Matthew Ellis
There is no doubt about it, the internet is replete with both free and pay-for SEO tools. Besides, SEO optimization services, sold by both individuals and small companies, are all over the place. Faced with so such diverse options, choosing a decent SEO tool as a Webmaster is always a herculean task – especially if you just want a free one!
However, a careful filtering will reveal one thing and that is, a lot of what's on offer is nothing but a lot of duplication that give you the same results (with slight variations) from several different companies and optimization tools.
In this article therefore, I’ve filtered through the various options out there and present to you five of the very best free SEO tools you can use today. These tools will help you keep tabs on your most essential SEO metrics, and those of your competitors, without getting bogged down in stats from a dozen different analytics providers.
If you are ready for this let’s get started!
1. Google Keyword Tool
The original and best known SEO tool of them all! The Google Keyword Tool is an excellent resource straight from the same company that most of us are really trying to convince when we work on our SEO (since they control well more than half of the entire online search market). Keywords are a vital part of managing any SEO campaign and they need to be researched carefully in order for you as a blogger/Webmaster to know what words and phrases are being most searched for in your particular niche.
With the Keyword Tool, you can do this easily, quickly and completely free of charge. Best of all, the Keyword Tool measures searches within the Google Search system itself, letting you know exactly what the internet's largest segment of your target market is typing in when they go hunting for what you're offering.
With this Keyword Tool you can narrow searches down by region, look at monthly search trends and even examine the last 12 months or so of searches for your select keywords. Google Keyword Tool is not as in depth as many paid for tools but it is an enormously helpful resource nonetheless.
2. WordStream Free Keyword Tool
This wonderful tool offers the same basic keyword search option as the Google Keyword Tool but with a few added bonuses. With the Wordstream Keyword Tool, you have access to a database of nearly 1 trillion keywords and phrases, meaning that any search you do offers you a list of possible terms that is truly expansive.
Additionally, the website’s other tools also include a niche keyword finder, to better find your niches general keyword clusters; a niche grouper to better organize them into clusters and a negative keyword tool, that give you the words you should not be using in your SEO campaigns; specific words to avoid.
WordStream offers a freemium use model and allows you up to 10 free searches in all of the above per day without a paid subscription.
3. Ranking Checker by SEOMoz
This isn't an extraordinarily fancy SEO utility, but what it offers is quite an invaluable service. Through SEOMoz's ranking checker you can do exactly what its name suggests and test the ranking that your site has on the major search engines for all your major optimization campaign keywords. This way you can see where to focus your attention, how much improvement is required and track your progress while tweaking your campaign. The SEMoz Rank checker gives you a view of how your site ranks on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Again, the SEOMoz tool is a freemium utility and offers a set number of free savable searches per day before you have to buy in for larger analysis.
4. Link Diagnosis
With the Link Diagnosis Tool, you can investigate the SEO quality of your backlink sources and decide which ones to seek and which ones to avoid based on the information you receive. This tool provides you with a completely free wealth of information on other links that other tools such as the Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO Site Explorer all bill for.
Through Link Diagnosis, you can review each backlink's anchor text, Page Authority, and Domain Authority as well as each backlink page's title, whether the link is a dofollow or nofollow, PageRank, number of outbound links, modified outbound link count, and Link Strength.
The only single condition to receiving all this free information is that you will have to download a free Firefox extension to display much of it. But hey, you get unlimited searches for these stats; while the competition only give you between 3 and 5 link searches, displays limited data and bills you for anything more.
5. SEO FOR Firefox by SEOBook
There are very few SEO tools out there that offer you more information on the optimization metrics of all your competitors without charging you for it. The completely free SEO for Firefox extension is a handy little add-on for your Firefox browser that will automatically build itself into your web navigation, allowing you to find out reams of data about any website you visit with just a single right click.
Some of the information it provides includes: PR: (Google PageRank) an estimated measure of global link authority, Age, Links, inbound link types, number of bookmarks to del.icio.us, how many pages are cached on Google, Technorati linking, Alexa ranking, Blog subscription counter and numerous others. All of this information is also fully exportable right from the SERP's to a CSV file.
SEO for Firefox is used by more than 500,000 webmasters and SEO analysts and for good reason.
Free SEO tools Takeaway
Keeping a tab on your essential SEO metrics don’t have to cost you a fortune. These five SEO tools, used wisely, will give you all you need to know about your sites/blogs. Check them out today, choose the ones you want to use right away. In these days when Google has renewed it fight against blackhat SEO, cant afford to leave your site/blog search engine optimization strategy to outside help only nor do you want to ignore these free SEO tools as they can actually put more money in your pocket!
Will love to know what you think of these SEO tools. Whatever you opinion is, share it with us in your comments below.
About the author: Matthew Ellis is a grizzled freelance journalist with extensive experience covering the tech industry. When he’s not writing, you can find him reviewing well-knownsales outsourcing firmAcquirent or working on his forthcoming bluegrass album.
It’s interesting that many companies do their utmost to sell tools that are mere duplicates of what’s already offered for free. I personally use Google’s keyword tool for my research and have NOT found real need for paid versions for a long time (I used wordtracker back in the day). However, I don’t fixate on these tools based on the recent “unrest” on Google’s results pages for competitive keywords.
One question, Matthew…
How reliable is SEO FOR Firefox by SEOBook?
By the way, a great post!
@Chimezirim Odimba,
Wondering why many are selling those tools when you can get better versions for free? Then you will still have to learn a few things about the internet! Truth is, internet marketing is nothing but finding someone who is too lazy to do something for himself and doing that thing for him while he pays you for it. QED!
Frankly, with a little careful look you can get nearly everything free online. And like you said, over the years I’ve personally concentrated all my keyword research on Google tools. Why go for some monthly packages when Google (the biggest of the search engines and the big daddy of them all) is ready to provide you with data from their own databases? Of course, this may take you a little more time than other tools since those tools have a way of gathering and doing research on different keywords at the same time but if you are not doing SEO as a company or you are running too many searches at the same time, Google tools are just ok.
About SEO for Firefox, I have used it many times, in fact, I’ve it installed, and I can say it is ok. It has a way of giving some deep insights which can be useful.
Great article. I didn’t realize that there are still good seo tools out there. I will try out those five. Thanks for the post.
Hey Matthew!
Google keyword tool is the best tool in above mentioned list. Almost every intelligent blogger use them.
Joe
I agree with the previous comment that Google Keyword Tool is something that really every intelligent blogger (and static web page copywriter) should make use of.
I use it just as often as a thesaurus, for finding alternative words while I write, as I do simply for researching keywords in advance.
That’s a great list. I’m going to try “Link Diagnosis” after all quality of linking resources should be good enough so that you won’t hurt by Google Penguin.
Helpful article. Thank you very much. Rank Tracker Tool is another interesting tool that tracks keyword ranks across top 5 search engines. The site is ranktrackertool.com
A very handy tools indeed Mattew,
I especially like number 1-3. But others are aslo great.
Thanks for sharing.
Very helpful article! I had never actually heard of the SEO for Firefox extension and have done extensive research online to find some cool tools that will either help me improve my SEO or that will allow me to get a better understanding of why my site is not doing so well among the SEO giants. I truly thank you for this article.
Good article. I was aware of and use some of these but I was unaware of the link diagnosis tool. I will be checking that one out. Another good free tool for backlink checking is ahrefs.com.
i use the google keyword tool sometimes and i think its a great tool
I really like of Google Keyword Tool its great speaccialy for Adsense thanks for sharing
The 5 free SEO tools are amazing.I’m using the number 1,3 and 5 tools.I’m happy with those.It’s free and easy to use.I’m glad you shared this topic.Thanks.
I am using SEOMoz, but google keyword tool, is also a good. The rest have not tried it, I am using different tool, but still want to try it, not that bad i guess.
Great article. For seo purpose seo tool is best but free tools are not benifit.
I will try this tools once. Thanks for the post.
Hi Matthew Ellis, Great list of Free SEO Tools. I used Only Google Keyword Tool and never used the other tools. I will surely try out the other tools which you have listed. Thanks for Sharing!
@Sai Kumar,
I also agree that Matthew has given us a whole of lot of tools to work with. Since he posted this article I added these tools to my arsenal and must say they just superb.
A nicely explained work. Please suggest me which priority of keyword is good for SEO low, medium or high priority keywords
Hey Matthew, great list there. But I guess you forgot to mention ahrefs. I use it personally and it has great tools.