The 18 Best Free SEO Tools in 2026 (Ranked by Actual Usefulness)

I keep a messy Google Doc called "SEO tools that don't suck." Started it maybe three years ago after rage-quitting some freemium thing that locked basic features behind a $99/month paywall. The doc has like 40 entries now. Most are crossed out. Some have notes next to them like "actually good" or "never again" or just "???".

So I finally cleaned it up. What you're reading is the survivors list.

Fair warning about free SEO tools in general: the business model for 90% of them is showing you just enough data that you feel stupid for not upgrading. "Your site has 47 critical issues! Want to know what they are? Swipe your card." I fall for it maybe twice a year. Getting better though.

If you want something more tailored to small businesses, I wrote a separate guide for that. This one covers the full spread. More tools, more opinions, fewer guardrails.

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The big three (just set these up, seriously)

I'm grouping these together because if you don't have them running, nothing else on this list matters.

Google Search Console is the only SEO tool that uses Google's actual data. Everything else - Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz - they're estimating. GSC gives you real click numbers, real positions, real CTRs. The 2025 updates were genuinely useful too. You can now describe what you want to analyze in plain English and it sets up the filters, which saved me from writing regex patterns I could never remember anyway. I wrote a full guide on getting the most out of it if you want to go deeper. Only annoyance: 24-48 hour data delay, and if you only discover it after a traffic drop, you've got no historical data. Classic.

GA4 tells you what happens after the click. Engagement, conversions, traffic sources. I'll be honest, the interface is clunky. Everyone says this. The migration from Universal Analytics was painful and the event-based model still confuses me sometimes. But it's free, comprehensive, and the only analytics platform with direct Google Ads integration. We deal with it.

Bing Webmaster Tools - yeah, I know. I ignored Bing for years too. That was dumb. Bing powers Copilot, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and a growing chunk of AI search results. You can import your Search Console setup in like two minutes. The backlink data is often more comprehensive than what Google shows. Worth ten minutes of your time, especially now that AI search pulls from Bing's index so heavily.

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Keyword research

This is where the free tool landscape gets crowded and weird. Lots of options. Wildly varying quality. I'll spare you the equal-treatment thing and just tell you what I actually reach for.

Google Keyword Planner is designed for advertisers but the keyword data works fine for SEO. Search volume trends, competition, seasonality. You need a Google Ads account (free to create, no ads required). The catch nobody mentions: without an active campaign, you get volume ranges instead of exact numbers. "1K-10K" instead of "3,200." Helpful for comparing keywords against each other. Less helpful for actual planning. I pair it with other stuff for precise numbers.

The Revised Keyword Difficulty Checker is ours, so take that however you want. But I use it because it's free with no signup wall, which is more than most competitors offer. Enter up to five keywords, get difficulty scores 0-100. That's the whole thing. I reach for it when I need a fast read on whether a keyword is worth building content around before I commit to the work. Doesn't show search volume, so pair it with Keyword Planner.

AnswerThePublic is the one I always forget exists until I need it. People search in questions - "how do I," "what is the best," "why does" - and this thing visualizes all those patterns around any keyword. Three free searches per day. Make them count. Broad terms give you noise. Specific terms give you blog post ideas.

Google Trends. Honestly underrated. I keep a tab open during content planning. If I'm debating between two topic angles, Trends settles it in ten seconds. Relative interest only, not exact volumes, but for timing your content calendar and spotting seasonal patterns? Nothing else does it as well. Completely free, unlimited searches.

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A quick detour about my backlink obsession

I need to talk about backlinks for a second because this is where I have the strongest opinions and where I think most people waste the most time with tools that tell them things they can't act on.

Last year I spent probably two full weeks analyzing backlink profiles for a cluster of sites in the same niche. Spreadsheets everywhere. Cross-referencing Moz data with Ahrefs data with Search Console data. My partner walked in on me at like 11pm hunched over a laptop with three monitors of spreadsheet data and asked if I was okay. I wasn't, really. But I learned something useful: the tools mostly agree on relative authority rankings even when they disagree on absolute numbers. A site that Moz says has DA 60 and Ahrefs says has DR 55 is still clearly stronger than the site both tools rate in the 20s. The specific numbers don't matter as much as people think. The ranking order matters.

Anyway. That obsession is why I have strong feelings about which backlink tools are worth your time. If you want the full picture on why domain authority matters, I wrote about that separately.

The ones I actually use for backlinks

The Revised Backlink Checker - another one of ours, appropriate salt, etc. Enter any domain, get referring domains, total backlinks, dofollow ratio, quality indicators. No signup, instant results. I built it because I got tired of logging into paid tools for a quick profile check. Not trying to be Ahrefs. It answers "how strong is this site's link profile?" in about three seconds. Check it out.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is the other one. Only works for sites you verify ownership of, so no competitor spying. But for your own sites, the backlink data is among the best available. Limited to two verified projects. If you own the site and want the best free backlink data, this is it. The site audit feature alone justifies the setup.

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Technical SEO (the boring stuff that actually moves rankings)

Nobody wants to do technical SEO. It's the flossing of digital marketing. Unsexy, tedious, and the thing everyone claims to do but doesn't. I have a technical SEO audit checklist if you want structure.

Screaming Frog

I need to give this its own section because it's genuinely in a class by itself. Free version crawls 500 URLs. Finds broken links, missing meta descriptions, duplicate titles, redirect chains, missing alt text, and like dozens of other issues I'd never catch manually. The 2025 update added AI integration where you can run ChatGPT or Claude prompts during crawls to generate alt text or analyze content at scale. Still free for 500 URLs.

It's a desktop app, not cloud-based, which annoys some people. No scheduling on free either. But nothing else comes close for free technical crawling. Export the errors, work through them, watch rankings improve. I've done this cycle maybe fifteen times across different sites now.

The rest of the technical toolkit (quick hits)

PageSpeed Insights uses real Chrome user data to show load times for actual visitors. Test your homepage and top landing pages. If mobile scores are below 50, stop everything and fix that first. Usual culprits: bloated images, too many third-party scripts, cheap hosting. I've seen sites jump 15+ positions from fixing load times alone. Not always. But enough that it should be first on your checklist. Only tests individual URLs though - annoying.

Google Rich Results Test - if you've added schema markup, this tells you whether Google can actually read it. Only tests one URL at a time. Doesn't tell you which schema types to add. But run it before deploying any structured data. I've caught errors with this that would have completely broken rich results on pages I'd spent hours optimizing. Two minutes of testing, hours of debugging saved.

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Content tools

I'll keep this section short because I think people overthink the tooling around content creation.

Hemingway Editor highlights complex sentences, passive voice, adverb overuse. Gives you a grade level score. I aim for grade 6-8 for web content. Not because readers are simple. Because everyone prefers clear writing on screens. Your PhD committee might like long sentences. Google searchers don't. Sometimes flags perfectly fine sentences though. Use judgment.

ChatGPT and Claude - yeah I know. But the free tiers are genuinely useful if you know what to ask. Content outlines, finding subtopics, rewriting meta descriptions, analyzing search intent. I use them constantly for brainstorming. Where I draw the line: don't let them write your content wholesale. Google's helpful content system rewards original perspectives and expertise. AI as research assistant, not ghostwriter. The difference matters.

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Competitive intelligence

Half the battle. Knowing what competitors do, where their traffic comes from, what they're built on. I wrote a full guide on competitor backlink analysis for the detailed playbook.

The Revised Website Traffic Checker lets you enter any domain and get estimated monthly traffic, trends, competitive comparison. No signup, just enter a URL. Give it a try. Traffic estimates are estimates, obviously - relative comparisons between sites, not gospel for absolutes.

And the Revised Technology Lookup detects what tech stack a competitor uses. CMS, analytics, hosting, frameworks. Why does this matter for SEO? If your competitor is on WordPress with Yoast and you're struggling with Wix's limitations, that's useful context. Or you notice top-ranking sites in your niche all use a specific CDN. Tech stack affects speed, crawlability, available features. Not always actionable, but I've had a few "oh, that's why they rank better" moments from it. Try it here. Detection isn't perfect for heavily customized sites, fair warning.

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Local SEO (if this applies to you, don't skip it)

Google Business Profile. Single most important local ranking factor. When someone searches "plumber near me," Google pulls from Business Profiles first. Fill out everything. Hours, services, photos, Q&A, posts. Get reviews. If you're a local business and haven't claimed this, genuinely stop reading and go do it. Everything else here is secondary for you.

The Performance Insights built into GBP are surprisingly granular. How customers find you, what they do next, how you compare to nearby competitors. Check it monthly. That's it. Just check it monthly.

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Honorable mentions (speed round)

Ubersuggest gives three daily searches. Wordtracker Scout is a Chrome extension that's fine. KeywordTool.io has limited free keyword data. TechnicalSEO.com's Schema Generator is actually great and I've had it bookmarked for ages. Google's Mobile-Friendly Test is being sunset but Lighthouse in DevTools does the same thing and more. Whatsmyserp and SERPRobot let you check rankings free in limited quantities.

None of these changed my workflow. But they exist and they're free and someone will find them useful.

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OK so what do you actually install

Don't try all eighteen at once. I did this once, set up everything in an afternoon, got overwhelmed by data from twelve different dashboards, and then ignored all of them for a month. Learn from my mistake.

Week one: Google Search Console (15 minutes, starts collecting immediately), GA4 (connect to Search Console), Google Business Profile if you're local. Done. Let them collect data.

When you're ready: Run a Screaming Frog crawl. Fix what it finds. Check PageSpeed for your top pages. Use the Revised Keyword Difficulty Checker to validate target keywords. Probably a weekend of work if you're thorough.

Getting competitive: Revised Backlink Checker and Traffic Checker for sizing up competitors. Check tech stacks with Technology Lookup. AnswerThePublic for content gaps they haven't covered.

Content flow: Research with Keyword Planner and Trends. Outline with AI. Edit with Hemingway. Validate schema with Rich Results Test before publishing.

What free tools won't do

I should be straight about this. Free tools are excellent at identifying problems and opportunities. They're bad at solving the hard stuff.

You can find that your site has 47 broken links. Fixing them is still on you. You can discover competitors outrank you because they have 10x more backlinks. Actually getting those backlinks? That's the real problem.

Content you can write yourself or get AI to help with. Technical fixes are mostly covered by YouTube tutorials and audit checklists. But earning backlinks from authoritative sites - Wikipedia, Reddit, major publications - that's genuinely hard. I spent months on outreach campaigns last year that produced basically nothing. Cold emails into the void. It was demoralizing.

This is where Revised fits in. We find contextual backlinks from authoritative sources through legitimate domain acquisition. Not outreach, not guest posting. See how it works or browse the marketplace if you're curious.

Free tools get you maybe 80% of the way there. That last 20% - especially the authority and backlink piece - is where I've watched site after site stall out. Including my own, more than once.

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Wrapping up

The free SEO tools available right now are genuinely better than paid tools were five years ago. Google gives away more data now than companies used to charge thousands for. Wild.

You don't need hundreds per month to do effective SEO. You need time and consistency with the right free tools. Set them up. Check them. Act on what they say. That last part is where people fall down - they have the data and just... don't do anything with it. I've been guilty of this too. Easier to run another audit than to actually fix the 30 issues the last audit found.

When you're ready to tackle the backlink problem, we're here.