My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021

My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021
9 min read
12 January 2021

In this article, I'm gonna show you my favorite SEO tools. The best part, every single tool in this list is 100% free.

1. seedkeywords.com

Most keyword research tools work the exact same way, enter a seed keyword into a tool and get a list of suggestions. The problem with this approach is this, everyone types the same exact seed keywords into these tools. No wonder most keywords are super competitive. That's where Seed Keywords comes in. It helps you sidestep this problem.

Instead of pulling seed keywords out of thin air, you actually ask customers how they'd finds you online. Then you use those seed keywords in a traditional keyword research tool.

For example, let's say that you run an online flower delivery e-commerce site. Well, you'd use Seed Keywords to create what's called a scenario. Basically, you ask people how they would search for what you sell, then send that scenario to people and if you're like me, you'll be surprised at the responses that you get. Finally, put the terms that you find into your favorite keyword tool, and you'll find some untapped keywords that your competitors don't know about yet.

2. SERPerator

Which leads us to our second free SEO tool, SERPerator. Now I didn't include SERPerator on this list, just because it has a name that kind of sounds like terminator. Although, that didn't hurt. With that, here is how this tool works.

As you probably know, the search results change dramatically, depending on where you are and the device that you're using. And this some tool helps you check out the search results across different locations and devices.

All you need to do is specify your device and location, and you'll see exactly how the results will look for someone searching from that location, using that device.My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021

3. Exploding Topics

You probably already know that finding new trending keywords is an SEO goldmine, and it's simple math.

If you target an old keyword, they're going to be more blog posts, articles, YouTube videos and content in general, that you have to compete with. But when you target new keywords that are trending up, you get in early before the search results get super competitive.

For example, a while back, I wrote a post optimized around the keyword, Mobile SEO. Back when that keyword was relatively new. Even though that keyword didn't have a ton of searches yet, I knew that Google had been rolling out updates that penalize sites that weren't mobile optimized, which meant that searches for that keyword were primed to explode. And because I got in super early, I was able to carve out a top three ranking for this growing term, a ranking that I still hold to this day.

The question is, how do you find these new trending terms? Well, you could use Google Trends but the issue with Google Trends is that you already need to know what you're looking for. In other words, Google Trends is great for confirming a trend on a keyword that you already know about, but it's not really helpful for coming up with new trends and topics.

Enter Exploding Topics. With exploding topics, you get a list of new trending keywords presented to you on a silver platter. My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021And the tool has a database of trending topics across several different industries, including health, fitness, marketing, fashion, consumer products and more.

4. LSI Graph

Moving right along, our next free SEO tool is called LSI Graph. You've probably heard of LSI keywords before. They're basically words and phrases that are closely related to your main keyword and when you include these terms in your content, Google sees your content as comprehensive, which can give you a nice little rankings boost.

For example, let's say your target keyword is "Star Wars." LSI keywords for "Star Wars" would be things like, Luke Skywalker, Jedi, Princess Leia and the Millennium Falcon. So, how do you find LSI keywords?

A very cool free tool called LSI Graph. Just enter your target keyword into the tool and you'll get a list of LSI keywords that you can sprinkle into your content. My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021

5. TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is a free Chrome extension that helps you optimize your YouTube videos for SEO.

For example, let's say that you wanna use some of the same tags that another video is using. Well, you can use TubeBuddy to easily see those tags and use them in your video.My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021Or let's say you're looking for a keyword to optimize your video around. You can use TubeBuddy to see the competition level on YouTube's the first page for that keyword.

6. Wordtracker Scout

Wordtracker Scout takes kind of a unique approach to keyword research. Instead of entering a keyword into a tool, Wordtracker scans a page and finds keywords that show up over and over again.

That way, you can go over to one of your competitor's pages and grab the keywords that they're already using in their content. My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021You can even sort the list of keywords by opportunity, which are terms that have the best ratio of search volume and competition.

7. Google Search Console

No list of SEO tools would be complete without talking about Search Console, why? Well, if you take a step back, Search Console is actually a pretty feature-rich piece of SEO software. And unlike almost every other tool in the market, the data that you get comes straight from Google, so you know it's legit.

For example, you can use the Search Console as a rank tracker to check your site's ranking in the SERPs. You can also use it to get a feel for your site's backlink profile. Now, this isn't nearly as good as a paid tool like Ahrefs, but it's not terrible. Last but not least, you can see all of the pages that your site has indexed in Google and if you have any technical SEO problems that's holding your site back.

8. Answer The Public

Most keyword research tools get their data from the same exact place, the Google Keyword Planner. Answer The Public is a little bit different. This tool focuses on questions that people ask on forums, Quora, Reddit, blogs and on social media, and it turns those questions into awesome keywords. My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021My favorite feature inside of Answer The Public is that they have a section dedicated to versus keywords.

So, why is this helpful? In my experience versus keywords are great for SEO, that's because versus keywords usually aren't super competitive and the people that search for versus keywords tend to be pretty advanced, which means they're usually close to buying something.

For example, I recently published the post that compared Ahrefs to SEMrush. Even though this keyword doesn't get a ton of searches, the people that do search for this keyword are pretty advanced.

Remember, these aren't newbies that are looking up what SEO is or how it works, they're comparing two different paid tools. And these are the exact type of people that I want to get in front of, which is why I published that versus post. And like I said, versus keywords aren't usually really competitive, which is why I was able to rank in the top three within a few weeks.

9. Animalz Revive

Animalz Revive helps you find older content on your site that needs an update and upgrade, or both.

Before this tool came along, you had to manually find these pages in Google Analytics and it was a huge pain. But with this tool, you get a list of pages that need some TLC.My 9 Favorite Free SEO Tools For 2021 It even shows you how many visitors you're losing by not updating your old content.

So, before we end this article, I've got a quick bonus tool for you, Siteliner. Siteliner is a free technical SEO tool that scans your site for SEO problems like blocked pages, messed up redirects, duplicate content and broken links. You can even drill down into each page on your site to see if the tool found any issues.

You can also compare your site's loading speed and page size, to other sites in Siteliner's database, which is helpful for benchmarking. So, that's my list of my nine favorite free SEO tools.

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Kelly 3.4K
I'm your source for the latest in tech news and updates. Stay informed with my articles on the most exciting developments in the tech world
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