15 Free DIY tools that do the heavy work at accessible fees
Luca Tagliaferro
Apparently, some people are worried that SEO is dead. So they head to Google ( I know, right?) to make sure this is not the case.
In fact, 6,500 searches every month can confirm some people have this worry.
Actually, just the fact that 6,500 people head to Google to check whether SEO is dead means it’s not dead, right?
Not only that but also in 2022 there are over 5.8 billion searches on Google, per day! Every second, 40,000 searches and it’s always growing.
Also, 20% of the queries that get asked every day have never been asked before!
What does this mean?
It means that you need to start doing SEO as soon as possible and jump on the opportunity!
However, there are two problems.
Problem #1:
SEO needs a well-versed strategy and lots of expertise. Data analysis and research are a must for building a successful strategy and giving your website the best possible chance of ranking higher.
The second problem is the money. Not just an SEO consultant, but also SEO tools are expensive and can hit small companies’ monthly budget. For example, SEMRush basic account starts at $99/month!
That’s why I compiled this list of DIY SEO tools that anyone can use, for as little as $15/month to start with.
Shall we get into the details?
Let’s go!
Free DIY SEO Tools: 15 affordable tools for small companies and SEO beginners
Are you stretched with your marketing budget but still need a great SEO tool?
These 14 tools are very much affordable.
Let’s start with my favourite one, SERanking.
Disclaimer: Please note that I might receive affiliate compensation to no extra cost to you. I actually really use SERanking and have used all of the other tools you’ll see displayed here, so I only recommend what I use and test myself.
SERanking is my personal tool for keyword research and position reports. I use the paid version but you can try the free trial for 14 days.
SERanking shows you real-time analysis and position of all of your keywords in the search engine.
To start, create an account with SERanking simply by adding your email and a password. I like it so much that I even wrote an extensive review so if you still have doubts, have a read.
If you are interested in the review, have a look at it.
Once you setup the account, you can use the tool for free at its full potential for 14 days.
If you want to upgrade and use it for a longer time, you can skip the trial and pay the starting price of just £18/month.
The basic account will allow you to do plenty of things:
- Monitor up to 250 keywords
- Audit 40,000 pages
- Monitor 6,000 backlinks
- Many other things!
Below is a breakdown of their payment page with different account options.
Pricing
Pros:
Real-time monitoring and updating of all results
Fast and accurate results
Tool for both individual and agencies
Best for small businesses and SEO freelancers
Cons:
Missing the TF-IDF Tool and semantic analysis
Only checks data for Google and Yandex
Read my full SE Ranking review for more in-depth analysis.
2. Free Trial: GrowthBar - best for Content AI
GrowthBar is one of the most user-friendly SEO tools available. Users may access millions of search results, backlinks from competitors, Google Ads statistics, and generate blog content with only one click.
GrowthBar is a tool created with Open AI, the most advanced language model yet created. That means the outcomes and recommendations are of the highest quality.
It’s smooth, sleek, and completely original.
Due to its easy work and quick access for everyone, it has become a part of almost every SEO expert’s life. Many newbies think that this tool can’t beat any other high price SEO tools.
But this conception is not right as it is a combination of many SEO tools and can be used for getting multiple metrics.
It is an exclusive tool that will keep you informed about your website’s current progress and guide you on how to improve.
There are four main sections that you can cover with this tool to keep track of your website.
First of all, it will inspect your site to extract data related to its performance from basic to advance.
It will show you how much-expected free traffic your website will get according to the strength of keywords. In addition, it will also show CPC data to show the business that the site will get.
Another amazing feature of this SEO bar or tool is that it will keep track of your website rank. In turn, you can easily estimate either you have got positive results or negative one.
If we say that it is a tool that can be used for SEO from basic to advance for your website, it might be right.
It is because you will get keywords data from this tool even if you are going to start a website from scratch.
In short, it will be the best SEO tool for you to keep track of your website performance and take steps to improve that.
Pricing
Pros:
Content generation for bloggers
Keyword and content intent analysis
Low-cost SEO tool
Easy to access
Cons:
Keywords suggestions might be old
Basic backlink analysis only
LinkWhisper is 100% free on WordPress. It claims to be able to automate your internal link building to some extent.
That can only be a good thing because doing it manually is a pain in the neck.
So, let’s have a look at how Link Whisper performed when we put it to the test.
Link Whisper promises to use artificial intelligence to help you locate internal link opportunities.
In a nutshell, Link Whisper automates the process of determining which pages on your site are appropriate for internal linking.
Link Whisper provides contextual suggestions to help you rapidly add internal links to your posts.
This means it evaluates the content of your posts and suggests internal connections whenever they are relevant and would benefit the user.
In the post editor, it includes a simple and intuitive section where you may add internal connections to your content.
You may also use their inbound internal links page, which provides suggestions for internal links, to update internal links in your posts.
Pricing
Differently from other SEO tools, LinkWhisper doesn’t charge on a monthly subscription, but it charges on the number of websites you want internal links for. So you pay once forever!
Pros:
Links suggested by your page content
Easy WordPress integration
Ideal for bloggers and niche site creator
Easy to access
Cons:
It’s not an SEO tool suite
Only compatible with WordPress
Do you want to get an estimation about the ranking of your website? Are you looking to spy on other websites directly from your search page? If yes, MOZ SEO will be the best choice for you.
Without a question, Moz is one of the best SEO tools available. There’s not much Moz can’t perform, from site auditing to rank tracking, backlink analysis to keyword research. It gives you industry-standard stats as well as numerous page optimization recommendations.
You may also install MozPro for more advanced functionality, as well as the MozBar browser extension, which allows you to perform SEO analysis and track your Moz scores, such as DA and PA.
But studies have shown that MOZ-created DA is the best predictor for ranking on the higher results. If your website has a higher DA score, there will be a huge probability that you will get a higher rank.
Pricing
Moz offers a 30-day free trial. The paid plans start from $99 per month and range up to $599 per month.
Pros:
Backlink analysis
Website rank predictor
Multiple metrics evaluation
A quick analysis of various websites
Cons:
Not good for beginners due to the complex interface
Database and metrics are available for the US only
Once you have implemented SEO on your website, it is not where everything will come to an end.
But you need to keep an eye on the performance of your SEO off and on to make changes if required.
SEOlyzer will analyze your website to find SEO issues quickly and then displays them on your computer screen.
SEOLyzer will crawl your website like Google crawlers do to find the exact problems and issues. For overall performance, it will show the total SEO score of your website and enable you to check whether it will be the same as your expectations or not.
In addition to this, SEOLyzer will also show an analysis report of every page of the website for better understanding. With this, you can easily check what is the issue and on which page it is found.
Therefore, you can easily follow instructions by this tool to resolve those SEO problems with simple clicks. You must learn how to use SEOlyzer for better understanding and improvement in your website’s performance.
Pricing
SEOlyzer charges according to how many URLs you want to analyse and crawl. The free plan allows up to 10,000 URLs, 1 crawl a month and 1 website.
Pros:
Crawl and analyze your website like Google
Show SEO issues and methods to resolve them
Every page analysis
Downloadable report about SEO
Cons:
High price packages
Have a limited tool kit
An SEO expert knows how much importance links have in making authority of any website.
Sometimes, you have invested a lot of time and effort to get backlinks from different websites, forums, and platforms. But you are not still getting betterment in your website’s performance.
Some of the reasons are that you have made spam links, broken links, or other harmful links.
So, you must keep an eye on links you have made with the “Check my links” chrome extension. It is a Google Chrome extension that you can add to your browser.
By clicking on this, while you have opened a specific website, it will show you statistics regarding backlinks for your website.
In this way, you will get to know which links have been broken and you need to fix this problem. In addition, it will also show how many links from the entire collection are do-follow, no follow and live at that time.
In short, you can keep an eye on your website’s backlinks under a single screen while working on it.
Pricing
CheckMyLinks is a free Chrome extension.
Pros:
Show broken, live, and spam links side by side
One-click evaluation
Keep an eye on your website and your competitor’s too
Check authority of links (Do-follow, No-follow)
Cons:
Takes a long time to display results
Being a free app, support basically doesn’t exist
One of the most used SEO tools all over the world is Ahrefs. It is being used by many experts because of its reliable and authentic results.
This tool will allow you to do almost every kind of analysis of any website. Whether you are looking to get new keywords or analyze other websites for competing with them, you will find this tool amazing.
It will show you estimated revenue, organic traffic, number of keywords in ranking, position in Google search results, and many others under a single screen.
When you are using Ahrefs, you do not have to worry about any other tool. It will show you all those metrics that you need to stand on the prominent position of the search results.
If you are looking to beat any website’s rank, you will find this tool supportive for you. It will show you all the hidden factors of that website and analyze them properly.
With this tool, you can get a list of those websites from where your competitor has got links. In turn, you can directly approach them or find more quality websites than those to get more fruitful results.
In short, Ahrefs will be a magical tool for all SEO experts who want to work professionally to show their expertise.
Pricing
Pros:
In-depth and complete site analysis
Show multiple metrics for better understanding
Spy on other’s or your website performance
Easy access to keywords in ranking with the exact volume
Cons:
High price tool
A little complex to use for beginners
When you are talking about SEO, you can’t ignore keyword research and analysis of your competitors. These are the factors that will help you to decide which type of content you need for your website.
It is common to browse different tools over the internet to accomplish these tasks. Many people prefer to use paid tools to find keywords and get a complete analysis report.
No doubt, you can use Ubersuggest freely with complete command but it can show you basic data about your website quickly. This website has a particular tool to find keywords on which you can write to the target audience and engage them.
Also, you can paste the link of your website for complete SEO analysis like keywords on which you are ranking and your competitor’s rank.
Also, it will show you the visitors that you are getting on your website. Last but not least, it will display variations in the website rank that you have got in the past few weeks.
Pricing
Pros:
Analyze your website performance
Complete SEO analysis
Efficient Keyword research tool
Trial based SEO suggestions
Cons:
Not good for free users
Limited tools for a normal user
WordPress is one of the most used CMS for designing and building platforms. According to the estimation, almost 70% of the total websites have been designed and launched through this software.
If you also have a WordPress website or store, it is not easy for you to deal with SEO issues and optimize everything before publishing content. Yoast SEO is a specific plugin of this platform that can be used freely or by getting paid subscription.
When you are writing a blog, you can’t write it with 100% optimization. You must need a tool that will check your blog and show optimization results on the screen.
This tool will do this task for you and show different sections with red and green dots in the left corner.
The green dots show that you have achieved those factors while writing optimized content.
Similarly, you need to improve those factors that come in front of the red dots. In this way, you can easily optimize your content without publication and make it more SEO-friendly.
It will also show the SEO score of a blog or article by analyzing readability, word selection, optimization, linked domains, and other factors.
Pricing
Pros:
Quick content optimisation
Easy to understand
Comprehensive guide to make content optimised
Exactly shows you how any internal links you should use
Cons:
Does not follow the latest Google updates
Some features are oversimplified
If you are just starting your SEO career and do not want to indulge in complex tools, you should need to give it a try to Majestic. It is an SEO tool that will analyze the backlinks of any website properly.
This tool is designed only for this purpose and to focus only on backlinks to give you an exact idea about your site authority.
On the entire page of this tool, you will get every metrics that is related to backlinks.
For instance, you will get Referring domains list, their IPs, status of links, external & internal links, and all others that are related to this section.
In short, if you are worried about backlinks analysis, you should pick this tool. It will never lead you on the wrong track while working on the backlinks of any website.
Pricing
Pros:
Deep-link analysis
Fast report creation
Easy to use
Simple and user-friendly interface
Cons:
Limited website analysis
High price for a simple evaluation
An SEO expert has experienced situations a lot where he has got some plagiarized and copied content. When a writer delivers a plagiarized content, it is difficult for an SEO person to rewrite it to make it unique.
It will take a huge time and effort to accomplish this task.
Also, it might alter the meanings of the content while rewriting. In such a case, you need a paraphrasing tool that will assist you to do this task within seconds.
Paraphraser.io has the best tool have ever used to be an SEO expert and content writer.
It has helped me a lot when got a few lines under duplicated section.
You only need to pick the plagiarized sentences and paste them into this tool’s given text insertion box. It will enable you to get unique and engaging content within seconds.
This tool is based on AI technology with which it will first understand the meanings of your content and then rewrite it.
In this case, you will get the lines just according to the original nature to preserve their meanings.
Now, you can publish your content on any website and implement SEO on it properly for better reach.
Pros:
Human-friendly paraphrasing
Clear display of before and after paraphrasing
Easy to use
Side by side presentation for a quick comparison
Cons:
Rewrite only a few words in a single turn
There are too many banners on the site
Pricing
SEOquake comes useful when you have to compare your website with your competitors within seconds.
It is not like all other tools that will show you an analysis report including traffic source and proportion.
But it will do link analysis to show you what you need to do for getting a higher rank.
It will compare your stats with your competitors and dictate to you how you can fulfill those requirements.
It will also show all SEO issues that it has found instead of analysis and show its solution on your screen too.
In this way, you will be able to spy on others and improve SEO both with the same tool.
Pros:
SEO analysis with suggestions
Keep a check on competitors’ websites
Find backlinks for any site
Traffic sources and proportion in %
Cons:
Limited SEO analysis
Does not show live, spam and broken links separately
Pricing
SEOquake is a free browser plugin that offers organic research data at the press of a mouse. SEOquake, which is now available for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera, may give criteria for listings inside search engine results.
SEMrush is another SEO analysis tool that I have used for quite some time and it’s currently the most popular SEO tool out there. It has some extended functions that are very powerful.
With this tool, you can analyse every single factor that comes in the SEO section.
It will also show your comparison stats on your screen to get an idea about the performance difference between both websites.
Along with this, it will also help you to find keywords that you can target to beat the other website’s rank.
In short, you will get a complete report and instructions that you can follow for getting back on track or outrank the others.
Check out my complete review of SEMrush and what to know before using it.
Pros:
Semantic Analysis of your content
Accurate position tracking
display historical fluctuations in ranking
compare different website performances (only on the business plan)
Cons:
Extremely expensive for every function or user you add extra
Has lots of functions that you pay for but never use
Pricing
SEMrush is the most expensive SEO tool out there. The basic account starts at $99.95/month plus VAT and you can only track 500 keywords.
Seobility is another SEO tool. It’s also feature-rich. The outcomes, however, may not always be as spectacular.
It is not meant mainly for expert SEO practitioners in my opinion. But if you’re just starting or have a small-medium business, it might fully satisfy your desires.
That is, Seobility is a simple to use SEO solution for SMBs that is budget-friendly.
The aim of Seobility is to give SEO experience as easily as possible. In 2013, the firm started off as a free SEO tool for everybody.
They have been adding additional tools over time and finally, the present SEO suite of Seobility comprises tools such as the ranking tracker, keyword checker, site audit, the competence analyst, a competitive content testing TF*IDF tool, and a backlink checker.
Pros:
Powerful TF-IDF tool for semantic analysis
Simple and easy to use UX and UI
Clear and cheap pricing if compared to other SEO tools
Stunning PDF reports
Cons:
Lack of step-by-step onboarding can be daunting for beginners
Lack of filters for most reports
Pricing
Seobility maintained clear, open and easily understandable pricing plans. The good news is that there’s a free plan all time. The better news is that naturally with a few exceptions, it includes virtually all the features of premium programs.
Sign up now for Seobility free plan (affiliate link)
SERP Similarity is a free tool from KeywordInsights.io, a new SEO tool for doing topic research.
What does SERP similarity do?
The tool quickly shows you the search similarity of two keywords compared. What can you do wit this insight? You can decide whether you need to create a new page or not.
In the example below, I compared the two keywords “SEO consultant” and “SEO expert”. You might think they are the same, right?
Wrong!
These two keywords have 0 results in common, which means you get different results. In this case, you should have two pages.
Pros:
Immediate comparison
Easy decision on what to do next
Free of charge
Can take screenshots of the report
Cons:
Lack of filters
- Can’t download in Excel
Pricing
The tool is absolutely free to use, you just need to create an account and access it.
What are DIY SEO Tools?
Search engine optimization software that helps website owners enhance their exposure on Google is referred to as SEO tools.
SEO tools are most commonly used to assist website owners with keyword research, link building, on-page SEO, keyword rank tracking, technical SEO, and other tasks.
With Google’s ever-changing algorithm, having a few different SEO tools in your arsenal is essential, since they are utilized for different purposes.
If you’re just getting started with a new website, for example, you might use SERanking for keyword research, SurferSEO for semantic keywords and on-page SEO, and SEMrush for tagging.
SEO Tools FAQ
When it comes to SEO, how long does it take?
The results of your SEO efforts usually take 3-6 months to appear. If you’ve recently started a blog and your website is fresh new, it will take longer to be indexed than a well-known, high-DA site.
For example, getting my first 100,000 monthly visits took me roughly eight months.
Now that I have a higher DA, I can develop a new page, index it, and have it show on Google’s first two pages within a day.
Overall, to enhance your search rankings, regard each blog post as a long-term investment and update it on a regular basis.
Which free SEO tool is the best?
Although there are numerous free SEO tools available, they do not offer as many useful features as premium options. If you want to track your SEO and conduct keyword research for free, you may use one of the following tools:
Google Keyword Planner is the first place to start.
1. Google Keyword Planner.
2. Moz Link Explorer.
3. Google Trends.
4. Google Analytics.
5. Google Search Console.
6. Keyword Hero.
7. Screaming Frog.
What are the top SEO tools?
The best SEO tool is not free, but you can still get an amazing value for money with:
Is it possible for me to perform my own SEO?
Yes, if you are well-versed in SEO methods, you can run your own SEO. For my site, I do all of the SEO myself – I started it two years ago while having a full-time job and a young family, and now have 20,000 monthly visits, so it’s absolutely feasible.
The following are the methods of performing your own SEO:
1. To increase your SEO abilities, read SEO blogs and attend classes.
2. Be aware of your intended audience.
3. Conduct keyword research to come up with relevant topics to write about.
4. Keep SEO in mind while writing your websites and blog articles.
5. Use backlinks from guest articles and link-building services and tools to increase your Domain Authority (DA).
6. Learn how to track your traffic with Google Analytics.