Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important for improving website visibility and getting organic traffic.
Many people believe that the best SEO plan requires expensive tools, but there are various SEO services and free options available to help you optimize your website effectively. This article will show you how to do SEO using free tools.
This article will show you how you can do SEO using free tools
1. Website Audit with Free Tools
A website audit is the first step to understanding your site’s current SEO status. It will help you identify issues such as broken links, slow loading speeds, and poor mobile usability. Here’s how you can perform a website audit using free tools:
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is an essential tool for SEO people. It provides most accurate data into how your website is performing in Google search results and identifies issues that may be affecting your site’s visibility. Google search console key features include:
- Crawl Errors: Shows if Google is having trouble indexing certain pages.
- Mobile Usability: Highlights any issues with your website’s mobile version.
- Page Experience: Provides details about Core Web Vitals, focusing on speed, interactivity, and layout shifts.
To use Google Search Console:
- Verify your website ownership by adding a meta tag or uploading a file.
- Check the coverage report for indexing issues.
- Review mobile usability issues to ensure a mobile-friendly website.
SEO Site Checkup
SEO optimer is another great tool for a free website audit. This will run your website against technical SEO issues for a detailed report, out of some scoring system, including meta tags, image optimisation and URL structure. You can also compare your site’s performance with competitors.
Although it limits the number of free audits, SEO Site Checkup provides useful data into:
- Meta Descriptions and Title Tags: It will check for missing or duplicated metadata.
- Broken Links: Detects any 404 errors.
- Page Speed: Highlights areas that slow down your website, like large images or unnecessary JavaScript.
2. Keyword Research with Free Tools
Keyword research is a tool that helps SEO experts identify terms people search for in your niche. If you target the right keywords, then relevant traffic will be driven to your site. Well, here are some free tools for keyword research:
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner, though designed for Google Ads, is a great free tool to find keyword ideas. You’ll get estimates on search volume and competitiveness, as well as suggested bid prices, which are helpful for SEO, too. Here’s how to use it:
- Create a free Google Ads account.
- Go to the “Discover new keywords” section and enter a seed keyword or website URL.
- Analyze the keyword ideas based on search volume and competition levels.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is another great free keyword research tool developed by Neil Patel. It provides detailed data on keyword search volume, keyword difficulty, and SERP analysis. While it has some limitations in the free version, it is still useful for small websites. It key features include:
- Keyword Suggestions: Ubersuggest generates a list of keyword ideas based on your input.
- Keyword Difficulty: Gives a score from 1 to 100 to estimate how hard it is to rank for a given keyword.
- SERP Overview: Shows the top-ranking pages for each keyword along with backlinks and traffic data.
To use Ubersuggest effectively:
- Enter your primary keyword in the search bar.
- Review the suggested keywords and choose those with a moderate difficulty score and high search volume.
- Use long-tail keywords that are easier to rank for, especially if you’re targeting a niche market.
3. Content Optimization
Once you’ve identified the right keywords, you have to optimize your content in the next step. Content optimization makesure that your pages are relevant, engaging, and well-structured for both users and search engines. Below are some free tools to help optimize your content:
Rank Math SEO (WordPress Plugin)
If you have a WordPress website, Rank Math SEO is a highly popular free plugin for optimizing your on-page content. It offers suggestions on improving your content for SEO and readability. Features include:
- SEO Analysis: Provides feedback on keyword usage, meta descriptions, and internal linking.
- Readability Check: Suggests improvements based on sentence length, passive voice usage, and transition words.
- Snippet Preview: Shows how your page title and meta description will appear in Google search results.
AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is a unique tool that helps you understand what questions people are asking in your niche. It generates a visual map of queries and topics related to your keyword, which can inspire content ideas. To use this tool:
- Enter a broad keyword related to your industry.
- Review the questions and phrases that people are searching for.
- Create content that addresses these questions, using the keywords you’ve identified.
4. Track and Analyze SEO Results
Monitoring your website’s performance is key to understanding the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Several free tools can help track important metrics like traffic, keyword rankings, and backlinks:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is essential for tracking your website’s traffic and user behavior. It shows detailed information about where your visitors come from, how they interact with your site, and which pages are most popular. Key metrics include:
- Organic Traffic: Track the number of visitors coming from search engines.
- Bounce Rate: Measure how many visitors leave your site after viewing only one page.
- Conversion Rate: Monitor how well your website converts visitors into leads or sales.
To get started with Google Analytics:
- Sign up for a free account.
- Install the tracking code on your website.
- Review the traffic and behavior reports to identify areas for improvement.
Google Search Console (Again)
Besides providing insights for website audits, Google Search Console also helps track keyword performance. It shows which queries are driving traffic, your website’s average ranking for each keyword, and the click-through rate (CTR) for each query. Use this data to:
- Identify high-performing keywords and create more content around them.
- Find low-performing keywords and optimize the pages they are associated with.
- Track your site’s progress over time.
5. Using SEMrush for Free SEO Tasks
SEMrush is a high-tech tool for SEO and perhaps one of the best among all, but fortunately for beginners, their free version gives an opportunity to try some very useful features one can take advantage of. To sum up, though with some limitations, one can perform various SEO tasks without necessarily paying. Under the free SEMrush account, one has the following possibility:
- Perform limited keyword research: Discover a few top keywords and phrases relevant to your industry.
- Conduct site audits: SEMrush will analyze your website’s technical SEO health and offer recommendations for improvements.
- Track position changes for a few keywords, helping you understand how your rankings evolve over time.
Although the free version of SEMrush comes with certain restrictions, it can still be a helpful tool to incorporate into your SEO strategy when you’re starting out.
Conclusion
There are several easy ways to do SEO well without having to spend a lot of money for it. You could do keyword research, optimize content, audit your website, and track performance with the right approach and help from free tools-all of these without spending even a single buck. Tools include Google Search Console, Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, and Yoast SEO-decent starting points to help you improve the ranking of your website in search engines. Applying these free resources appropriately will surely bring in better visibility and more organic traffic to your site.
