo index)
• Keyword Analysis: Discover New Keywords
• Print & Export: Data is Printable & Transferable (CSV format)

Hence,  you should install SEOquake, detect your website issues and fix them instantly.

7.Ubersuggest   

Ubersuggest is another free keyword research tool, which help you discover millions of keywords for your blog or website. Besides giving suggestions, Ubersuggest provided information about search volume, cost per click (CPC) & SEO difficulty of the keyword you are searching for. Stand out feature for Ubersuggest is that, it gives keyword suggestion based on questions people usually search. It shows a list of keyword variations based on your seed keywords. Ubersuggest considers comparisons as a critical search pattern for example “which is better covid vaccine Covaxin or Covishield” it gives suggestion on the basis of how people are comparing two products. It is an ideal tool for generating new keyword ideas, generate more suggestions & discover more ideas for your content.

Explore features of Ubersuggest

• Rank tracking: Track your keyword rankings and monitor your SEO progress. View ranking at multiple locations
• Keyword ideas- thousands of innovative Keywords, content ideas
• Competitor analysis- Keyword traffic, Top pages in traffic
• SEO explorer- SEO analyzer, backlink suggestions

So, what are you waiting for! Install Ubersuggest & Boost your On-page SEO strategy.