Finding great ways to cut costs without sacrificing the effectiveness of your SEO campaign can be a challenge. But without an endless marketing budget, you’ll need to look around for some great tools that will allow you to cut down on human labor and software costs, without sacrificing the quality of your work.
Luckily, the industry continues to develop, and companies are coming out with software to boost your SEO efforts, at no initial cost. You can use these tools for enhancing your strategies until you garner enough revenue to move on to bigger and better tools. But the reality is, you’ll probably like some of these tools so much, you’ll stick with them instead of moving on to something more expensive.
Without further ado, here’s a list of some of the most popular SEO tools in the industry.
1. Moz
Moz has a whole suite of SEO tools that you can try for free. After the trial ends, you’ll need to pay to keep some features, but others will continue working for you at no cost. These tools include keyword tracking, ranking monitoring, on-page optimizations, and link tracking, just to name a few.
2. Rocket Ranking
For an all-encompassing SEO solution, try Rocket Ranking, the tool that helps small businesses and startups increase their website traffic daily. With their on-page SEO optimizer, keyword profit calculator, SEO backlink builder, SEO backlink counter, and social media like and follow tool, small businesses are able to gain the social clout and recognition necessary to move up in the rankings. It starts out completely free, and then can be upgraded quarterly for a very small fee.
3. MergeWords
Use MergeWords to research keywords for rankings and domains, and queries for link building. It’s an efficient tool for organizing all search information into data that you can use to plan your strategies.
4. Buffer
With the use of Buffer software, scheduling all of your social media content interactions is simple. It has a comprehensive content builder that enables filling in SEO-optimized content and setting up a publishing time frame to keep your campaign on track. It’s one of the best tools for staying ahead of the social game.
5. Google Tools
Though not everyone likes the way they operate, Google has an arsenal of tools that you should at least check out when it comes to search engine optimization. Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Google Trends, PageSpeed Insights, and more can all be utilized to test the success of all SEO-related content and strategies. The best part is, most of these tools are entirely free for the basic versions.
6. Screaming Frog
This free tool is legendary for its ability to “spider crawl” through websites, links, images, code, and apps in order to collect useful data for maintaining your website. You’ll be able to fix many of the errors that would otherwise hurt your rankings, such as image errors, incomplete meta tags, or copied content. Screaming Frog is also very useful for spying on competition and receiving reports on inbound and outbound links.
7. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is an excellent tool for gathering insightful data about your websites, customers, or even competitors. It can also be used to define a target audience, pick up on branding cues, report on traffic sources, and track other helpful metrics. Though there are other free tools that do the same thing, this apparatus is particularly useful because it delivers all the information in easy-to-read graphs, which simplifies the process.
When it comes to getting started in the world of SEO, startups have an armory of resources at their disposal. Staying ahead of the competition and watching your rankings improve over time is made infinitely easier with the help of these tools.
