9 best free
SEO tools

to rank on Google search

How to get to the top of google search results? With quality keywords, professional SEO writing and a smart backlinking strategy. These free easy-to-use tools will help your site to rank on Google and bring tons of organic traffic.

Use these awesome free tools to get your website found on Google.

Google search console for indexing your site - a must!
Google keyword planner to find keyword suggestions
SEM Rush magic keyword tool to analyze keyword metrics
SEO Writing Assistant to write the content that search engines love
SEO Power Suite Content editor to avoid keyword stuffing
Link Assistant to find the backlinks you need to build an authority site
Link building tool to make backlink building easy and organized
Seobility to check your site for errors that hold down your ranking
Google Analytics to track your performance and see what works

Many take SEO as something “techy” and out of their reach. In reality, it is not so much about “IT secrets”. It is based on pure marketing logic. To get found on Google all you need is:

high-quality content,
a well-organized website and
an established reputation in your niche.

In this article, we’ll look at the ways to achieve this.

The way your website is organized is often referred to as “on-page SEO”. This is about how you manage your site structure, name your links, write your titles and meta descriptions. In this article, we’ll look at the SEO tools that help you identify current errors and fix them in this article.

Your reputation in the web-space is called “off-page SEO”. This means you need to get authority websites to link to yours. This is the most important part of your ranking on Google. This seems like a difficult task. But we’ll look at the tools that help you manage the backlinking process and make your site reputable.

You are probably asking yourself “How do I improve my Google ranking”. In this article, we’ll look at the best SEO tools for ranking on Google at every stage of your search optimization.

Disclosure: This project is reader-supported. This means I earn a commission when you purchase through some of the links on this website. There’s no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support! Full disclosure here.

Getting started with SEO

Find the right keywords
Keyword search tools

Keywords are crucial if you want to improve your position in Google. Ideally, you want to find the best keywords even before you start creating content. But if you already have nice articles that are waiting to be discovered, you can still optimize them. Run keyword research and integrate new words into your content. This will help you to get on the first page of Google

How to choose the best keyword research tool? What should you look for in keyword research software? Here are the most important keyword indicators.

Key metrics

The first thing to consider is the monthly search volume for a particular word. This shows how many times a month people search for your keyword. If the number is too low you will not get much traffic for this keyword.

Domain authority indicates how trustworthy this site is. It is a website’s reputation rank.

Competition index. To get your website on the first page of Google you need to know how competitive your keywords are. In other words how many other websites have similar content. And the authority rank of these websites.

PPC stands for “pay per click”. This is how much it costs if you want to run a paid campaign. Now you might say: “I am not interested in paid advertising. I want customers to find me through organic search”

You don’t need to advertise for these keywords. At least, at the starting point. But you want to find high-value keywords and focus on them in your writing. Because these are the words that will bring money to your business.

If a word has a high CPC, this means companies are willing to pay a lot for this particular word. They won’t pay for a word that doesn’t convert well.

Don’t make this common mistake of all new bloggers

The most common mistake of new bloggers is writing based on the most popular keywords. This is not going to work.

First, the competition for these words is too tough. The market is dominated by huge players. They have hundreds of people writing great content for them. They have a good reputation and people trust them. Of course, links by famous publishers and bloggers get lots of clicks. Google sees they are popular and keeps them on the first page. Vicious circle.

If you are a newbie, you are likely to get stuck somewhere on page 10. Sounds disappointing, doesn’t it? But there is a solution. Follow these tactics to show up on the top of Google search

Focus on less competitive words and avoid generic terms. The best bet is to focus on long-tail keywords that include 4 words or more. Fewer people will use them. But those who do, are clearly looking for a solution to their problem. If somebody types in a long-tail keyword, your site will appear on Google search.

And you have a much higher chance to rank for these words. Furthermore, you can target several low search volume words to drive more organic traffic.

1. Google search console

Google search console is at the very basis of search engine optimization. Once you have created a website you need to create a Google Search Console account to show up in Google search. Google uses this tool to create a better user experience for web-masters, SEOs and website owners.

Here you can check how many times your site has appeared in google search results. You will find the average rank of your page and the keywords your website is ranking for. You can also see what exact pages these keywords are driving traffic to. A fundamental resource to build your SEO.

Google Search Console

2. Google keyword planner

Google keyword planner is the first tool that comes to mind. This is where most people get started. It is a popular tool worth considering, but I would only use it for keyword ideas.

If you add the main keyword to the search field, they will recommend similar terms that people search for. This is useful, but not enough to rank on Google.

Pro hack: you can also add a URL of your competitor to see what words they are ranking for. Of course, you shouldn’t copy their content. But you want to use some of these words. After all, these terms are what people look for. This is why these pages rank on Google search.

Google Keyword Planner gives basic information on the search volume. It has three levels:

Low: 0 to 1000 searches
Medium: 1000 to 10 000
High: 10 000 and more

Not bad for a start. But if you want to get your site on Google this is not enough.

First of all, every niche is different. If you write about popular products, you will see hundreds of thousands of searches. But if your subject is industry-specific, 5 000 searches may be a good share of searches.

For example, the term “SEO tools” gets 6 600 searches a month. This is not low for the SEO industry, but in Google keyword planner terms it would be considered “low”.

To get a higher Google ranking we need a more professional keyword research tool.

Google keyword planner

3. SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool

SEM Rush magic keyword will show you how difficult it is to rank for a certain keyword. On top of all the necessary metrics, you will get exclusive data for keyword marketing strategy. They take into consideration not only the number of searches. It looks into other metrics of those lucky sites enjoying the first-page ranking:

search volume
trend (how the search volume changed over time)
PPC cost (the cost per click if you were doing paid advertising)
Keyword Difficulty (shows how difficult it is to outrank your competitors
Competitive Density

If you are a new blogger or if you are promoting a newly rising business this metric is your key to success. The key to free organic traffic to be exact. You need to identify those low competition words and build your content around them.

SEMrush is an all-in-one platform that will boost your Google rankings. It can help you with anything: your site audit, most popular pages, drawbacks with site structure and more. But my favorite part is their SEO writing assistant which we’ll review in detail in this article.

Start now for FREE

Keyword Magic tool

Create amazing content

SEO writing tools

Once you have chosen the best suitable words you need to create amazing content. Successful content marketing always starts with research. Google some of your keywords and see who is ranking for them. What are the top 3 sites writing on your subject?

Of course, you don’t want to copy their content. No way. But these guys are top-performers for a reason. Study their writing style, formatting and visuals. This will point you in the right direction.

Start writing based on your research. Answer your readers’ questions. Create the content you want to read.

The next step is editing. It goes without saying that your post needs to be impeccable in terms of grammar and spelling. I guess you are already using Grammarly. If you don’t, you definitely should!

You may be very good at grammar and spelling. But when you are writing a blog post you want to focus on the idea. You want to research your subject to the fullest. You want to create content that inspires.

It is nice to delegate simple tasks like grammar and spelling to a smart app. It’s free and it’s super helpful.

But a grammatically perfect article will not help you to get to the first page of Google. You need to optimize your blog posts for SEO. These tools give awesome SEO tips for bloggers and content creators to get your website on the first page of Google.

4. SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant add-on for Google docs will analyze your content and the content of your competitors. Based on this analysis it will come up with a list of the words that should be in your article.

This is important for two reasons. First, it will help you rank for additional keywords. Second, less obvious, Google will decide on the quality of your article based on the words you are using. If you fail to use most of the words that your competitors have used, Google will assume the quality of the article is poor.

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant makes sure you use the necessary words to present a professional image. To your readers and to search engines. It will also give you recommendations on length, backlinks, and other critical SEO factors in SEO Writing Template. Everything you need to rank on Google search results.

The best part is that it integrates with Google Docs. No need to switch between tabs, get used to new editing software, or copy and paste texts.

Here is how it works

First, you need to install the Add-on to your browser. I use Google Chrome.
Log in to your Google docs account and open the document.
Go to add-ons at the top of the page and select “SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant”
On the right side of your document, you will see the Writing Assistant window. Log in with your SEMrush account and start working. If you don’t have a SEMrush account register here!

Enter your target words
Get editing recommendations, keyword suggestions and your general SEO score
Make the suggested changes. Once the issue is fixed it turns green.

SEO Writing Assistant

Your project is automatically saved. You can take a break whenever you want and come back to your project when you are ready. No need to set up again. Your target keywords and completed tasks will be waiting for you. You have one project with a free or pro plan. To create more projects, you need to upgrade to Guru.

In addition to search optimization, SEMrush will check your blog content for readability for free users. This helps you to avoid too long paragraphs and complicated sentences. You don’t want your visitors to bounce away because your sentences are too long.

If you get a paid plan you will also get your text checked for Originality and Tone of voice. Needless to say, you don’t want your site to lose authority due to plagiarism. The tone of voice is important for marketing.

You need to use the appropriate language for your audience. If you write reviews for computer games you want to use gamers’ slang. If you publish legal updates you need to use business language. For your audience to relate to you, speak like them.

5. SEO Power Suite Content Editor

SEO Power Suite Content Editor is a part of SEO Site Auditor software. You can write in the editor or copy and paste into the editor your existing article. I like the second option better because this editor doesn’t have grammar or spelling checks.

This tool will ask you for your focus keywords. It will analyze your blog post or product description and give you blogger SEO tips. This amazing search optimization tool can:

Check your title and headings for keywords
Check your meta description for keywords.

NomadDiva tip: meta description is a short overview of the article that you see in Google search results under the title. This is an important part of SEO blog writing.

First of all, this is the first thing a potential visitor will see in the search results. Based on this short text they will decide, should they click the link or not.

Second, Google also scans meta descriptions to understand what the article is about.

Many people forget about meta description because it is not visible on the page. Don’t make this common mistake. Always make sure you have a good meta description which includes at least one keyword.

SEO content editor

Analyze popular articles on your subject and suggest more keywords.
Check the article for keyword stuffing.

A big advantage of SEO Power suite content editor: it will tell you which words you need to delete to avoid Google penalties.

NomadDiva tip: Using keywords is good. It is the best thing you can do to rank on Google. At the same time OVERusing keywords is very bad. It will hurt your Google ranking. Google considers keyword stuffing as spam and sends the violators to the last page.

Here is how SEO Power Suite Content Editor works.

Download and install SEO Powersuite Site Auditor. This is desktop software. There is no cloud option.
Enter your domain name to create a project. You will see other options like Rank Tracker, which will look at in more detail later in this article.
In the left-hand navigation choose the Content editor
Copy and paste your text or start writing.

This is useful software with many features to do SEO for bloggers and digital marketers alike. In the free version, you cannot save your projects. Every time you open the program you start from scratch. If you are using the free version make sure you back up the results. To be able to save your projects and unlock additional features, upgrade to a paid plan.

SEO-power-suite-content-editor-seo-writi

Download for FREE now

Blogger SEO optimization is crucial if you want to get to the top of google search results.

Now that you have edited your blog content, you are ready to publish it on your website. Regardless of the software you are using, make sure to transfer correctly your:

Title
Meta description
Heading 1
Heading 2,3 …….
Optimize your images. Resize them to make sure your page loads faster. Add Alt text to your image, so that search engines know what it is about.

Build a reputation in the webspace

Backlink building tools

Backlinking is word-of-mouth in online business. Imagine there is a new product in a supermarket. You are not sure if it’s good or not. After your friend mentioned it, you will probably take a closer look at it. If ten of your friends have been talking about it, you feel like you have to give it a try.

If another blogger thinks your content is good, they will give a link to your website in one of their articles. Or relevant media, shops and service providers could link to your content. This is very good for your website for two reasons.

First, the loyal readers of those referring sites will come to check out your page. Don’t miss your chance. Make sure they find something amazing there.

Second, Google looks at the number of backlinks you have and the quality of websites that link to you. Based on these criteria, Google decides if your content is worthy or not. If you have many authority sites linking to you, Google assumes people like your content and - voila - puts it on the first page!

In fact, a backlinking strategy is your number one priority if you want to rank on Google.

Creating a great article and waiting for it to be discovered is a dead-end, obviously. You need to reach out to people and companies to pitch your project. You can start by dropping links to your website on social media. This is not bad, but it is unlikely to bring you lots of traffic. If you want to be on the top of Google search results, you need to be strategic.

Check if you already have backlinks and determine the top-performing pages
Identify your key competitors. If you are an expert in your niche you probably know them already.
Check who is linking to their websites
Reach out to these site owners

Number 1 and number 3 are clear. We all know how to use Google search and how to write emails. But how do I find out which sites link a certain domain? Here are the best backlinking tools.

Link Assistant

6. Link Assistant by SEO Power Suite

Link Assistant crawls 7.1 million pages daily, this software offers hundreds and thousands of link building opportunities. You can also adjust your search based on a specific link building strategy. Perhaps, you are only interested in guest posting. Or you believe forums and comments are the most effective.

You can also search for prospects based on your competitor's backlink profile. Just enter the domain name of your competitor and it will show you all the websites linking to it. As simple as this. Now you can investigate these referring sites and reach out to those you like. This is how it looks.

SEO Power Suite

7. SEMrush Link building tool

SEMrush Link Building Tool went even further! No wonder they are an industry leader when it comes to SEO.

They do Step 1 for you. All you have to do is to add your keywords (up to 10) and competitors (up to 10). Then SEMrush analyzes the backlinks and gives you a detailed report.

You get thousands (!) of sites where you should try to acquire a link and domain authority score (very important). You can review the suggested prospects. If you want to continue working with them, move them to Progress (1). If you don't think they are suitable, move to Rejected (2). You will also see SEMrush rating for each backlinking prospect, based on their authority and accessibility. You can even download that to CSV.

Unbelievable, but all of this comes under a free plan.

Here is how it looks

Download now for FREE

Link building tool

SEMrush.com

Try it for FREE

You can also add an email box and reach out to the site owners right from the system. And you don’t need to search for the contact information for all your prospects. Many are already in SEMrush database.

You can send up to 500 emails daily if you connect a Gmail account or 100 emails with Microsoft account. Then you get a well-rounded report on your success, evaluate the links or automatically follow up.

This tool makes building backlinks super-easy. So you can invest more time in creating high-quality content and writing great guest posts. Build high-quality links and your website will show up on the first page of Google.

Website health check

SEO tools for a site audit

A site audit is like a visit to a dentist. Do it regularly to find weak spots. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

This is true for the website as well. Check it for system errors, poor on-page SEO, broken links, or harmful backlinks. All of these result in a loss of organic traffic. This means you are losing a lot of money without even knowing.

Of course, it only makes sense to run a site audit after you created engaging content and implemented an effective backlinking strategy. Then you will appear in Google search results and start driving search traffic. A site audit will evaluate your current status and make sure nothing is holding you back.

8. Seobility

Seobility is a good easy-to-use tool with a free forever plan that includes basic features and regular reports. SEObility will give you information on the most important pages on your website and incoming links. It will check loading time, broken pages, and metadata.

It also checks your content for the most used keywords and pages without particular keyword optimization. It will even find pages with typos and the same paragraphs.

This tool is great in its simplicity.

SEObility also has necessary features like keywords, backlink analysis, and information on your competitors. You could use it for keyword research and backlink building, but with limited functionality.

SEObility does not have as many features, like the other tools we have covered. This may be good for a beginner. Navigating around it is very easy. You won't get lost in plenty of options. If you are a complete beginner, confused with techy stuff, this is the simple SEO tool for you.

Seobility

Tools that we have already covered, SEMrush and SEO Power Suite, also work great for a website audit.

In SEMrush the site audit function comes under the SEO toolkit. In SEO Power Suite it comes under the matching name - Site Auditor. Both are very useful.

If you are using any of these tools for keyword research, content marketing or backlink building, I recommend that you run a website audit there. It is always easier to work with a familiar interface, rather than switching back and forth between different platforms.

Seobility

Track your performance

SEO analytics

See your organic reach growing and spot any problems at the initial stage.

9. Google Analytics

The most important tool to see the dynamics of your online marketing strategy. This will show you how your audience grows over time and what are your main traffic sources. The go-to resource when you need to understand, what is working and what is not.

This will show you the number of visitors and how many pages they viewed. How long did they stay on your website? What is your bounce rate or how many people leave without taking any action on your site?

Google Analytics will tell you a lot about your audience:

Where they are from
What devices they are using: desktop, tablet or mobile
What time of the day people visit your site

Use these metrics to navigate your marketing strategy and track progress as you go.

Good news: Google Analytics easily integrates with a lot of platforms. This includes SEMrush and SEO Power Suite. So after you have created a Google Analytics account you can work with your data using your favorite tool.

Start now for FREE

Google Analytics

Take it to the next level

Upgrade

SEMrush, SEO Power Suite and SEObility have free and paid plans. If you are serious about your online business and want to invest in organic traffic here is my rating.

The gold winner is SEMrush. On top of the features listed in this article, there are a lot more.

Even the free version is exploding with useful resources. Can you imagine what a paid plan do? Some of the extra features you will get:

Keywords. With a free version you get 10 keywords for 10 requests a day. This is a maximum of 100 keywords. Now, 100 keywords a day is not bad for a start. But once you get serious about your keyword search, you need to filter out thousands of keywords. With a PRO plan you get 10 000 words per request. And you also have 3 000 requests per day. This takes us to 30 000 000 keywords daily limit. Their smallest paid plan outweighs any superstar-business-pro plan that you might see elsewhere. They also have a Guru plan and a Business plan, where we are looking at 500 000 000 searches.
The number of projects. You can use most of SEMrush tool for free for one domain. This is considered one project. This also makes it easier for you to rank across different channels. With a pro version you can work on 3 projects at a time. A business account gives you access to 25.
Site Audit. You can crawl (or check) up to 100 000 pages per month. The free version only allows you to crawl 100.
Position tracking. You can track your position for 500 words with a Pro plan while the free plan only allows you to track your ranking in Google for 10 keywords. You get even more features with Guru plan like Cannibalization Report, which shows pages that compete for the same keyword.

Price

The paid plan starts at $99/mo. For many small businesses, this may seem quite high. Consider how much you spend every month on advertising though. With these tools you can get free organic traffic and optimize advertising costs.

If you are running PPC campaigns, with SEMrush you will make them a lot more effective. In marketing terms, your cost-per-acquisition will drop. You will spend less money on getting a signup or making a sale. This is a good investment for your business.

Silver goes to SEO Power Suite. Even though it has fewer features than SEMrush, it has amazing functionality. Totally sufficient to grow your blog or business online.

You can use limited functions for free for all the four software toolkits, together forming seo power suite:

Site Auditor
Link Tracker
Link Assistant
SEO SpyGlass

With a paid plan you can:

Save your projects to come back to them later.
Keep your work in the cloud storage
Set the tasks to run on autopilot
Copy data to clipboard
Export reports (with an Enterprise plan)

Price

The paid plan starts at $299 per year. There is no option to pay monthly.

This is a lot cheaper than in the first place. And you still get a lot of useful functionality to rank number 1 in Google search.

Buy now

The bronze winner is Seobility. A good and simple tool for beginners. If you are not planning to invest a lot of time and resources into improving your SEO, this is a good solution.