SEO tools
The best SEO tools tell you what to do next. Get the free core toolbox, the paid platforms worth the money, and our guides to measuring and reporting.
Tools do not do SEO. They tell you where to look, and a tool is only worth its license if the data it produces changes what you do next week.
Five free tools cover most of the ground, and we use them on every engagement. Google Search Console is the only place you see how Google actually treats your site: impressions, clicks, queries, indexing status and Core Web Vitals, straight from the source. GA4 connects that visibility to behavior and revenue. Google Keyword Planner gives you search volumes and competition from Google's own data. Ahrefs Backlink Checker and Webmaster Tools give you a serious look at your link profile and your technical errors without a subscription. PageSpeed Insights turns page speed into a prioritized list of fixes.
Paid platforms earn their place when you need scale and history. Ahrefs and Semrush cover keywords, competitors and links in one dataset. Screaming Frog crawls your site the way a search engine does, which is still the fastest route to a full technical picture. Neither replaces judgment: a tool flags 4,000 issues, and the work is knowing which twelve matter.
The newest category is AI visibility. Classic rank trackers say nothing about whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews cite you, so measuring that has become its own discipline rather than a column in an existing report.
Guides in this section
- Ranking factors – the factors that carry the most weight for your positions, from links and search intent to Core Web Vitals and E-E-A-T.
- Algorithm updates – what Google's updates actually do, and a clear method for responding when traffic moves.
- Visibility tracking – how to measure your visibility across both classic results and AI surfaces like ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
- Search analytics and reporting – building an SEO report your management actually reads, with the right data from Search Console and GA4.
- Bounce rate – what bounce rate tells you, and which changes keep more visitors on the page.
Want the picture the tools produce without buying the stack first? Our free SEO analysis is built by hand across your technical setup, content and visibility in both classic search and AI search.
