27 of the Best SEO Tools For Small Business | Free – Paid

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As a small business owner playing the SERP game, you need the best SEO tools to compete and outrank your competitors.

With the right tools, strategies, and executions, you can improve your search visibility, increase awareness, and generate more leads, and sales.

But there's a problem. There are too many tools already in the SEO market and several new players coming up with new tools and features.

This can be a problem to determine which is the right SEO software for your needs. Without guidance, proper research, and prior knowledge of the SEO tools, you could end up subscribing to a tool that doesn't fit your needs and budget.

So, in this post, you'll find tools I have personally used, that have helped improve search visibility, and I can vouch for them.

The SEO Tools You'll Find in The List

On this list, you will find tools for the following SEO task and more. You will even find tools for black hat SEO tactics.

• Keyword research
• Market explorer
• Competitive Analysis
• Keyword Gap
• Audience Insights
• Link building
• Link Analysis
• Backlink Gap
• AI-powered SEO tool
• Content editor and optimization
• Blogger Outreach
• Technical SEO Audit
• Competitors PPC Analysis
• Content outlines and editor
• And lots more...

Now, let's explore the list of...

Top 27 Free And Paid Best SEO Tools For Small Business

Semrush is a household name in the SEO world.

One of the few search engine optimization tools used by SEOs professionals and agencies worldwide.

It is one of the best-paid SEO tools for small business owners and the top choice for BIG business websites such as eBay, Quora, HP, Booking.com, etc.

Semrush is an all-in-one marketing tool with SEO features such as:

• Keyword Research and Analysis Tool.
• Link Building Tool.
• Competitors analysis tool.
• Content Research Tool.
• Backlink Gap
• PPC marketing and research tool.
• SERP Analysis.
• Rank tracking tool.
• Market Analysis Tool.
• Local SEO
• Domain Analysis Tool.
• Lead Generation and list management tool.
• And more

Semrush might not be a good fit for everyone, especially if you're a beginner with no SEO knowledge or on a tiny budget.

If your business generates a decent monthly income, and you can afford an extra $119 per month, the Pro plan is sufficient for small businesses.

It is worth mentioning here that Semrush has several tools that are worth the investment, one is the keyword magic. Keyword magic is the most powerful keyword research and analysis tool I ever used.

You can read my extensive review of the Semrush keyword magic tool tutorial here -a must-have keyword research tool for serious content marketers.

SEO Powersuite is a desktop-based SEO Software. There are four toolkits in the bundle package.

Each of these software handles specific SEO tasks but complements each other to provide a complete one-stop solution to all your search engine optimization tasks.

Link-Assistant is the SEO Powersuite backlinks analysis, research, and link-building tool. It offers six blogger outreach modules and you can automate every process of it right from the app.

Website Auditor is an on-page SEO analysis tool that crawls your site for technical SEO errors and provides recommendation fixes. It is a potent site auditor tool. I use it regularly.

SEO Spyglass is a competitor analysis tool and backlink checker tool. With over 7.1 billion web pages crawled daily, it is a massive link index database.

With SEO Spyglass, you can see incoming link data, and referring domains, analyze competitors' link profiles, and discover potential growth opportunities.

Rank Tracker is one of the best rank tracking and keyword tools in the market today.

You can track keyword position for an exact location, track SERP rankings for different keywords and search engines, and analyze keyword performance at any time.

It offers 18 keyword research methods including Keyword Gap, competitors keyword research, etc.

SEO Powersuite Features

Here are some it's helpful features worth mentioning here:

• Team Collaboration - Work with team members via cloud storage facility (dropbox integration.).
• Track Keyword positions in any search engine.
• Competitors keyword tracking and research.
• 19 keywords research strategies
• Localization keyword tracking.
• Track multiple URLs.
• Keyword SERP history and fluctuations.
• Mobile result keyword tracking.
• SERP features keyword tracking.

With the regular new features added, SEO Powersuite is one of the most up-to-date SEO software.

There are three licenses available on the website:

The forever-free license comes with feature limitations. But there is no time limit - use it for as long as possible.

The professional license cost $299/yr, while the Enterprise is billed at $499/yr. The Enterprise edition is one of the best SEO tools for agencies and top industry marketing firms.

But I have good news for you; if you download through the link below you'll get 14-day access to the premium features of SEO power suite professional at no cost.

You don't even need to enter payment details. Only an email address and your name.

Surfer SEO uses the power of AI technology to analyze your content against SERP's top ten rankings. It checks for over 500 on-page SEO signals comparing your content with the search results.

Then it suggests detailed instructions on how to optimize your content based on data-driving SEO metrics.

This allows you to model what's already working for your competitors in SERP to build on an existing winning SEO strategy.

You can use SEO Surfer to optimize existing content or a new one. The SEO Audit tool is a powerful on-page checker that allows you to optimize your content and rank higher:

You can analyze your content for:

• The average content length of top ranking pages
• Number of headings (H tags)
• NPL Entities coverage
• Missing backlinks
• Referring domains
• Keyword usage and occurrence
• Meta tags structure
• Competitor's average page speed
• And more...

You don't need to guess how to implement all these metrics in your content, the tool gives you directions. It tells you what important search queries you need to add, whether you need to remove or add more content, and the average word count.

The Site Audit tool also looks for internal linking opportunities to pass SEO link juice to your important pages. It will scan your existing articles and report-related posts from which your target page should link.

SERP Analyzer is a powerful competitor analysis tool that checks the first 50 URLs in organic results for your target keyword for over 500 SEO signals to give you detailed optimization reports for your focus keyword.

This saves you time and energy trying to guess what's working or not. You can quickly find a winning formula for writing your next blog post.

Surfer SEO Top Features

• Content Planner - Plan your content strategy with relevant topics and keywords in minutes.
• Site Audit - Audit your site, find errors and get SEO quick wins recommendations, and opportunities.
• SERP Analyzer - Get expert-level insight into your competitor's SERP ranking strategies.
• Content Editor - Optimize new or existing content for your target keyword with data-driving SEO metrics.
• Free Outline Generator - AI content outline and short paragraphs generator
• Keyword Surfer - Chrome extension to research content and keywords in SERP
• Content Editor - Google Chrome Extension for Docs

Mozbar is one of my favorite Google Chrome extensions. I can't do without it. I use it daily.

Mozbar gives you an overview of SERP top ranking pages SEO metrics such as DA/PA and links profile.

This gives you handy SEO information for link prospect outreach and content analysis.

Mozbar Google Chrome extension is one of the best free SEO tools. Your Google search result page will have additional SEO features when installed and active.

Compare the first search result below:

To this one:

Did you see the difference?

This is one of the most complete, versatile link analysis tools in the market. There are lots of features from link building, link alert, contact finder, etc., to detecting Google penalty risk links.

This tool can check for potential link penalties issues on your website. So you can act quickly before Google pulls the Hammer.

Link Research Tool checks for over 150 link data for every link profile it analyzes. And over 25 link sources combine to analyze a single URL.

Link Research Tool Top Features

• Link Detox Boost ®️ - Link recovery acceleration tool
• Common BackLink Tool (CBLT) - Advance competitor backlink profile analysis and link-building methods
• Competitive Link Detox - Discover high-profile links your competitors have.
• Competitive Link Velocity - Compared link growth in your industry and spot trends to determine if you're building too fast or too slow.
• Link Alert - Get notified when you or competitors get new links.

There are four subscription payment models and four plans to choose from.

• SuperHero small- $599/m
• SuperHero Standard - $999/m
• SuperHero Plus - $2,499/m
• Enterprise - Get a quote

However, there is a 7-day free trial of the SuperHero Small plan at $17. This gives you access to test the tools and learn how they work.

Many SEO professionals consider Ahrefs as one of the best tools in the industry.

Ahrefs prides itself as a complete, up-to-date SEO tool with historical background marketing metrics dated as back as five years in the history of that web page.

It does a lot more than you can imagine.

This page won't be enough to write about the SEO features, benefits, and use cases of Ahrefs. You need to see it yourself.

But here are a few just to mention:

• Site Explorer - Backlink analysis, organic traffic research, and competitor's paid advertising research tools.
• Keyword Explorer - Accurate keyword tool, supports 171 countries database from 10 different search engines. Get thousands of keyword suggestions from a database of over 7 billion keywords.
• Rank Tracker - Monitor keyword position in serp and get notified if something needs attention.
• Content Explorer - Get new content ideas, discover link partners, and explore the SERP with a database of more than 11 billion web pages.
• Site Audit - Get deep insights into the on-page technical factors affecting your site rankings.

Ahrefs does not offer a free trial of its tools, so you can only subscribe to paid plans on the website.

Note, the above prices are for the annual subscription. If you pay monthly, the price is up a bit.

Removeem is abacklink monitoring, Google penalty recovery, and anchor text over-optimization tool.

The tool scans your site for keyword anchor text, and brand mention, and lets you know if you're at risk of anchor text over-optimization penalty.

In its report, you don't need to worry if the brand name appears over-optimized. This will be in red, don't sweat over that. It is good for SEO, and Google loves that too.

Remove'em Top Features

• R-Score - Anchor text matching and comparison to determine the most used phrases.
• Disavow File - Export disavow file to Google search console within Remove'em
• Spreadsheet - A spreadsheet includes the task you've done to facilitate Google penalty recovery
• Email Validation Tool - Third Party email address validation check to ensure maximum delivery rate.
• Multiple link data sources - Remove'em integrates with Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic to analyze link data.
• Email Templates - Get access to tested email outreach templates to save you the trial and error tactics.

Remove'em offers three standard subscription plans on the website:

• Lifetime Account - $249 paid one-time
• Monthly - $99/monthly
• Agency - $899/monthly (more than 10 websites)

The company also offers complete link-removal services if you're like an expert to clean up your bad links.

BuzzStream is a blogger outreach tool for finding link partners, influencer marketing, networking, and relationship building.

If you want to streamline your outreach strategy, automate tedious tasks, and send high-converting email messages, Buzzstream is the right tool.

Some BIG brands that use the tool for marketing outreach campaigns include 99designs, Canva, indeed, Seer, and more.

Buzzstream is built for small and large-size businesses, whether you're a solo entrepreneur or agencies, there is a plan that fits the need and budget.

Buzzstream Top OutReach Features

• Research - Search prospects, find contact info by marketing metrics, and build contact lists fast.
• Email Message - Send personalized email messages that improve your open rate based on list segmentation.
• Manage - Build and manage relationships and collaborate with team members.
• Report - Get a detailed report on your outreach campaign performance such as the email subject lines, message, open rate, etc.

Buzzstream offers four standard plans plus a free 14-day trial period on each plan:

• Starter - $24/m
• Growth - $124/m
• Professional - $299/m
• Custom - $999/m

If you own a website/blog, you need Google analytics - period.

I don't need to start explaining why here; you need to see it for yourself.

If you want to know/understand where, how, when, what, and why - all about your website, look no further - Google Analytics is the best free SEO analytics tool.

Google Analytics lets you know what's happening on your site - how people find you, traffic sources, landing pages, exit pages, time on site, user's location, gender, new visitors vs return users, pageviews, sessions, bounce rate, etc.

Google Analytics is completely free. You only need a Gmail account to log in and create your web property.

Formerly Google webmaster tools - if you run a website/blog, you need this tool, too.

Google search console is Google's SEO tool for technical website audits. The tool lets you see errors that might prevent your website pages from indexing, ranking, and appearing for all SERP placements.

Google search console provides excellent insight into organic keyword ranking, position, impressions, search queries, top-performing pages, on-page errors, etc.

Google search console Top Features

• Sitemap submission tool
• URL inspection tool
• Google Core Web Vital assessment report
• Google Organic clicks reports
• Analyze keywords by clicks, position, impressions, country, queries, dates, and pages.
• Mobile usability report
• Page experience report for mobile and desktop
• URL removal from Google search engines request
• Index coverage report
• Website link profile overview

Google search console is free.

Page speed Insights is a testing tool that reports a web page desktop and mobile performance. It then provides recommendations on how to fix the issues affecting the page.

The tool works in two ways to diagnose a web page for page speed and performance test - it collects lab and field data and compares it against hundreds of checks to provide its report.

This allows it to capture many of the real-world bottlenecks that affect page speed.

The test report is broken down into a few metrics:

• First content painful - FCP
• Time to Interactive -
• Total blocking time - TBT
• Cumulative layout shift - CLS
• Largest content painful - LCP
• Speed Index

Though some of its recommendations may not be possible to fix, such as third-party codes affecting performance, it is worth paying attention to its detailed report if you want to improve speed and provide a better user experience.

SE Ranking is an all-in-one-SEO toolset that lets you do keyword research, site audit, off-page SEO, competitive research, track keyword position, and create branded white label reports to show clients and teams.

If you're looking for Semrush alternatives, SE Ranking is a good match. The interface and the reporting are very similar. It analyzes and categorizes SEO data in an easy-to-understand table and report.

You can analyze SEO and keyword data from over 130 country databases including the United States, and get great insight into your report.

SE Ranking Top Features

• Competitive Research - Get a detailed report on competitor's organic traffic, paid ads, keywords, backlinks, domain trust, organic traffic distribution by country, and more
• Keyword Research Tool - Run in-depth keyword research and get up-to-date information about your search term. See keyword data such as similar keywords, ranking difficulty, top-ranking pages, etc
• Backlink Checker - Get full data about any domain link profile. See their new and lost link, anchor text, link attributes, unique IP, etc
• Backlink Gap - Build quality backlinks by spying on your competitor's link profile.
• Website Auditor - Audit your site for over 130 on-page errors and get actionable tips on how to fix them.

There are other SEO tools such as

• SERP analyzer
• On-page SEO checker
• Keyword Grouper
• Index status checker
• Search engine autocomplete

SE Ranking is fairly priced and offers different subscription plans. You can subscribe to a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, six months, and annual plan.

Check out the full pricing structure on this page.

Undoubtedly one of the best content analysis, influencer marketing, and discovery tools in the market.

BuzzSumo gives you access to the archives of more than 8 billion articles on the internet. You can possibly research content ideas, find winning topics, publish high-performing articles and get influencer contact details.

BuzzSumo Top Features

• Content discovery - Get all the content ideas you need in one place and say google by to writer block.
• Content Research - Publish posts on an industry topic backed by data that's guaranteed to succeed
• Find Influencers - Research influencers and industry leaders to help you amplify your marketing efforts.
• Web Monitoring - Track web, keywords, industry updates, and brand mentions all in one place.
• BuzzSumo Chrome Extension - Analyze content and discover opportunities as you browse through the web.

BuzzSumo offers a 30-day free trial and a forever free plan. The free plan gives you access to limited content marketing and discovery features. You can subscribe to the 30-day trial plan via the web button below.

There are three standard subscription plans on the website:

Linkody is a backlink checker, management, and monitoring tool for link builders. When a web page links to you, or your link is removed, Linkody let you know.

It also reports if incoming links are pointing to a 404 error page on your site. This gives you an opportunity to fix the redirect and improves the user experience on your site.

Linkody is also a spy tool, i.e., it will email you when a competitor gets new backlinks so you can act fast to see if there are opportunities for you to tap into. You can use the tool to also manage on-page SEO factors such as title tags.

Linkody Top Features

• Link Disavow
• Analyze website landing pages
• Detect link attributes
• Link status detection
• Anchor text overview
• Competitors backlink monitoring
• Mozbar metric overview for the analyzed link
• Moz spam score
• Linking domain popularity score
• Linking domain server IP
• Top Level domain extension
• Linking domain external followed links
• Link export and import via CSV file

Linkody has five standard pricing options to choose from and 30-day free trial access. Check out the free access from the link below.

• Webmasters - $14/90/m
• Advance - $24.90/m
• Pro - $49.90/m
• Agency - $49.90/m
• Agency XL - $153.90/m

Yoast SEO is the industry self-acclaimed #1 best tool for SEO WordPress. It is loved by WordPress users and has over 5 million downloads already, making it one of the most download WordPress plugins of all time.

Yoast SEO WordPress plugin has great SEO features like:

• Automatic sitemap submission.
• On-page SEO optimization.
• Content optimization.
• Word-count checker.
• Image alt optimization.
• Content keyword analysis.
• Schema Markup
• Internal link suggestion
• Optimize for multiple keywords
• Wincher Integration
• Readability score
• Search appearance analysis
• Structure data markup, etc.

You can import SEO settings from other WordPress SEO plugins into Yoast for easy migration.

Majestic is one of those few link analysis tools that are useful - by far one of the most feature-packed SEO analysis tools. With a huge, regularly updated index, Majestic is a great tool every SEOs should try.

Lots of cool features:

• Site explorer.
• Search Explorer.
• Webmasters tools.
• Keyword Checker.
• Backlink history - dated as far back as 5 years.
• Bulk backlink checker tool.
• Clique Hunter - detect all cliques linking to a list of websites. etc.

Want to track your keyword ranking in other Google's international search results just like users will do? Like Google.co.uk, Google.com.ai, Google.com.au, etc.

Search Latte is the tool that lets you do just that without stress. This simple tool is pretty useful for international SEO professionals/agencies.

Unlike Google Page Speed Insight, GTMetrix is a page speed testing tool that analyzes the content of your web pages and reports on the average time it takes your page to load.

Then it presents possible recommendations on how to fix things up.

Like Google page speed insight, not every Gtmetrix recommendation you should take seriously.

This is because some are completely out of your control (like modifying files not hosted on your server). Or script from third-party apps for tracking and data analysis like Google Analytics code.

And some are just generic recommendations that may not apply to your situation.

Does what it says better - SERPFox is a keyword tracking tool, and in my opinion, it does that job well.

Also, it provides you with links to the tracking articles on your blog, so you know which article ranked for the search term.

nTopic is more of an on-page SEO content optimization tool.

This simple tool scans through your content for word relevancy. Unnecessary words. Then it provides possible content optimization suggestions for topical, relevant words that are likely to increase your on-page SEO content optimization.

For simplicity, you can install a WordPress plugin and start using nTopic right there in your text editor interface.

Also, you can instantly install a Google Chrome extension to analyze any web page for content and keyword relevancy.

Ubersuggest previously is a keyword research tool that tends to mimic the Google autocomplete suggestion tool. As the name implies, it is more of a keyword suggestion tool.

But after Neil Patel bought it in 2017, ubersuggest has become a complete SEO analysis tool.

Now, ubersuggest has an SEO audit tool, backlinks analysis, content analysis, keyword ideas tool, etc.

Neil Patel has continually improved the quality of the SEO tool by adding more SEO features regularly to compete against the likes of ahrefs, Moz, etc.

I use UberSuggest for competitor's backlinks analysis regularly. It is beneficial for uncovering competitors' backlinks profiles that you can tap into.

If you're not so sure whether your website has been hit by a Google algorithm update, notice a sharp drop in your organic traffic.

This simple tool lets you discover exactly when the incident occurs so you know if you've been hit by any of the Google updates - Panda, Penguin, Mobile Friendly, Core updates, etc.

Link Explorer is Moz's creation and one of the most reliable versatile backlink analysis tools on the planet today. Moz link explorer will check how many inbound links a page has acquired in the last 90 days, total backlinks to the page, and domain root.

Also, it provides the page and domain authority of a URL. This estimate of the SEO strength a given web page might possess to compete for organic search traffic.

Many SEOs marketers would argue that Google's own free keyword research tool is not the best keyword research analysis tool out there.

The fact remains Google is the king when it comes to organic search traffic. So, when Google offers you a tool that researches keyword databases - you'd better use it.

Keywordtool.io is one of my favorite free keyword research tools. Though, you're limited to keyword research features in the free plan.

If you want to generate a list of related long-tail keywords that you can target in your content, keyword.io is a helpful free keyword research tool to try.

Input your seed keyword, and the keyword tool will generate a list of long-tail keyword ideas you never thought of. It categories the result into 3 sections:

You can filter the search results by excluding negative keywords you don't want. Run your keyword research by a particular search result type.

The keyword tool also provides other keyword data like search volume, CPC estimate, keyword trend, and competition.

Since I started using Google Trend regularly, I have seen how helpful the keyword research tool can be. Google trend is one of the free keyword research tools on the list.

Google trends help you understand the popularity of a search phrase over time. It helps in knowing the trend curve of a given search phrase, and its best use to discover search terms your target audience uses to find relevant information.

While I was writing the headline of this post.

I was faced with options to either use "premium" or "paid" in the headline above. So, I headed over to Google Trends and typed in my search queries to compare which word had been used mostly for the past 12 months.

As you can see in the image below, the word "paid" is mostly used by users to search for paid SEO tools. The word "premium" seems to be heading downwards, while "paid" is on the rise.

This is good for writing keyword-rich content that is well optimized to meet users' and the search engine's interests.

You're speaking the language of your users while optimizing for search engines too.

Many SEO tools today make it difficult to know which one is best for the job. You don't have to use them all. Pick one or two for a task and learn how to use them in the best way.

Thank you for reading this far, but not surprisingly, this list is far from being complete. What are your favorite SEO tools?