Here’s a curated list of free SEO tools and software for marketers, covering everything from keyword research to link building and site analysis. These tools can help improve your SEO strategy without needing a large budget.

1. Google Tools 🌐

• Google Analytics
  Provides insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion tracking. It’s essential for understanding how users interact with your site and which sources bring in the most valuable traffic.
• Google Search Console
  Offers information on search performance, indexing issues, and mobile usability. You can also see keywords you’re ranking for and track click-through rates.
• Google Keyword Planner
  Originally designed for Google Ads, this tool helps find keywords, get search volume data, and discover cost estimates for keywords, making it useful for SEO keyword research.
• Google Trends
  Allows you to explore trending search terms and track changes in search interest over time, which can help guide content and keyword strategies.
• Google PageSpeed Insights
  Analyzes your site’s loading speed on both desktop and mobile, with suggestions to improve load times. Faster sites typically rank higher on search engines.

2. Keyword Research Tools 🔍

• Answer the Public
  A tool that provides keyword suggestions in the form of questions, prepositions, and comparisons. It’s ideal for finding long-tail keywords and understanding what people are asking about your topics.
• Ubersuggest
  Provides keyword ideas, search volume, and SEO difficulty scores. It also includes domain-level data, backlink analysis, and content ideas.
• Keyword Surfer (Chrome Extension)
  Shows estimated search volumes, cost-per-click, and keyword ideas directly in Google search results, making it easy to do research without leaving the search page.
• Soovle
  A simple keyword tool that pulls autocomplete suggestions from various search engines like Google, Bing, Amazon, and YouTube. Great for brainstorming keyword ideas across platforms.
• Keyworddit
  Extracts keywords from Reddit, providing insights into terms real users are discussing in your industry’s relevant subreddits.

3. Site Analysis Tools 🖥️

• SEO Minion (Chrome Extension)
  This extension helps analyze on-page SEO, highlights broken links, previews SERP snippets, and provides an overview of your page structure.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Free Version)
  A powerful site crawler that allows up to 500 URL crawls for free. It finds broken links, analyzes page titles and metadata, checks for duplicate content, and more.
• GTmetrix
  Tests your site’s load speed and gives detailed recommendations on how to improve performance. This tool is particularly useful for optimizing Core Web Vitals.
• Yoast SEO (for WordPress)
  A plugin that helps optimize your content for keywords, provides readability scores, and offers meta tag optimization, XML sitemaps, and more.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
  The free version of Ahrefs provides insights into your site’s backlinks, keyword rankings, and overall SEO health. It’s great for getting high-level data on performance and areas for improvement.

4. Link Building Tools 🔗

• Moz Link Explorer (Free Version)
  Moz’s free Link Explorer provides a snapshot of your link profile, including Domain Authority, inbound links, and top pages. This tool is helpful for checking backlinks and assessing link-building needs.
• Hunter.io
  Finds email addresses associated with any website, which is useful for outreach and link-building efforts. The free plan offers limited searches and verifications per month.
• Check My Links (Chrome Extension)
  This tool highlights broken links on any webpage, making it useful for link-building efforts as you can suggest replacements for broken links in your outreach.
• HARO (Help a Reporter Out)
  Connects journalists with sources. You can sign up for free and pitch yourself or your brand as a source, which can lead to high-quality backlinks if journalists use your input.
• Backlink Checker by Ahrefs
  A free backlink checker tool that lets you see the top 100 backlinks to any domain. It’s helpful for competitive research and finding backlink opportunities.

5. Content Optimization Tools ✍️

• Grammarly
  Helps improve grammar, spelling, and readability. It’s an essential tool for content creators and marketers to ensure polished, professional writing.
• Hemingway Editor
  Analyzes readability, sentence structure, and complexity, which is helpful for creating user-friendly content that engages readers.
• Yoast Real-time Content Analysis Tool
  Yoast provides a free online tool that analyzes your content for SEO and readability, even if you’re not using WordPress.
• Canva
  Not directly an SEO tool, but essential for creating high-quality visuals and infographics, which can improve engagement and sharing rates on social media.
• Zyro AI Content Generator
  Provides AI-generated content ideas, making it useful for brainstorming blog topics or creating quick content outlines.

6. Technical SEO Tools ⚙️

• Mobile-Friendly Test (by Google)
  Tests your site’s mobile usability and provides suggestions for improving mobile performance, which is crucial for mobile-first indexing.
• Schema Markup Generator (Merkle)
  Generates schema markup for your content, making it easier to implement structured data for rich snippets in search results.
• XML-Sitemaps.com
  A free XML sitemap generator, essential for creating sitemaps that help search engines crawl your site more effectively.
• Robots.txt Generator (Google)
  This tool helps you create and edit a robots.txt file to control which pages search engines can or cannot crawl.
• Broken Link Checker (for WordPress)
  A WordPress plugin that identifies broken links on your website, helping maintain a clean link structure and improve user experience.

7. Rank Tracking Tools 📈

• Serprobot
  Tracks up to 5 keywords for free, allowing you to monitor your rankings and see how your SEO efforts are paying off.
• What’s My SERP
  Provides a free SERP checker to track keyword rankings. You can add multiple keywords and locations for deeper insights.
• SEOquake (Chrome Extension)
  Offers instant SERP analysis, displaying rankings, backlinks, and social metrics for any webpage. It’s helpful for on-the-go ranking checks.
• Small SEO Tools
  This suite of tools includes a keyword rank checker, plagiarism checker, and backlink checker, among others. It’s useful for various SEO tasks in one platform.

8. Social Media and Engagement Tools 📲

• Buffer (Free Plan)
  Schedules posts across various social media platforms, allowing you to plan and publish content consistently. Consistent social engagement can indirectly improve SEO.
• Hootsuite (Free Plan)
  Another scheduling tool, Hootsuite also offers basic analytics and engagement tracking to help understand social media performance.
• BuzzSumo (Free Version)
  Helps identify popular topics and content ideas, as well as analyze engagement levels for specific keywords. It’s useful for finding content that’s likely to gain traction.
• TweetDeck (for Twitter)
  A Twitter scheduling and engagement tool that helps keep track of keywords, hashtags, and conversations in real time.

These free tools cover various aspects of SEO, helping marketers optimize content, track performance, conduct keyword research, and more without spending on premium software. Using them effectively can help boost search rankings and grow organic traffic.