Free and paid SEO tools

Where a site ranks in Google depends on three things: its technical setup (can the search engine crawl and understand its pages?), its content (does it answer what people are searching for?) and its authority (do other sites link to it?). An SEO tool measures and diagnoses one of these three pillars, or all three at once.

It also tracks results over time: clicks, rankings for your target keywords, pages that are climbing or slipping. Without that data, SEO is done blind.

• SEO suites: Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Sistrix bring keywords, rank tracking, backlinks and site audits together in a single interface, on a monthly subscription.
• Keyword research: Google Keyword Planner and AnswerThePublic show what people type and estimate search volumes.
• Backlinks: Majestic and Ahrefs analyze the links pointing to a site and to its competitors' sites.
• Technical audit: Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Oncrawl and Lumar crawl the site the way Googlebot does to spot errors, redirects, and pages that are slow or can't be indexed.
• Content optimization: Yoast SEO and Rank Math, two WordPress plugins, along with Surfer SEO, guide how you write copy and tags.
• Measurement and reporting: Google Search Console, Google Analytics and Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) track clicks, rankings and traffic, and pull them together into dashboards.

Seven tools in this selection are completely free: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Data Studio, PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse and Google Keyword Planner, the last one as long as you open a Google Ads account, and with only volume ranges until a campaign is running. Together, they cover rank and traffic tracking, site speed and a first round of keyword research.

Others offer a lasting but limited free version: Screaming Frog crawls up to 500 URLs for free, and Semrush, Ahrefs and Moz give access to part of their data without a subscription. The “Price” filter above shows them.

A small site or a small business: start with Google's free tools (Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights). On WordPress, add Yoast SEO or Rank Math for tags and the sitemap.

A site that wants to outrank its competitors: an SEO suite becomes useful for finding keywords, tracking your rankings and analyzing competitors' links. Semrush and Ahrefs are the most complete; one of the two is enough in most cases.

A large site (thousands of pages, ecommerce): the technical audit takes center stage. Screaming Frog is the benchmark; Oncrawl, Lumar or Sitebulb take over for heavier or scheduled crawls.

An agency: a suite for analysis, a crawler for audits and Data Studio for client reports. To see which tools professionals use most, read our ranking of the most used SEO tools.

What is the best free SEO tool? Google Search Console, because it's the only one that shows data from Google itself: queries, clicks, rankings and indexed pages. Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights round it out.

How much does an SEO tool cost? From nothing for Google's tools to several hundred dollars a month for a full suite. Each tool page in this selection lists the prices taken from the vendor's official pricing page, with the date they were checked.

Semrush or Ahrefs? The two suites overlap heavily. Ahrefs keeps the edge on link analysis, Semrush on keyword research and rank tracking across many countries. One of the two is enough in most cases.