The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know
Recently a “101 free SEO Tools that don’t suck” list went popular on Sphinn. I love 101 items lists and I love free SEO tools especially if the tools “don’t suck”. While checking out the list I’ve encountered some tools I haven’t been using much or been familiar with at all. On the other hand I was missing some tools I use daily. When I noticed that the list actually contains SEO tools that measure the so called keyword density I finally decided to compile my own list.
Here I want to focus on those few free SEO tools you must know to be able to practice SEO in a meaningful way.
Using 101 tools for whatever purpose is not productive. At the end of the day you got to find your set of say 10 or 12 tools you’ll use. Everything else is just playing around and wasting your precious time. Thus this list will be the size of the usual SEOptimise list, approx. 30 items. I’ll concentrate on free SEO tools here as everybody can test them this way. Some of them are freemium that is they offer basic functionality for free and make you pay for the full fledged product.
This list of the 30 free SEO tools you must know will be a mix of
- web based tools
- stand alone software
- Firefox extensions
Keyword Research
- Google Insights for Search
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool
- Google Trends
- Wordtracker SEO Blogger
- Wikipedia article traffic statistics
Site Check
- Google Webmaster Tools
- GSite Crawler
- Google Website Optimizer
- Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool
- Pingdom Tools
Link Tools
- Yahoo! Site Explorer
- Xenu Linksleuth
- Majestic SEO
- Link Diagnosis
- Link Harvester
- Social Media for Firefox
Ranking
Analytics
Various
- googlebar (not Google Toolbar!)
- Quirk SearchStatus
- SeoQuake
- SEO for Firefox
- SEOpen
- Quarkbase
Take note that I did not mention some of favorite tools because they offer no free version. Also it was important to me that you don’t need to register to use these tools. All of the tools do not require a sign up or log in with the exception of a tool by SEOMoz which is a highly trustworthy SEO provider.
Many thanks to all the knowledgeable SEO practitioners on Twitter who contributed to this list, in no particular oder:
@SEOSEM
@supaswag
@SEOHolicc
@remarkablogger
Of course this list is highly subjective. Plus, I’m quite sure I forgot and left out a tool on purpose you rather would want to see in a “must know” list. So make sure this tool gets a mention too.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Great list of super useful resources. This is going straight to my del.icio.us account. Thanks.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Great list. Some of these I already use, but it never hurts to try other options. These will come in very handy. Thanks
July 30th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
could you please list the paid ones as well ? greatly appreciated :)
July 30th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
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July 31st, 2009 at 5:05 am
Interesting Post! As of now, I know only part of the SEO tools. After seeing your article, I am aware of remaining tools. Thanks a lot :)
July 31st, 2009 at 5:39 am
Great list. I would add: http://www.websitegrader.com for analyzing your site’s ranking vs your competition and http://www.crazyegg.com for analyzing user experience via a heat map.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Wow man, this is an awesome list of SEO Tools. It helped me a lot. Thanks for sharing.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Thanks all for the feedback! Much appreciated!
Angela: Thank you. Both of them almost made it, Crazy Egg does not offer a free version though. Website Grader is a great tool for the average webmaster but I don’t use it as a SEO. I only trust my own judgment when it comes to grades. For instance it say “No Meta Keywords Found” on my page.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I’d also add the FireFox plugin Web Developer… great way to get insight into the On Page SEO factors… my favorite is the “disable cache” so that my changes aren’t held in limbo!
And of course Firebug too, for interactive changes, and speed testing.
firefox web developer direct link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
firefox firebug direct link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
July 31st, 2009 at 1:44 pm
[...] Free SEO Tools – Are You Using Them? A great list of free SEO tools from the folks at SEOptimise, if you’re not using most of these you probably should [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I would also add seomoz.org/term-extractor and seomoz.org/term-target and seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html
Thanks,
@TomaBonciu
July 31st, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Great list, looking to see what I am missing.
Thanks Much, Ben Walter
July 31st, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I was at a tech roundtable the other night and our resident WordPress guy said he swears by the All In One SEO plugin for WordPress. Said it seems to yield great results for him.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
July 31st, 2009 at 11:43 pm
whoa, had no idea there were so many. Time to check some of these out and see which ones I have been missing out on. Good post.
-Rich
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 am
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August 2nd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
wow. Good info, thanks
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:46 am
Also:
ClickTale.com (allows you to record user sessions for analysis)
myIPNeighbors.com (see what other sites are hosted on a server)
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 am
Thanks for the list, Tad, you showed a couple of new tools to me. I’m going to check them out. Also I think the free edition of SEO PowerSuite tools could be added to your list
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
There are some great tools out there when it comes to SEO and online marketing. I know the wordtracker labs have some really great stuff out there.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Nice list of tools, wikipedia rticle stats is particularly interesting if you track the rankings of the article.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
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August 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
MIA: Link Voodoo. http://www.linkvoodoo.com Great tool!
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 pm
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August 4th, 2009 at 12:58 am
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August 4th, 2009 at 3:07 am
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August 4th, 2009 at 4:07 am
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August 4th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Great list, thanks for sharing. Bookmarked!
August 4th, 2009 at 9:38 am
30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know…
This list of “must know” free SEO tools features the best tools for both pros and people new to SEO.
…
August 4th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Great List. We use most of these now but I’ll give the others a look. Thanks.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Hello everybody. Thanks for the feedback.
# Web Develeoper is a good idea.
# Firebug for SEO purposes? Nice to have.
# seomoz.org/term-extractor is great, the other two are OK but not worthy of this best of list IMHO.
# Clicktale is a good idea as well but its free version is very limited.
# myIPNeighbors.com is useful but not indispensable for SEO I think.
# Link Voodoo is weird, it makes you download a php script to your computer. I won’t allow that for security reasons.
# SEO PowerSuite is fine but it doesn’t let you save your inputs or results in the free version which is very limiting. Also their GUI fonts are sooo tiny I barely can read them.
Did I overlook a suggestion?
August 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am
[...] The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 11:22 am
great tools … use half of them
will check rest :)
August 4th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Thanks for the list of resources. I even did not know existance of some of them. It is nice to have a list of free resource in one place. Also I have recorded in my delious account.
August 4th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Very useful list. Most known but some good new tools there to ‘have a play’ with. Thank you.
August 4th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
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August 4th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Great list
There is also another keyword ranking tool. http://www.onlineseo.com
August 4th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
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August 4th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Great list of tools Tad! I agree that there are about 8-10 tools that I use most often, and you have covered most of them in your list.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
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August 4th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
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August 4th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Agree some new quality sites should be here. Domainsuperstar has excellent domain based tools – also agree with Tad Chef on Crazy Egg.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:24 am
[eng] 30 tool SEO da conoscere…
Liste ragionate di tool seo per ricerca chiavi, controllo sito, verifica ranking e link….
August 5th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Thank you for sharring. Great tools. I know half of them.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Great list – a few really useful new ones but of course also a lot of golden oldies :)
I saw this one retweeted quite a few times on Twitter today: http://www.seosupporter.com
Is in beta at the moment, but looks really good and could have a lot of potential
August 5th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know…
Kudos for a great SEO article – Trackback from SEOKudos…
August 5th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
http://www.webtraffic24.com great for estimating competitors’ visitation.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Greata and very useful list Tad. I am sending you a trackback.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:26 am
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August 6th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Take a look on http://www.webseoanalytics.com
There are 11 free seo tools and it allows you to build customized reports by using your company’s logo.
August 9th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
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August 9th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
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August 10th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Nothing about bing webmaster tool?
August 11th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Great list of SEO and covers different area.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Thanks for this tools.
Some are very good
August 11th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
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August 13th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Nice SEO-Tool collection. Thanks!
August 13th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know…
Recently a “101 free SEO Tools that don’t suck” list went popular on Sphinn. I love 101 items lists and I love free SEO tools especially if the tools “don’t suck”. While checking out the list I’ve encountered some tools I haven’t been using much or bee…
August 20th, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] 30 Freie Seo Tools: The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 5:02 am
[...] The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know – As anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows, I like free SEO tools. That’s why I enjoyed the list written by Tad Chef on SEOptimise, which includes tools like GSite Crawler and Xenu Linksleuth. The list includes a direct link to each of the thirty tools. [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 12:46 pm
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September 1st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Very helpful. Thank you. Is there a way to know what tools you listed here, or those listed elsewhere, may put our site at risk with google thinking we are using link schemes (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356)?
September 4th, 2009 at 1:15 am
While the list is good, it lacks one of the top SEO tools out there: SpyderMate!
http://spydermate.com
September 4th, 2009 at 8:07 am
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October 10th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Thumbs up for all the people providing such an informative tools and link regarding SEO .I already knew a very few of them but now it has added pretty much to my information.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Thought you would be interested in followtopia. ( http://www.followtopia.com ). It is good for backlinks, keywords, mozRank, and do follow.
December 13th, 2009 at 8:45 am
說 http://tinyurl.com/nggtyw (30個免費的 SEO 工具) http://plurk.com/p/2yr1xp
December 13th, 2009 at 9:06 am
30個免費的 SEO 工具：http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/07/the-30-free-seo-tools-you-must-know.html
December 13th, 2009 at 11:28 am
zum SEO-Stöbern nach wie vor ein guter Ausgangspunkt: 30 gratis Tools, die man kennen sollte – http://tinyurl.com/nggtyw #seo
December 24th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Free SEO Tools You Must Know
http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/07/the-30-free-seo-tools-you-must-know.html
January 1st, 2010 at 10:20 pm
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January 14th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
RT @seoptimise The 30 Free SEO Tools You Must Know | SEOptimise http://bit.ly/lUUeL