SEO is a word that is thrown around a lot online these days. SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the process of setting up your site to make it as easy as possible for users and search engines to understand what your site is about and to appropriately categorise it, direct users to it, and list it properly in search results.
The advantages of having good SEO are obvious. A more optimised site will appear higher in search rankings. Performing higher in search rankings makes it more likely that users will make it to your site, engage with your content, and buy your products. As a result, there is an enormous financial incentive to be as optimised as possible. However SEO does not happen alone, and just like humans always do, there have been some tools created to help the SEO process. What follows is a list of some of the best free SEO tools.
Google Trends
It is no surprise that the biggest name in search engines is also one of the biggest providers of search engine tools. Google Trends is a tool that shows users the volume of a particular search. This helps site managers and marketers be aware of search trends within their target market. Google trends is a great way to track the popularity of various keywords to optimise your content.
https://www.google.co.nz/trends/
Keywordtool.io
Keywordtool.io is a tool that takes a search that you execute on a keyword and proposes alternative keywords that are similar, along with some stats regarding the alternative keywords including the volume of searches done on it and other relevant information. Keywordtool.io is a great way to come up with alternative keywords for your content.
Moz
Moz is a company that offers a host of SEO tools and packages. While they do offer some programs for pay, many them are free, including their open site explorer, which tracks what sites link to you to ensure that the authority of your site is not being lowered by garbage backlinks. Moz is especially good for brick and mortar operations as it will take location into account and tell you how you compare to your local competitors.
Bing Webmaster Tools
While Google may be the biggest name in the search engine game, Bing is a close second. Bing is the actual search engines that any users who search through Yahoo use. Bing Webmaster Tools gives you up to date information about how many users are going to your site from Bing and lets you see how your site compares to others in Bing searches.
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Hootsuite
SEO isn't just for web pages anymore! With Hootsuite you can analyse how your social media efforts connect to your SEO strategy. Moreover, Hootsuite also allows you to schedule posts on different social media networks so that your new article, image, video, or sale always show up on your customer's network at just the right time. This is an excellent way to save time and helps make the job of social media marketing more like traditional print work by creating and using an editorial calendar.
Admittedly there is a paid plan but you'll quickly see a positive ROI on this.
Woo Rank
Woo Rank is a tool that is called a scrapper. It goes through your site and finds problems with various types of back-end SEO practices. This lets you check to make sure that all of your link URL's are optimised, allows you to know if you need to set up 301 redirects to any of your old posts where the link as changed, as well as check meta descriptions and other valuable information
Google Analytics
The list ends with Google. Google Analytics is a tool that lets website managers figure out not only how the site is performing, but also provides demographic data. Additionally, through analytics, you can check and see how people are using your site, what page they are most likely to go to after your landing page, how long they stay on a page and the bounce rate. All of this information can help you to diagnose problems with your site and take the needed steps to fix them.
As you can see, there are many different SEO tools on the market, and more are being created all the time. Make sure you are using the appropriate SEO tools to ensure that your site is performing at best possible level.
