9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2022-2023
The best part, every single tool in this list
is 100% free.
I'm Akhtar Nawab , the founder of Backlinko,
the place where marketers turn
for high rankings and more traffic.
And if you're looking for tools
that will help you get higher Google rankings,
you'll love this Article, keep Reading.
The first tool on this list is called seedkeywords.com.
Most keyword research tools work the exact same way,
enter a seed keyword into a tool
and get a list of suggestions.
The problem with this approach is this,
everyone types the same exact seed keywords
into these tools.
No wonder most keywords are super competitive.
That's where Seed Keywords comes in.
It helps you sidestep this problem.
Instead of pulling seed keywords out of thin air,
you actually ask customers how they'd finds you online.
Then you use those seed keywords
in a traditional keyword research tool.
For example, let's say that you run
an online flower delivery e-commerce site.
Well, you'd use Seed Keywords
to create what's called a scenario.
Basically, you ask people
how they would search for what you sell,
then send that scenario to people
and if you're like me,
you'll be surprised at the responses that you get.
Finally, put the terms that you find
into your favorite keyword tool
and you'll find some untapped keywords
that your competitors don't know about yet.
Which leads us to our second free SEO tool, SERPerator.
Now I didn't include SERPerator on this list,
just because it has a name
that kind of sounds like terminator.
Although, that didn't hurt.
With that, here is how this tool works.
As you probably know,
the search results change dramatically,
depending on where you are and the device that you're using.
And this some tool helps you check out the search results
across different locations and devices.
All you need to do is specify your device and location
and you'll see exactly how the results will look
for someone searching from that location, using that device.
Pretty cool and now it's time
for our third SEO tool, Exploding Topics.
You probably already know that finding new trending keywords
is an SEO goldmine and it's simple math.
If you target an old keyword,
they're gonna be more blog posts, articles, YouTube Article
and content in general, that you have to compete with.
But when you target new keywords that are trending up,
you get in early before the search results
get super competitive.
For example, a while back, I wrote a post
optimized around the keyword, Mobile SEO.
Back when that keyword was relatively new.
Even though that keyword didn't have a ton of searches yet,
I knew that Google had been rolling out updates
that penalize sites that weren't mobile optimized,
which meant that searches for that keyword
were primed to explode.
And because I got in super early,
I was able to carve out a top three ranking
for this growing term,
a ranking that I still hold to this day.
The question is, how do you find these new trending terms?
Well, you could use Google Trends
but the issue with Google Trends
is that you already need to know what you're looking for.
In other words, Google Trends is great
for confirming a trend
on a keyword that you already know about,
but it's not really helpful
for coming up with new trends and topics.
Enter Exploding Topics.
With exploding topics,
you get a list of new trending keywords
presented to you on a silver platter.
And the tool has a database
of trending topics across several different industries,
including health, fitness, marketing, fashion,
consumer products and more.
Moving right along, our next free SEO tool
is called LSI Graph.
You've probably heard of LSI keywords before.
They're basically words and phrases
that are closely related to your main keyword
and when you include these terms in your content,
Google sees your content as comprehensive,
which can give you a nice little rankings boost.
For example, let's say your target keyword is "Star Wars."
LSI keywords for "Star Wars" would be things like,
Luke Skywalker, Jedi, Princess Leia
and the Millennium Falcon.
So, how do you find LSI keywords?
A very cool free tool called LSI Graph.
Just enter your target keyword into the tool
and you'll get a list of LSI keywords
that you can sprinkle into your content.
Pretty cool, with that,
it's time for tool number five, TubeBuddy.
TubeBuddy is a free Chrome extension
that helps you optimize your YouTube Article for SEO.
For example, let's say that you wanna use
some of the same tags that another Article is using.
Well, you can use TubeBuddy to easily see those tags
and use them in your Article.
Or let's say you're looking for a keyword
to optimize your Article around.
You can use TubeBuddy to see the competition level
on YouTube's the first page for that keyword,
which leads us a tool number six, Wordtracker Scout.
Wordtracker Scout takes kind of a unique approach
to keyword research.
Instead of entering a keyword into a tool,
Wordtracker scans a page
and finds keywords that show up over and over again.
That way, you can go over to one of your competitor's pages
and grab the keywords that they're already using
in their content.
You can even sort the list of keywords by opportunity,
which are terms that have the best ratio
of search volume and competition.
And now it's time for SEO tool number seven,
the Google Search Console.
No list of SEO tools would be complete
without talking about Search Console, why?
Well, if you take a step back,
Search Console is actually a pretty feature-rich piece
of SEO software.
And unlike almost every other tool in the market,
the data that you get comes straight from Google,
so you know it's legit.
For example, you can use the Search Console
as a rank tracker to check your site's ranking in the SERPs.
You can also use it to get a feel
for your site's backlink profile.
Now, this isn't nearly as good
as a paid tool like Ahrefs, but it's not terrible.
Last but not least, you can see all of the pages
that your site has indexed in Google
and if you have any technical SEO problems
that's holding your site back.
Which leads us to tool number eight, Answer The Public.
Most keyword research tools get their data
from the same exact place, the Google Keyword Planner.
Answer The Public is a little bit different.
This tool focuses on questions that people ask
on forums, Quora, Reddit, blogs and on social media
and it turns those questions into awesome keywords.
My favorite feature inside of Answer The Public
is that they have a section dedicated to versus keywords.
So, why is this helpful?
In my experience versus keywords are great for SEO,
that's because versus keywords
usually aren't super competitive
and the people that search for versus keywords
tend to be pretty advanced,
which means they're usually close to buying something.
For example, I recently published this post
that compared Ahrefs to SEMrush.
Even though this keyword doesn't get a ton of searches,
the people that do search for this keyword
are pretty advanced.
Remember, these aren't newbies
that are looking up what SEO is or how it works,
they're comparing two different paid tools.
And these are the exact type of people
that I wanna get in front of,
which is why I published that versus post.
And like I said, versus keywords
aren't usually really competitive,
which is why I was able to rank in the top three
within a few weeks.
And now it's time for our last tool,
SEO tool number nine, Animalz Revive.
Animalz Revive helps you find older content on your site
that needs an update and upgrade, or both.
Before this tool came along,
you had to manually find these pages in Google Analytics
and it was a huge pain.
But with this tool,
you get a list of pages that need some TLC.
It even shows you how many visitors you're losing
by not updating your old content.
So, before we end this Article,
I've got a quick bonus tool for you, Siteliner.
Siteliner is a free technical SEO tool
that scans your site for SEO problems
like blocked pages, messed up redirects,
duplicate content and broken links.
You can even drill down into each page on your site
to see if the tool found any issues.
You can also compare
your site's loading speed and page size,
to other sites in Siteliner's database,
which is helpful for benchmarking.
So, that's my list of my nine favorite free SEO tools.
Also, if you want exclusive SEO and traffic techniques
that I only share with subscribers,
head over to backlinko.com
and hop on the newsletter, it's free.
Now, I wanna turn it over to you,
which tool from today's Article are you gonna try first?
Are you gonna find trending keywords using Exploding Topics
or optimize your Article with TubeBuddy?
Lemme know by leaving a comment below, right now.
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