There are many SEO tools available in the market. There are paid tools, free tools, and even some premium tools. I’ve tried to use most of the SEO tools in the market today.
In this post, I’m going to share my experience with these SEO tools. I have listed down the top 5 free google tools which you can use for your SEO works.
Google Mobile-Friendly
Fortunately, the search engine giant is doing its part to make your life a bit easier. With the help of the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool, it only takes a couple seconds to determine if your website is mobile friendly or not.
After you enter your URL and click “Analyze,” you want to see something that looks like this:
As you can see, there’s no gray area with this free tool. Your website is either mobile-friendly or it isn’t. This impacts your search results.
If your website fails this test, don’t waste another day before making the necessary changes. A mobile-friendly version of your site could do wonders for your search engine rankings, as well as the amount of organic traffic that you generate.
Google My Business
Local SEO is big business. If you’re a local company looking to drive business online, you need to implement a sound strategy, built around search engine optimization.
For most, this starts with Google My Business. With a business listing, you’re in a position to provide prospective customers with more information on your company, including business hours, location and contact phone numbers. It’s a simple search engine free tool.
Consider this statistic, shared by Social Media Today: local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within one day.
Creating a Google My Business listing does not guarantee online or foot traffic, but it definitely moves you in the right direction.
Here’s an example of how a listing appears on the web:
Your listing may not look like this on day one, as it can take some time to get up to speed. For example, you’ll want to add more photos, as time goes by. Along with this, you’ll hope to consistently generate positive reviews through social media to improve rank on search engines.
Google My Business isn’t a tool for all business owners, but it’s one that local companies can take full advantage of.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Is a fast website really that important?
Well, it all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If you want to find your website at the top of the search engine rankings, this is a must. And, if you want to best serve your visitors, it’s also a good idea.
In other words, you want your website to be as fast as possible.
How fast the content on your website loads will have an impact on your rankings and how users interact with your site. This is why you need to ensure that your website is moving as quickly as possible, at all times for optimal search results.
Thanks to the Google PageSpeed Insights tool, you never have to guess whether or not your site is up-to-par, in regards to speed. Instead, it helps you to make your website fast on all devices.
Running an analysis will provide the following:
Be sure to check both the desktop and mobile tabs, as you want to make sure your website is up to speed on every device type.
Furthermore, Google provides advice on things you should fix. By taking this information to heart, you may find a few ways to quickly increase the speed of your site.
Google Correlate
Are you the type of person who wants to go above and beyond, when researching keyword data?
If you fit this mold, like me, there are a few tools that can help you generate the best results. Google Correlate is one of them.
With this, you can uncover search patterns that “correspond with real-world trends.” This free tool focuses on relevant keyword research.
In other words, it provides keywords that are typically searched together. For example, maybe you run a search for “fat loss.”
You know that there are many keywords based around this subject matter. But, this tool shows you the ones that most closely correspond with your primary keyword. Develop your keyword planner with the help of this tool.
If you have a strong interest in uncovering the best long tail keywords for any subject, the Google Correlate tool can be your best friend. Do yourself a favor and experiment with this, before writing your next blog post. It may help you find a unique angle that you had previously overlooked.
Google Chrome
What does a web browser have to do with SEO?
If you find yourself thinking that one browser is the same as the next, change your thinking. Here’s why: Google Chrome has a variety of SEO extensions that can help you make better decisions about your online marketing strategy.
For example, the SEO & Website Analysis extension is one of the best you’ll find. With this, you can instantly pull an SEO report for any website.
Not only does this provide the opportunity to track the impact of your SEO strategy, but it does the same for your competition. As a result, you’ll gain a better understanding of what you need to do, in order to move to the top of Google for your target keywords.
(via SEO & Website Analysis download page)
If you’re open to using Google Chrome as your browser, make sure you’re also open to downloading a few SEO extensions. Once you find the one that suits you best, you may be surprised at how often you rely on it as a free tool and keyword planner.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a variety of tools that Google has grouped together to help you monitor website performance in the Google Search Index. Put simply Search Console’s primary function is being your go-to resource for understanding your site’s technical SEO.
A more in-depth look at Google Search Console can be found here. However, I would like to highlight a few of the useful metrics Search Console gives the SEO amateur.
- Pages Indexed: Your website won’t show up on Google’s SERPs by users unless it is indexed by Google. Search Console tells you how many of your pages are being indexed; if only 80% of your site is indexed then 20% of your site is invisible to Google.
- Pages Crawled per Day: How many pages have been crawled for the last 90 days. Similar to indexing, making sure your pages can be crawled helps Google see that your site has relevant information to users. For a deeper look at how to improve your crawl budget, my colleague Mark has written a piece you can find here.
- Crawl Errors: How many pages Google is having issues with crawling.
- Duplicate Titles and Descriptions: Duplicate content is bad for SEO. If multiple pages have duplicate content, then Google will often view those pages as the same. This will reduce your ability to rank well for your targeted keywords. Search Console checks if there are duplicate titles and descriptions on your site and compiles it into a report for you.
There are many more features and metrics to be found in Search Console such as basic search analytics, so it is definitely worth spending some time looking through them to see how Search Console can help you with your website’s SEO.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is part of Google AdWords, and it lets users research and analyse lists of keywords for use in PPC campaigns.
As part of the Google AdWords advertising platform, it is designed as a tool to improve your paid search campaigns. However, it is still a very effective tool for those carrying out SEO.
You can research the following with Google Keyword Planner:
- Keyword ideas based on a phrase or product category
- Search volume trends for keywords or groups of keywords
- Average monthly search volume for keywords
Here, I have entered the search terms “football shirts”:
We can see metrics for average monthly searches, competition and search volume trends.
By obtaining these metrics you can understand what the most popular search terms are. You can then optimise your pages and content accordingly to target these keywords, thus driving more traffic to your website.
A note of caution: Keyword Planner must be used in conjunction with other keyword research tools. Unless you meet the minimum spend threshold on your AdWords account, the search volume statistics will be throttled and shown in broad ranges such as 100k – 1M. Therefore, as the tool is so heavily orientated towards paid search, it should not be your only source of keyword data.
Some keyword research tools that I find very effective are Moz’s Keyword Explorer and Semrush’s Keyword Analytics tool. They give you monthly search volume, keyword difficulty and even suggest similar keywords you should consider targeting.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is an automated content detection service that helps you manage your online presence. Essentially, Google will send you daily emails alerting you if the search terms you have set are appearing online. These search terms can be anything from a person’s name to a business or product name. Google will notify you if other sites are quoting you, linking to you, or even complaining about you.
It is incredibly easy to use and takes no maintenance at all. Simply input the search terms you wish to create an alert about and Google will do the rest. For example, my client Conosco specialises in IT Support and Services – therefore it’s super important for them to stay up to date with the latest news about their online presence.
You can refine your search terms by using
- Quotes (“”): Specific words or phrases
- (Site:): To be notified of new content on specific sites of high value
- Minus Sign (-): Negative keywords
Google Alerts is particularly useful for the SEO beginner because you will be notified of brand mentions. Brand mentions are a great way to gain quick wins for link building. If your company is being mentioned online but you are not linked to, there is an opportunity for you to expand your link profile.
Contact the website, publication or person and ask them to insert a link to your site. A diverse link profile will boost the domain authority of your site and increase your search engine rankings across a broad range of terms.
Google Trends
Google Trends is an online search tool that shows how often specific keywords, phrases and subjects have been entered into Google and how that has changed over time.
It is easy to navigate and extremely versatile. You can compare up to five search terms at a single time with the results being displayed in Google’s “Search Volume Index” graph.
Each search term can then be filtered within four parameters:
- Type of Search: Web Search, Image Search, News Search, Google Shopping, YouTube Search
- Location: Worldwide and Specific Country Search
- Time Period: Past hour, day, 7 days, 30 days, 12 months, 5 years, and customised date ranges
- Categories: Arts and Entertainment, Autos and Vehicles, Beauty and Fitness, Books and Literature, Business and Industrial, Computers and Electronics, Finance, Food and Drink and Games
For example, if I wanted to see the interest for smart home assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, I would enter the search terms “home assistant”; Past 5 years; Computers and Electronics.
Here, we can see this very basic search demonstrates the rise in popularity of smart home assistants. From having low interest from 2013 through until 2016, there has been a steady rise in how often consumers are searching for “home assistant”. As a marketer, you could use this information to help build your strategy. If this trend continues as expected, you could invest in these products and optimise your pages to target “home assistant”.
If used correctly, Google Trends allows you to see what keywords are trending and when. This is an invaluable tool for marketers who want to understand their audience better and what products and services they are interested in. This example shows the UK interest in different sports over the past 5 years.
Here we see “football” has much higher relative search terms than the other sports, only dropping when there is a summer break. We also see that interest in “rugby” peaked during the 2015 Rugby World Cup and “tennis” peaks every year during the 2-week period of Wimbledon.
Analysing this data assists you with content ideation. For the best SEO results, you need to be producing quality content – content is still king. By having this data, you can run your campaigns based on historical trends, seasonal spikes and upcoming events.
Google Trends will show you a relative interest in your search terms over time. However, since it does not show you actual search numbers, it is best used in combination with Google’s other tools, such as Keyword Planner.
8. Google Voice
What is your primary goal, in regards to SEO and your website?
Like most, the answer is simple: to drive as much qualified traffic as possible.
But, remember this: there’s more to a successful business than increasing website traffic. You must have a plan for converting these people into customers.
Depending on your business, you may be the type who needs to jump on the phone with prospective clients. In this case, you know how important it is to be readily available at all times.
This is where Google Voice comes into play.
With this tool at your disposal, you gain access to one number for all of your phones. So, if you have more than one business line, for example, you can use Google Voice to bring them all together.
Furthermore, it offers free long distance, a simplified voicemail system and competitive rates on all international calls.
If you’re wondering what else you can do with Google Voice, consider the following:
- Send text messages directly from your computer.
- Create personalized greetings to customize the callers’ experience.
- Share voice mails and read transcriptions online.
- Receive calls from any phone.
Getting started is as simple as requesting a new number or using an existing mobile number.
From there, follow the prompts and you’re account will be set up in no time.
You may not consider this to be a traditional search engine optimization tool. But, in many ways, it’s extremely important to the success of your marketing plan.
Conclusion
Google is the most wide-spread search engine and it is estimated that on average more than half of all Internet users use Google to find information they are interested in. The importance of this fact for an effective SEO campaign is huge. It means that what you do and how your website is presented on search results of Google can make a lot of difference for your business. This is why it’s important to track everything you do and see whether you still get visitors or not. Your own pattern of actions should be an inspiration source for new ideas and this helps you start thinking beyond the traditional pattern of conducting SEO.