Best Free SEO Tools 2024 for SEO Ranking

Are you looking for the best SEO tools that help in gaining more traffic and better ranking? You are in the right place.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is improving the visibility and relevance of a website or a web page in the organic results of a search engine. SEO is essential for any online business or website that wants to attract more traffic, leads, and customers.

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However, SEO can be challenging and time-consuming, especially if you don’t have the right tools and resources to help you. Fortunately, many free SEO tools are available online that can help you with various aspects of SEO, such as keyword research, backlink analysis, content optimization, technical SEO, analytics, and more.

This article will review some of the best free SEO tools you can use in this year to boost your SEO ranking and performance. These tools are:

Let’s examine these tools and how they can help your SEO strategy.

SEMrush: Best for keyword research

SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that enables companies and marketers to improve their online presence by providing valuable insights and analytics. It was founded in 2008 by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov and has since become one of the most reliable and widely used SEO tools in the industry.

Features and functionality of SEMrush

Now we will discuss some of its features and functionality,

Domain analysis

SEMrush offers a comprehensive domain analysis that provides an in-depth view of a website’s performance. It includes data on organic search traffic, backlinks, top keywords, and more, allowing users to assess the overall SEO health of their website.

Keyword research

One of SEMrush’s key features is its robust keyword research tool. Users can discover a large number of relevant keywords related to their niche or industry. The tool also provides valuable data such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and competition density, which help marketers select the most effective keywords for their campaigns.

Backlink analysis

Backlinks are critical to SEO success, and SEMrush excels at detailed backlink analysis. Users can identify their website’s backlinks, assess their quality, and even examine competitor backlink profiles to gain a competitive advantage.

Competitor research

Understanding competitors’ strategies is important to outperform them in the digital arena. SEMrush’s competitor research feature allows users to analyse competitors’ keywords, traffic sources, and ranking positions. This data enables companies to develop better strategies and seize opportunities to outperform competitors.

SEMrush Pricing Plans

Plan Name	Including	Price
Pro Plan	SEMrush offers a Pro plan that is suitable for freelancers, startups, and small businesses. This plan provides access to basic features such as keyword research, domain analysis, and limited access to backlink analysis.	$129
Guru Plan	The Guru plan is designed for marketing agencies and growing businesses. It includes all the features of the Pro plan and also provides access to content marketing and historical data, making it ideal for companies looking to grow their online presence.	$249
Business Plan	The Business Plan is SEMrush’s most advanced and comprehensive plan. It is aimed at larger companies and agencies with extensive marketing needs. This plan provides full access to all SEMrush features, including white-label reports and API access.	$499

Advantages and Disadvantages of SEMrush

Pros

All-in-one solution: SEMrush offers a wide range of SEO tools on a single platform that simplifies the workflow for marketers.

Accurate data: The tool provides reliable and up-to-date data that enables users to make well-informed decisions.

Competitor analysis: SEMrush’s competitive analysis feature enables companies to stay one step ahead of their competitors.

User-friendly interface: The platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible to beginners and experts alike.

Cons

Cost: Although SEMrush offers several pricing plans, it can be relatively expensive for some small businesses.

Steep learning curve: it may take some time for new users to fully understand the extensive features and be able to use them effectively.

Ahrefs: Best for backlink research

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool suite that provides comprehensive solutions for various aspects of search engine optimisation. It focuses on backlink research, keyword analysis, competitor analysis, ranking monitoring, and site auditing. With a user-friendly interface and an extensive database of indexed links, Ahrefs helps companies gain valuable information about their competitors’ strategies and improve their ranking in search engine results.

Ahrefs backlink research

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool allows users to perform a detailed backlink analysis for any website. The tool provides important metrics such as domain rating, referring domains, and backlink types. Users can explore new backlink opportunities, eliminate malicious links, and track their link-building progress.

Competitor backlink analysis

One of the most important features of Ahrefs is the ability to analyse competitor backlink profiles. By analysing the backlink profiles of competitors, companies can develop effective strategies to outrank them in search engine results.

Main Features of Ahrefs

Below we will discuss some of the main features of ahrefs.

Site Explorer

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer is the cornerstone of backlink analysis. Users can enter any domain or URL and get valuable information about their backlink profile, organic search traffic, and best-performing content.

Keyword Explorer

The Keyword Explorer tool allows users to perform comprehensive keyword research. It provides valuable data such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and clicks per search, helping businesses identify the right keywords for their content.

Content Explorer

The Content Explorer feature allows users to search for the most popular and shared content in their niche. This helps content creators identify hot topics and create valuable content that resonates with their target audience.

Rank Tracker

Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker allows users to monitor their website’s search results for specific keywords over time. This helps evaluate the effectiveness of SEO efforts and identify areas for improvement.

Site Audit

The Site Audit tool helps users identify and fix on-page SEO issues that may be hindering their site’s performance in search results. It offers actionable recommendations to optimise the site’s health.

Alerts and notifications

Ahrefs provides real-time alerts and notifications to inform users about changes in backlinks, keyword rankings, and competitor activity. This helps companies keep an eye on their SEO strategies and quickly adapt to new developments.

Pricing plans

Ahrefs offers various pricing plans to meet the different needs of businesses. Let’s take a look at the most important plans:

Plan Name	Features	Monthly price
Lite plan	The Lite plan is ideal for individual website owners or small businesses that want to perform basic backlink analysis and keyword research. It offers limited access to certain features and a set number of reports per day.	99
Standard subscription	The Standard subscription is more comprehensive and suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. It includes additional features such as Content Explorer and expanded access to reports.	199
Advanced Plan	The Advanced plan is designed for agencies and larger companies that need in-depth backlink and keyword analysis. It offers higher data limits and report generation.	399
Agency Plan	The Agency Plan is intended for marketing agencies and businesses. It offers access to all features, higher data limits, and the ability to monitor more keywords and projects.	999

Pros and cons of ahrefs

Pros

User-Friendly Interface: It’s very simple to make use of.

Comprehensive Keyword Research: Ahrefs can be used to conduct keyword research for a range of search engines, including, most notably, YouTube — key competitors typically only provide information on searches for Google.

All-in-One SEO Tool: It offers access to the most important tools commonly required in an SEO project, such as keyword research and backlink analysis and site auditing.

Easy Broken Link Analysis: Analyzing broken links (both external and internal) is very simple with Ahrefs.

Core Web Vitals Review: It allows you to review Core Web Vitals performance quickly and access laboratory and field data from one location.

Extensive Domain Verification: The extensive “domain verification system” implies that Ahrefs lets you use a wide range of websites for a reasonable price.

Affordable Additional Seats: The addition of seats for Ahrefs is quite affordable in the standards of its rivals.

Free Trial Available: A trial at no cost is accessible (but we’d like to use a free version!)

Cons

No Free Trial Period: There’s no trial period for free.

Limitations on Reports: The report’s limits are absurd.

Lesser Link Index: The link index of this site is less than the indexes of its main rivals Moz and Semrush.

No Telephone Support: There’s no telephone support.

Lack of Project Management Tools: There aren’t built-in contact surfaces or tools to manage projects that can aid you with building backlinks.

No Mobile-Friendly App: There’s no mobile-friendly app that can do the on-the-go SEO work.

Yoast SEO: Best for WordPress SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular and widely used WordPress plugins for SEO. It helps you optimize your WordPress website or blog for search engines by providing various features and functionalities to improve your on-page SEO.

You can use Yoast SEO to:

• Generate and update XML sitemaps automatically.
• Add meta titles, descriptions, keywords, and canonical tags to your pages and posts.
• Optimize your content for readability, relevance, and keywords using their content analysis tool.
• Add schema markup and structured data to your pages and posts.
• Manage your breadcrumb’s navigation and internal links.
• Avoid duplicate content issues by setting up redirects and canonical URLs.

Yoast SEO offers a free version that gives you access to most of its features and functionalities. You can also upgrade to their Premium version, which gives you access to more advanced features such as social media previews, internal linking suggestions, content insights, focus keyphrase export, etc.

Moz Link Explorer: Best for link analysis

Moz Link Explorer is another great tool for link analysis that allows you to analyze and monitor the link profile of any website or web page. Moz Link Explorer is part of Moz Pro, a comprehensive SEO tool offering various features and functionalities such as site audit, rank tracking, keyword research, etc.

You can use Moz Link Explorer to:

• Find out who is linking to your website or your competitors’ websites.
• Analyze your and competitors’ backlinks’ quality, authority, relevance, and diversity.
• Identify new link opportunities and outreach prospects based on your niche or keywords.
• Track and monitor your Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) scores.
• Compare your link profile with up to five competitors.

Moz Link Explorer offers a free plan that gives you access to 10 monthly queries and 50 results per query. You can also sign up for a 30-day free trial of their Medium plan, which gives you access to 5,000 monthly queries and 10,000 results per query.

Google Analytics: Best for web analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most popular and widely used web analytics tools worldwide. It helps you measure and analyze the traffic, behavior, and performance of your website or web page.

You can use Google Analytics to:

• Track how many visitors come to your website or web page from different sources such as organic search, social media, referrals, etc.
• Analyze how visitors interact with your website or web page, such as bounce rate, time on site, pages per session, etc.
• Measure how well your website or web page converts visitors into leads, customers, or subscribers using goals, funnels, and e-commerce tracking.
• Segment your visitors based on various criteria such as location, device, interests, etc., and create custom reports and dashboards.
• Integrate Google Analytics with other Google tools such as Google Search Console, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, etc.

Google Analytics is free to use for up to 10 million monthly hits per account. You can also upgrade to Google Analytics 360, a premium version offering more advanced features such as data freshness, data-driven attribution, unsampled reports, etc.

Google Keyword Planner: Best for keyword planning

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool from Google Ads that help you find and plan keywords for your online advertising campaigns. However, you can also use it for organic keyword research as it provides valuable data and insights on keywords such as search volume, competition, and bid ranges.

You can use Google Keyword Planner to:

• Discover new keyword ideas based on your product, service, or niche.
• Analyze any keyword’s keyword difficulty, search volume, competition, and bid ranges.
• Find long-tail and related keywords to help you target more specific audiences and lower costs.
• Create and manage keyword lists and export them to various formats.

Estimate the traffic and performance of your keywords using historical data and forecasts.
Google Keyword Planner is free, but you need a Google Ads account to access it. You don’t need to run ads or spend money to use it, though.

XML Sitemaps Generator: Best for sitemap creation

XML Sitemaps Generator is a free online tool that helps you create XML sitemaps for your website or blog. XML sitemaps list all the pages and posts on your website or blog along with some metadata such as the last modified date, priority, etc. XML sitemaps help search engines crawl and index your website or blog more efficiently and effectively.

You can use XML Sitemaps Generator to:

• Create XML sitemaps for up to 500 pages or posts on your website or blog without registration.
• Create XML sitemaps for unlimited pages or posts on your website or blog with registration (free).
• Validate and test your XML sitemaps using their online validator tool (free).
• Submit your XML sitemaps to major search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., using their online submission tool (free).

XML Sitemaps Generator also offers a premium version that gives you access to more advanced features such as image sitemaps, video sitemaps, news sitemaps, etc.

Screaming Frog: Best for site audit

Screaming Frog is a desktop-based tool that crawls and analyzes your website or web page for various SEO issues and opportunities. Screaming Frog is one of the best tools for site audit as it provides a comprehensive and detailed report of your website or web page’s SEO health.

You can use Screaming Frog to:

• Crawl and analyze up to 500 URLs on your website or web page for free.
• Crawl and analyze unlimited URLs on your website or web page with a paid license.
• Find and fix broken links, redirects, duplicate content, missing tags, etc., on your website or web page.
• For SEO optimization, analyze your website or web page’s title tags, meta descriptions, headings, images, etc.
• Generate and update XML sitemaps, robots.txt files, canonical tags, etc., for your website or web page.
• Integrate Screaming Frog with tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Moz, etc., for more data and insights.

Keywords Everywhere: Best for keyword data

Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension showing keyword data such as search volume, competition, and cost per click (CPC) on various websites and platforms such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, etc. Keywords Everywhere is a great tool for keyword research as it helps you find and analyze keywords on the go.

You can use Keywords Everywhere to:

• See keyword data such as search volume, competition, and CPC on websites and platforms such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, and eBay.
• See related and long-tail keywords for any keyword on various websites and platforms such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, etc.
• See trending keywords and historical data for any keyword on websites and platforms such as Google Trends, Google Search Console, etc.
• Export keyword data to CSV or PDF files for further analysis or reporting.

Keywords Everywhere offer a free version that gives you access to limited keyword data. You can also upgrade to their paid version, which gives you access to more keyword data and features such as bulk upload, favourites list, custom metrics, etc.

Ubersuggest: Best for keyword suggestions

Ubersuggest is a free online tool that helps you find and suggest keywords for your website or niche. Ubersuggest is a simple and easy-to-use tool that provides various keyword ideas based on your seed keyword or domain.

You can use Ubersuggest to:

• Find and suggest keywords based on your seed keyword or domain.
• Analyze any keyword’s keyword difficulty, search volume, competition, and trends.
• Find long-tail and related keywords to help you rank better and target more specific audiences.
• Create and manage keyword lists and export them to various formats.
• Track and monitor your keyword rankings and performance across different search engines and devices.

Ubersuggest is free to use, but you must sign up with your email or Google account to access it. You can also upgrade to their paid version, which gives you access to more features, such as unlimited queries, more keyword data, site audit, backlink analysis, etc.

Google Trends: Best for trend analysis

Google Trends is a free online tool that helps you analyze and compare the popularity and interest of any keyword, topic, or niche over time and across different regions and platforms. Google Trends is a great tool for trend analysis as it helps you discover and understand the latest trends and insights in your industry or niche.

You can use Google Trends to:

• Analyze and compare the popularity and interest of any keyword, topic, or niche over time and across different regions and platforms.
• Discover and explore the latest trends and insights in your industry or niche based on various categories such as web search, image search, news search, YouTube search, etc.
• Find and compare related keywords and topics for any keyword, topic, or niche based on metrics such as rising queries, top queries, interest by subregion, etc.
• Create and customize charts and graphs to visualize and share your trend analysis.

Google Trends is free to use; you don’t need to sign up or log in to access it.

Google Search Console: Best for site performance

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that helps you monitor and improve your website or web page’s performance and visibility in Google’s organic search results. Google Search Console is a must-have tool for any website owner or webmaster as it provides you with valuable data and insights on your website or web page’s SEO health and performance.

You can use Google Search Console to:

• Verify and submit your website or web page to Google’s index.
• Monitor and analyze your website or web page’s traffic, impressions, clicks, and click-through rate (CTR) from Google’s organic search results.
• Identify and fix any issues or errors that affect your website or web page’s crawlability, indexability, usability, security, etc.
• Optimize your website’s content, structure, speed, mobile-friendliness, etc., for better SEO performance.
• Test and implement features and enhancements for your website or web page, such as rich results, AMP pages, structured data, etc.

Google Search Console is free, but you must verify your website or web page ownership. You can also integrate Google Search Console with other Google tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, etc., for more data and insights.

Kraken.io & TinyPNG: Best for image optimization

Kraken.io and TinyPNG are online tools that help you optimize and compress your images for faster loading and better SEO performance. Images are one of the most important and impactful elements of any website or web page, but they can also slow down your site speed and affect your SEO ranking if they are not optimized properly.

You can use Kraken.io and TinyPNG to:

• Optimize and compress your images without losing quality or resolution using their advanced algorithms and settings.
• Reduce your images’ file size and bandwidth by up to 80% or more.
• Upload and process multiple images at once using their bulk upload feature.
• Download and save your optimized images to your computer or cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
• Integrate Kraken.io and TinyPNG with various platforms and tools, such as WordPress, Shopify, Magento, etc., for easier image optimization.

Kraken.io and TinyPNG offer free plans that give you access to a limited amount of monthly image optimization. You can also upgrade to their paid plans, which give you access to more image optimization, features, and support.

PageSpeed Insights: Best for speed optimization

PageSpeed Insights is a free online tool from Google that helps you measure and improve the speed and performance of your website or web page. PageSpeed Insights is one of the best tools for speed optimization. It provides a comprehensive and detailed report of your website or web page’s speed score, issues, and opportunities.

You can use PageSpeed Insights to:

• Measure and analyze the speed and performance of your website or web page on both desktop and mobile devices using various metrics such as First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Time to Interactive (TTI), Total Blocking Time (TBT), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), etc.
• Identify and fix any issues or errors that affect your website or web page’s speed and performance, such as render-blocking resources, unused code, inefficient images, etc.
• Optimize your website or web page’s speed and performance using various suggestions and recommendations such as minifying code, enabling compression, leveraging browser caching, etc.
• Compare your website or web page’s speed and performance with other websites or web pages in your industry or niche.

PageSpeed Insights is free; you don’t need to sign up or log in to access it.

KeywordChef: Best for content ideas

KeywordChef is a free online tool that helps you find and generate content ideas for your website or niche based on keywords. KeywordChef is a simple and easy-to-use tool that provides you with various content ideas based on your target audience’s search intent and questions.

You can use KeywordChef to:

• Find and generate content ideas based on your seed keyword or niche.
• Analyze your target audience’s search intent and questions for any keyword or niche.
• Find long-tail and related keywords to help you create more engaging and relevant content.
• Create and manage content lists and export them to various formats.
• Track and monitor your content performance and ranking using their rank tracker feature.

KeywordChef offers a free plan that gives you access to 10 daily queries and 10 results per query. You can also upgrade to their paid plan, giving you unlimited queries and results.

Conclusion

SEO is a vital and ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and improvement. However, with the help of these free SEO tools, you can make your SEO strategy easier and more effective. These tools can help you with various aspects of SEO, such as keyword research, backlink analysis, content optimization, technical SEO, analytics, and more.

Using these tools, you can boost your SEO ranking and performance and beyond. However, remember that these tools are not a substitute for your knowledge, skills, and creativity. You should always use these tools as a guide and support, not as a replacement for your SEO efforts.

We hope you found this article helpful and informative. If you have any questions or feedback, please comment below. We would love to hear from you.

FAQs

Here are some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about free SEO tools: