SEMRUSH and Ahrefs undoubtedly offer the best SEO tools and services. Their advanced platforms offer marketing insights, keyword research, competitive research, content marketing and more. If you really want to take your blog/website to the next level and reach more people, you’ll eventually need to invest your time and money to acquire such tools.
However, SEMRUSH and Ahrefs are expensive, with SEMRUSH costing $199.95 a month for their lowest tier and Ahrefs cheapest plan locking at $99, at the time of this writing. Nonetheless, here are 5 free alternatives to kickstart your SEO journey.
(Note: SEMRUSH does offer a free trial for new users and Ahrefs has free SEO tools that anyone can access.)
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving your website content and technical set-up so that your website can get a higher ranking in search engine results. This means that if someone types in a keyword or phrase into Google, your website will be listed at the top, increasing visibility and traffic to your site.
SEO is important for any business, large or small. It’s also one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available today. It involves many different techniques, such as; Keyword research to find the best keywords for a site, optimizing content to include those keywords, building back-backlinks from other websites to build authority and more.
5 free SEO tools for anyone on a tight budget
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool from Google that helps you find keywords for your website and marketing campaigns.
It works by showing you the average monthly search volume for a set of keywords and gives you an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for a given term.
Keyword planner also provides estimates on the cost-per-click (CPC) of a particular keyword, which can help you determine whether or not it’s worth investing in SEO for that term.
Answerthepublic
Answerthepublic is a free tool that shows you the most popular queries in your niche, and how many people are searching for them. This is a great way to understand what your audience is looking for, and this information can be used to create content that answers those questions.
Answer The Public is also a great way to find out which phrases are related to your niche topic. So if you were writing about affordable cars, for example, you might discover that people who searched for “affordable cars” also searched for “affordable electric cars” or ” the best hatchbacks to buy.” Therefore, if you wrote an article about hatchbacks, you’d be able to optimize it for both of these additional terms.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a great resource for marketers to research what people are searching for. It can be used to see if there are any new trends, which keywords are popular and how they compare to the past.
Google Trends aggregates data from millions of searches and displays how many people search for a term over time, how often it’s searched for in each country, and the top related queries. But Google also allows you to compare two terms head-to-head.
Google autocomplete
Google Autocomplete is the built-in function that provides suggestions to users who type a search query in the Google search box. The suggestions are based on the most popular searches performed by other Google users. These suggestions are then used for keyword research.
The concept behind this technique is that when someone types a keyword into Google, it will provide them with a list of terms and phrases relevant to their search. This list can be used to gain valuable insight into how users are searching for topics on the Internet, what they expect to receive in their search results, and what words and phrases they would use if they were looking for answers to their questions or problems.
While there are many other tools out there that can help you determine keyword trends, Google autocomplete is perhaps one of the easiest ways to get started with keyword research.
Mozbar Chrome extension
Moz is one of the most popular and trusted SEO tools out there. It’s an all-in-one suite that can help you with keyword research, competitor analysis, content optimization and more.
MozBar is their chrome extension that can be installed for free. It allows you to check for page authority, domain authority and spam score of any site or page. With this information on hand, it’s easier to get a perspective of how competitive certain keywords and niches are.
In addition, Moz has a paid tool that gives you access to Moz’s most advanced features, including a complete set of SEO tools, keyword tracker and rank tracker.
Once signed up, you will also gain access to Moz Community forums where you can ask questions about SEO and connect with other digital marketers.
To learn more about SEO, read our article here.
