Search Engine Optimization (SEO) might be the most important digital marketing strategy out there. It enables your business website to highly rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) and potentially reach thousands (if not millions) of readers. If you execute your SEO campaign correctly, you can increase your organic site traffic, see sales and newsletter conversions, and boost overall revenue over time.
However, SEO isn’t a one-time hack. It’s a long-term strategy that demands continuous optimization of your site. Furthermore, search engine algorithms are continually changing, so you might need a smart plan for quick adaptation to these changes. Although it might be overwhelming, there are several free SEO tools that can help you optimize your website and improve its ranking on search engines. Here are some of those simple and free SEO tools to boost your digital marketing strategy.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a tool that helps you understand the loading speed of your website —for both desktop and mobile—and ways of improving it. Website loading speed is critical because Google considers it while ranking sites, and will penalize you if your loading time is too slow.
Enter a URL, and PageSpeed Insights’ result page will reveal information regarding speed, user experience, and other site elements that need to be fixed.
2. Moz Local Listing Score
Moz Local Listing Score gives you confidence that your target audience can find you on search engines. It shows you how more than ten different sources rank your websites, such as on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Bing.
If your SEO and digital marketing can outdo your business rivals, you’ll rank top in SERPs, thus increasing the chances of becoming a leader in your industry. Let Moz Local Listing Score offer you an added boost.
3. Google Analytics
Do you understand your target audience and your site visitors? Google Analytics drops cookies in your visitors’ browsers, enabling GA to collect information about how they interact with your site, as well as their basic demographics. When you install Google Analytics, you can track information within categories that include:
- Conversions: You can link this with Google Ads to track the success rate of ads within the platform.
- Behavior: GA tracks the bounce rate, dwell-time and site speed
- Audience: It tracks real-time page traffic as well as specific periods of time (for example, you can easily see what your monthly traffic number looks like with this tool)
- Acquisition: The tool gives you access to all kinds of traffic data and channels that attract most traffic (like a newsletter, social media, direct traffic, search traffic, and more).
4. Search Atlas (ATL)
With the Search Atlas all-in-one SEO tool, you can have a comprehensive analysis of your backlinks, get a list of LSI (latent semantic indexing) terms to add to your existing pages to boost your on-site SEO, track your keyword ranking, and track the data that Google collects from your site. Search ATL can be instrumental in increasing your traffic, auditing your website, and understanding your competition. Using Search Atlas is key to beating your competitors and staying ahead of the curve.
5. Google Keyword Planner
Finding the right keywords to rank for shouldn’t be puzzling. The wrong way to go about identifying keywords is by guessing — that can be time-consuming and inaccurate. When you enter a keyword or a key phrase into the Google keyword planner, the tool will display various useful statistics to guide your SEO strategy, for instance:
- A list of keywords
- Average monthly search volume
- Competition
- Suggested words for your consideration
Google keyword planner helps you identify high traffic and targeted keywords and long-tail key phrases for any website content you create.
6. Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Ahrefs is another helpful, free SEO tool for any digital marketer. Although there are paid versions, the free version of Ahrefs Backlink Checker gives you access to the first 100 backlinks to any URL or website. You can also access:
- The number of backlinks
- Referring domains
- Domain rating
- URL rating
- Keyword search volume
Ahrefs gives you everything ranging from keyword difficulty and traffic value to cost-per-click (CPC) metrics, and organic traffic metrics. Furthermore, it helps you discover keyword and key phrase gaps in your web content, understands how you measure up against your rivals, assesses traffic value, and see how to advance your SEO campaign.
Regardless of your profession or level of expertise in content marketing, you can’t underestimate the power of SEO in today’s digital world. Use the tools mentioned above to take your digital marketing to the next level.