39 Best Free and Affordable SEO Tools Every Startup Needs
“Search Engine Optimization is no longer about stuffing keywords and attempting to trick Google into ranking your website. It’s about creating a user experience that is data driven. We know what customers are searching for and we know how to get them to a page. It’s a combination of science and art to successfully rank a website.”
– Leland Dieno
– Leland Dieno
As someone has said “Do you know where to hide a dead body? It’s on the second page of Google because nobody goes there!”, SEO is definitely something worth the time to pay attention to these days. In this post, we’ve compiled 39 best free and affordable SEO tools everyone needs. Topics include Local SEO, Outreach / Linkbuilding tools, Scrapers / Scanners, Keyword Tools, Analytics and Other Tools. Have a productive time optimizing your websites!
39 Best Free and Affordable SEO Tools Every Startup Needs
01
Local Viking
Local SEO
Paid
There’s a few tools out there that do similar things but feel free to check this out. You can schedule GMB posts, track snack pack rankings and manage all of your Google My Business properties from one easy to use dashboard.
02
OneUp
Local SEO
Paid. 7-day trial available.
This tool lets you schedule posts for Google My Business. It’s cheaper than Local viking if you’re only looking for the posting element of Local Viking. You could also use One Up to share your new content to social media.
03
Surfer SEO
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid. Start a 7-day trial for $1.
This is a data-driven SEO tool which could help you with scaling your traffic. The tool can analyse more than 500 ranking factors and shows you the correlation between the importance of factor and position in SERP.
04
Guest Post Tracker
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid
Big database containing 1500+ domains that accept guest posts. They keep an updated list of blogs that accept guest posts. They also keep track of what the website owners charge for the guest post and help you track all of your guest posts in one place.
05
Just Reach Out
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid
This tool helps you get press without the need for a PR team. It allows you to find the most relevant journalists, publications, press opportunities, podcasts and broken links so you can pitch with confidence.
06
Buzzstream
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid. 14-day trial available.
Buzzstream is an outreach platform you can use to store data you gather on your influencers. You can send emails within the platform too so you’ll be able to see if your colleague has contacted them too. It’s got a sweet analytics section too.
07
Ahrefs
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid. Start a 7-day trial for $7.
You can check lots of data with this tool. Broken links, competitors backlink profiles, anchor texts used, referring domains for your own website, get keyword volumes and more.
08
SEO Jet
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid
You can use this to check your anchor text usage on your URLs. It splits your anchor text into three groups (Blended, Exact Match and Natural) and gives you a gauge that allows you to see what types of anchor text you need in order to stay fully optimized.
09
Majestic SEO
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid
Looking at your referring domains are great but topical trust flow is a big thing. Having relevant domains linking to you from your topical niche is vital to higher rankings and this is exactly what Majestic shows you. You can use this in combination with Ahrefs.
10
Dibz
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Paid. 15-day trial available.
This tool is designed to save you time and simplify the link building process. You enter a bunch of advanced search operators and it goes and returns all the results for you. You can then export this data or filter them in the app. It also displays a bunch of spam metrics that will help you decide on what sites to avoid. Once done you can import all your data straight into Pitchbox or export the data and import it into Buzzstream.
11
Detailed
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Free
This tool generates updated website rankings within your niche that is sorted out by Twitter mentions. You can see who’s talking about the biggest sites online. The tool comprises of a SEO blog, industry ranking, SEO Extension (Chrome & Firefox) and SEO Blueprint (Private Course).
12
HARO
Outreach / Linkbuilding Tools
Free Strategy
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. Basically if a reporter needs sources to provide a statement on a topic, you have the option to comment. In return you will get a link or a mention. The problem? You will get a lot of requests, it can be annoying to dig out what’s worth your while or not.
13
Domain Hunter Plus
Scrapers / Scanners
Free
This Chrome extension is for you if you’re creating (Private Blog Network) PBNs, this tool is great. It’s similar to Check My Links as it scans the page your on but this one checks to see if the links mentioned are available to register.
14
Check My Links
Scrapers / Scanners
Free
This is a chrome extension that lets you scan for broken links on a page. It quickly finds all the links on a web page, and checks each one for you. It highlights which ones are valid and which ones are broken, simple as that.
15
Google Results Bookmarklet
Scrapers / Scanners
Free
Quickly and easily get the listings of a result set from Google. This bookmarklet has been written to extract the results from the Google SERPs. It specifically looks for certain attributes to gather the results.
16
Screaming Frog
Scrapers / Scanners
Free / Paid
This tool is vital for all your on-site tweaks. It crawls your websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps and gives you data like in-links, word count, Missing H1s, Title tags that are too long, Time to first byte etc.
17
Netpeak Spider
Scrapers / Scanners
Free / Paid
Alternative to Screaming Frog. It’s a desktop tool for day-to-day SEO audit, fast issue check, comprehensive analysis, and website scraping.
18
URL Profiler
Scrapers / Scanners
Paid. 14-day trial available.
This is a great tool for link builders. You can stick a bunch of domains in and pull data from places like Majestic, Moz, Ahrefs etc for those domains. You can also scrape for emails, check if the domains are indexed and loads more. Available for Windows and Mac.
19
Keyword Shitter 2
Keyword Tools
Free
Pop in a keyword and it will spit out a ridiculous amount of variation. It is great for finding long tail keywords. New features include: results table, sorting results, configurable keywords permutations, IndexDB storage, and more options.
20
You AutoComplete Me
Keyword Tools
Free
Good little tool for spitting out a bunch of keywords. It’s free! You will need to run these through a KW tool for the volume though.
21
FAQ Fox
Keyword Tools
Free
This tool is actually pretty awesome. Enter some sites and it will spit out all the links where someones asking a question about your subject.
22
Ubersuggest
Keyword Tools
Free / Paid. 7-day trial available.
Another tool for keyword suggestions. This will help you find long tail keywords + it gives you volume. Find the number of buyers searching these keywords, see how search volume has been changing over time and find easy-to-rank-for keywords.
23
Answer The Public
Keyword Tools
Free / Paid
Find out what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for in Google. AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword.
24
Keywords Everywhere
Keyword Tools
Paid
Chrome and Firefox Extension. This is a good tool for getting volumes if you don’t have access to keywordtool, accuranker, ahrefs etc. If you put a keyword in Google search it will give you the volume for it. You can also analyse pages with this tool and it will give you frequent mentioned keywords, density etc.
25
Google PageSpeed Insights
Analytics
Free
This allows you to see how fast your website loads on mobile and Desktop.
26
Google Mobile Friendly Test
Analytics
Free
Another free tool by Google. This helps you test your web pages to see if they look okay on Mobile.
27
GT Metrix
Analytics
Free
This tool tells you how fast your site loads and gives you lots of recommendations.
28
Google Analytics
Analytics
Free
It provides you with web analytics. It tracks and reports the traffic from websites. Get a deeper understanding of your customers. Google Analytics gives you the free tools you need to analyze data for your business in one place.
29
Google Search Console
Analytics
Free
This is another necessity for SEO, I’m sure you all use it already but if you don’t this will allow you to submit your sitemaps, disavow spammy links, view your pages as Google Bot sees it and much more.
30
Barracudas Algorithm Tool
Analytics
Free
This tool allows you to see the latest updates by Google alongside your analytics. It’s great for analyzing the effects an update has had on your domain. It also has a feature called SEOCompare where you can purchase SEO Visibility data for your domain.
31
Siteliner
Analytics
Free / Paid
Siteliner is a free service that lets you explore your website, revealing key issues that affect your site’s quality and search engine rankings.
32
Copyscape
Analytics
Free / Paid
Copyscape is great for checking duplicate content you have on your site that’s also elsewhere on the web.
33
Bright Local
Analytics
Paid. 14-day trial available.
SEO reporting, lead generation, reputation management, citation management…. It does everything you need for local search.
34
Accuranker
Analytics
Paid
Everyone needs a keyword tracking tool. Its not the cheapest but its great.
35
Google Location Changer (SERPs)
Other
Free
This lets you google from another location. I.e If I want to see the results from London but I stay in New York.
36
Google Trends
Other
Free
Nice tool to watch out for upcoming trends. Can help you decide if you want to double down on something or not.
37
Questiondb
Other
Free / Paid
Stuck for questions? Generate better blog topic ideas here. Enter in a broad keyword (e.g. “protein powder”, “backlinks”) to find relevant questions and find untapped content ideas to create more useful content.
38
RankMath
Other
Free / Paid
Rank Math is a Search Engine Optimization plugin for WordPress that makes it easy for anyone to optimize their content with built-in suggestions based on widely-accepted best practices. Easily customize important SEO settings, control which pages are indexable, and how you want your website to appear in search with Structured data.
39
Yoast SEO
Other
Free / Paid
It’s a WordPress plugin that helps you optimise your site easier. It has a readability checker, allows you to set meta descriptions and title tags with ease and much more. It will automatically generate a sitemap for you plus so much more.
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