Free SEO Tools for Startups, You’re Welcome

I previously blogged about 3 SEO tools that professionals might not know about and are absolutely free. Now I’m expanding my list and I’ll try to include more free SEO tools I use. If you have a startup company that invests more in digital marketing, you should definitely get these tools. Here are the reasons why:

• startups usually have limited budget so they don’t hire an SEO agency
• they usually have small or few projects
• free tools are perfect for testing

I’ve tried plenty of free tools before and a lot of them are really interesting and helpful. But if you’ll ask me what my favorites are, they’re in this list. Check them out!

Keyword Research

1. MergeWords – mainly used for keyword research but can also help in searching domains and queries for link building. It combines sets of words automatically so you won’t miss any related keywords, domains and search queries.
2. KeywordTool.io – if you’re looking for an alternative to Google Keyword Planner, KeywordTool.io is probably the best. It generates up to 750+ suggestions for every keyword and it’s absolutely free. This is perfect for researching keywords for content.
3. Soovle – get keyword ideas from top websites like Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Yahoo. It’s fast, easy to use and very efficient.
4. Found PPC Keyword Tool – concatenate large lists of keywords for AdWords. You don’t have to spend more time creating a large number of keywords covering each service or product on your website. Learn more about the tool.
5. Google Keyword Planner – this tool is designed for PPC but is also great for SEO. Here’s a walkthrough video by Quick Sprout on finding low-competition, high search volume keywords for your SEO campaigns.

Competitor Benchmark

1. Similar Web – Get any online marketing insights and traffic data for any website or application. Great way to analyze your competitor’s website.
2. Built With – this tool will give you an idea on what a website is built with. It is perfect for competitive analysis because it helps you track the widgets, frameworks, CMS, advertisers, etc.
3. Archive.org’s Way Back Machine – get access on 435 billion archived web pages. You can track adjustments on any website that resulted in traffic changes and link count.
4. WhoIs Lookup – another sneaky tool that helps you see the people or organizations behind a domain name or IP address.

Technical/Diagnostic

1. Audit My PC’s Sitemap Generator – I’ve talked about Audit My PC’s sitemap generator on one of my blog posts. An alternative to Screaming Frog that helps you deep crawl all the pages on your website, title tags, error pages, inbound and outbound links.
2. Netpeak Spider – another alternative to ScreamingFrog, Netpeak Spider is perfect for startups because it provides almost the same services as ScreamingFrog and is absolutely free. Netpeak Spider is a tool that scans and analyzes websites, broken links, title tags, descriptions, duplicates, incoming and outgoing internal links, etc.
3. Seoptimer – get a quick scan and SEO tips on your website’s on-page. It’s a great initial on-page report you can send to your client.
4. Found.co.uk SEO Tool – another quick and easy-to-use diagnostic tool that helps you identify common on-page errors on your website.
5. Robots.txt Checker – A tool that analyzes each line on your website’s robots.txt. It helps you identify errors and gives great advice to give you a perfect Robots.txt.

Link Building

1. Outdated Content Finder – an awesome tool that helps you find old content. It gives you an opportunity to create better content in exchange for a link. Learn more about the tool here.
2. Scrapebox Link Checker – this tool helps you see if a certain website is linking to you without doing it manually. Just input multiple URLs and the link URL you want to check then you’re done. This is perfect for mentions link building.
3. SEO Quake – originally, it helps you analyze a website but you might not know that it’s also great for link building. Get a glimpse on a website’s data on SERPs without checking it manually. This will speed up your overall link building strategy.
4. BacklinkWatch – An alternative to Ahrefs and OpenSiteExplorer, BacklinkWatch is a simple link checker tool that lets you check your backlinks and spy on your competitor’s backlink information.

Aside from the tools I’ve listed above, you’re also going to need Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to track the perforamance of your SEO, Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing campaigns. Most of the people I know in the industry have access to these tools. The reason is, they’re vital to their overall digital marketing strategy so make sure you don’t miss them.

If you know any free and awesome SEO tools that I might have missed. Let me know in the comment section!

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