Want more website traffic without spending a penny? Improving your SEO doesn’t have to cost a fortune.
Here are some of the best free SEO tools out there for beginners with tips how to use them to help your website grow. This guide is perfect for small business owners who want to improve their website but don’t know where to start.
1. SEO Quake - Analyse Your Competitors’ Websites
What it is: SEOquake is a free browser extension that helps you quickly understand how any website is performing.
What it does: helps you look more closely at competitors and uncover why their site might rank higher than yours.
How to use: Visit a website, and SEOquake gives you a snapshot of key metrics in your browser.
SEOquake Browser Bar in Action, Highlighting Key Stats
What you’ll see in the browser bar
Traffic Estimates: an idea of how many visitors a page gets per month.
Page Rank: a quick way to see where a page ranks, the lower the number the stronger the website. Don’t worry if you see a high number in the thousands – there’s a reason for this. But for now use this feature more comparatively to assess which website is ranking higher than another.
Backlinks: check how many websites link back to a specific webpage
Example scenario
You have a website selling luxury candles, you want to update your website but you’re not sure how it could be improved, one thing you can do is make a comparison of 2 popular competitor websites in your industry.
1. Type in “luxury candles”
2. Choose 2 links in the top 10 search results and observe their browser bar stats:
3. Here are some example stats to compare site 1 vs site 2. Looking at metrics like traffic, keyword rankings, and linking strategy, will give you insight into how they structure their pages and what might be working for them in terms of SEO and user engagement.and understand how a page performs.
4. You might find it interesting to check Keyword Density, to analyse how often important words appear on the page.
Summary: SEOquake—it helps you spy on competitors and uncover their ranking secrets.
Not sure how to start with SEO?
If you’re looking for a smart keyword strategy or expert help with technical SEO issues, check out affordable SEO packages for small businesses.
2. keywordtool.io - keyword suggestion tool
What it is: Keyword tool is an online browser tool with free and premium features.
What it does: Keywordtool.io generates hundreds of keyword ideas in seconds, based on what people are searching for online. You can discover and organise keywords for your topic and it’s perfect for creating tailored content that attracts your ideal audience.
Benefits of the tool:
- Pick up the most relevant searches done by users on the Google search and other search engines and many other sources including YT, bing, amazon and more
- This help you save yourself time going into each individual search engine for your search or even trying to brainstorm yourself
- Use the filter tool for narrowing down the search. You can easily filter by country, language, select the most relevant keywords and export them to add to your campaigns.
How to use, example scenario:
You own a website offering picture framing services in the uk
- Enter in a short keyword or broad topic
- Choose a search engine e.g. Google, Bing, YouTube etc.
- Filter by country and language
4. Select most relevant keywords to your topic
5. Export your filtered down list of keywords to excel, CSV or copy them to clipboard to use in your campaigns. Can use your keyword list in conjunction with Google Keyword Planner (also free to use).
Bonus tip and free SEO research tool: Google Keyword Planner
What it is: Google Keyword planner is a free SEO tool, run on the internet browser
An example use – How to get some free keyword insights from Google Keyword Planner:
1. Click on Get search volume and forecasts:
2. Upload or paste keyword lists into the Google’s keyword planner to get more insights into the search volumes for all those terms and competition level.
Summary: Keyword.io generates hundreds of long-tail keyword ideas based on what people are searching for online. Perfect for creating content that attracts your ideal audience. This tool is useful for saving time and getting tailored keyword ideas for creating better content.
3. Screaming Frog - Website Audit Tool
What it is: Desktop application
What it does: Screaming Frog crawls your site to uncover errors and technical SEO issues, so you can fix them and improve your rankings.
Benefits of the tool:
- Find broken links (404s) and server errors, & Redirects
- Detects duplicate content could be dragging your site down
- Analyse page titles and meta descriptions during a crawl and identify those that are too long, short, missing, or duplicated across your site and much more
How to use
To analyse a site and look for hidden errors or issues, simply enter a site URL to crawl and click on the Issues tab. There, by getting familiar with the interface, you can uncover more details about your website and resolve potential issues holding back your website and site ranking.
Explore the interface:
The Panels:
top left – URLS affected
top right – list of issues
bottom left – meta data and page details
bottom right – issue details and suggestions how to fix them
Summary: Screaming Frog is one of the most popular free SEO tools. As an auditing tool it detects common SEO issues and errors holding your website back.
Ready to make your website more user-friendly and effective?
Take the first step with our SEO packages, crafted to not only elevate user-friendliness but also to boost your site’s overall visibility and performance. Let’s work together to create a website that’s welcoming and efficient for all.
Note: No SEO tool is 100% accurate. Search data fluctuates daily, and competitor strategies or algorithm changes can impact results. For the most reliable insights, it’s best to use multiple tools and cross-check data.