There is a wide range of SEO tools and software out there that can provide valuable insights and help you to maximise the chances of ranking highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs) - but many of these come with a hefty price tag. 

However, what you might not be aware of is that there is a massive arsenal of free SEO tools for everything from content and video analytics, to keyword and rank tracking.

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s very own tool for conducting keyword research for both PPC and SEO purposes. This is great for conducting large scale keyword research across all regions and languages.

Keyword tool

FatRank

A Google Chrome extension that allows you to quickly check what position a website ranks for a specific keyword.

Ranking tool

Check My Links

A Google Chrome extension that quickly scans a selected page for links, highlighting any broken ones that need fixing.

Link tool

Google PageSpeed Insights

Used for discovering the mobile and desktop page speeds of a website, the PageSpeed score ranges from 0 to 100 points. A higher score is better and a score of 85 or above indicates that the page is performing well.

Speed test tool

Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool claims to be more accurate than Google's Keyword Planner, and it is also more widely used for longtail keyword suggestions.

Keyword tool

Google Analytics

The most popular web analytics tool on the web, Google Analytics allows you to track and monitor website traffic and make business and marketing decisions based on your data.

Analytics tool

Google Analytics API

Collect real time data and display it through dashboards and reports for your clients/key stakeholders.

Analytics tool

Google Search Console

Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console allows webmasters to monitor and maintain their website's presence in the Google Search results. It can also provide you with useful insights such as your backlink profile.

SEO Toolbox

Bing Webmaster Tools

Similar to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools is for controlling and monitoring a website's presence within Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.

SEO toolbox

Google Trends

Google Trends shows you how often a particular phrase or query is searched for in various regions and languages of the world. You can filter results a lot more in terms of time frames compared to Keyword Planner which only gives you a monthly average from the last 12 months.

Keyword tool   Social media tool

Schema Creator

Schema Creator is great for getting started and learning about Schema Microdata.

Technical SEO tool

XML Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps allows you to easily create and test sitemaps to be submitted to search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo and more.

Technical SEO tool

Copyscape

Copyscape is a duplicate content and plagiarism checker for your website. It is also often used to detect content fraud.

Content tool Technical SEO tool

Structured Data Testing Tool

The Structured Data Testing Tool allows you to develop, test, and modify your structured markup.

Technical SEO tool

GTmetrix

GTmetrix gives you insights into your website’s speed and performance, and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it further.

Speed test tool

SEO Quake

This is a plugin for your browser that provides information on a range of metrics, such as Pagerank and website age, and allows you to view all the information in the SERPs for multiple websites, giving you an idea about the level of competition for certain keywords.

SEO toolbox

Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is a large (100 terabyte) archive of web page snapshots, allowing you to see how a website looked at a certain period in time, going all the way back to 1996.The Wayback Machine is great for broken link building.

Onpage SEO tool

Buzzsumo

BuzzSumo allows you to track content across all social networking sites, ranking it based on the number of shares it’s received on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. It monitors content by topic or user, and uses an advanced search engine to deliver accurate results. Plan your SEO Campaign with Buzzsumo.

Social media tool Content tool

Moz Toolbar

Moz Toolbar is a great browser extension which gives you useful, instant insights into metrics such as Page Authority and Domain Authority.

SEO toolbox

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a tool that allows you to edit website tags easily so you do not have to always consult a developer. For example, you can implement Google Analytics on every page of your website with ease. Check out our beginner’s guide to Google Tag Manager.

SEO toolbox

Majestic

Majestic is one of the best link research tools available on the web as it has one of the best historic backlink indexes on the web. There is also a more extensive paid version available.

SEO toolbox

SEMrush

SEMrush is also a well renowned SEO tool with multiple functions. There is also a paid version which allows you to view more data and get more insights.

SEO toolbox

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is an SEO spider that crawls websites and fetches data so that you can audit a website from an on-page perspective. 

SEO toolbox   Technical SEO tool

BuiltWith

This is a useful Google Chrome extension that helps you to discover what programmes and tech were used to create the vast majority of websites. 

Technical SEO tool

Google Public Data

Google Public Data is great for researching content and creating infographics as it provides users with large sets of data and forecasts on a wide range of topics.

Social media tool Content tool

Boomerang

Boomerang allows you to schedule emails, while it is also great for link building and following up on outreach emails.

Email marketing tool

Moz Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is a link and web page analysis tool which also provides useful insights into metrics such as ‘Spam Score’, Page Authority and Domain authority.

Link tool

WordPress SEO by Yoast

A popular WordPress plugin that has multiple functions to help optimise your web pages for the search engines, including indexing options and a content analysis.

SEO toolbox

Siteliner

Similar to Copyscape, Siteliner is a great tool for finding duplicate content on your website.

Onpage SEO tool Content tool

Anchor Text Over Optimization Tool

The Anchor Text Over Optimization tool is used to analyse the diversity of your anchor text. This will allow you to identify where your website might be at risk from a Google penalty for anchor text over-optimization, for example too many exact match links.

 Link tool

Bitly

Bitly is a popular URL shortening and analytics platform.

Analytics tool   Technical SEO tool

Wistia

According to its website, “Wistia combines world-class video hosting, marketing tools, and video analytics.” It also helps with video optimisation by automatically marking up videos with meta data. This ensures that rich snippets are created for the video within the organic search results.

Video content tool    Analytics tool

Xenu's Link Sleuth

This great tool is mainly used for finding broken links, but you can also create sitemaps and find redirected pages, while it also boasts an easy-to-use reporting format.

Link tool

Trello

This is the second time we’ve recommended Trello recently, as it also appeared in our list of ‘5 Useful Tools for Digital Marketers’. Trello is great for project management, allowing you to organise your projects into boards and easily see what’s being worked on, who’s working on it and how far through the process it is.

Project management tool

Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

This tool allows you to strategically pre-construct page titles and meta descriptions to maximise your click-through-rates.

Technical SEO toolContent tool

Youtube Analytics

For anyone using video in their marketing strategy, Youtube Analytics is a must-have!

Video content tool    Analytics tool

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb gives you insights into nearly any app or website so you can look at things like your competitors traffic statistics. 

Analytics tool

KnowEm

KnowEm is a social media brand search engine and marketing platform which offers numerous services for helping you with social account management, you can also reserve your brand name across multiple channel. 

Social media tool

Robots.txt Checker

This tool is great for optimising your Robots.txt files by finding errors and misspellings that could be causing you problems.

Technical SEO tool

CloudFlare

CloudFlare acts as a reverse proxy and can improve things like website speed and security.

Speed test tool    Technical SEO tool

nTopic

nTopic is a fantastic content tool where you can discover insights such as the relevance of the content on your web pages in relations to the keywords you want them to rank for.

Onsite SEO tool

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is mainly a paid tool but they do offer some free data. It is a well renowned SEO tool box with multiple functions where you can track keywords, backlinks and monitor competitors.

SEO toolbox

Piktochart

Piktochart is an infographic design application that allows users to easily create infographics without needing professional graphic design experience.

Infographic tool

Banana Tag

BananaTag is a great tool for email scheduling, email tracking and creating email templates. 

Email marketing tool

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a keyword tool that prides itself on discovering keywords that Google Keyword Planner would not!

Keyword tool

Moz Local Listing

Moz Local Listing helps you to easily manage your local business listings by allowing you to quickly edit and delete information, as well as generally boost your online presence.

SEO toolbox

StatCounter

StatCounter is a web analytics tool which offers numerous statistics such as visitor paths, keyword analysis and popular pages. 

Analytics tool

Searchmetrics Research

Searchmetrics Research Lab can provide you with some great insights for your website but is very limited compared with the paid version.

SEO toolbox

Mail Tester

Sometimes you can have trouble sending emails to certain addresses, but with Mail Tester you can run a test before potentially spamming someone or wasting your time.

Email marketing tool

Similar Page Checker

Check for web pages and content similar to your own with this great tool to avoid content duplication.

Onsite SEO tool

SERPmetrics

SERPmetrics is a fantastic rank monitoring tool with additional features such as a Fluctuation chart to show you search ranking changes.

Rankings tool

TextCleanr

TextCleanr removes all text formatting and code when pasting between applications.

Technical SEO toolContent tool

WebPageTest

WebPageTest is a tool used to measure website speed and gain insights on how to improve it.

Speed test tool

MyBlogGuest

With MyBlogGuest you can build links, find outreach opportunities and network with other content publishers to really improve your guest blogging strategy.

Content toolLink tool

Wordstream’s Free Keyword Tools

Wordstream is mainly a paid tool, but it does offer some great free keyword tools like the ‘Keyword Niche Finder’, ‘Keyword Grouper’ and ‘Negative Keyword Tool’.

Keyword tool

KeywordEye

Keyword Eye is another great keyword suggestion tool for your marketing campaigns. It can provide you with useful insights such as competitor research, while the ‘Question Finder’ allows you to identify the questions your target market are asking about in the search engines.

Keyword tool

Whois Lookup

Whois Lookup is used to gather information such as contact and technical details on chosen domain names.

Technical SEO tool

Seer Toolbox

Seer Toolbox is an all-in-one spreadsheet-based SEO tool that gathers data from platforms such as Majestic, Google Analytics and more.