The year is almost up and it’s time to present the best free SEO tools for SEO professionals in 2020 EVERY YEAR. In my opinion, the best tools are “the best” because they service real foundation needs not fly-by-night gimmicky trends or 3rd party metrics that are not used by major search engine algorithms. Because of these reasons they are used year after year and they continue to be developed and improved upon.
These tools give any SEO real value in the form of easy to digest information that is still highly in depth. In fact, the amount of data given can arguably be overkill for smaller SEO projects (looking at you Google Analytics). Either way, I have used these 5 tools year after year as an SEO professional and I would personally recommend them to anyone looking to improve their search presence.
SEMRUSH
SEMrush is the “swiss army knife” of SEO tools. It does a lot of different things that can help search engine marketers with marketing insights. The “snapshot” of useful search engine marketing information (keyword ranking, keyword bid cost, traffic volume trends, competitor data, etc.) found in the SEO dashboard alone is worth using the tool.
SERPLab
A keyword tracking tool with a simple interface that provides free SERP (Search Eninge Results Page) checks, track and monitor your search engine keyword ranking quickly and quite accurately.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Probably the best backlink profile tool available right now. A very robust platform that gives more backlink data than any other free backlink checker. I have been using Ahrefs for years and recommend it to anyone who need backlink information on a website.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics platform offered by Google for free. Tracks and reports website traffic, and contains a dizzying amount of information. A useful tool but a common sentiment is that it is overly complicated and despite all the information it provides only a portion of it can be used to better an SEO campaign.
Google Search Console
Check indexing status, optimize visibility a website, and get organic positions for all keywords a website is being indexed for. A great compliment to Google Analytics ever since GA went dark on providing organic keyword data (not provided).
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Googles own keyword tool complete with search volume (average estimates) and PPC costs per keyword bid (range). That’s right, you can literally see what people are typing into google and how much they are typing it on an average monthly basis. This tool is a necessity for any serious SEO trying to rank specific keywords. It’s a free tool but the catch is a Google Ads account is needed with at least 1 Google Ads campaign running.