While we may have talked about the basic concept of keywords in the past, such as determining the vernacular of your target audience then focusing your efforts on those keyword phrases, we had only touched slightly on the tools that small business owners can use to help them discover which one of those phrases are the most potent to use. While it is generally good practice to use a blend of both low-traffic, niche keywords and high-traffic yet generic relevant keywords to cast the widest net, actually knowing what those phrases’ monthly global searches are, as well as any potentially useful permutations of the keyword, is invaluable.
Unfortunately, not every small business has an unlimited budget when it comes to SEO, which means that knowing which free SEO reliable resources and tools exist becomes central to any small business’s marketing plan. So if you would like to get a leg up on the competition in the SERPs without having to break the bank doing so, here are some useful, and largely free, SEO tools to help you turbocharge your marketing efforts.
ScreamingFrog SEO Spider
The free version of this program allows for up to 500 URIs within a domain to be scraped. Hitting the cap is typically not a problem for most small business owners, but the paid premium version of this software removes this cap.
This tool is invaluable, in that it can produce reports for a variety of items, such as: H1, titles, meta descriptions, error codes, and so much more. These reports can be downloaded for a variety of uses, such as optimization and troubleshooting purposes.
Google Search Console
Once you are signed into your Google account and your site has been added as a property, Google Search Console can help siteowners with a plethora of helpful SEO tasks, such as:
submitting new sitemaps
identifying pages that are indexed, non-indexed, mobile-friendly, etc.
detecting slow loading times or other performance issues
checking both internal and external links
Pro Tip: External links, or rather links on other sites that point to your’s, can often be vetted for further keyword and/or onsite optimization opportunities.
Google My Business
Setting up a Google My Business account takes less than an afternoon, and when done right, can place your business towards the top of its respective space. Google My Business gives business owners an opportunity to list their business name, contact information, hours, as well as a description and rundown of the services that are provided. These can afford the business a better opportunity of being listed in local results, and is a significant portion of NAP citation and local SEO strategy for many SEO marketing firms.
SEOquake
From the makers of SEMRush comes SEOquake, a Chrome extension that provides a quick analysis of a webpage and provides:
a check for critical onpage issues
the prominence of the doman based on the number of pages and backlinks pointing to it
a keyword density check
This tool, while not as in-depth as SEMRush, can also be used for checking competitor page performance and potential keyword phrases.
PageSpeed Insights
When a URL is entered into this program, a check is ran on its load speed, meaningful paint speed, and numerous other metrics. A slow load time does not make for a good user experience, and can increase your bounce rate (i.e. would-be customers leaving your page to go somewhere else) if it takes too long to load.
Once the program is done scanning the URL, it will generate a list of potential fixes that may address the specific issues it found, such as reducing extraneous CSS/HTML, etc.
How Little Egg Solutions Can Help
We are Little Egg Solutions, a full-service white hat SEO marketing firm. If you find that you do not have the time to run these checks or download these tools yourself, we can help. Our team has over 30 years combined experience in the digital space, and can certainly help your little egg grow. If you would like to know more about how we can help, please give us a call. We’d love to hear from you.