In today’s article, we’ve rounded up 37 of the best free SEO tools on the market.

We asked experts on Indiehackers, SEO Facebook groups, Twitter, Slack communities and other online communities which tools they love to use.  to make sure that the tools included aren’t just available for a 10-day free trial–they’re going to stay free. 

The tools mentioned are organized by category for easier navigation. Keep in mind that a lot of these tools have different features that allow them to cover more than one category. 

What are SEO tools? 

SEO tools are software used by marketers to research, implement, and analyze the organic performance of their websites.

Related post: SEO Glossary: 300+ SEO Terms for SEO Beginners

The tools included in this article are organized according to function:

• Analytics
• Crawling/indexing
• Keyword research
• Link building 
• Local SEO 
• On-page SEO 
• Research 
• Site speed and
• SEO WordPress plugins

Free analytics tools

Different tools report on and measure SEO metrics. The tools used to measure click-through rate won’t be the same as the ones used for conducting market research. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics the golden standard for SEO analytics tools. It shows you data on your audience, acquisition, traffic sources and traffic volume, and you can also set and track conversion goals. 

This is your go-to for seeing which channels perform and generate ROI.

Image of Google Analytics taken from the Google Analytics Academy.

Clarity

Clarity by Microsoft is a free UX analytics tool. It shows you how your users behave on your websites. Features include session recording playbacks, heatmaps, engagement metrics, and website performance data. 

It works alongside Google Analytics rather than instead of it, since it can’t filter by traffic.

Google Data Studio 

Google Data Studio is a dashboard and reporting tool by Google. It connects with several data sources—namely by Google—like sheets, Analytics, GSC, YouTube and others to allow you to easily visualize performance. 

All Google data sources are free to connect to, but you have to pay for any 3rd party sources. 

You can build some good-looking dashboards in data studio, and we use it as a supplement to our client reports.

Screenshot of Loves Data using Google Data Studio.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the most accurate tool for tracking keyword rankings, click-through rate, clicks per query, impressions and a complete overview of your keyword visibility. 

The free GSC tool allows you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website and its ranking and coverage.

Free crawling/indexing tools

Screaming Frog

SEO pros screamed to us that they love Screaming Frog. It’s a powerful tool for auditing large numbers of website pages. It helps you quickly find any errors (404, missing meta descriptions, improper website architecture) and saves users hours of manual work.

Their SEO Spider tool is free for up to 500 URL crawls, and includes the following features: 

• Finding broken links, errors, and redirects
• Analyzing page titles & meta data
• Reviewing meta robots and directives
• Auditing hreflang attributes
• Discovering exact duplicate pages
• Generating XML sitemaps
• Site visualizations

Related post: SEO-Friendly URLs: How to Create a URL Google AND Users Like

Check My Links

Check my Links is a Chrome extension that will crawl through web pages for you and check for broken links. 

All you need to do is install and activate it. 

Once the page you want to crawl is open and it’s started, it’ll highlight all the links that are valid in green and the broken ones in red. You can then copy all the bad links with one click.

Free keyword research tools

Google Keyword Planner

In order to use this one, you’ll need a Google Ads account. 

Since it comes as a part of the Google Ads toolkit you can be sure the data is really accurate.

It’s great for gathering insight on search trends and particular keyword popularity with its monthly search volume. You can also track how topics develop, and anticipate bidding costs for specific keywords. 

This tool is also helpful with segmentation based on language and country, and can help you choose specific keywords to target different markets accordingly. 

Grow Keywords 

This website lets users input a primary keyword and collect a list of the best keyword phrases to use. There is also an option to ‘grow’ (aka find) other keywords relevant to a single result. 

It’s great for finding related keywords for your website, and there are buttons at the top that easily let you copy or download your list once you’re done.

Answer the Public

This easy-to-use website has you type keywords into the search bar to check the top results,  categorized as questions, prepositions, comparisons, and alphabeticals. 

You can also easily export the data once it’s been gathered, and choose to save the results as visualizations or lists. Answer the Public provides easy insight into what details people are interested in when they search a topic and helps quickly find long-tail keywords.

Keep in mind that there are only three searches a day for free.

We created a guide to interviewing customers for content that resonates with them

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Explorekeywords.com

Explore keywords offers a variety of different specifications when searching for new keyword ideas. 

In each of these specific categories, the website offers different search terms. 

This is broken down such that:

• Keyword volume checker allows for different search volumes, whether bulk or specific.
• The digital marketers option allows for search engine specification (Google, Bing, Google Images) and a selection of country and language.
• Publisher keywords allow for specifications of question, popular, A-Z, and local SEO keywords.
• Youtube keywords have the same options and publisher, except with a hashtag generator instead of local SEO
• Ecommerce allows users to specifically browse for Google shopping, eBay, and Amazon
• Keywords for the Play Store results can be specified as Google Play, apps, movies, or books results for users to easily find what is most relevant to them.

Keyword Surfer

This Chrome extension lets users easily gather search data and understand guidelines for keyword content. It’s less powerful than tools like SEMrush, but it also doesn’t have a limit on number of daily activities. 

This extension offers unique tools like a word count for the top results in a search. It produces correlation charts to help track competitor’s traffic for the same keywords. 

Unlike other tools, it also allows you to select the specific keywords you want to save and copy them all at once. 

Ubersuggest 

This browser plugin can be used on search engines such as Google, YouTube, and Amazon. It offers keyword search volume, CPC, and searched keyword insights. 

It’s easy to use and has an intuitive SERP analyzer that’ll break down domain authority. 

Image from the Ubersuggest extension download page.

Free link building tools

Linkedin

Yes, the social network. Linkedin is a great tool for building one’s personal brand and to help build up a network, and if you don’t already have an account, there’s no time like the present. 

Link building is one of the SEO activities that marketers struggle with the most. While it is a time-consuming activity that requires commitment and consistency, knowing how to navigate platforms such as Linkedin can be game-changing. We use our LinkedIn network to get contributor quotes and exchange link opportunities.

Medium

Medium is an online publishing platform where writers can submit content on just about anything and build an audience. 

For link building purposes, Medium functions as a guest posting opportunity in a hub where you can easily reach audiences already interested in your topic. 

For instance, a quick search on B2B SEO provides stories, related tags, and authors on the subject. With 60 million users, it’s a great platform to use to help generate backlinks to your main website and content.  

Search results on Medium.com

Reddit

In order for this to be a helpful link building tool, you’ve got to know which subreddit communities to join and engage with. 

Establish a presence in these subreddits. Follow the community guidelines (which usually means you can’t just outright ask for backlinks).

It may take time, but you’ll find users who post questions and hopefully generate quality links back to your own content.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools lets webmasters add their webpages to the Bing crawler. This allows your sites to appear in Bing search engines and makes it easy to evaluate performance. 

You’ll need to create an account using your Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account and verify your site URL to use this tool, and although Google is the search engine superpower, it’s important that your content is also competitive in other spaces. 

The interface is a bit outdated, but if that isn’t a pet peeve of yours then you’ll enjoy using this tool.

Free local SEO tools

Google My Business

This tool allows businesses to interact with potential and current clients through platforms such as Google Maps. You can upload a company overview, photos, and additional contact information to convince customers you outdo competitors. 

Google My Business helps businesses expand their presence and dominate locally. Google Maps shows different results than a traditional Google search does, and if you aren’t ranking in Google Maps you’re local SEO struggles. 

It’s also the best way to keep customers clued in on your business. Day off for a holiday? You can have it appear in your Google Maps listing. Change in hours of operation? Same thing. 

It’s one of the easiest and best ways to maintain quality CRM.

Moz Local Listing Score

Moz offers several different free tools on their website–the Mozbar, Mozcast, and Moz Local Listing Score being a few.

This tool specifically allows webmasters to evaluate how accurately their business listing appears across the internet.

Moz’s local SEO tool conducts an SEO audit on existing content and location data to maximize a company’s online presence. It’ll check your citations on different local search engines to find where data is missing or inaccurate. 

The features users love about this tool include the ability to track clients and find NAP inconsistencies in listing sites. There is also a nifty tool that lets you download your score as a PDF. 

And if you’ve got any questions, customer support answers quickly, too.

Related post: SEO Statistics For 2022 You Should Know

Free on-page SEO tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools 

For on-page SEO, Ahrefs is a tool that covers your bases. It’ll conduct a site audit and also includes some cool features to highlight SEO issues on your webpage.

The free version won’t give any insights on competitors or access to the Ahrefs keyword search feature. 

Even still, you get some great insights into your own website’s performance and metrics from one of the best SEO tools–for free.  

SEMrush 

SEMrush is an SEO tool that provides users with the key data you’ll need to perform well in Google.

Like Ahrefs, SEMrush allows you to sign up for free, but when they ask you to ‘choose your trial plan’ make sure to click the ‘skip trial’ option in small font underneath.

SEMrush is a great tool for keyword research and offers powerful link building and site auditing features that help with both on-page and technical SEO. 

However, it is important to note that although free accounts have access to all tools, they are limited to 10 activities per day. 

This means you will need to plan out your activities accordingly. 

Similarweb

Similarweb is a search engine browser extension that allows users to extract real-time metrics for any website by simply activating the extension while on the page. 

It provides traffic rankings, search traffic, and a full analyzer report. Some of the features users rave about include its expansive global data, covering:

• Visits 
• Audience metrics 
• Social media and mobile apps
• Geographical distribution
• Search data
• Traffic sources
• Organic keywords

SEO Minion 

SEO minion is another SEO plugin you can download to Google Chrome or Firefox. It helps anticipate organic traffic and optimize your on-page SEO. 

Users love that this extension includes all the functions an SEO-er would need. SEO minion can:

• Analyze on-page SEO 
• Check broken links
• Check redirects
• Simulate SERPs from multiple locations
• Improve CTR with its SERP preview tool
• Check hreflang tags

Free Research Tools

Google’s Question Hub 

This tool shows where there are gaps in information available to searchers. 

This provides marketers with the opportunity to generate content to fill the gaps in their fields and boost their content in the Google algorithm. 

Although there are minimal options to refine searches when navigating this tool, sifting through the results for certain keywords can prove helpful. You can then use the other SEO tools Google provides to track the success of your content.

SparkToro

SparkToro is a tool that specifically helps with Twitter analytics. Users say it’s a great tool for quickly learning about an industry and saves them weeks.

It will: 

• Conduct a fake followers audit
• Track what’s trending
• Provide a ‘Spark Score’ to determine the influence of your account

The free version only provides insights on Twitter analytics, and users are limited to 10 searches per month. 

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are a great tool when researching SEO. 

Members will post about anything and everything SEO-related and build connections with other marketers and SEO specialists. 

By keeping a tab on what is discussed in these groups and posting whenever you have a question, you’ll be able to learn from others in the industry.

SEOQuake 

This browser plugin allows users to perform an SEO analysis on any website. It includes an SEO toolbar, a SERP overlay, and an extensive SEO page auditing tool. 

It’s great for research into specific areas and providing a bigger picture. It’s also non-invasive as an extension and offers domain comparisons that marketers appreciate quite a bit.

Free site speed tools

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a tool that secures your websites, APIs, and applications, and it’s great at it. 

It protects both external and internal resources and helps with creating globally scalable applications. 

Thanks to its massive global network, Cloudflare’s also a great option for geographic areas where other CDNs fall short. 

GTMetrix 

GTXMetrix is a tool that helps optimize your website so that it runs fast. It’ll give you quick and lengthy reports on what’s inefficient about your website.

More importantly, it also shows what you can do to improve.

It tracks page performance with a monitoring schedule and alerts to conditions you choose, like web vitals. It also lets you test your content from different locations. 

The free package specifications are:

• 1 page can be monitored daily
• 50 weekly on-demand tests
• 10 daily API credits
• 3 month data retention period for reports

Map of locations your website can be tested for both free and premium packages.

CSS Minifier 

If you’re code-savvy, minifying the CSS can shorten a site’s load time. The less code that a system needs to read, the shorter the time it’ll take to load a webpage.

This free-to-use website allows users to paste a limitless amount of text (CSS code) and optimizes the code for you to download. It’ll eliminate all of the useless space and change elements such as the word for a color to its HTML color code.

An example of how CSS Minifier reduces unnecessary source code characters.

Chrome DevTools 

DevTools is a Google Chrome extension that focuses on debugging code. 

It is a tool originally meant for developers, but most of its features also come in handy to marketers trying to improve their website’s usability.

A particularly useful feature for SEOs looking to speed up webpage load time is the network tab. It inspects for bottleneck assets and in what order assets load on a page. 

Other DevTools functions for SEO:

• Manage and optimize CSS
• Find and fix problems
• Produce mobile device simulations and mobile-friendly tests
• Analyze performance and accessibility

Free SEO WordPress plugins

GeneratePress

GeneratePress is a theme for WordPress. It enables users to start a website with focus on stability, speed, and accessibility. 

The theme is small, which users adore since it means smooth and clean loading. It’s easy to use and visually simple, but the simplicity keeps your page from getting too busy.

Jetpack Boost 

Jetpack is a tool for WordPress that will make your website faster and safer. It’ll also make use of digital marketing tools to increase traffic to your page. 

The free package offered focuses on customer relationship management. Jetpack’s CRM package lets you: 

• Easily view your leads and sales funnel
• Create proposals and invoices for customers
• Track transactions
• Create limitless contacts

Everything included in the package is considered essential for your site. Users appreciate the convenience of having everything they need neatly organized into one plugin.

Jetpack also offers lazy image loading to users. This tool is amazing since it only loads the images that show on a visitor’s screen. 

Anything before or after what your reader is viewing won’t load, which helps improve your site’s speed score.

Yoast 

In order to use Yoast SEO for free, you need to be using a self-hosted WordPress site. 

Yoast SEO helps users optimize content and keep their best practices in mind. It is a great tool for no-index and auto-generating meta tags for your content.

With the free version, users love getting:

• Rich data on their keywords
• Help with research, adjusting and improving content
• Faster indexing with richer results 
• Help keeping an eye on your pages so nothing’s out of date
• To preview page snippets on Google
• Content’s Flesch Reading Ease score 
• Full control over breadcrumbs
• Immediately marked links as no-follow/sponsored
• Help with technical configurations like robots.txt files and .htaccess 

Async Javascript

Async is a plugin that helps eliminate render-blocking Javascript. 

Render-blocking Javascript are the parts of a code that prevent any other above-the-fold’ content from loading until it’s finished. 

This can slow your website down and lead to problems with user experience. 

To avoid that, Async Javascript gives you have full control over where to attribute or exclude ‘async’ and ‘defer’ to improve your website’s performance. 

WP Meteor

This WordPress plugin promises a “2x to 5x page speed improvement, even on top of your existing optimizations.”

This tool gets rid of render-blocking Javascript, like Async Javascript does. 

WP Meteor also optimizes CSS and font loading for you, and the support team is incredibly helpful and quick to respond for a free plugin.

SEOPress

SEOPress boasts an impressive amount of features for users that make posting for SEO simple and easy. 

This plugin offers everything you’ll need for a powerful SEO strategy, with some featured favorites being the:

• Title and meta assistance
• XML sitemap
• HTML sitemap
• Google knowledge graph
• Content analysis
• Matomo Cloud (GDPR ready)
• Google Tag Manager (GDPR ready)
• Import Yoast SEO / All In One / Rank Math / SEO Framework / SEO Ultimate / WP Meta SEO / Squirrly post and terms metadata

Breadcrumb NavXT

This tool creates highly customizable breadcrumb trails for your WordPress website.

These trails can be locational and suit any needs you may have. The interface is intuitive but also offers features for more adventurous and skilled developers/users.

With nearly a million active installations, this tool makes navigating your page easy and fluid for both you and your visitors.

Sample screenshot of the miscellaneous tab from the Breadcrumb NavXT download page.

Final thoughts

While the team here at FCM already used several of these tools in our daily activities, there were still a few new ones that caught us by surprise. 

These tools are great despite your level of SEO expertise. They automate processes for you and shed hours of research in a few quick clicks–what’s not to love about that?