Google SEO tools are designed to help business owners and marketers optimize their SEO strategies and take performance to another level. Google SEO software diagnoses website issues, helps with keyword research, tracks industry trends, and provides critical insights to help businesses achieve their digital marketing goals.
Our experts outline nine free Google SEO tools that businesses should use to stay ahead of the competition.
Table of Contents
9 Free Google Tools To Grow Your Business
As Google processes nearly 6 million searches each minute, it’s very likely that it’ll be the primary source of visitors to your website. Therefore, you need to optimize your strategies to align with Google’s requirements, and the best way to do that is by utilizing the tools it offers.
These free Google tools for SEO will help take performance to the next level:
- Google Search Console for SEO Performance
- Google Analytics for Website Insights
- Google Alerts for Brand Mentions
- Google News for Up-to-Date Information
- Google PageSpeed Insights for Performance Metrics
- Google Business Profile for Local Marketing
- Google Keyword Planner for Keyword Research
- Google Schema Markup Testing Tool To Optimize Structured Data
- Google Trends for Industry Insights
1. Google Search Console for SEO Performance
With Google Search Console, you can track page impressions, indexed pages, website issues, keyword rankings, and overall website performance. To ensure your website is working as it should, this tool offers a wide range of tests on different factors:
- Overall website health: Google Search Console provides updates on the overall health of your website, alerting you instantly to any issues such as malware attacks, hacking attempts, or content removal.
- Sitemap checking: If you’re working on indexing your site, this helpful feature analyzes sitemaps and suggests optimal strategies to help you rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs).
- Site issues: Site issues such as bugs can prevent Google from indexing your page. Additionally, page speed issues may lead to penalties from Google. These tools can pinpoint any problem areas and help you resolve them.
- Link analysis: This Google SEO tool also analyzes all links on your site to ensure they’re working. You can track these links and monitor the performance of campaigns or pages based on the traffic they generate.
- Search results performance: It also helps ensure your website is getting the traffic and engagements you need to succeed.
- Keyword research: Using this tool, you can identify the top-performing keywords that drive traffic to your site, which helps you optimize pages to increase traffic.
- Click-through rate: You can also analyze click-through rates for specific campaigns, web pages, and content types to see what’s working and identify areas for improvement.
- URL inspection: You can check specific URLs for insights into performance and potential crawling or indexing issues
You can leverage the information that Google Search Console provides to identify elements that are hurting your SEO rankings. It’s a keyword tool, cybersecurity alert system, and performance analyzer all in one. Through this tool, you can ensure you have a website that makes an impact on search algorithms and your target audience.
Expert insight: Entrepreneur and web influencer Neil Patel highlights the importance and power of SEO in ensuring your website succeeds. He outlines the importance of staying up to date on analytics, ensuring mobile friendliness, using keywords, and building links, which are all huge determinants of how Google ranks your site.
2. Google Analytics for Website Insights
With the Google Analytics tool, you can measure website traffic, conversion rates, and ad performance. You can also learn about your current audience, what kind of content they are looking for, what they interact with most, and how they engage with your website.
Google Analytics 4 is the latest iteration of this cutting-edge tool, with new integrations, better quality analytics, and an influx of new features to gain even more specific and accurate insights into your website’s performance, audience, and functionality.
These insights give you the complete picture of the customer journey, offering ways to improve your marketing plan by giving you actionable paths with trackable results. Google Analytics also presents your data in an easily digestible format and provides you with unique data insights.
To give you a better overview of Google Analytics’ use, here’s an example:
Le Petit Marseillais, a company that falls under the umbrella of Johnson & Johnson, utilized Google Analytics to distinguish between true traffic and post-click traffic across multiple campaigns they ran for a new product line:
- The team [at Le Petit Marseillais] used DoubleClick Campaign Manager to plan, execute, and measure Les Petits Bonheurs’ campaigns and leveraged Google Analytics 360 to measure user activity on the brand’s website. The full integration empowered Johnson & Johnson to discover and create valuable audiences.
- They used their YouTube channel audiences to target users likely to be interested in Les Petits Bonheurs’ products. They then used Google Analytics 360 to segment website visitors into different audiences based on visit durations and specific on-site behaviors.
- DoubleClick Search allowed them to create further audiences based on users’ previous keyword searches. These methods of finding the right viewers and serving relevant ads at scale paid off; Johnson & Johnson France increased reach among their target by 19% and saw a 21% improvement in cost per unique user.
Thanks to this free Google tool, the team at Le Petit Marseillais gained access to data that helped them more effectively target audiences and gain insights into how users interacted with their ads and their content. This led to significant improvements that will continue to drive traffic and increase engagement.
3. Google Alerts for Brand Mentions
Use Google Alerts to receive notifications for new articles, websites, or other mentions of a specific topic or organization. It detects changes across the web and sends email alerts outlining these mentions.
When you create a Google Alert, you can set how often you want to receive notifications, the type of content or website you want to track, the geographical region for results, and how many results you wish to receive.
These are the benefits of Google Alerts:
- Track brand mentions: This helps in social monitoring by providing real-time updates whenever your brand or products are written about. It provides data on who is writing about your offerings, what they say, and potential informational gaps.
- Keep up with the competition: You can also use Google Alerts to keep an eye on your competition. You can follow what’s being said about them and how your mentions stack up in comparison.
- Track industry trends: It’s also a valuable tool for staying on top of emerging trends and industry developments. By performing active social listening, you ensure you don’t miss out on a golden opportunity.
Staying on top of trends and setting up these alerts will help you identify exciting content opportunities for a blog or product pitch. There is no better way to brainstorm ideas than to pull directly from what is being created and sought after.
4. Google News for Up-to-Date Information
Google News is a free tool that keeps you up to date on the latest news stories and topics of interest based on your preferences. It’s ideal for finding timely article topics or conversations to jump in on.
With Google News' advanced settings, you can quickly and easily search for topics and stories by filtering them by date, region, category, and website. This functionality is perfect for finding a timely story in a specific area or category. You can then delve deeper to try and understand the topics of interest in your niche.
With up-to-the-minute alerts about breaking news, trending topics, and market insights, Google News is a vital tool for creating content, coming up with new stories, understanding your competitive landscape, and maintaining a unique and fresh content strategy in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
5. Google PageSpeed Insights for Performance Metrics
PageSpeed Insights is a fantastic tool for analyzing loading times on any given webpage; all you need to do is plug in the URL and the free Google SEO software provides real-time performance markers to help you optimize your page speeds.
Using data from the Chrome User Experience Report, PageSpeed Insights reports on two distinct metrics: First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOMContentLoaded (DCL). The calculated averages are then compared with the Chrome User Experience Report to determine whether your web page runs fast, slow, or average.
PageSpeed Insights also provides the following:
- Optimization score: This determines how well the page follows common best practices when it comes to performance in two categories: time to above-the-fold load and time to full page load. The score is a number out of 100: above 80 is good, between 60 and 79 is medium, and below 60 is low.
- Page suggestions: This feature provides insights into whether a page's layout, appearance, or functionality can be altered for better results. The tool also offers ways to improve website speed and rankings to attract a larger audience.
6. Google Business Profile for Local Marketing
If you have a storefront, you want more visibility — not just online, but in person. Creating and optimizing your Google Business Profile will help you show where your audience is and bring them to your door.
Your business profile — including your business name, address, phone number, operating hours, and detailed directions — will appear in Google Search and Maps, making it easier for nearby customers to find you. An optimized listing improves local SEO performance and puts your business at the top of “near me” search results.
Furthermore, positive reviews on your listing will increase trust in your business and encourage potential customers to support your offerings.
7. Google Keyword Planner for Keyword Research
Using Google Keyword Planner, you can perform extensive keyword research and pinpoint words and phrases most used in your niche. With these keywords, you can create content that effectively reaches your target audience and deliver content they’re actively searching for.
By identifying which words and phrases generate the most traffic, you can also estimate your budget and strategize accordingly. You can further break down keyword research results by geography, gender, interest, and platform to better target your audience and find the phrases that will give you the best results.
8. Google Schema Markup Testing Tool To Optimize Structured Data
The Schema Markup Testing Tool enables web admins and SEO professionals to ensure their site's structured data markup is correct and optimized. Incorporating structured data into your SEO strategy can be a game-changer, leading to improved visibility and higher click-through rates in search results.
Here's why the Schema Markup Testing Tool is a must-use for your SEO strategy:
- Validate your structured data markup: Ensuring that your structured data is correctly implemented is essential for rich results and featured snippets, which can make your search listings more attractive and informative.
- Identify and debug errors or issues: Correcting these errors is crucial to ensure that your rich results or structured data features will not be marked invalid by search engine algorithms.
- Visualize structured data on mobile and desktop: With the growing importance of mobile optimization, this feature ensures your structured data looks great on all platforms.
- Uncover opportunities to boost your content. Rich results, such as recipes, job listings, and more, can make your content stand out.
- Track performance. When you know how your structured data is performing in search results, you can gain insights into potential issues that need to be addressed.
9. Google Trends for Industry Insights
Google Trends is more than just a tool for SEO; it's a valuable resource for content marketing, social media planning, and overall digital strategy. By harnessing its capabilities, you can ensure that your website remains relevant, engaging, and in sync with what your target audience is searching for.
With Google Trends, you can accomplish the following:
- Discover popular search queries related to your industry or niche: It provides valuable insights into the popularity of specific keywords and long-tail search terms, enabling you to focus your content creation and optimization efforts.
- Access data on seasonal trends: This is crucial for businesses that depend on specific times of the year, such as holidays or annual events.
- Explore search data by location: This can help you tailor your content and target strategies to specific geographic areas.
- Look up related queries: Use Google Trends to uncover ideas for new content or keywords to target. It can help you identify emerging trends and capitalize on them.
- Access real-time data: This tool is invaluable for staying updated on the latest developments, news, or events that could impact your SEO strategy.
- Compare search interest for multiple terms: You can gauge the relative popularity of multiple topics. This can be helpful for competitive analysis and identifying areas where you can gain a competitive edge.
Keeping up with what people are searching for, trending topics, and changes in search interest over time can help improve your ranking on SERPs.
Free Google SEO Tools: Key Takeaways
Google is the most-used search platform in the world, and it is important to learn what it wants from content to succeed. These free tools simplify the process of streamlining SEO strategies, putting you one step closer to running a website that sees results.
Don’t waste time hoping your website will suddenly perform on its own. To develop robust digital marketing and SEO strategies, you need the best tools to gather advanced analytics and insights to guide you.
Alternatively, you can partner with a top SEO agency to take your website performance to the next level.
Free Google SEO Tools FAQs
1. Are there any good free SEO tools?
Yes, there are several good free SEO tools available: Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and Trends are just a few examples. These tools provide valuable insights into website performance, keyword research, and trend analysis, making them essential for creating SEO strategies that work.
2. Which SEO tool is most accurate?
Google Search Console is one of the most accurate tools as it directly connects with Google's search engine, providing precise data on your website's performance and how it appears in search results.
