There is tons of paid SEO software and toolsets out there that can help you manage your SEO processes, and many of them are worth paying for. However, Google offers it’s own set of tools absolutely free of charge. I’m going to list all of the free Google tools that I use to assist me with my SEO efforts. So, let’s begin.
Google Webmaster Tools
First and foremost, there’s Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. You don’t have to sign up for Webmaster Tools for your site to be included in Google’s search results, but doing so can help you understand how Google views your site and optimize its performance in search results.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides powerful digital analytics for anyone with a web presence, large or small. It’s one of the most powerful digital analytics solutions available. Google Analytics allows you to track your website’s traffic, goal conversions, and much more.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Page Speed Insights measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices. It fetches the url twice, once with a mobile user-agent, and once with a desktop-user agent. The PageSpeed Score ranges from 0 to 100 points. A higher score is better and a score of 85 or above indicates that the page is performing well.
Google Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner is like a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing ones. You can search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and even create a new keyword list by multiplying several lists of keywords together. A free AdWords tool, Keyword Planner can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your campaigns. Whether you’re new to online advertising or an experienced pro, you can use Keyword Planner to lay the groundwork for a successful campaign.
Google Places
More people search for businesses online than anywhere else, so it’s important to make sure your local business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps. With Google Places, creating a great listing takes just a few minutes and doesn’t cost a thing.
Google Structured Data Testing Tool
The structured data testing tool lets you check your markup and make sure that Google can extract the structured data from your page. This tool will display the markup found on a specific web page, as well as a preview of how that page might appear in Google search results. You can also see examples of extracted markup for specific information types. If you’ve created rich snippets for a Google custom search engine, you can also use this tool to preview the results.
Google Structured Data Testing Tool
Google Structured Data Markup Helper
Structured Data Markup Helper shows you how to update your site so that Google—and potentially other companies’ products—can understand the data it contains. Once Google understands the data on your site, your data can be presented more attractively and in new ways. In addition if you send HTML-formatted email to your customers, Markup Helper can show you how to change your email templates so GMail can present the data in your email in new and useful ways.
Google Structured Data Markup Helper
Google Alerts
Google Alerts are emails sent to you when Google finds new results — such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs — that match your search term. You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Web.
If you work in the SEO field I highly suggest you take advantage of these free Google SEO tools. Google has provided them for a reason (hint hint).
