The 7 Best Free SEO Tools
We present to you the 7 best SEO tools that you can use for free, their advantages and disadvantages, and what you should pay attention to when choosing them.
You can't ignore the topic of SEO. No wonder then that with this enormous demand for SEO tools you'll come across a large selection of providers for free SEO analysis. But not every free version is automatically perfect for your situation and your company. OMR Reviews gives you an overview, so you can focus directly on the relevant SEO tools.
The most well-known SEO tool providers offer free variants alongside their paid SEO analysis tools. But how useful are these free SEO tools actually? We have tested these SEO software solutions and summarized our experiences for you.
General information about SEO tools
In the past, classic marketing consisted mainly of print, TV, and radio advertising. But today, digital technologies are an indispensable part of the marketing mix, and one of the most important market segments of corporate communication is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
It is super important for companies to be found in Google & Co. In addition to paid search engine advertising (SEA), organic traffic plays an important role. This is where SEO comes into play.
SEO tools are programs or software solutions that help website operators and SEO experts with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – i.e. in reaching users from organic sources. With the SEO analysis tools you can analyze your content, your backlinks and keywords. You can keep an eye on your ranking stand and even evaluate the data of your competitors to constantly improve.
SEO features you need
An optimal SEO tool box consists of different modules. When choosing the best tool, the rule is: as many features as you can effectively use and as few features as you actually need. Whether you use a single tool or combine the advantages of different programs is up to you. It is also up to you whether you prefer to work with cloud-based SEO analysis tools or want to install SEO software.
These are the components your SEO tool box should ideally consist of:
1. Component: Webmaster tool
You should keep an eye on users' search behavior with a webmaster tool such as Google Search Console. In this way you can follow how your pages are currently ranking and what users are searching for at all. It is important to be up to date about the state of your website. Only in this way can you intervene directly if necessary.
2. Component: Keyword tool
It doesn't help you to rank for keywords that nobody is searching for. With a keyword research tool you can have planned keywords evaluated and come up with new ideas and search combinations.
3. Component: Link tool
Always keeping an eye on the competition is a good thing. This also applies to your link strategy. You can check who is linking to your competition and draw conclusions for yourself from other companies' link strategies. In addition, you can check in advance whether it is even worth asking for a link on a website.
4. Component: Link building tool
Link building tools help you find websites that want to link relevant content. If you want to build follow-ups, you must be able to identify websites for contact.
5. Component: SEO Index Tools
Index tools access a keyword database. You can determine results for search terms. This applies to current and historical results. With the rankings you can create lists of search terms for which your competitors rank. You can also follow whether the positioning of websites in the search results is improving or worsening. This way you can find errors and compare the performance of different websites.
6. Component: Onpage tool
Websites are crawled with onpage tools, to quickly find technical errors that you should then fix. Otherwise, it could result in poor user experiences, which would degrade your positioning.
7. Component: Content Performance Tools
With content performance tools, you can identify successful content from other websites and incorporate gained insights into creating your own content.
8. Component: Wdf*idf
Creating text according to Wdf*idf (Within Document Frequency * Inverse Document Frequency) means checking a text by counting how often certain words occur in it. WDF*IDF Tools (for example, Termlabs.io or Ryte) therefore check whether the relevant keywords are sufficiently present in your content. Otherwise, search engines cannot classify your content as relevant content.
9. Component: Monitoring tool
With monitoring tools all your measures are measured and analyzed. This is the only way you can continuously improve.
If you are now desperately looking for THE perfect free SEO tool: It probably won't exist! A combination of different SEO analysis tools is not only an option, but also a pretty good one.
One advantage is that you can find the hidden gems more easily. These are keywords that are frequently searched for and at the same time you can expect little competition. So it's easier for you to rank for those terms and reach many people. You should also not forget that the displayed search volumes are not always very accurate – so they should be regarded as estimates. Therefore, it is safer to work with several keyword tools.
Pros and cons of free SEO programs and SEO software
Of course, there are reasons why the upgrades of the free versions are paid for. Free SEO tools either have fewer functions or the existing functions can be used less extensively, which is why they are sometimes only suitable for smaller companies. Whether the limited usefulness is a pro or con depends on what you actually need. Our tip: Focus on the biggest levers and do it right. Depending on how you are set up, free SEO analysis tools may already be sufficient.
The evaluation criteria for our top 7 of the best free SEO tools from the market leaders
By now you already know from which components a good SEO tool should consist. We briefly explain to you according to which criteria the following free SEO analysis tools were tested and evaluated.
1. Criterion: Keyword Research
The keyword research at Ahrefs.
If you want to create a blog or a website, you first need to know what people are searching for on the net. The goal is to attract attention to your site with the right terms. You want to rank on Google & Co. for these search terms.
In theory, of course, you could just check the suggestions the search engine displays in incognito mode in Google. Since the normal search displays personalized results, don't forget to switch to incognito mode. The autocomplete function then suggests the most searched combinations to you. Keyword tools do this job for you and show you a much greater variety of possible keywords than you could research manually.
2. Criterion: Health Score
If your site doesn't work properly, website visitors will have a bad user experience. The visitor will remember this and so will Google. In other words, you not only lose these users but also worsen your ranking. A good SEO tool checks and evaluates the condition of your website.
3. Criterion: SEO Compare
You want to stand out? Then you need to watch competitors and adapt. You can learn a lot from competition and recognize your own potential and risks.
4. Criterion: SERP and Snippets
Snippets are short extracts from the text of a website. They appear in the SERPs (= search result pages) of the search engines. A snippet is therefore a small insight into what users can expect on a page. Good snippets arouse the interest of searchers and deliver what they promise.
5. Criterion: Wdf*idf
The WDF*IDF function of Seobility.
To put it simply, WDF*IDF (= Within Document Frequency * Inverse Document Frequency) checks how often a certain word occurs in a text. In addition, this value is compared to the number of words in all other texts on Google. A good tool therefore checks your text and analyzes whether the relevant search terms have been used sufficiently compared to the competition.
6. Criterion: Backlinks
Backlinks are external references from another website to your website. Think of the links as a recommendation for your website. The more recommendations, the better your reputation. Search engines classify websites in this way as a trustworthy source. Google already confirmed in 2016 that backlinks, along with content, are the most important ranking signal for websites.
7. Criterion: Reporting
In order to be able to work effectively with interesting data, a tool must have a clear SEO reporting. This way you can filter, select and work effectively with the data as a team.
8. Criterion: Costs
This article is primarily about free SEO tools. For some, free tools may not be enough in the foreseeable future. It would be annoying to start searching for tools again and get used to new SEO solutions again.
Those who compare with foresight will probably also include the future cost factor in their decision. Finally, we also show you what costs you can expect if you want to upgrade the respective SEO program or SEO software.
Our top 7 of the best free SEO tools among market leaders
In the SEO tools category on OMR Reviews, you will already find a large selection of good SEO programs and software solutions. You can look at the general reviews or filter the reviews by small businesses, midsize businesses, or enterprises. We have tested some of them ourselves and present here our top 7 of the free SEO tools.
Seobility
Sistrix
Ahrefs
Semrush
UberSuggest
AnswerThePublic
Screaming Frog SEO Spider1st place: Seobility
Seobility Dashboard
The free SEO tool from Seobility also crawls pages and gives feedback on various factors. It is a clear tool with manageable functions. But with the functions it has, you get detailed improvement suggestions. So the suggestions are directly displayed in three colors, so you can see right away which points need to be fixed, should be and can be. Especially in the areas of OnePage and Keyword Optimization it is very strong.
Positive Special Feature:
Seobility offers strong functions in the free SEO tools, which are available to you without registration.
Negative Special Feature:
The number of free queries is very low. In addition, the tool is not quite as accurate as other programs when counting backlinks, which can make a difference for larger pages.
Please also remember that despite the detailed functions, this is not a so-called outreach tool. It does not specifically support you with insights about backlinks from the competition.
Keyword Research:
Your keyword optimization decides whether you can assert yourself against the competition. Seobility has helpful SEO functions. You can, for example, search for new keyword ideas, questions and similar search terms.
Seobility is great for keyword competition analysis. With the keyword research tool, you can compare your competitors' keywords with your own.
Health Score:
Seobility checks your website. All you have to do is enter the URL. The tool goes very deep and therefore leads to over-optimization. Remember, it's just a tool to support you. Not everything it shows you actually needs to be implemented.
Seobility also has a Google update radar that keeps you updated about the changes. Simply sign up for the newsletter to be informed by email.
SEO-Compare:
You can check with the ranking check how you are currently ranking for certain search terms. Just enter the keyword and optionally select a country or a city, or a platform. That way you can see what position you are in right now and can compare your position with that of your strongest competitors.
SERP and Snippets:
With the SERP Snippet Generator you can see how users see your search result and check both the title tag and the meta description for their length. Here again, applies the color game: green (evaluates Seobility as good), orange (sees the tool as uncritical) and red signaling a need for improvement.
Backlinks:
As part of the SEO check, Seobility also checks your backlinks, summarizes the results and evaluates them.In addition to the free variant, the tool also offers paid versions. With the payable variants, the software offers additional white-label PDF reports, automatic regular crawling, and other functions. More information about Seobility and the Seobility prices
can be found on OMR Reviews. Is Seobility not exactly what you are looking for? Then check out the best alternatives to Seobility
on OMR Reviews.
2nd Place: SISTRIX
Sistrix Dashboard
The founder of SISTRIX GmbH Johannes Beus was previously responsible for search engine optimization at idealo.de.
Positive Special Feature:SISTRIX thinks a step further than the competition: The traffic that you generate on your website through your social media marketingSistrix has a great impact on your SEO.
offers an Instagram hashtag generator as well as a Google Update Radar in the free SEO tool box. In addition, for all who have multilingual websites in use, there is another advantage: You can check your hreflang tags for free and thus ensure that Google understands the geographical orientation of your website and creates hreflang link attribute markups. There is even a free hreflang guide.
Negative Special Feature:
For the free onpage analysis you have to create a free account.
Keyword Research
The keyword research at SISTRIX.
The free SISTRIX keyword tool searches for terms that are searched for in this context after entering the keyword and the country. For a free tool, a really large number of results are displayed, which are sorted in descending order of interest. As logged in users, you can export the list directly for further processing.
If you are logged in, you can enter the keywords you want to rank for and compare yourself directly with the competition. When making this comparison, you can set filters to, for example, select the search engine or choose between PC and mobile.
Health Score:
SISTRIX checks your website. For this, you just have to enter the URL. The tool goes very deep and therefore leads to over-optimization. Remember, it's just a tool to support you. Not everything it shows here you really need to implement.
SISTRIX has a Google update radar that keeps you up to date about the changes. Simply sign up for the newsletter to be informed by email.
SEO-Compare:
With the visibility index you can measure your success in Google search results. Two results are given directly: the visibility index for the desktop and mobile version.Google Search ConsoleIndependent of external influences, you can see whether your SEO measures are bearing fruit and follow the development of your domain. What does external influences mean? Unlike the
, SISTRIX actively measures rankings free of external influences such as seasonality, weather, vacation times and other external factors and trends. If you not only check your website, but also those of your competitors, you have the direct comparison.Now you have compared your visibility index
with that of your strongest competitors and are not quite satisfied with the result, then increase your value. You can, for example, create new content with additional keywords or rank for particularly search volume strong keywords.In addition to the free version, the tool also offers paid versions. With the payable versions, the software offers additional training courses for further education, tools for content marketing & text optimization, and other functions. More information about Sistrix and the Sistrix prices
can be found on OMR Reviews. Is SISTRIX not exactly what you are looking for? Check out the best alternatives to SISTRIX
on OMR Reviews.
3rd place: Ahrefs
Ahrefs DashboardAhrefsThe professional backlink tool from
is not used without reason by well-known large companies and agencies. It creates very detailed and precise backlink profiles of a site. It is also stronger than most other SEO programs when it comes to keyword search volume. For example, it also provides information about the difficulty of ranking for a keyword, so you can make decisions more easily about which keywords are profitable for you.
Positive Special Feature:
The tool estimates for you the difficulty of ranking for a certain keyword and gives specific tips on how you could achieve this.
Keyword Research
Ahrefs offers three great tools for keywords: Keyword Generator, Keyword Difficulty Meter and Keyword Ranking Checker.
The Keyword Generator helps you come up with new keyword ideas. In addition to the new search terms, it also shows you the search volume. You can filter the search results by phrases and questions. Keyword tools do this job for you and show you a much greater variety of possible keywords than you could research manually.
The Keyword Difficulty Checker from Ahrefs estimates for you how difficult it would be to rank for a certain keyword and gives specific tips on how you could achieve this. The keyword difficulty increases the chance of promoting you to the top 10 search results. This difficulty estimation in combination with specific tips is for us a clear competitive advantage.Google Keyword PlannerDon't confuse keyword difficulty with keyword planner competition in Google Ads. The competition in the Keyword Planner refers to the competition in the
, and the keyword difficulty to the organic search results.
Last but not least: the Keyword Rank Checker. Enter your keyword and your website. The tool tells you how you are currently ranking for this search term. It also immediately shows the top-ranked pages and details like backlinks and traffic.
The free keyword tools from Ahrefs are also available specifically for YouTube, Amazon and Bing.
SEO-Compare
In the search results, you will also find your competition, which you can analyze and evaluate with the SEO tools.
SERP and Snippets
The Ahrefs SERP checker shows you search results with difficulty and detailed information for the top 10 search results. Here, for example, you will learn how strong the respective backlink profile is, how many domains link to the site and the estimated traffic on the site.In addition to the free variant, the tool also offers paid versions. With the payable variants, the software offers additional JavaScript rendering, unlimited verified projects, and other functions. More information about Ahrefs and the Ahrefs prices
can be found on OMR Reviews. Is Ahrefs not exactly what you are looking for? Check out the best alternatives to Ahrefs
on OMR Reviews.
4th place: Semrush
Semrush Dashboard
With the free version of Semrush's SEO analysis tool,you can create and manage a project or dashboard. There you can see the most important evaluations. A total of 12 SEO tools are included in each project.
SemrushPositive Special Feature:
is clear and comprehensive at the same time. There is also a course offer. For example, if you are in the area of keyword research, the tool offers you a free course on it.
Keyword Research
Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool lets you generate keyword ideas. Simply enter a search term and use the filter options to display keyword suggestions. The idea list appears with details such as the search volume, trends, cost per click and an estimation of the keyword difficulty.
In the Position Tracking tool, you can enter your domain, a list of your competitors and your keywords. Semrush tracks the ranking of your domain and your competitors for these keywords every day. This way, you can effortlessly keep track of a limited number of keywords even in the free version.
If you enter your keyword in the SEO Content Template, Semrush analyzes the Google Top 10. The tool tells you which related terms you can use, which backlinks you should strive for, and provides information about the readability and the recommended text length.
With the Onpage SEO Checker, Semrush lists specific content recommendations for onpage optimization.
Health Score
The Site Audit thoroughly checks your website and lists weaknesses. In the free version, the number of crawled pages is limited.
SEO-Compare
Regarding competitive research, Semrush offers some functions. Among other things, you can retrieve detailed insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.
Reporting
Even in the free version, you can create a PDF with your website audit results and competitive analysis. To generate an unlimited number of reports, however, you need to upgrade.Looker StudioIn addition to the free functions of the tool, Semrush also offers a paid version. This includes additional features such as Custom Crawls, no URL limitation, integrations with Google Analytics and the Google Search Console, Custom Extractions via regex or xpath, saving of crawls as well as creating robots.txt and Scheduled Crawling. More information about Semrush and the Semrush prices can be found on OMR Reviews.
Is Semrush not exactly what you are looking for? Also check out the best alternatives to Semrush on OMR Reviews.
5th place: Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest Dashboard
The best-selling author of the New York Times and the founder of UberSuggest Neil Patel is one of the top influencers on the net according to the Wall Street Journal. According to Forbs, he is also one of the top 10 marketers on the internet.
Positive Special Feature:
The leap between the free and paid version is small.
Negative Special Feature:
It collects a lot of your data and some results are very inaccurate.
Keyword Research
Ubersuggest offers a free tool for keyword research. Simply enter a search term and the desired country and the keyword brainstorming can continue. In addition to the number of search queries, it also gives an estimate of how difficult it will be to rank organically and with paid ads for this keyword and the cost per click. With an upgrade, you can even look at which age group is searching for the keyword how often.
SEO-Compare
The domain comparison shows you the websites that appear in the search results for similar keywords. You can download a list of competitors as a CSV file for further processing.
Ubersuggest lists your best ranking pages and analyzes both the views and the backlinks. You can see the individual keywords, the search volume, the place in Google and the number of organic page views. If you enter your competitors' URL instead of your own, you can compare your insights with those of the competitors.
Backlinks
The SEO tool shows you who is linking to your competitors with backlinks and not to you.
Reporting
In Ubersuggest, you can export your created lists and reports as CSV for further editing with a click.
In addition to the free functions of the tool, Ubersuggest also offers a paid version. This includes additional features such as SEO trainings and consultations, daily reports, and other functions. More information about Ubersuggest and the Ubersuggest prices can be found on OMR Reviews.
Is Ubersuggest not exactly what you are looking for? Also check out the best alternatives to Ubersuggest on OMR Reviews.
6th place: AnswerThePublic
Ubersuggest Screenshot
AnswerThePublic makes use of the Google Suggest function. Because the suggestions that appear when typing search queries in the search engine are based on the real questions and search terms of users, helpful insights can emerge as to what is particularly of interest in a certain subject area.
Positive Special Feature:
With AnswerThePublic, you get insights into the true insights of users. You can enter language, country, and the respective keyword and get all the insights. In addition, you can generate new keyword ideas.
Negative Special Feature:
The free version of AnswerThePublic is limited to three possible search queries. In addition, the scope of the suggested keywords is very large, which can become a bit confusing in the presentation.
Keyword Research
You can filter by language, country, and topics when researching keywords. Also, you can understand and learn about possible and emerging trends through keyword research. The existing data is either visually processed or, for example, alphabetically. AnswerThePublic clusters the queries by comparison and shows what, questions, articles or related searches. The individual topic blocks or presentations can also be downloaded.
In addition to the free keyword research, the service provider also offers a paid pro version. This offers additional features such as reporting, unlimited search queries or structured storage options. More information about AnswerThePublic and the prices of AnswerThePublic can be found on OMR Reviews. Are you looking for more SEO tools? Check out the best alternatives to AnswerThePublic
on OMR Reviews.
7th place: Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO SpiderScreaming Frog User Interface
is software developed by the agency Screaming Frog that allows you to check websites for various aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The software is particularly useful for webmasters and SEO experts looking to optimize their websites' performance with regard to search engines.
Positive Special Feature:
What particularly stands out is that the software provides a lot of information about the URLs. Once users know how to get the necessary information in the tool, almost all OnPage and technical SEO data can be found.
Negative Special Feature:
The fact that the tool is not a web application and must be installed locally on the computer is not so practical. This takes up a lot of memory. In addition, the interface is not intuitively designed and users must know exactly what they want to do and where the functions can be found.
Reporting
The software works like a "spider" (i.e. a kind of robot) that searches the website and collects information about the existing URLs, metadata, alt texts for images and much more. The collected data is then presented in easily understandable reports that allow the user to identify weaknesses in the SEO strategy and make appropriate improvements. The free version covers a maximum of 500 URLs and Basic On-Page Analysis & Technical Audits. During the crawl, different modes can be selected, for example a website crawl (top-down) or a list crawl, for example a sitemap.
Healthscore
Also, the analysis of the status codes is considered and Hreflang tags, like duplicate content checked. Furthermore, sitemaps can be created with Screaming Frog.
SERPs and Snippets
Additionally, H1 structures are checked, the length of titles, headings and meta information.In addition to the free functions of the tool, Screaming Frog also offers a paid version. This includes additional features, such as Custom Crawls, no URL limitation, integration with Google Analytics and the Google Search Console, custom extractions via regex or XPath, saving crawls and the creation of robots.txt and scheduled crawling. More information about Screaming Frog and the Screaming Frog prices
can be found on OMR Reviews. Is Screaming Frog not exactly what you are looking for? Also check out the best alternatives to Screaming Frog
on OMR Reviews.
Find more free SEO tools on OMR ReviewsMany free SEO tools offer modules for the most important SEO tasks such as keyword research
- Keyword Tool and the website condition check. These tools include:
- Redirect Path: KeywordTool.io is an online service that helps users generate potential keywords for their website content. The keywords are generated based on search data from various search engines such as Google, YouTube, Bing and the Amazon search engine.
- : Redirect Path is a free Google Chrome extension. It is used to determine whether a specific URL is being redirected – and if so, where it is being redirected to. This can be helpful to ensure that the redirects on a website are working correctly. Pagespeed Insights:
- Google's free tool helps improve the performance of your websites. The tool analyzes the contents of a website and makes recommendations on how to improve performance in terms of loading time for users and the "mobile friendliness" of the website.Karma Keyword Tool
: On the Karma Keyword Tool website you can check your keyword, how often it is searched, what CPC would have to be paid, how strong the competition is and what search results there are.
Each of the seven tools above has a user-friendly dashboard, so even as an SEO beginner you can quickly get started and work efficiently, but content-wise each has different strengths and weaknesses. First think about what is really important to you and then combine the tools that are best suited to meet these challenges.Depending on what requirements you have for your SEO tool
Empfehlenswerte SEO Tools
Weitere empfehlenswerte SEO-Tools kannst du auf OMR Reviews finden und vergleichen. Insgesamt haben wir dort über 150 SEO-Tools (Stand: Dezember 2023) gelistet, die dir dabei helfen können, deinen organischen Traffic langfristig zu steigern. Also schau vorbei und vergleiche die Softwares mithilfe der verifizierten Nutzerbewertungen:
Pia war mehr als 10 Jahre im Vertrieb und Marketing verschiedenster Unternehmen aktiv. Danach gründete sie ihr eigenes Unternehmen und betreibt dieses zusammen mit ihrer Geschäftspartnerin.
