Free SEO Tools for Site Growth and Optimization

Phase one of growing a successful site requires utilizing free SEO tools for keyword research, on-page optimization, and content planning.

### Free SEO Tools for Every Phase of Your Website: A Comprehensive Guide
* 🔍 In the initial phase of your website, focus on keyword research with tools like **Google Keyword Planner**, **AnswerSocrates**, and **Reddit Keyword Research Tool**.
* 📊 Use tools like **UberSuggest** and **MozBar** to assess keyword competitiveness and choose the right keywords for your content plan.
* 🛠 For on-page SEO, consider using **Rank Math for WordPress**, which provides a **comprehensive set of SEO tools for free**.
* 🖼 Optimize your images with tools like **Imagify** to improve site speed and user experience.
* 🔍 In the second phase, **leverage Google Search Console** to optimize existing content and identify **new keyword opportunities**.
* 🏗 Implement schema markups with Rank Math or use Google's Rich Results Testing Tool to **enhance your search appearance**.
* 🕷 ️ Conduct site audits with tools like **Screaming Frog SEO Spider** to identify **technical issues** and improve **site performance**.
* 🔗 In the third phase, focus on link building with tools like **Ahrefs' free backlink checker** and **Hunter.io for finding contact information**.

you see, when your site is new, the biggest resource we have is our time, and we do not wish to invest much money on something we don't know if it works. But when your site is more established and it is making money, the thing is you have more money, and you will try to find ways to optimize your time. So can we agree that you are looking for free SEO tools because you are at the initial stages of your site? If yes, then this video is for you. And we are not only going to share with you a list of free SEO tools, but also bring you through a journey. Anyway, no affiliate links or sponsored tools allowed. Let's go. Hey, it's Jack from Rang Maath, the one WordPress SEO plugin that brings you the fastest and the most convenient SEO and AI tools for WordPress. And this channel is all about helping you grow your search traffic. So if you're new to us, consider subscribing now. Starting a successful site comes in different phases, and in each phase, you will need different tools, especially in the first

phase. It is all about getting the most visibility for your site, which means finding keyword opportunities with an adequate search volume and with low to medium competition. You will also need basic on-page SEO tools, sitemap tools, and many others. Then, the goal of phase two will be to achieve topical authority, which means finding new keywords in a different way, optimizing your existing content, speed optimization, etc. And the final phase of the site is all about amplification and engagement. This comes with building backlinks, performance monitoring, etc. Many free SEO tools are concentrated in the first two phases, but there are some free tools for the third phase as well, which I will share with you. But anyway, enter phase one, you will need three keyword research tools. I want to share with you two videos we have already done on keyword research, which I think you will find helpful. This is the video on keyword research tutorial, and this is a list of free keyword research tools. And we have figured out which are the most accurate ones. Links are in the description if you

want to check them out, but after the course, I want to share with you the most accurate free keyword research tools. Here, let's start with this. You might not believe this, but the most accurate keyword research tool out there is something that is easily accessible to you: the Google Keyword Planner. Because most keyword tools out there base their data from Google's API. Not only are you able to retrieve worldwide search volume, because most keyword research tools out there only show you search volume from a particular location, you will be able to find many keyword ideas. For example, let's say that we are in the aquascaping niche. Let's search for can aquatic plants grow in gravel, and immediately I'll be able to see the search volume of the keyword I've added, together with the keyword ideas it has provided. Anyway, their search volume is the most accurate out of all three tools out there. Plus, let's say that you intend to start a blog in the aquascaping niche, and you found that TCAP tocom is a website you aspire yours to be.

find what keywords this site is ranking for. Just copy this link, head back to the Keyword Planner tool. Instead of starting with keywords, you start finding keywords with a website. Paste the link here, select the entire site, and you will have all the keywords the site is ranking for. Feel free to download the list of keyword ideas. The best part is there is no limit to its usage, so you can find keyword ideas from as many sites as you want. However, instead of the range in the search volume column, if you want a more accurate figure like this, you need to keep an ad campaign active. Maybe run a $1 campaign. If it works for you, SEO is all about understanding what your audience is searching for online, the words they are using, and the content they wish to consume. We used to have Answer the Public to find phrases people are searching for related to a topic, but since it was bought over, you are limited to three searches a day. So now we have Answer Sotis. Let's try to find keywords related to the preer niche. You see, we

can select a country which is good for local SEO, but unfortunately, we can select worldwide. We can select the language as well. And check this out, you will get a ton of keywords or key phrases people are searching for related to your topic. They have categorized it by the questions people ask, prepositions, comparisons, and they also sort all the keywords by the letters, which is kind of neat. So with just one search, you will find tons of awesome keyword ideas. All you need to do later on is to verify the search volume and the competition level of each keyword. If the previous tools are not getting enough keyword ideas for you, we have suo. I'm not sure if it is pronounced this way, but it's not. I'm sorry. You know when you do a Google search before you complete your keyword search, there will already be some related suggestions. This is a great way to find keyword ideas. You can run through the letters and you will find many, many keywords. But Silo isn't just about Google. It pulls search suggestions from over a dozen sources, as you can see.

for example, let's search for Preppers. And you will have a ton of suggestions from other sources in real time. If you do the same like Preppers a, b, then C, and so on. This is what we call alphabet soup. You will find lots of keyword ideas people are searching for on different platforms. With that information, you can find new angles or topics you hadn't considered before. So this is easily one of my favorite free SEO tools. Still not happy with the keyword idea tools? Let's have one more. As we all know, Reddit is a great platform where communities drive every possible niche under the sun. Will most likely have a subreddit community for discussions. So the Reddit keyword research tool. This is the link. Allows you to dive into these discussions to uncover valuable insights like what topics are trending, what questions are being asked, and the language real users use. Let's say that we are interested in starting a website for the purpose. As we search for something, the tool will already show some Reddit suggestions. Let's select that. Get

keywords, and here we go. You see, there are a ton of related keywords and phrases derived from Reddit posts and comments, as well as their search volume. And if you click on the context, you will find all the subreddits and discussions related to the keyword. Exploring these subreddits allows you to get a deeper understanding of your niche so that you can tailor your content even more closely to your audience's interest. This is definitely a valuable tool to find highly relevant keywords. Now, these are all the tools to get as many keyword ideas as possible and identifying your search volume. So, if you found keyword ideas from Soovle, Socrates, and the Reddit keyword research tools, it's best you run them through the Google Keyword Planner. That will filter out those ideas that no one is searching for. And for those remaining keywords with search volume, it's time to categorize them based on their competitiveness. Now, UberSuggest is not the only Chrome extension that provides the function we need. You can use MozBar

as well, but in this case, I'm just going to use Uber suggest. Let's say that we are interested in this keyword preppers for beginners that has between 100 to 1,000 search volume. When you have the Uber suggest Chrome extension installed, as you search for the keywords and you enable the tool, you will have some data on the search results page, something like this. The most important information to assess the keyword difficulty of this is the domain authority. A keyword that has sites with domain authority of 50 and above ranking for it in the first 10 positions, it is considered high competition. If you see a few 30 to 40 plus domain authority in the top 10 results, it is a medium difficulty keyword, and if there are one or a few results from sites with below 30 domain authority in the top 10, it is an easy keyword to rank. And if you find government content in the top 10 results that are relevant to the search term, the keyword is impossible. So based on this, we can say that this keyword is within

the medium difficulty level because it has one two three three sites that have a domain authority of between 30 to 40. So this is a good keyword for new sites. You want to try to rank for medium and easy keywords. And as your site matches, you will target keywords that are harder to rank. So with these tools, you'll be able to find the right keywords to target and put them into a content plan. The next step is for you to build your website so there is a place for your content to live. You will need SEO tools to generate an XML sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. Add relevant schema markups to your pages so that search engines will understand your site better. You need a tool to guide you through on-page SEO optimization. Add meta titles and descriptions to your content and so many other things. If you use WordPress, Rank Math provides all necessary SEO tools for free. Rank Math is probably the most holistic free SEO tools for WordPress users. And yes, it does have a paid version but the free version gives you a

ton to rank your website smoothly. Do you know when you install rank MAF and you run through our setup visit, we will ask you to connect your site with a Google account following through some steps. And by the end of the setup, your site would have been connected with your search console and an XML sitemap would have been submitted to it automatically. Everything is done for you seamlessly in the background so that you don't need to worry about the minute SEO task. When you write an article, we have 20 plus SEO checks on the site that helps you make sure that your page is SEO friendly. Any score that is above 80, you would have achieved the goal. Plus, by default, a meta title and description would have been added for you automatically without any extra steps. However, if you wish to change them, click on edit snippet and you can change them here. We give you 750 free AI credits every month as well. One credit for one word. So you can click on generate with AI and it will automatically generate the meta title and description for you.

if you like the output, just click on insert and they will be added to the fields. Also, there are external tools out there that will give you a preview of how your article will appear on search. You have that tool here as well by toggling these two buttons. Want to know how your page will look on social when it is shared? Click on the social tab, and now you can toggle between Facebook and X. You can change the meta information right below. If you need help generating a content outline, there are over 40 AI tools available to you for free, limited to its credits, so you can generate about four to seven outlines every month if you utilize all free credits to this tool. Also, when you add an image to your articles, you don't need to worry about adding an ALT text because with this setting, the image file name would have been added as an ALT text when the image is added to your content. And I am only scratching the surface of what RankMath SEO can do. We have many tutorials on how to use the plug-in on our channel.

the one video you should watch to optimize your site for SEO as a beginner is this video right here. The link is in the description. Images are probably the most important part of SEO because it breaks up the text and a feature is worth a th000 words. But images can slow down your sight, which can cause a poor user experience. Hence, it's important to optimize your images. This tool is by WP rocket. Full disclaimer, we are under the same umbrella with it. You can auto-optimize your images on upload to make the size of your images smaller. You can optimize your image in the next-gen format, such as Aviv, which is even newer than webp. It provides better compressions without loss in image quality. And you can even optimize your theme files as well. When it comes to image optimization, Imagify is one of the best solutions for WordPress users. If you wish to spend the free content AI credits RankMath provides on something else rather than generating SEO outlines, then this free tool is perfect for you. Google Gemini is a free AI tool anyone can use just like chat.

GPT, this is the link. You can ask all sorts of questions, and you will get an answer from the AI. But let's just say we wanted to generate an SEO content outline for the topic best WordPress SEO plugins. Give it a while, and there we go. It even tells you the target audience, the content goal. In some instances, they will even tell you the primary and secondary keywords, as well as the search intent. So if you're not happy with this, you can always ask it to generate again. And now we are talking. We have the target audience, search intent, primary keyword, second secondary keywords, and the content structure. I think these are spot on. So try it yourself to see if it works for your content. Leave a comment down below and share your experience. So these are all the tools in phase one to help you write high-quality content that will rank, and without you worrying too much about the minute SEO task. When your site has between 100 to 300 published articles, depending on the size of your niche, it's time to move on to the next.

phase. In this phase, you are not so worried about the competition level because you are already in the game. The search engines already know what your site is about, but they don't know if you should be trusted as an authority in your niche. So, how do you let them know that you are awesome? By covering as many topics related to your niche that have a good search volume and demonstrate your expertise through the content. Let's uncover some keywords you may not have thought of. Google Search Console is probably your best friend as a blogger because it tells you what your audiences are searching for and also provides you with information to optimize your page for SEO. For example, if you go to the Performance tab of your site, go to Pages. Let's say that you want to optimize this page because the click-through rate is not great. To see what keywords this page is ranking for, click on Queries. Here's the list. You can select the average click-through rate as well as the average position so that you know what keywords you should optimize the page.

for if you filter about those underperforming keywords, which are keywords that are ranking at position seven or more, you know your page has a chance of climbing to the Top. If You Give a better explanation, a clearer guide, or whatever that satisfies the search intent better, so you can filter the results by position. And if you want those keywords that are ranking above seven, you will select greater than six. So go through the list of keywords and double-check the effectiveness of your content against these keywords. Are you providing the answer the Searchers need? There is a high chance that you're missing something; otherwise, yours should be ranking at the top. Also, you want to keep a lookout for keywords that have a different search intent than the page you are on. For example, if you look through this list, we can see virtual assistant jobs for senior citizens. The page we are on provides a list of job ideas, but the person searching for this keyword is looking for virtual assistant jobs only and not a list of ideas. So this page is not directly answering the

intent of the search term so you can take this keyword as an opportunity to create another piece of content. This is just one of the examples of using Google Search Console. You can use it to check if there are any technical issues with your site, submit an XML sitemap so that Google can send out their spiders to crawl your pages, know what pages to optimize for page experience, call what vitals, look for any security or manual actions, etc. It is one of the best SEO tools for bloggers to understand the performance of your site. You see when you search for Rank Map review and scroll down, this site has a star rating. This is a rich result. If you search for best cookie recipes, these are rich results as well. Pages that have these rich results take up more visual assets and gains more attention that may convert into clicks. And the criteria to getting these results is to have schema markups on those pages. Google provides you with a tool to analyze your schema markup codes so that you know they are error-free. For example

if you want to know the schema markup for this page is error-free, what you can do is to right-click on the page, click on view page source, Ctrl+A or Command+A to select all the codes, copy it, head to the Google Rich Results Testing Tool (this is the link we have left it in the description), and then what you want to do is to select code. I find that the code method works better. Paste the copy codes here, hit this button, and in a couple of seconds, it will show you all the schema markups that are on the page, and if there are any critical or non-critical issues. Now, if you don't know where to start with adding schema markups on your site, then let Rank MAF do the job. If you run a WordPress site, by default, we add an article schema on your blog pages. If your page is a recipe, you can always select the right schema type and add all the information in here. If the page is a software review, you need the star rating on a search results.

page. All you need to do is just to add in whatever information you have in this schema type, and your page should be able to pass the reach results testing too without any issues. We made it super seamless for you to add the right schema markups to your pages. Plus, we have these videos right here to ensure you won't encounter any issues. If you're interested in getting started with schema, the links to these videos are in the description. Now, Screaming Frog is not a typical SEO tool where you can get the information on a browser. It is a software that you need to install on your device for it to work. Most SEOs mainly use the tool to do site audits to see if there are broken links or things that are not working on their sites, and some even use it to analyze other people's websites. So, Screaming Frog is a premium tool, which means there are some limits to its free version. It crawls up to 500 URLs on the site, but I think the free version already provides you with some cool insights. You see, I'm analyzing.

rang math.com and now it is done. If your pages have no issues, you should see a status code of 200 with an okay status. You can sort them by their codes to see if there are any other issues. For example, a status code of 307 or 301, which means these pages have been redirected either temporarily or permanently. If one of these pages are not supposed to be redirected, you have an issue to fix. Or if there are pages with errors, which usually have status codes within the 400 range, then you will need to do something about those pages. You will have an overview of the indexability of your pages, then the metadata information, canonical links if any, and many other things. And if you switch to issues, it will show you the issues you have on your site. And these are the pages, so you can assess if they are truly what the tool claims. It will take a long time to explain every detail of the two, but one thing that may be helpful to you is that if you know a competitor website and you

want to know what are the most important pages on their site. You can sort the results by in-links, which are the number of internal links pointing to this page, and you will see which other pages that are most important to the site. Well, Rank MAF is a SAS company, so needless to say, the pricing page is the most important, followed by the knowledge base of our Analytics tool, and then the support. This may not be accurate because not every page is CW on the site. The paid version may provide a different view, but this will give you a gauge on the important pages of your competitor's site. Imagine this is not rang mav.com but an affiliate block site. The top link page would definitely show some cool insights on what pages matter to them. So, this is a cool free SEO2 go check them out. SEO Review Tools don't just provide one, two, it provides a suite of free SEO tools. You won't believe that these tools are all for free when you visit the website. This is the link you will see these featured tools, but there are a

total of 66 SEO tools at your disposal from SEO Authority tools like Compar the Checker, technical SEO TOs, and so many of them. For example, if you want to build backlinks for your page, you can leverage the link building tool. You can add the keyword you want your page to rank for, such as SEO tips, select your targeted country, and a category if applicable. In a while, they will give you a clue on where you can get those backlinks. For example, to find backlink opportunities from guest posts, these are all the keywords to search for on Google to find guest post opportunities. Click on view the results, and you can start working on the outreach. So I'm not going to go through every single SEO tool here. You can check them out yourselves and see if these free SEO tools help. The link to this page is in the description as well. At this stage of the game, you should be optimizing your pages for speed so that your site visitors will have a better user experience. And the best tool you can use is a tool provided.

by Google called PHP insights. This is the link. Let's check out how rang math.com performs. Hi, I think it is not bad even though it says fail on the interaction to next paint, which measures the lag between the interaction of a page, such as clicks, Tab, and keyboard interactions. 209 milliseconds is a fifth of a second, so it is still fast. However, you got to check the interaction of your page on your mobile as well to have a gauge if it is fast or slow. It is fast anyway. This is the mobile performance, and this is the desktop performance. As you scroll down, this is the performance of your page in real time. The call Web vitals is a track record of the performance of your page over 28 days. So if you want to optimize this page for Speed, you will need to see all the issues that the two have pointed out. Some are easy fixes, and some are unavoidable. You need to do some research to fix these issues. Think about if it really makes business sense to spend time, money, and energy fixing those issues. I mean if you're say it's just a

Niche site. It wouldn't make much of a difference unless it takes more than 5 seconds to load. But if your site is a large e-commerce site, a laggy site will drive sales away. So, it makes business sense to optimize, even for a second faster anyway. PHP Insights is an awesome tool to diagnose the user experience of your pages. So, we have covered all the free SEO tools you can use to grow your topical authority, and it is time to amplify your site's performance. Welcome to phase three. Now that your site is somewhat of an authority and other site owners know of your existence, it's time to amplify your efforts. I've talked about the stages of link building in this video. If you're interested in that, the link is in the description. And now let's go to the tools that will help you in this phase. Ahrefs is a well-known premium SEO tool, but they do offer some free SEO tools that you can use without limits. So, the free tools by Ahrefs are located on

this page. This is the link. You see, this keyword generator provides you with keyword ideas based on your seed keyword. This is a tool for the first two phases. Then the keyword difficulty Checker gives you a score on keywords, telling you if it is easy or difficult to rank based on the competition level. And then they have a broken link Checker, which is helpful for auditing your sites. You don't want your site to link to pages that do not exist. It gives a bad signal to the search engines. So what do we have here? Here, this page links to a Sam Rush post, and it says this is a page that does not exist anymore. Let's click on it. And yep, I think we need to do something about this. Then you can check the authority of a site. This is one of the most accurate tools for this function. And to help you find backlink opportunities. Let's say we want to outrank the top results of this keyword SEO tips, which is a super tough keyword to rank. And you want to know what sites

are giving backlinks to this page. So what you can do is to copy this URL, go back to the tool, select backlink Checker, paste the URL here, and we have a list of sites linking to Sam brush. These are all backlinks for the domain, not for the page itself. So to find the backlinks for a particular page, go back. Instead of the subdomains, we select exact URL and search for it again. Now these are all the pages that link back to Sam Rush's blog post. If you go through the content of those pages as well as the anchor text, you can figure out why these pages are linking back to the page we are competing. For example, Backlinko's page is about the 17 most important SEO tips. And if you read that page and see if you have an article that adds value to Backlinko's page, maybe a tip that both Backlinko and Sam Rush didn't have, you can contact Backlinko and ask them to check out your page. I'm just giving you an example. Backlinko has affiliations.

with Sam rush you can do the same with t affiliate as well or whatever Links of over here. Study the context of why these pages are linking to this page, and you can give them a reason why they should check out your page and link to you instead of this page. And if you want to find more backlinks opportunities, of course, you can select the subdomains, and you can find more backlink opportunities by studying the reasons and the context of why these pages are linking to Sam rush. So imagine your site has no Authority. Nobody knows your site or brand exists. When you reach out to those site owners, would they even bother looking at what you have to say? There is a high chance that they won't even read your email, and that's why banklink Outreach should only be done when you or your business have some kind of credibility. Anyway, when you find a site you want to contact, you can either visit their site and look for their contact information through it, which is sometimes a difficult task, or you can use the next tool called

hunter.io. Hunter.io is a great tool for SEOs to find contact information of a site. In the previous example, we want to find the contact information of zapier.com. Let's copy the link. If you don't have a Hunter.io account, you can get a free account with them. And once you do, you will reach this page, which is under the search tab. Paste the link here, and here we go. There's so many of them, but you can sort them out by management or whatever that makes sense as your point of contact. So these are all the 15 free SEO tools for each phase of your site. If you're looking for more free SEO tools, maybe for local SEO and others, you can check out the link in the description that will lead you to our written blog on this topic. Anyway, if you find this video helpful, how about helping us out by smashing that thumbs up button? And if you haven't subscribed to us, we are all about sharing SEO and AI-related content. So consider subscribing. This is Jack from Rank Math.

15 Best Free SEO Tools (You Won't Believe It)

Rank Math SEO

Free SEO Tools for Different Stages of Your Website

When your site is in its initial stages, you'll need free SEO tools for keyword research and basic on-page SEO.

As you progress to the second phase, you'll require tools for topical authority and content optimization.

In the final phase, tools for backlink building and performance monitoring become essential.

The Google Keyword Planner is highlighted as the most accurate tool for keyword research, offering worldwide search volume data and keyword ideas, as well as the ability to find keywords for a specific website.

This tool is recommended for obtaining valuable insights into what your audience is searching for online.

Effective Tools and Methods for Keyword Research

Selecting a country and language for local SEO is crucial, and using tools like Soovle, Socrates, and Reddit keyword research can provide a wide range of keyword ideas.

Running these ideas through the Google Keyword Planner helps filter out irrelevant ones.

The UberSuggest Chrome extension is valuable for assessing keyword difficulty based on domain authority, helping to identify the competitiveness of the selected keywords.

Optimizing Your Website with Rank Math SEO

Rank Math SEO offers a comprehensive set of tools for website optimization, including XML sitemap generation and on-page SEO guidance.

The plugin provides 750 free AI credits per month for generating meta titles, descriptions, and content outlines.

Additionally, Rank Math SEO assists with image optimization and offers various tutorials for beginners.

The Importance of Google Search Console for SEO

Google Search Console helps bloggers optimize their pages for SEO by providing valuable information on search performance and keywords.

It allows for the identification of underperforming keywords and search intent mismatches, as well as the discovery of new content opportunities.

The tool also helps in identifying technical issues, optimizing for page experience, and obtaining rich results through schema markups.

Guide to Checking Schema Markup and Using SEO Tools

To check for error-free schema markup on a page, you can use the Google Rich Results Testing Tool by copying the page's code and pasting it into the tool.

Rank MAF can help with adding schema markups, especially for WordPress sites, offering seamless integration.

Screaming Frog is a premium SEO tool used for site audits, providing insights into issues like broken links, redirects, and page errors, with the ability to analyze metadata and indexability.

The pricing page is the most important, followed by the knowledge base of their Analytics tool, and then the support page.

SEO Review Tools offers a suite of 66 free SEO tools, including a link building tool and PageSpeed Insights for optimizing website performance.

Google's PageSpeed Insights tool provides an analysis of Rang MAF's website performance, highlighting areas for improvement in both mobile and desktop versions, as well as real-time page performance and core web vitals tracking.

Optimizing Your Website's Performance with Free SEO Tools

It's important to optimize your website's speed, especially for e-commerce sites, as it can significantly impact sales.

PHP Insights is a valuable tool for diagnosing the user experience of your pages.

Ahrefs offers free SEO tools, including a keyword generator, keyword difficulty checker, broken link checker, and backlink checker, which are all essential for improving your site's performance and authority.

Backlink outreach should be done with credibility to increase the chance of site owners paying attention.

io is a useful tool for finding contact information for sites you want to reach out to.

Offering valuable content and building a reputation can also help improve the success of backlink outreach.