7 Free SEO Tools For Beginner Content Marketers

Not every beginner marketer or marketing team has the budget to splurge on SEO tools right away. I mean, you should’ve seen the look on my face when I asked a fellow content marketer to suggest what SEO tools I can use, and she said, “We use Semrush, and it’s really great!”. She didn’t know this, but I had already come across the Semrush pricing page, and converted the price of their most affordable plan to Naira. Yikes.

Tinubu’s Nigeria means ~ ₦1,500 = $1, so it would cost me about ₦130,000 monthly to use the Semrush Pro plan. Needless to say, that’s what got me to start searching for free SEO tools. So here’s me sharing some of my tried and tested free SEO tools with you.

Everyone says Google is the king of search, right? Google has numerous free tools for marketers, or anyone really, and SEO tools definitely aren’t left out.

Search Console is a free tool from Google that helps you monitor your website's presence in Google search results. It provides insights into whether pages of your website can be crawled, alerts you about issues and warnings you need to fix, and lets you analyze your search performance data. It also provides you a little insight into technical SEO, and not just keywords and rankings. I think it's a must-have for any website owner or marketer, especially if you’re just starting out.

Pros

1. It’s free.
2. It’s easy to set up.
3. Provides valuable insights into site traffic, indexing status and organic impressions and clicks.
4. Sends emails with regular insights and warnings about your site.
5. Can manage multiple properties (websites).

Cons

1. It has limited historical data.
2. You might need a bit of technical knowledge to fully utilize it’s features.

Still on Google, we’ve moved on to one of the best tools any marketer can ask for. Even outside SEO purposes, Google Analytics is really valuable for learning all kinds of things about a website. From where your traffic is coming from to mapping user journeys and your top performing pages, GA4 is always going to be your guy. You can set it up in minutes, and start tracking data for your website in a day or two.

In the past few months, there have been lot of opinions about GA4. Is it worse or better than the Universal Analytics we’ve all known for years? It’s definitely a bit harder to understand, I’ll tell you that. While we’re still trying to master the intricacies of GA4, let’s talk about it’s pros and cons.

Pros

1. It’s free.
2. It’s easy to set up.
3. It provides LOTS of data about your website, even things that are unrelated to search.
4. It can create unique reports based on what you’d like to know.
5. Can manage multiple properties (websites).

Cons

1. GA4 is a bit difficult to navigate.
2. There might be some friction if you’re migrating from Universal Analytics to GA4.
3. Provides limited organic keyword data.

Surfer has a number of SEO tools, but it’s most popular is the Keyword Surfer chrome extension. This is my personal favourite free keyword research tool. If you’ve read my Tix blog case study, then you know it’s one of the tools I used to come up with keyword ideas for the Tix blog, and it’s data has never failed me.

After downloading and installing Keyword Surfer, all you have to do is type in a keyword into your search bar. It’ll give you loads of information including it’s monthly traffic, cost per click and related keywords with their monthly traffic too. I’ve found this really helping even now, trying to build keyword clusters at my new role.

Pros

1. It’s free.
2. It’s easy to install.
3. You can choose what country you’d like to see search volumes for.
4. It’s super easy to use and understand.
5. You can export a csv of related keyword results.
6. It tells you the monthly traffic, number of words on the page, and when the meta titles of pages on SERPs have been changed.

Cons

1. It has limited data about certain keywords.

One of the most popular SEO tools in the industry is Moz. Moz has a suite of tools designed to elevate your on-site SEO game, and the Keyword Explorer is one of them. With this tool, you have to type in the keyword you’d like to research, create an account, and get all your results.

The Moz Keyword Explorer does just as it’s name suggests. It thoroughly explores the data related your keyword and gives a detailed report included a SERP analysis, keyword volume, keyword difficulty and organic clickthrough rates.

Pros

1. It’s free.
2. It’s very easy to use.
3. It gives very detailed reports, including keyword difficulty and SERP analysis.

Cons

1. You have to create an account to use it.
2. You have just 10 free queries a month.
3. It has limited data on related keywords.

Speaking of big players in the SEO industry, Ahrefs is one of them. Ahrefs has several SEO tools. You can access some of them for free, and you have to pay for some of them. However, there’s a free version of the Ahrefs dashboard that’s pretty good for beginners. It’s super easy to set up if you already have Google Search Console, and works as an all-in-one SEO dashboard that includes Search Console data.

Ahrefs is probably the most detailed free SEO dashboard I’ve ever used, which makes me even more eager to see what the paid version looks like. You can look at everything from organic keywords, to where you are on the SERPs, to backlinks. It even has a pretty accurate reading of your domain authority.

Pros

1. It’s free.
2. It’s very easy to set up, especially if you already have Google Search Console.
3. It’s gives very detailed metrics and reports for a free version.
4. Sends email updated on SEO issues and warnings that could affect your site’s ranking.

Cons

1. Some features and reports aren’t available on the free version.
2. You have to own a website, or have access to it’s Google Search Console account to run it through Ahrefs.

This is kinda like Ahrefs Webmaster Tools ‘Lite’. Using Moz Link Explorer is pretty similar to using Moz Keyword Explorer. Instead of keyword research, Moz takes a dive into whatever link you type in, and gives you a report on it’s domain authority, top pages and their page authorities, top backlinks, and how some of your metrics have changed over time. Moz Link Explorer gives some insight into the SEO health of your website. But honestly, it doesn’t give a lot of it. It shows top 5 results for each of the metrics I’ve listed, and it doesn’t get any more detailed than that. At least, not without a paid account. If you’re doing a preliminary search on a website, or you’re trying to see an overview of what your competitor’s metrics look like, then this is a great choice. Otherwise? Maybe not.

Pros

1. It’s free
2. It’s very easy to use and understand.
3. You don’t have to own a website to run a check on it.

Cons

1. You have to create an account to use it.
2. You have just 10 free queries a month.
3. It’s reports aren’t as detailed as other tools.

Answer The Public isn’t your regular keyword research tool. Just like the name says, it literally the public’s questions about the keyword you’ve researched that you should probably answer. This is particularly great for SEO content because it doesn’t just show you search volumes and related keywords. When you type in your keyword, it shows you a wheel of questions people are asking about it.

It’s super easy to use, and even gives you some insight into what good search volumes and CPCs are. Here are a couple of pros and cons of Answer The Public.

Pros

1. It’s free.
2. It’s very easy to use.
3. It’s great for coming up with SEO content ideas.
4. Questions related to your keyword are grouped into ‘

Cons

1. Without creating an account, you only get 1 free search a day.
2. With an Answer The Public account, you get 3 free searches a day.
3. A free Answer The Public account doesn’t show you all the search volumes for questions related to your keyword.
4. You only get about 6 results per question type.

If I have to guess what question is on your mind now, then it’ll be “What tools are your favourite?”. You’ve probably already guessed it, but I really like Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. I love the way it merges Google Search Console data and some deeper reports to give you a thorough understanding of where you are with SEO and what you need to do to get better.

Don’t take my word for it though. As a beginner content marketer, it’s important that you do your own research into the tools in this blog post and more. Figure out what’s important to you and what isn’t, and choose your go-to tools based on that.