What are the best free/low cost tools you use for SEO?
-
Hello!
I will be giving a talk next month about free/low cost SEO tools and apps and I would like to hear what your favorite/most useful tools are.
I know this question has been discussed here before, but this is a topic that is constantly evolving and I am interested in knowing what people currently find to be the best.
I'd like to hear about things you really use on a regular basis--there are a lot of things out there that sound cool, but end up not being used.
So, what are your go-to free SEO tools?
Thank-you,
Linda -
It is a very nice rundown of what's out there. Thanks again.
-
Thanks
I didn't intend it to be that long, but at the same time, didn't want to leave anything out!
-
Wow, that's a great answer! I totally agree about Screaming Frog--I'd feel blind without it.
-
- Screaming frog! All day long
I love SF, it's amazing. I have the paid version (as I use it a lot) but their free too is good too. For smaller sites, the free tool is absolutely fine. It's not som crappy demo that has most features blocked or anything, it's very usable. Their paid version
Their paid version I'd put under 'low cost' for what you get too. Love the fact you can ingore robots.txt, great for testing dev sites.
One thing I REALLY like about SF (vs SaaS based online tools), is the ability to edit my hosts file & add a dev domain, then run SF on the site, even though it's on localhost - A benefit of desktop tools).
Then there's:
-
**Google Analytics **- I like to create custom dashboards for various things, such as segmenting mobile vs desktop, PPC dashboards, social dashboards etc. I think as SEOs we forget how many clients either don't realise custom dashboard exist, or don't realise how useful they can be
-
Search Console / WMT (can't get out of the habit of calling it WMT!)
-
Deep Crawl - Very handy. I use this, Moz's crawl and Screaming Frog for all my crawl testing needs
-
Various free page-speed checks (GTmetrix, Google page speed insights, Yslow, testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com, Pingdom page speed tool also)
-
OSE & Moz (not free but for what you get, I think it's low cost)
-
Moz's keyword explorer (AMAZING tool. Not just saying that as this is on Moz, I genuinely think it's awesome)
-
Chrome & Firefox inspectors
-
Firebug
-
GA plugin for Chrome
-
GA debugger for Chrome (handy for testing GA events in Chrome console!)
-
Check my links Chrome extension (for when you don't need a full crawl and just want to check for broken links on a page quickly in the browser)
-
Google Alerts - Great for finding unlinked mentions as they happen, keeping tabs on competitors mentions & press, or even being alerted to related topics etc.
-
Excel or Google Sheets - Great for a multitude of data analsys!
-
access_log file - I possibly saved one of the best till last! The access_log file is great for parsing out stuff like Googlebot visits. Pop the data into a (paid) tool like Screaming Frog log file analyser, or (as I like to do) insert the data into a MySQL database and run some queries... You can find a WEALTH of tasty info, like:
-
What pages get the most Googlebot activity
-
Group pages together (e.g. all posts within a category, or pages under a URL folder) and calculate what % of Googlebot crawls they got
-
Identify any important pages that are not getting crawlled much
-
Cross-check your sitemap (in MySQL I like to select all pages from the sitemap - which I store in a MySQL table, then do a JOIN with the access_log table in the same MySQL database, then pull off a count how many times the sitemap pages were crawled, according to the access_log table. Of course the access_log needs to be for a decent time period).
These are not strictly for SEO, but useful for SEOs I think:
- **Awesome Screenshot **for Chrome - good for taking quick screenshots & annotating screenies, for devs/staff/clients etc
- Pocket - Brilliant for 'bookmarking' articles to read later... Helps me stay on-track when I'm head-down working but spot an SEO related article I want to read later... Add to pocket & close tab
- Onetab - For the times when the number of open tabs makes my mac sound like a Boeing 747
Closes all open tabs, saves them in a list for later - Can export to a file too. Handy!
Argh! That's a long list, sorry!
- Screaming frog! All day long
-
Google analytics , search console, keyword planner, chrome developer tools
-
Thanks so much for the responses so far! Thumbs up for everyone.
-
Screaming Frog is a great tool that has a free version. 500 url limit (suitable for most small sites).
-
Here is a few:
- Pagespeed Insights (Google)
- Keywordtool.io
- Xenu (link checker)
- GTmetrix
As you know, may tools have a free demo, or limited functionality for free. Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best way to add a noindex./nofollow meta tags to tags in a blog?
Could anyone tell me the best way to add noindex./nofollow meta tags as I have around 12 duplicate tags in a blog. I have the Yoast SEO plugin - unpaid version.
Moz Pro | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
Moz Crawl Test: WordPress sites with and without /feed and /trackback entires?
I have multiple WP websites and on some of the websites, on my Moz Crawl test, I see an entry for every blog post but also entries for /feed and /trackback for that single blog post. For example, www...com/someArticle www....com/someArticle/feed www...com/someArticle/trackback 1. Can anyone explain why the Crawl test is picking up the /feed and /trackback items? Is it simply because they are 301 redirects to the original post (www...com/someArticle)? 2. What setting(s) in WordPress are making this information appear? Or is it just that the site(s) that have the /feed and /trackback are displaying "normal" behavior for a WP site with a lot of trackbacks and feed entires? 3. Should /fee and /trackback, as well as /author be blocked in robots.txt? Thanks in advance for your advice and input!
Moz Pro | | Titan5520 -
Tool to find compeitor keyword overlap?
I want to know which competitors rank for the same things I do. Is there a tool that can give me this info?
Moz Pro | | ShearingsGroup0 -
What is the logarithmic scale used for domain authority?
I want to quantify how much better a score of 80 is compared to 60. Or 60 compared to 30 etc.... What is the logarithm base? Thanks, Rik
Moz Pro | | garypropellernet0 -
SEO process suggestions / keyword analysis
hi all, we've done a bit of SEO over the years for our site, and are looking to pick things up this year and spend more time on SEO. first off, we are working on revising our keyword list & would like to view what keywords specific competitors are ranking for and try to target those keywords as well. is this possible via SEOmoz (similar to spyfu)? please let me know if you feel this is a good first step in picking up our SEO efforts for the new year. i've been looking at the research tools & is seems the Keyword Difficulty Tool hasn't been fully functional for the past week or so ("Our Keyword Difficulty Tool is having issues displaying AdWords API data. We are working with the AdWords API folks to get a fix soon!"). also, i noticed i can enter competitor sites in open site explorer & compare link metrics, but i don't see anywhere to compare keyword metrics. is there something i'm missing? thanks again everyone!
Moz Pro | | lsat0 -
Tool Request - What keywords does a site rank for?
Hi folks, Something I've never had to do before so I'm not sure which tool to use, but is there a way to determine the keywords that a website currently ranks for? Hope someone can assist 🙂
Moz Pro | | ChristopherM1 -
Best Practices for having Social Profiles indexed
There has been a lot of talk lately around social profiles potentially improving your brand as well as search. What I'd like to know is the best practices for getting those social profiles crawled and indexed so they actually provide a good link to my site. I'm also wondering what the difference between what Linkscape sees and what Google sees and when I'm looking at Open Site Explorer's rankings on one of those social profiles how can I be sure that Google sees it the same way. I ask this because a lot of these profiles are not well internally linked to. An example is about.me, it's a potentially great link, but it's essentially an island, and even after dropping a couple Twitter links to my profile, Open Site Explorer shows and Page Authority of 1, and it's not even indexed with Google. What I did last night was put a link to my about.me, flickr and wedding wire in my Connect menu drop down on my site to get that crawled hopefully soon. Are there other methods of getting those crawled and indexed so it starts passing some juice?
Moz Pro | | WilliamBay
What do you guys do?0 -
What SeoMoz tools should I use to track the sucess of my SEO efforts and find possible linking partners?
HI All, I am a new user to SEO moz pro and I have a few questions I hope you can help me with. We are adding a new product category to an existing site and I am wondering what tools to use to track our SEO efforts to build ranking for these new products. I have already started a campaign that tracks the ranking of our primary keywords but I am wondering if there are other tools I should be using as well. Currently our SEO strategy is centered around link building. I have been approaching sites that have content related to our products and offering to write articles, guest blogs, and create educational resources that benefit the sites users and have specific anchor text linking back to our site. Since we are trying to build rank for a new category of products should I be linking to the general product category page or should I try to link to sub categories or individual products? Also I have used the juicy link finder to help me identify related sites that I can approach but I haven't received very many good leads. Is there a more specific way to use the tool or another tool that I should try? If you have any suggestions about other SEO strategies/activities that we should be pursuing please share your ideas! Thanks!
Moz Pro | | AndrewY0