Small business marketers know the importance of measuring their marketing efforts, since many don’t have the luxury of unlimited time, resources or budget to waste and therefore need to know what efforts are working, which aren’t, and how to constantly improve. There are a few really amazing marketing tools but unfortunately, many are simply too expensive for small business marketers to use. Luckily, there are several fantastic tools out there and even better, they are F-R-E-E! Here are the best free SEO tools that will make you a better marketer.

Google Search Console

Google Search ConsoleAlmost every marketer with a website knows the merits of Google Analytics, but surprisingly few take advantage of Google Search Console. What exactly is it?  Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. It helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site. You can do the following with this tool:

  • Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.
  • Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
  • View Google Search traffic data for your site
  • Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.
  • Show you which sites link to your website.
  • Troubleshoot issues for mobile usability and other search features.

SEMrush

SEMrushKnown as the all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals, this tool is amazing. Yes, there is a paid version that will give you even more data, but the free version of SEMrush offers plenty of insights. Just go to the home page and enter your website URL; it’ll ask you to register before you can continue, but don’t worry; they only ask for the basics:  email and a password. Once you’re in, check out all that you get to see, including organic search results, paid search results, backlinks and more. Be sure to look at the left navigation bar and go through each tab to see what information you can get. It’s a lot of info! Yes, you’ll get even more if you pay, but again, what you get for free is more than enough for most people.

Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Building good links to your site is an important part of overall SEO. While a solid content marketing strategy will help attract the right links, it’s still a good idea to keep an eye on what your backlinks look like. Try the free version of Ahrefs Backlink Checker; if you like it, you can always upgrade to the premium. Start by entering your domain on the home page. You’ll get a short dashboard showing you your domain rating, number of backlinks, referring domains and more. You can also check out the top anchor text used for those backlinks as well as the top pages of your site being linked to. Very handy as you build a solid link building strategy.

Google Trends

Google TrendsSometimes your content marketing efforts need a little inspiration. When you’ve done your keyword research and still need topics to write about, Google Trends is a good place to start. Google Trends is a search trends feature that shows how frequently a given search term is used in Google’s search engine relative to the site’s total search volume over a given period of time. Google Trends can be used for keyword research and to discover event-triggered spikes in keyword search volume. Wordstream wrote a great article on how to use this awesome tool. Check it out to get started!

Moz

Actually, Moz isn’t just one tool, they actually have several free SEO tools on their site….score! Start by visiting the home page and clicking “check my presence” or go straight to their full collection of free SEO tools including:

  • Keyword Explorer
  • Link Explorer
  • MozBar
  • My Online Presence
  • Categories
  • Free Location Audit

We just love this site! Yes, you can subscribe to get even more but start with the freebies; you’ll be pleased with how much you can get!

While these are a few of our favorites, there are actually many more free tools. Ahrefs wrote a nice article about the 29 Best Free SEO Tools; check it out if you are ready to dig even deeper into your SEO.

No marketer should be without a few solid tools to give you insights into your web presence and how to improve. Hopefully these suggestions of free SEO tools to try will give you a nice place to start and make you a better small business marketer.

Patty Hughes
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