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When it comes to getting started with SEO and digital marketing, there’s a whole lot of different tools and techniques out there that can help SEO beginners.
From barebones, free tools to complete premium SEO software suites, here are eighteen of the most useful tools for any beginner looking to flesh out and refine their site SEO and data analytics approach.
Google Search Console
Free Features? Yes!
Useful For: Website analysis, keyword research, error reports and alerts.
Google Search Console is great for more surface-level research and analysis. Providing the top 1,000 backlinks and organic keywords, this is a limited tool, but it definitely has its uses for SEO beginners. It’s worth noting that other major search engines have their own search consoles, but Google is the biggest, so we went with this one here.
PageSpeed Insights
Free Features? Yes!
Useful For: Testing that all-important web page speed.
We’ve known for a long while now that page speed is hugely important, which is exactly why you need to know exactly how speedy and quick to load your website is, and that’s where PageSpeed Insights can step in, giving you all the data you need to get things up to speed.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Free Features? Yes, there’s a free version available, but this is a yearly subscription service.
Useful For: Web crawler tool, great for analysing the structure of a site.
Testing your website for any weak points as far as user experience and other key elements are concerned, this is a tool any technically-minded SEO beginners should have in their arsenal. Perfect for delivering all the data you need to refine and optimise your site.
ProRankTracker
Free Features? Not really, there is a free trial though!
Useful For: SEO rank tracking and reporting.
Perfect for keeping an eye on your websites ranking and SEO performance, ProRankTracker is an extremely useful third-party service perfect for keeping an eye on how you perform on different keywords. This is hugely necessary when it comes to getting the full picture of your SEO performance.
Answer The Public
Free Features? Yes, but there is a premium version too.
Useful For: Content creation, especially getting those ideas together.
It can be hard to know which way to take your SEO content, even when you’ve got a solid keyword plan, getting fresh ideas together for your content can get tricky. Answer the Public can throw up a ton of useful, and some not so useful, suggestions. Stay on keyword and keep your blog regularly topped up with fresh posts without the headache of struggling to come up with new ideas.
Google Analytics
Free Features? Yes!
Useful For: Website analytics and performance tracking.
While there are plenty of analytics services out there, Google Analytics is still a solid, reliable choice, perfect for keeping track of things on your site. This can be a great place to start for a beginner looking to get a solid handle on their sites overall SEO performance, and while you will find it useful to supplement this with other, potentially free, tools, this can provide a solid base of information to work from for most websites.
Clicky Web Analytics
Free Features? Free if you make less than 3,000-page impressions daily!
Useful For: It’s another analytics tool, perfect for a beginner with a small business to grow.
This is another useful tool for beginners with smaller businesses looking to get to grips with their analysis and SEO, and the fact it’s completely free for smaller businesses is a great way to start using a premium-quality tool while your business is still growing.
Majestic
Free Features? Nope.
Useful For: In-depth backlink analysis.
This one is perfect for really digging into the details and nitty-gritty of your backlinks, making sure you have the quality links you need and weeding out the less-than-ideal ones. Plenty of useful data to be found here.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Free Features? Nope.
Useful For: Monitor SEO health, backlinks and keyword info.
This is a great general tool, offering plenty of great functions and elements in one suite. This makes it a good place for a beginner to start out, although it is a premium service. It can be worth investing in one solid SEO tool suite and supplementing that with the many other useful free tools that are available out there.
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
Free Features? Free for the top 100 backlinks!
Useful For: Checking out your website and competitor backlinks.
Great for finding potential backlink opportunities that your competitors might already be taking advantage of, pointing SEO beginners in the right direction.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Free Features? Free for the top 100 backlinks!
Useful For: Checking out your website and competitor backlinks.
Great for finding potential backlink opportunities that your competitors might already be taking advantage of, pointing SEO beginners in the right direction.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Free Features? Not really, you need to run a campaign to use.
Useful For: Search volume, competition, suggested terms data.
This is another potentially useful tool you can use to keep abreast of your site’s performance, offering a wide range of useful data and a fairly intuitive straightforward interface, great for the beginner. Not many free features, however.
SERPSim
Free Features? Yep!
Useful For: Perfecting your website’s Google SERP snippets.
When it comes to making sure that your posts are performing are well as they can be, making sure that your snippets are sharp and functional is vital. SERPSim helps you do exactly that, checking and refining your Google SERP snippets.
Google Trends
Free Features? Yes!
Useful For: Keeping on top of all the current trends.
Straightforward and free, Google Trends is perfect for watching out for and keeping abreast of new and developing trends. When catching the wave of a new trend can be a hugely powerful element in a digital marketing approach, keeping an eye on developing trends is vital, especially for SEO beginners.
Ahrefs’ SEO toolbar
Free Features? Some technical and on-page SEO features are free, but premium is required for other features.
Useful For: Keeping quick and easy tabs on your site performance.
This free Chrome and Firefox toolbar plugin allow you to take a regular look at how your site is doing, providing analysis on many of the different features and elements of your page, extremely conveniently.
Moz Local Listing Score
Free Features? Free, but only works in the UK, US and Canada.
Useful For: Seeing how your brick-and-mortar business is performing online.
This is a useful tool when it comes to having a quick look at how your business is performing online, providing lots of handy local info that you can draw upon to refine your business’s online performance, it even throws in some actionable hints and tips, making things easier for SEO beginners.
Yoast SEO
Free Features? Plenty, but premium is very worthwhile.
Useful For: Easy on-site SEO optimisation on WordPress
This is an extremely straightforward SEO optimisation tool, perfect for the beginner looking to refine their website, getting everything as optimised, refined and high-performance as possible. The free version has a lot of useful elements, but the paid premium tool is great too.
SemRush
Free Features? Not especially, but plenty of free trials available for the premium services.
Useful For: Pretty much everything SEO, data analytics and digital marketing, but remember this is a premium service.
SemRush is a great platform for anyone looking to step up their digital marketing game. From SEO to content marketing, competitor research, to PPC and all the way over to social media marketing, all on the same platform.
SimilarWeb
Free Features? Yep, but the paid version has more data points.
Useful For: Getting a snapshot of your competitor’s online performance.
Keep abreast of the competition, this tool includes lots of useful data points, from traffic sources, performance, locations, etc. Perfect for SEO beginners, doing competitor research, with plenty of free features, and an intuitive enough interface for beginners to get a handle on quickly and easily.
