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
-
How i can get the audit report (using tools etc.) immediately for any website?
I want to audit websites in few minutes/ hours (tools/ free tools, technics). Reports should be authentic and provide full site health report i.e.404 errors, duplicate page content/title, missing meta tags etc. Kindly suggest.
Moz Pro | | 1akal0 -
Finding Related Keywords and/or Phrases
I'm diving into unknown territory and looking for keywords and phrases related to a prospective new clients business. He knows some of the general terms, for example, water removal. What tool works best to find related search terms and the number of searches for those keywords/search terms. I usually use the Google Keyword Tool but going to give moz a try. Love to be able to get local search data as well. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | DFLsports1 -
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 -
Authority from Linking Root Domains: youtube.com / wikipedia.org / adobe.com
Hi there, Presently doing competitor analysis and note two competitors who have a way higher 'moz domain authority' than my client. Using moz tools I notice their top 5 linking root domains all have a score of 100. Refer to screen shot. Of note, both list youtube.com and _wikipedia.org. _ Similarly, my client's domain is ALSO linked from their user profile on youtube.com. They also have a published wiki page with their URL linked. BUT, youtube.com or wikipedia.org are not listed in their "top 5 linking root domains". Their highest scoring linking root domain is prweb.com - with a score of 97. If my client has links on these top domains why would they not be listed in my client's top five domains list like they are listed in their competitors top five? Researching for reasons I came across this old post (2009) here - http://moz.com/blog/followed-links-from-four-unexpected-sources - and wonder if the competitor's links are 'followed' links - even though all resources suggest wiki and youtube are definitely 'no follow' links? Other interesting "Top 5" domains that are listed for my competitors as top "linking root domains" are microsoft.com, adobe.com and europa.eu - again, refer to screenshot. Questions are IF these top linking root domains are in fact 'followed' links/valuable links and help with domain authority scores calculated by the moz tool then 1) HOW do I get these links to show/provide the same value? AND 2) How are my competitors, who are simply travel products, getting links from top domains like adobe.com? I do hope all the above makes sense and that I'm using/interpreting the moz comparative tool correctly! Cheers iGe864i.jpg?1
Moz Pro | | catherineh0 -
What user agent is used by SEOMOZ crawler?
We have a pretty tight robots.txt file in place to only allow the major search engines. I do not want to block SEOMOZ.ORG from being able to crawl the site so I want to make sure the user agent is open.
Moz Pro | | eseider0 -
SEO Yoast data export
Just thought I would give something back. (Is this the right place!) I use Wordpress with the excellent SEO Yoast plugin. I needed a way of extracting the focus keywords that I have entered onto my pages along with the url for use on the SEOmoz On-page Optimisation tool. So I created GetYoastData which outputs to the browser the required data (and a bit more) that can be saved into an csv (Excel) file. Hope you find it useful - Yes it's not polished and yes it might output a blank line now and again but it's fairly useful. http://deanandrews.uk/get-yoast-seo-data/
Moz Pro | | DeanAndrews0 -
Very confused on site.com/ or not using a /
I'm wanting to put the rel="canonical" tag on my homepage but I'm not sure which to use? How would you know what to use and always links to, http://www.site.com or http://www.site.com**/** Personally I never knew there was a difference until I used the seomoz tool and I wasn't using the tag.
Moz Pro | | GYMSN0 -
How to Use Open Site Explorer
I've used Open Site Explorer here at SEOmoz for the first time and I'm confused by the results. I'm wondering how dated the results are? And, what are they based on? For example, I'm certain my facebook shares and like are higher...same with the twitter links. It seems kind of old?! One of my competitors who gets about 2x more traffic than me DOES have great backlinks. I know that. BUT, it's odd that her facebook and twitter results are what they are compared to mine - they're WAY higher in site explorer AND her links seem on par with her facebook page whereas mine don't. Whereas mine seem WAy Way lower than what they are in reality. She barely tweets and facebooks any more. Maybe once per month. She started out gangbusters, but doesn't do it much any more. That's kinda why I'm wondering if it's based on older stuff and not updated often? Anyone know?
Moz Pro | | annasus0