Top free tools for SEO to boost your e-commerce business’s online visibility

Search engine optimization (SEO) remains one of the core blocks in the marketing foundation of every e-commerce brand. It helps your business get to the top of search engine results and, thus, get noticed by your target audience. At the same time, it allows you to improve user experience and appear as a more trustworthy brand. So, one way or another, you need it to make your business grow.

Getting started with optimization is easy with free tools for SEO. Today, there are tools meant to make different aspects of search engine optimization simple, and you can leverage them for your success, too. All you need is to find the right options.

Can SEO really be done for free?

SEO is a rather complex field that requires ongoing effort to achieve tangible results. It also spans a number of subfields, such as on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and technical SEO, each of which demands a special approach and tactic to succeed. Last but not least, search engine optimization is also very dynamic, as Google updates its algorithms regularly.

All these characteristics can make you believe that SEO is something that absolutely can’t be done for free. But that’s not quite true.

Given the complexity and, at the same time, the importance of search engine optimization, there are hundreds of SEO tools out there these days that are meant to help you with it. These tools come in many shapes and kinds. And while there are many paid ones that often come with more advanced features, there are also free tools for SEO that you can use.

Free solutions for SEO, of course, come with certain limitations. They might have limited functionality or restrict the number of manipulations you can perform per day, week, or month. Yet, they are still there, and they can be a good starting point, especially for small businesses and e-commerce sites. These tools can help you optimize your site without pulling too much of your budget, and we’re about to tell you about some of the best ones among them.

Best free SEO tools for E-commerce businesses

Now that you know that acing your search engine optimization is possible without paying too much for advanced solutions and services, the main question that remains is—which solutions and platforms should you try?

To help you get on the right track, we’ve compiled a list of the best options that are out there:

SE ranking

SE Ranking is one of the top-tier SEO platforms out there. Being around for over 10 years now, this SEO platform has already helped more than a million businesses, agencies, and independent SEO experts to kickstart their optimization efforts and make the most out of them.

Today, SE Ranking offers a comprehensive package of solutions that comes with a price tag. However, it also has a number of free tools for SEO that can be a good start for you.

Among the free solutions that can be found here are:

• Domain Analysis Tools
• Content Tools
• Technical SEO Tools

Additionally, the company offers a free test drive for its core solutions, such as Google Rank Checker, Website Traffic Checker, and Keyword Research Tool.

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is another all-rounded platform that finds its mission in empowering global businesses with accurate digital data. The company specializes in digital and marketing intelligence, and most of its products come at a price. However, there are also a few free products that are no less helpful.

With SimilarWeb’s Website Traffic Checker, you can get a glimpse into your competitors’ sites without paying a penny. The checker will break down the amount of traffic, its sources, and your competitors' user engagement indicators. This can help you detect weak spots in other brands’ strategies and use this knowledge for your own growth.

Source: SimilarWeb

Screaming frog SEO spider

Screaming Frog is a UK-based SEO agency. It started as a marketing agency in 1998 and gained a global reputation in the sector, along with multiple awards. Today, the company offers 360-degree marketing support that spans not only search engine optimization but also content marketing, paid social media, reactive PR, and many other paid services.

As for the free SEO tools, the company has its Spider—a smart site crawler that crawls your pages in almost no time, detects issues, and helps you identify areas for improvement. Some of the core problems it can help you with include broken links, duplicate content, URL structure, indexing issues, and many others.

Source: Screaming Frog

Google Search Console

If we’re talking about the best ways to handle free SEO, Google is definitely one of the role models to look up to. After all, it’s Google, with its algorithms and updates, that has the biggest impact on SEO trends and best practices, given its largest market share of 89.99% among search engines.

Google Search Console is Google’s primary solution for establishing, monitoring, and retaining presence in search results. It gives you a complex view of how Google sees your site, including how it crawls and indexes it. It’s a good unpaid solution for detecting and fixing a variety of issues for improving your rankings.

Source: HikeSEO

Google Ads Keyword Planner

There is no secret that keywords play a pivotal role in search engine optimization. And who can tell you better which queries are used the most than the world’s most popular search engine? Keyword Planner is meant just for that as it is a part of Google Ads—the company’s all-rounded advertising platform.

The planner enables you to tap into dozens of relevant keywords to target for your e-commerce SEO. It provides a complete statistic for every keyword, demonstrating its search volume, competition, and other metrics. With its help, you can identify high-potential keywords in nearly no time and boost your return on investment (ROI).

Source: Surfsideppc

Google Trends

Closing our list of free solutions offered by the industry’s leader, Google, follows Google Trends. To put it simply, this is another keyword-targeting helper that can tell you about the most trending topics in your target area.

Google Trends allows you to pick the country of your interest and see line graph charts that demonstrate the level of search volume for your target phrase during different periods of time. This chart can help you understand trends and seasonal fluctuations in different terms’ search volumes to adjust your strategy accordingly. This is an excellent opportunity to tap into your audiences’ demands during peak periods.

Source: Google Trends

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a global solution relied on by over a million users. Its primary focus is the performance of your site. GTmetrix easily analyzes your pages for loading speed, core web vitals indicators, performance (both in real-time and over time), and other characteristics to help you detect technical issues and improve functionality to lower bounce rates.

Now, we have to state that GTmetrics doesn’t offer a separate unpaid solution. It’s the same platform with all its core features, but you can either use a paid version or stick to the free but limited version. The latter only provides you with one monitored slot, five daily API credits, and 25 on-demand weekly tests. Though it may sound like not enough, it can be a good starting point for small e-commerce brands.

Source: GTmetrix

BrightLocal

The name speaks for itself—BrightLocal is a marketing agency that focuses on local marketing. Needless to say, local marketing, including SEO, is pivotal for small e-commerce businesses that have physical locations and want to drive both online and offline traffic. And that's where BrightLocal can help.

While it offers comprehensive solutions at a price tag, the company also has a whole set of unpaid SEO tools, including:

• Google Review Link & Place ID Generator
• Local RankFlux
• Local SERP Checker
• Local Listings Health Scanner

These solutions can help you gain valuable insights into how your business performs in local search and detect areas for improvement.

Source: BrightLocal

Alt: An example of a ranking report on BrightLocal

MozBar SEO Toolbar

Last but not least helpful on our list is Moz—a software company founded in 2004. The primary mission of the company has always been to offer people better ways to do marketing. And they seem to have achieved it. Today, Moz offers a number of products that have a solid reputation among users and are found rather helpful for marketing and SEO purposes.

While most of its solutions are paid, MozBar is meant for free SEO. It is a handy extension for the Chrome browser that gives you access to plenty of valuable insights. Namely, the extension allows you to check any site’s Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score. Apart from measuring the success of your own pages, this really comes at hand when evaluating your competitors.

Source: Moz

Conclusion

As you now know, free SEO isn’t impossible or unattainable. Although search engine optimization is a rather complicated and dynamic field that typically requires lots of work, these days, it can be handled easier at no price. All thanks to unpaid but effective solutions that are out there.

Now you have a complete list of reliable SEO tools that come for free, and that can help you take your e-commerce optimization to the next level. Be sure to give them a shot to save your team’s time and ensure greater results with less effort.