7 Free, Beginner-Friendly Small Business SEO Tools

SEO often sounds more complicated than it is. As a small business owner, you can get started with some of the best tools in the industry for free.

These small business SEO tools are free, beginner-friendly, and will cover all your DIY SEO needs.

Many small business owners get started for free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools This enables them to access website browser and On-site audit.

Using these tools you can:

• Monitor the health of your website
• Know your backlinks
• See which keywords bring you traffic
• Track any growth or decline in SEO performance

If you are working with an SEO agency or freelancer, this is also one of the best ways to monitor what they are doing and verify the results they report to you.

getting Started

The easiest way to set up Ahrefs is with a Google Search Console account (more on this later).

You can also go directly to your website, click the “Start for Free” button, and follow the instructions to fill in the rest of the information.

If you are interested in understanding what your competitors are doing and finding out their SEO strategies, you can also try Starter plan Only $29 per month.

It allows you to monitor your competitors and find new keywords to improve your own SEO at low cost.

2. Google Search Console

Google offers a range of free tools that can be used for SEO. The most important for monitoring search visibility is Google Search Console (GSC).

It provides data directly from Google about your site’s performance in search results. This data can tell you:

• Which keywords are you ranking for?
• If you have any technical questions
• How many people clicked on your website

While it sounds like this data overlaps with the data you can access in Ahrefs, there are some limitations. This means that you will not be able to see all of your information in the GSC platform.

Here’s how the two compare:

Despite its limitations, GSC is the only tool that can provide you with data from Google about your website’s SEO visibility, so it’s an essential tool to have in your toolkit.

getting Started

If you are using WordPress, the easiest way to set up GSC is to use Google’s Site Kit plug-in. This plug-in can automatically connect your website to the following Google properties:

If your website is not using WordPress, just follow the prompts on the website GSC login page:

After clicking the “Start Now” button, you will be prompted to log in to your Google Account. You will then be guided on how to connect your website.

3. Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile (also known as Google Places or Google My Business Profile) is vital for local small business owners.

If you’ve already set up a profile, your profile might look like this:

Without one of these, your business won’t show up on Google Maps…

…and people can’t leave you a review on Google.

It also allows you to display many local keywords in Google search results, map packs, and local services ads.

Thankfully, it’s easy to set up, here’s how.

getting Started

Start with a visit this page:

Follow the instructions to set up your business information. The system will ask you to fill in the following information:

• your company name
• your business category
• your contact information
• Your location (for customers to visit)
• Your business address (even if you don’t have a store)
• your product or service
• your business hours
• A general description of your business
• Pictures of your business and its premises

Make sure to fill everything out completely. Don’t cut corners here, this is your chance to show people searching on Google everything they need to know about your business.

Google Analytics is another great free tool for small business owners. It allows you to monitor who is visiting your website and how they are interacting with your content.

You can see:

• What marketing channels did they use to find you?
• The pages they visit most
• Which pages do they convert the most on?
• How they browse your site

For SEO specifically, you’ll want to filter your reports to show data from your organic pipeline:

getting Started

If you use a WordPress website, the easiest way to get started is to use Google SiteKit plugin. You can set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console at the same time.

Or you can Please follow the detailed steps in our Google Analytics usage guide.

5. Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is like the love child between Google Search Console and Ahrefs.

It provides all search data directly from Bing and rich SEO data, which you can only access through SEO tools.

It’s not as granular as Ahrefs, but it’s far better than what you’d get from Google.

Although you may think that Bing is not that popular compared to Google, I recommend that you still set up this free tool for two reasons.

1. You can use Microsoft Clarity, a free tool for measuring conversion and user experience data on your website. It provides heat maps, click insights, and data on common user behaviors.

getting Started

Thankfully, the hard work has been done. You can set it up by connecting Bing Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console:

Otherwise, just follow the prompts. This is very similar to the process of setting up a GSC.

Unlike the other tools on this list so far, ChatGPT’s benefit as an SEO tool for small businesses doesn’t lie in providing data.

Instead, it helps implement SEO recommendations, create content, and even understand SEO data.

Here are some of my favorite simple use cases for DIY SEO using ChatGPT:

• Write a click-worthy title
• Fill in missing subtopics in existing content
• Create a search-optimized outline for your content
• Identify search intent for any keyword
• Find a list of keyword ideas
• Translate keywords
• Create, update or improve page titles and descriptions

For example, here’s a simple tip to help brainstorm article titles:

If you want to change the tone, you can ask questions like this:

Or, if you want to find granular keyword and content ideas for any topic, you can try these tips:

getting Started

7. The SEO plugin of your choice

SEO plugins and apps make it easier to implement SEO on your website. What’s best for your site depends on:

• What website builder do you use for your website?
• What features do you need
• How much budget are you willing to spend

If your website is built on WordPress, you can access free SEO plugins (such as Yoast or RankMath) to implement SEO basics (such as page titles and descriptions).

Many website builders already include basic elements like adding a page title and description. However, SEO plug-ins usually allow you to further configure or modify the following:

• Your URL structure
• robot.txt file
• sitemap file
• schema mark

You can also check out SEO plugins with other, more targeted features. For example, Ahrefs plugin Designed to help you review and monitor the performance of your content.

getting Started

final thoughts

If you want to improve your SEO, you can upgrade to Ahrefs Starter Plan Get more keyword and competitive research for just $29 per month.