7 Free SEO Tools You Should Be Using

April 29, 2020
Every publisher on the internet knows that creating content is not enough to create a successful blog. No matter how good your content is, if nobody knows about it is worth nothing. Of course, writing about relevant topics and offering a high-quality product is important, but people should not forget that this is only 50% of the job when it comes to personal blogs and online stores.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a crucial skill to learn. Several tools on the internet are a must-haves and can help bloggers and entrepreneurs in their quest of conquering the web.�
Google Analytics
There are a few analytics tools on the market that will help you see where your audience is coming from, and what is their demographics, what OS are they using, and how did they reach your site. Among tools like Leadfeeder, Kissmetrics, and Woopra, the most powerful one remains the Google Analytics tool. While there is a paid option, everyone can create a free account.�
Google Search Console
Google gives bloggers and shop owners another�useful tool so they can analyze their websites. The platform can help find errors on websites, and it will continuously scan them to make sure errors don�t reaper. Once an error is found, an email with an alert will be sent to the owner of the website.
Google Search Console is also a great analytics tool when it comes to understanding the keywords that brought a customer to the store or reader to the website. Knowing what terms are most popular gives the ability to understand the audience better and create more tailored content for them.�
Bitly�
Since Google discontinued the URL shortening service goo.gl in 2019, people have found a few great alternatives. Bitly is a link management platform that has both a free and paid version. The free version allows you to shorten up to 1000 links per month, and you can view the link history for up to 30 days. The standard paid version will let you create up to 1500 short links per month, and you will also be able to brand them. The way branding works is the following:�
- Let�s say you would like to shorten the link�www.yourcompany.com/article-that-you-wrote-without-considering-the-length-of-the-title-for-seo-purposes
- The free version of Bitly will transform the above link into bit.ly/1234
- The paid version will let you use a custom domain: mycompa.ny/1234
Rank Math
Rank Math is a plugin for WordPress sites that has been almost as popular as its rival Yoast. Both plugins provide site analytics. One of the advantages of Rank Math is that is doesn’t slow the loading of the websites, it has Google Search Console integration, 404 monitor, internal linking suggestion, and even a role management tool.�
One of the things that distinguish Rank Math from other similar tools, is that it lets users optimize unlimited focus keywords. The default installation of the plugin lets you optimize for five, but with help from a filter, there is an option to increase this number.�
Yoast
Yoast has been the number one tool for search engine optimization of WordPress sites. It is a plugin that helps control titles, meta descriptions, manage sitemaps, and much more. Yoast is free to install and use, but there is also a premium version that will give you support, faster indexing, it will notify you about pages that have not been updated for more than six months, it will give you internal linking suggestion, and it will also let you export your focus keywords in CSV format.�
Grammarly
If your blog or website is based around images, like a photography portfolio, you might not pay much attention to the text that you are entering. But text matter � typos and bad grammar are not only embarrassing, but they also lower down your ranking with search engines. Grammarly is widely used by blog authors, journalists, and marketers. It can be used on Gmail, Facebook, Linkedin, and many other websites.
The free version checks your text for correctness, clarity, and engagement.
The premium version gives you advanced writing feedback, checks for consistency in spelling and punctuation, plagiarism, text fluency, and so on. In search engine optimization, if text readability scores high, that will improve the search ranking of the website.�
Keywords everywhere
Keywords everywhere is a research tool that works as an extension to Chrome and Firefox. Imagine that you have a key term that you would like to use. This tool will give you insights on how popular this key term is by showing you how often people searched for it during the past thirty days. The best part is that if you would like to run an ad for a specific key term, it will give you the number of advertisers that are also running ads for the same keyword.�