Discover free seo tools: the best no-cost options for 2025 for your contracting business. We've researched and tested the top options so you don't have to.

Neil Eneix

on Ecommerce •

December 04th, 2020

Pretty much all businesses know that the internet has changed the way consumers find new products and service providers. Search engine optimization (SEO) has never been more important, but there are many elements that affect the results you get with this marketing approach. Businesses can rely on dozens of different platforms to help you build a robust organic search marketing strategy, including a set of powerful free SEO tools that are suitable for companies on a budget.

Manually testing and finding the best free SEO tools takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you don’t have a huge amount of resources to invest in your marketing strategy. Fannit is an SEO company that has tested out countless free and paid platforms. Our team has worked with a variety of different resources from various providers, so we have a pretty good idea of which unpaid tools work as well as the platforms that don’t usually deliver great results.

Below, we’ll go over the different types of SEO tools you have available and discuss the importance of implementing the best platforms. We’ll also go over our recommendations for the best free SEO tools available and divide our picks by category.

Defining SEO Tools

Before going any further, let’s take a minute to define SEO tools.

In simple terms, an SEO tool is any platform that helps you research competitors, find keyword ideas, develop content, and perform any other task related to increasing your organic search engine rankings.

Google and other search engines factor in a huge number of variables when calculating your website’s rankings every time there is a relevant search.

However, understanding these variables is not always enough to find the right combination. In many cases, companies need to leverage SEO tools to access relevant data and, in turn, build better marketing campaigns.

With the above in mind, there are dozens if not hundreds of variables that affect your website search rankings.

Because of this, there are also hundreds of SEO tools that you can leverage to improve the performance of your site and many of these carry a hefty price tag.

While you may not be able to achieve the exact same results, you can also opt to work with unpaid SEO platforms that provide similar capacities to their paid counterparts.

By using platforms like Small SEO Tools, you can develop a solid campaign and improve the quality of your content without having to pay a small fortune.

More helpful reading: What Is SEO? Search Engine Optimization Marketing Definition & How It Works

Why Are SEO Tools Important?

Before the days of digital marketing, companies had the ability to conduct some marketing activities by themselves without having to involve third-parties.

Digital technology has given businesses the ability to connect with their potential customer at a whole new level.

However, this also means that companies need to employ different tools in order to understand potential buyers and ensure that their content is having the right effect.

SEO tools are crucial for a variety of reasons.

For starters, some SEO tools give marketers the ability to identify the keywords that potential customers use when searching for products and services.

Without a solid keyword research tool, knowing what phrases and keywords consumers use to find products would be next to impossible, making these platforms crucial for companies that need this SEO knowledge.

By leveraging the right SEO tools, you can:

Increase Rankings

The most obvious benefit of implementing quality SEO tools is the ability to increase your organic rankings for relevant searches. It’s no secret that Google and other search engines are the first places that consumers turn to when they need to find a product or service.

If you use the right tools, you can understand what the leading sites are doing and implement changes that increase the chance of getting your website on the first page of Google search results.

Keep in mind that there are many ways you can improve your rankings, so you need to analyze your specific scenario and identify the tools that increase your chances of success.

For instance, you may already have great content, but the technical SEO elements on your site may not be properly set up.

In these cases, having the ability to audit your site and find out what technical elements have to be adjusted will increase your chances of landing on the first page.

Track Progress

Simply making changes to your content and website structure doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get the results you want. In order to ensure that your SEO and content marketing strategies are performing well, you need to track your progress.

Again, this will vary from company to company, but some of the variables you may want to track include your site’s historic ranking changes, website search traffic volumes, and the number of leads you generate online.

In addition to free SEO audit tools, you can also find a variety of great tracking platforms that you can implement at no cost.

We’ll go over the list of our top picks for tracking and analytics tools later in this article, but remember to always work with a platform that was developed by a reliable provider like Google.

Study the Competition

The exact algorithm used to calculate organic rankings has never been disclosed by Google.

While this ensures that no one can manipulate the rankings, it also means that companies need to conduct a lot of tests to determine what improvements improve their rankings the most.

In addition to running multiple tests, you can also study leading websites and attempt to understand their strategy.

This can give you valuable insights and allow you to come up with SEO suggestions based on solid data, rather than starting from scratch.

There’s a handful of great free SEO tools online that help you gain a better understanding of competitors, but you should conduct a bit of research to ensure that you partner with a platform that provides accurate page metrics.

Understand the Audience

It doesn’t matter if it’s a B2B, B2C, or any other type of business, understanding the audience is the best way to develop engaging content.

Engaged audience members are more receptive to your marketing message, which means that they are more likely to complete the actions you want them to take, like contacting your business.

Many business owners feel like they already know enough about their audience to develop attractive content.

However, there are many Free Google SEO tools as well as platforms developed by third-parties that give you invaluable insights into the way consumers think and behave online.

This information can help you produce more impactful content, and the best part is that you can access it through tools available at no cost.

More helpful reading: On Page SEO Checklist – The Ultimate Guide for 2020 (Free Infographic)

The 60 Best Free SEO Tools For Google Website Analysis (& More)

Remember, all companies and products are different, the definition of the best free SEO tools will vary from one business to the next.

Understanding what your company truly needs is the only way to acquire the right platforms, so you should take the time to identify the gaps you need to fill in order to get your website on the first page.

Additionally, you also need to determine what areas of SEO will have the most profound effect on your company.

For instance, if most of your search traffic and sales come from smartphones and similar devices, you need to focus more on mobile SEO rather than desktop devices.

If you’re not sure what search and content marketing strategies have the highest odds of setting you up for success, you can always rely on an SEO company to help you identify the best approaches.

At Fannit, we employ a combination of leading paid platforms with reliable free SEO tools developed by Google and other renowned brands.

Here are our picks for the best free SEO tools available today.

Analytics and Performance

Having reliable analytics and performance tracking tools is crucial because they help you set a benchmark while also allowing you to track how well your content performs.

As with other forms of online marketing, SEO requires periodic optimizations in order to improve the performance of your campaign. The analytics tools you choose will tell you what changes to implement in order to get the results you’re looking for.

Remember, the analytics and performance tracking tool you select needs to come from a reliable developer.

This platform has access to your site’s performance SEO metrics and it may also collect personal information from users, so you should make sure that the SEO free tools you choose handle this data responsibly.

Google Data Studio

Besides being the world’s most popular search platform, Google offers a range of SEO research tools free of charge, but Data Studio may be among the most practical and flexible.

In a nutshell, this SEO tool allows you to take large data sets, like the ones found in Google Analytics, and transform them into engaging visuals.

Users can then share these materials with other team members and analyze the information collected in a much simpler way.

Google Data Studio can help with a huge variety of SEO tasks, plus you can build an almost endless combination of custom dashboards, but you’ll have to take the time and learn how to use the platform’s advanced features.

Bing Webmaster Tools

There’s no denying that Google products usually take up a lot of the attention, but they are not the only resources developed by leading search engines.

The Bing Webmaster Tools platform allows marketers to access crawl dates, generate reports, and view comprehensive information about their Bing organic rankings.

While the platform is only suitable for Bing organic rankings, there is no better tool to help web managers get ranked on this alternative search platform.

Furthermore, the platform provides keyword suggestions, SEO metrics reporting, and other features that help you send more Bring search traffic to your site.

Google Analytics

Out of all the free SEO tools out there, Google Analytics may be the most powerful and popular resource developed by the search giant.

In simple terms, Google Analytics is a comprehensive tracking platform that provides a huge amount of information about the way users behave on your website.

It’s essential for any company or individual who aspires to crack Google’s first page rankings and the best part is that it’s completely free of charge.

While it may not provide every single detail or present information in all formats available, Google Analytics can help you view the number of people that visit your website, how they found it, where they are located, and other crucial information that can help you adjust your digital marketing strategies through a free data management solution.

More helpful reading: The Ultimate Google Algorithmic Penalty Recovery Guide

Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is similar to Google Analytics, but it provides information from a search platform’s perspective, rather than the users who visit your site.

For example, Google Search Console allows you to see how your rank changes over time, what new keywords you’re ranking for, and the last time that Google bots crawled your site.

In addition to providing in-depth performance data, Google Search Console can also help you troubleshoot your site and send you alerts whenever there’s a problem that affects your rankings.

Like other Google products, Search Console allows you to create comprehensive reports, plus you can submit crawl requests directly to the search platform to ensure that all of your content is updated on its records.

MozCast/SEMrush Sensor

Although they are not technically free SEO reporting tools, MozCast and SEMrush Sensor make the cut to our list of favorites because they can help companies stay up-to-date with any major search algorithm changes.

Google updates the algorithm it uses to calculate search results position on a regular basis, but every now and again the giant implements an update that drastically changes pre-established rankings.

MozCast is a tool that allows you to monitor Google’s algorithm and check whether the patterns indicate a drastic algorithm update.

SEMrush is a similar free SEO tool developed by another leading marketing analysis tool that can also send out notifications whenever there’s a significant change in search rankings for one or more industries.

Crawling and Indexing

Crawling is an essential process that allows search engines to create a comprehensive index, which they scan every time a user conducts a search.

Also known as indexing, this process relies on simple pieces of code called crawlers, bots, or spiders, which are in charge of reading the entire contents of your site line by line.

By ensuring that your site is crawled regularly, you can help ensure that Google and other search engines have the most updated information about your site available.

But, even though crawlers should periodically analyze your site, they may not read your site regularly enough. The good news is that you have a variety of free tools that allow you to submit requests to Google and ensure that your pages get crawled on a regular basis.

Link Redirect Trace

Link Redirect Trace is a chrome extension, but this doesn’t make it any less powerful than any of the tools in this list.

Known as a comprehensive redirect path analyzer, the platform is designed to unveil details about the canonical tags, HTTP headers, robot.txt files, and other crucial pieces of information that can help you learn from competitors.

Additionally, the platform can also be used on your own site in order to identify areas of improvement and errors that need your immediate attention.

When used for competitor analysis, this tool allows you to see detailed technical information, like which pages contain cookies, bot blockers, and other elements.

Screaming Frog

Yes, Screaming Frog is known as one of the leading desktop crawlers thanks to its paid subscriptions.

However, the platform also offers a free version that allows up to URLs for each crawl, which is much better than a lot of the lower-tier solutions that charge a monthly fee.

For those who are not familiar with Screaming Frog, this powerful tool can help users identify broken links, analyze page metadata, highlight duplicate content, perform redirect audits, and create a visual of a site’s architecture.

You can also generate XML sitemaps in the free version, but you’ll need to upgrade your subscription for Google Analytics integrations and other advanced features.

Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer

Server log file analysis is one of the best ways to determine when, how, and by who your website is being accessed. Screaming Frog also offers a log file analysis tool, and the company has gone as far as creating a free version of this software as well.

As you can imagine, the Log File Analyzer has limitations, but it can help you visualize the number of visitors and unique sessions, the duration of each session, OS used, the exact time and date the site was accessed, among other pieces of information.

You’ll only have access to 1000 lines of log event limit and a one project limit, but the platform otherwise provides a full range of great features.

SEOlyzer

If you’re looking to bolster the SEO of your site by un

Free SEO Tools: The Best No-Cost Options For 2025