So now that you have some understanding of SEO (Search engine optimization),  maybe your curious about some of the SEO tools used by the professionals.  There’s a wide variety of SEO tools used (both paid and free).  So I have taken the time to do some research and put together a list.

Here is a list of the Top 5 free SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools

 Google Keyword Planner

Google keyword planner has been a go to SEO tool for many in the field for a long time.  It is one of the tools we use for keyword research.  You first have to set up a gmail account.  Once you set up a gmail account you sign in with that.

Once your in the keyword tool you can get all sorts of helpful information that can help with your keyword strategy.  Once you sign in it will bring you to a page that says “Find new keywords and get search volume data”.    Under product or service you put in your keywords ( or your products or services) then scroll down and click “Get ideas”

Once your brought to the next page you can get search volume, competition bids, and even suggest terms and keyword phrases.  This can be helpful with finding highly searched terms, how competitive those terms are, and even other keyword phrases you didn’t think of.

Google.com in an Incognito Window

The Incognito Window allows you to see common searches by other users with the auto-fill options.  If you go into your Google chrome browser and click on the tab that has the 3 bars in the top right corner you will get a list of options.  From there you can click on the Incognito option.  The reason we go into the Incognito window is because we don’t want google customizing your searches from your past searches.  We want to know what other people are searching ( our potential  customers!).

Once in the Google window we type in our search terms and google will provide a drop down box with relevant terms and phrases.  This helps us see what other people are searching about our targeted keywords or phrases.

Google PageSpeed Insights

More and more google is making page-speed very important.  Thinks about it.  When you click on a webpage you want that page to load as fast as possible so you can get the content your looking for.  If it takes to long you will abandon the page.  In the SEO world we call this Bounce rate.  This refers to the number of times a person has gone to that page and Bounced (left the page) without going to another page or in this case waiting for it to load.  In fact 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 2 seconds to load.

Just type Google page speed into google and it will show up right away.  Once your there just enter your URL, and this tool will test the loading time and performance for desktop and for mobile, plus identify opportunities to improve (and pat you on the back for what you’re doing well). The mobile results also come with a user experience score, grading areas like tap targets and font sizes.

Keywordtool.io

This free SEO tool has some very interesting features and functions.  It’s the perfect free SEO tool for generating long tail keyword ideas.  It’s similar to UberSuggest in the case that if grabs results from Google Suggest.  What makes this tool better is that it adds a character before AND after after the keyword you enter.

For example, if you enter “low card diet” into UberSuggest, it will search for “Low carb diet a”, “low carb diet c” etc.  Then it will search for the keywords AND search for “a low carb”, “b low carb diet”.  This can be very helpful because you can get many more keywords from the same search.  In fact it will shoot out up to 750 keyword ideas.

Google Trends

Google trends offer free information about changes in search volume for key terms over time.  This free SEO tool allows you to see the popularity rise of keyword terms that you are interested in and can provide SEO opportunities.  This tool can be great at spotting trends that you can jump in on early and take advantage of.