When you first start out doing SEO it is easy to be left wanting. You want AHREFs, you want Moz, You Want SEMRush, you want all of it. However, there usually isn’t the budget for all of that. Even though you want to do your best, you aren’t in position to spend $99/month on Moz. This is actually great news. While tools are great at checking on the work you’ve done, they aren’t great for actually telling you what to do or where to start. Knowing how to do SEO requires understanding the architectures of user experience and how to build a proper information architecture. These technical SEO aspects, when done manually starting out, give you a competitive advantage when you are able to budget for the rest of the tools.
What Free SEO Tools Do You Need
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Tag Manager
- Google Sheets
- Google Docs
The top two tools you should absolutely be using for SEO are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Before you can afford a keyword tracking tool, which will give you consistent, daily updates, you can utilize Google Search Console to keep tabs on your rankings. You can then monitor your overall traffic to your website through Google Analytics to measure the impact of your SEO work. Organic traffic going up is your purpose with SEO work.
From here you will want to explore Google Keyword Planner. This is the keyword tool for Google Adwords that provides you with concepts to rank for. I call them keyword concepts because Google notoriously groups keywords together, making this tool extremely difficult to use for SEO. Keyword Planner combined with Search Console, though, gives you the power to properly pick out ideal keywords to target. There are better keyword tools out there, of course, but this is a great way to get started in this realm for free.
Google Tag Manager has to SEO impact. None at all. However, you can utilize Google Tag Manager to place additional scripts on your website, manage conversion tracking, and track events on your website to determine what parts are working, and what parts aren’t. Being able to evaluate and deliver real customers to your clients is essential, and that starts with knowing how to track and understand the web visits. This partners with Google Analytics, and gives you the power to learn and grow.
Google docs and Google sheets give you the power of the cloud for free, and a tool that is used all over the world. Utilizing an open platform like Google Drive allows you to communicate better when you grow and add staff, while also providing a great resource for when you are starting out. That being said, there are advanced parts of Google Sheets that you will want to utilize. Google Sheets Lucid Charts, which is a free add on, lets you build out your site structure in a visual way. You can then design the internal links of your site, and make sure your strategy is properly implemented. This is extremely important, and almost always skipped over. Gantt Charts in Google Sheets help you with the planning and development of that strategy. Having a timeline of when and where things should be will better prepare you for a big agency.