Looking for the best, truly free online tools to improve your website, marketing & business? Check this out.
Marketing + SEO
Google Webmaster Tools is Google’s free diagnostic toolset. It’s a must have for any website owner who wants organic search visitors.
Bing Webmaster Tools is Bing’s free diagnostic tool set. It’s not as essential as Google’s – but it has some cool additional features to use.
Google Keyword Planner is Google’s keyword research tool. Use it to decide on what keywords to target for SEO or to bid on for PPC.
Google Instant is the feature in Google Search that tries to guess what you’re trying to type in. It pulls from previous searches – and is very useful to deciding on content to write.
Google Trends is Google’s historical archive of search volume for specific keywords. Use it to check out trends, seasonality, or compare different terms for content & SEO. I wrote a guide to Google Trends & Correlate here.
Ubersuggest will give you all the Google Instant results for a broad search. Essential for keyword research.
WhatsMySERP will show you all sorts of keyword information about a query’s search result directly in your browser.
KeywordTool.io is a solid alternative to Ubersuggest and Keyword Planner.
Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics is an online app that will tell you traffic.
WikiGrabber will help you quickly find link opportunities on Wikipedia.
WikiStalker is an online app that will help you understand connections between topics.
MailChimp is an email marketing provider, and free up to 2000 subscribers. Great product, amazing service.
Screaming Frog for SEO is the most amazing and useful SEO tool out there. It’s not super-user friendly, but if you want to do SEO, then you should download and use this tool (free for most features).
MergeWords allows you to drop in various words, and it will combine them in every combination. Really useful for developing long-tail keywords for PPC or SEO.
GetListed will tell you exactly where and what to do in order to improve your local SEO. Absolutely invaluable.
SEO Tools for Excel will turn Excel into an SEO powerhouse. Not for beginners.
Google Webmaster Rich Snippets Testing Tool will tell show you how your page will appear in the search results – and will tell you if you are using Schema correctly.
MozBar Toolbar (download) is essential for SEO research. Use it to look at competitor websites to spy on their keywords, and how strong their site is. Use it to overlay Google search results to see if you can compete for a term.
Link Search Tool will help you dream up searches to find websites to begin your hunt for your audience and links online.
Google Places for Business Category Tool will help you figure out what business category to use when setting up your local profiles. Great for local SEO.
Guide to Geotargeting & Local PPC is a solid ebook from WordStream on how to do local PPC advertising.
Topsy is a social search engine and will help you find socially successful content ideas.
Action Cheat Sheet is a great resource to help you think of better calls to action for you pages, PPC ads, or SEO.
Local Analysis Tool is a great tool for local businesses SEO. It will give you specific improvements you can make to your local listings to become more visible.
Review Handout Generator is a quick, easy way to create instructions on how customers can leave reviews for your business online (which are key to local SEO).
Keyword Wrapper allows you to quickly create keyword match types for PPC ads.
AdWords Editor allows you to edit your AdWords campaigns offline much more efficiently.
Split Tester helps you determine statistical significance in your tests.
OptinMonster is a suite of tools for calls to action and email collection.
Social Warfare is a suite of lightweight sharing buttons.
Ruzzit is a way to find trending topics online.
Analytics + Technical
Google Analytics is helps you track the number of visitors to your site…and so much more. It’s an essential for every website owner.
Piw ik is an open-source analytics software – similar to Google Analytics, except that Google doesn’t own it. Great for webmasters who are wary or skeptical about Google.
URL Encoder/ Decoder is encoded plain text into HTML so that you can do things like write manual (free) click to tweet messages – <a href=”https://twitter.com/home/?status=”ENCODED MESSAGE GOES HERE” target=”_blank”>Tweet this</a>
Is My Blog Working is a super-simple tool that will tell you the status of your website.
Pingdom Website Speed Test will tell you not only how fast your website is, but will show you what element is taking so long to load.
Google PageSpeed Insights will tell you how fast your site is – great supplement for Pingdom
Advanced Search Operator Guide will help you learn how to use Google to find exactly what you’re looking for.
TinyPNG | TinyJPG will reduce the size of your PNG images without damaging their quality. Helps to speed up your site.
Distilled Video Sitemap Generator will help you create an XML sitemap for your videos to help Google understand them better. Very useful since video sitemaps are typically a royal pain in the…
Check My Links will visually show you what links are broken on a page. Use it to repair your own site, or find broken links to point out to other websites.
Similar Page Checker will help you detect duplicate content on your site.
YouTube Analytics is thE very much unknown cousin to Google Analytics. Learn everything about how your YouTube videos are performing.
Like Explorer will tell you the social statistics of any piece of content online (including your own). Great for researching content ideas, and seeing what has already worked.
Local Business Schema will give you the correct markup to place on your business’ contact page to help your local SEO efforts.
Code Academy will help you try your hand at coding. Even if you don’t complete it – just learning to think like a programmer will help you run a better website and ask the right questions.
Chrome Developer Tools will help you dig into problems with your website (or even learn HTML & CSS )
Schema-Creator will help you generate the correct HTML markup to take advantage of Schema use in search engines.
