Shopify Affiliate ProgramBSA advertise PAgeOne Curator
Home > SEO > Top Ten Free SEO Tools in 2012

Top Ten Free SEO Tools in 2012

by Karen Lee on September 6, 2012

SEO Tools 2012
221 Flares 221 Flares ×

A recent SEO Industry survey indicates that most people or organizations that are somehow involved in SEO uses tools to help them do a variety of things, including, keyword research, monitoring visitors behavior, backlink and link profile analysis, monitoring rankings, etc.

No matter what job you do, choosing proper tools will save your time and make your task a little easier. As SEOer, making full use of the below 10 free SEO tools, you will deeply understand the market and help you choose the proper niche for your site.

1. Google’s Keyword Tool

google adwordsAt the very beginning of building a website, you need to learn well about the competition of your product. Enter one keyword or phrase, Google Keyword Tool will help you find related words or phrases. Thus, according to your human and financial resources, select proper keywords for your site.

2. Google Trends

google trendsGoogle Trends shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The horizontal axis of the main graph represents time, and the vertical is how often a term is searched for relative to the total number of searches, globally. Of course, you can select regions and years according to your needs.

google-trends

Besides, Google Trends can also help you to compare the trends of searches between two or more terms, separating terms with comma.

googletrends

3. Google Insights

google insightOn August 5, 2008, Google launched Google Insights for Search, a more sophisticated and advanced service displaying search trends data. Unlike Google Trends, Google Insights for Search provides a visual representation of regional interest on a country’s map. It displays top searches and rising searches that may help with keyword research. Results can be narrowed down with categories that are displayed for each search terms. Test drive the tool here.

google insights

4. SEO Quake

SEOquake is a popular and handy analytic seo-tool for Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers. It helps to obtain information about any site for a wide range of parameters such as page rank, Google index, Alexa and many others. Keyword Density tool serves to demonstrate a number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page. SEOquake has a parameter that highlights noffolow links.

seo quake

5. SearchStatus

search statusSearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and SeaMonkey that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialized needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

The SearchStatus extension appears at the bottom of the browser on the status bar. If you choose to view backward links for a particular page, they open in new tabs in the same browser window.

6. Google Analytics

google analyticsGoogle Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.

Track Visitors

GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Query Terms

GA can collect query terms which visitors use to reach your site. You will get inspiration to target new keywords for your site from these collected terms which you might not pay attention to.

Besides, GA can also offer other information about your site, such as landing pages, exit pages, page views, bounce rate, and new visits, etc. GA is the most widely used website statistics service, just have a wonderful experience now.

7. Google Webmaster Tool

Google Webmaster Tools is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. Meanwhile, you can check “Search Queries” led to your site, and dig new keywords for the site, and “Links to your site” tool tells who links the most, your most linked content, and how your data is linked.

While Google webmaster tools is a must use for your SEO, don’t forget to check out Bing’s new webmaster tools, where, among other things, helps you to fix on-page SEO problems on the fly.

8. Backlink Watch

This is a backlinks research tool, which can list at most 1000 backlinks for any site your want to check. Besides backlinks URL, it gives you Anchor Text, PR, OBL, and Flag.

backlink watch

9. Copyscape

copy scapeCopyscape is a free plagiarism checker. The software lets you detect duplicate content and check if your articles are original. This is particularly an excellent tool if you are accepting guest post on your blog/site.

10. HTTP Request and Response Header

View request and response header of a HTTP connection, HTTP status codes and HTML source.

http request

Conclusion

With all these ten free SEO tools in 2012, you can target your keywords properly, analyze your competitors easily, and improve your site quality quickly.

More SEO Stuff:

221 Flares Twitter 85 Google+ 15 Facebook 9 StumbleUpon 94 LinkedIn 10 221 Flares ×

Article by

This post is written by Karen Lee. She is an SEO at YOYBUY.COM. YOYBUY is one of the oldest and most reliable taobao shopping agents in China, helping foreign people buy items from almost all Chinese online shops (B2C).

Karen has written 1 articles at iBlogzone.com

{ 61 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Bhushan
Twitter:
September 6, 2012 at 12:12 pm

Google Analytics is one of my favorite tool.I can say this is too good.
Karen i can simply say you have make here a great mash-up of some awesome tools.
search status is Very good Firefox plugin which tells us about page-rank of page.

Thanks for your great work.I appreciate your post.
Bhushan invites you to check out ..Computer Inventory SoftwareMy Profile

Reply

2 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 2:26 am

Thanks for your comment.
Google Analytics is an necessary tool for any SEOer, make full use of it, we can get more valuable information for our site.
Search status provide us a quick way to get page-rank of page.

Reply

3 Ryan Biddulph
Twitter:
September 6, 2012 at 12:59 pm

Keep an eye on your metrics. Adjust, prosper. I am more appreciative of awesome tools like these now after months of ignoring metrics. To my detriment of course ;)

Thanks Karen!

RB
Ryan Biddulph invites you to check out ..Internet Marketing Training – 3 Simple Steps to Grow Your List with BloggingMy Profile

Reply

4 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 9:30 am

Great, thanks for your comment.

I still believe these tools are useful if you make full use of them.

Reply

5 Luigi September 6, 2012 at 2:09 pm

My favourite tools are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. “Backlink Watch” has caught my interest, too: it could be useful, if you want to monitor your backlinks or simply need to see where your competitors get theirs. I haven’t found the link, though.

Ciao from Italy

Reply

6 DiTesco
Twitter:
September 6, 2012 at 3:10 pm

Hi. Just Google it :) or go here > backlinkwatch dot com

Reply

7 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 9:24 am

i thinks you have found backlinks watch, have you? by the way, thanks DiTesco

Reply

8 Sanjeev
Twitter:
September 6, 2012 at 6:38 pm

I have used Google Adwords but never used Google Trends till now, looks interesting. Some of the keyword trends are displayed in Keyword tool, is it any different than that?
Sanjeev invites you to check out ..5 Must Have WordPress Plugins For Amazon AffiliatesMy Profile

Reply

9 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 9:42 am

You’d better try Google Trends, which allow you to select regions and time accordingly, meanwhile, it will help you compare multiple query terms easily.

Reply

10 Joe Boyle
Twitter:
September 6, 2012 at 9:55 pm

I’m very weary of putting too many eggs in the SEO basket, but some great tools, nonetheless. I’ve always been quiet fond of Google Webmaster Tools – it provides some great value even for non SEO purposes (like finding 404 errors that I can redirect for ease-of-use for visitors – extremely helpful). As for the rest, I’ve heard of the majority, and will tackle those that I haven’t (like that Firefox plugin!). Great post!
Joe Boyle invites you to check out ..What Your Sidebar Actually NeedsMy Profile

Reply

11 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 9:49 am

Thanks, Google Webmaster Tool is really awesome, which will give us valuable infomation for our site improvement.
Hope you try other recommended tools here, you will be surprised.

Reply

12 Rich
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 3:05 am

Wow, nice collection of SEO-related tools! I’ve used several of them already, but I’m going to be checking out the SEO Quake extension and Backlink Watch. they look very useful! Also, thanks for mentioning Bing Webmaster Tools – I’ve been meaning to look into this!
Rich invites you to check out ..King of the Dwarves!My Profile

Reply

13 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 9:54 am

Glad to hear that, just try these that you didnot used before, and waiting for your good news.

Reply

14 Heather Stone September 7, 2012 at 4:32 am

Not surprising that a number of these tools come directly from Google or that Google Analytics is certainly not the only tool helpful in this area. Thanks for sharing some of the other lesser known tools too.
Heather Stone invites you to check out ..Facebook Says “No More” to Fake Likes and FansMy Profile

Reply

15 Sai Krishna
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 5:01 am

Almost all tools was very important for a blogger who deals with SEO, I use above mentioned all google tools very often. Google is king of SEO :)
Sai Krishna invites you to check out ..Best Navigation Apps For AndroidMy Profile

Reply

16 Karen
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 9:57 am

yes, suitable tools will make our work easier, and they will give some values for us to improve our site.

Reply

17 Faissal Alhaithami
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 12:29 pm

How powerful your site’s SEO is going to be depends a lot on what kind of tools you have in your arsenal. I think you have covered all those tools without using which SEO can’t be improved.

Thanks.
Faissal Alhaithami invites you to check out ..How to Increase Your Social Media Fan Engagement With Web FormsMy Profile

Reply

18 Karen
Twitter:
September 8, 2012 at 1:42 am

right, we need to select proper tools for ourselves among hundreds of SEO tools, which will help us to improve user experience, and give us nice advice on how to get ideal rank on Search Engine.

Reply

19 neha September 7, 2012 at 12:57 pm

Great tools. I appreciate all of these tools.because i can’t improve the ranking of our site without SEO tools. and I still believe these tools are useful if you make full use of them.thanks for sharing.

Reply

20 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:17 am

Glad to hear that, hope these tools help you to get ideal rank on search engine.
Lucky you!

Reply

21 Jenni September 7, 2012 at 4:46 pm

Great collection of tools …very useful share
Seo is really an awesome job to do and i love it
Thanks for sharing this useful information with us

Reply

22 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:19 am

Thank you for your reply, hope these tools give you lots of help.

Reply

23 Joe Seals
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 6:00 pm

I use most of these and have come to count on them for my SEO needs. As for #8 Backlink Watch, I am not a big fan of that site. They don’t update very often or something. I try them almost weekly but I always shows that I have the same 791 backlinks. I have even removed some links from one of my other sites to see if they would still show up and they do. So for almost the last 3 months the number has stayed the same. Not sure why that is.

Thanks for the tips!
Joe Seals invites you to check out ..Interior car detailing, your health depends on it.My Profile

Reply

24 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:29 am

Thank you Joe. Actually, we cannot depend on only one tools for any research. there are some other backlink research tools for you: ahrefs (dot) com, and bing webmaster tools are also excellent tools.

Reply

25 nilesh
Twitter:
September 7, 2012 at 7:26 pm

Hey Karen, You are a great writer and the information on SEo is always welcomed by me. In all these 10 tools copyspace I always use to make my blog away from copyright case.

Reply

26 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:31 am

Thank you, i will share more useful information about SEO. Thanks for your comment again.

Reply

27 Sreejesh
Twitter:
September 8, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Great list, but you only mentioned online tools, there were many other free offline tools like Cleverstats google rank checker, traffic travis etc which are great!
Sreejesh invites you to check out ..How Being a Teacher Can Bring More Blog AudienceMy Profile

Reply

28 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 6:45 am

Thanks, it will be fantastic if you’d like to share more offline tools with us.

Reply

29 Juan
Twitter:
September 8, 2012 at 2:03 pm

nice sharing, i never use google insight and google trend. i don’t know how to use it
Juan invites you to check out ..How to Update Latest Release WordPress 3.4.2My Profile

Reply

30 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:50 am

Hi Juan, i strongly recommend you Google Insights, where you can find your keyword related “Top Searches” and “Rising searches”, which are valuable for you.

Reply

31 Jyothis Thaliath
Twitter:
September 8, 2012 at 2:34 pm

I’m tired of putting in a lot of effort into the SEO basket, you seem to have a great bunch of tools theres. I’ve always been using Google Webmaster Tools, I like the fact that it provides some great insights even for non SEO purposes (like finding 404 errors that I can redirect). As for the rest, I’m quite aware of the majority, and will tackle those that I haven’t (that Firefox plugin seems worth a shot). Thanks!
Jyothis Thaliath invites you to check out ..Blogger to WordPress Migration GuideMy Profile

Reply

32 firdosh joy
Twitter:
September 9, 2012 at 12:29 pm

Hello Karen , these are really very helpful blogging tool for free. But among all the above free tools for seo “Google analytics” is the best free seo tool which help me to track my visitors location and my readers choice. Thanks Karen for this great post

Reply

33 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:54 am

Thanks for your feedback. You’d better try “Google Webmaster Tool”, which will give you more valuable information and some advice to improve your website.

Reply

34 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 3:41 am

Thanks for sharing offline tools. Would you like to share more with us?

Reply

35 johan K. September 10, 2012 at 4:52 am

Pretty good list you have. Thanks for sharing it btw, as I have just explored them, such as the Backlink Watch and Search Status tools. It’s pretty useful for SEO’s and markerters online.

Reply

36 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 2:28 pm

Great to hear that, hope other tools can also give you some help.

Reply

37 Nelson September 10, 2012 at 8:10 am

Today there is huge competition in every field be it online or offline. The basic priority of any business is to understand the market, his/her competitors and the customers. Here we are concerned with online business which have to maintain websites. For that one has to be aware of his market trends and his competitors. There are a number of things which one needs to do while maintaining a website. Mostly it is a paid thing but if you do a bit of a research you can do it yourself and free of cost. This is what the blog deals with. The blog highlights ten free SEO tools using which you can not only maintain your website but also keep track of your customers.

Reply

38 Karen
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 2:32 pm

Excellent, thanks a lot for your comment, hope these ten free SEO tools will give you some help.

Reply

39 Charles Kiyimba
Twitter:
September 10, 2012 at 7:57 pm

I would like to extend a vote of thanks for the useful information you have shared with us. I have personally used Google Keyword Tool, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tool and little did I know that there are also such other useful tools. Thanks you once again for sharing and for making me learn something today.

Reply

40 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 3:16 am

Thanks for your interest in my writing, i will share more valuable information on iblogzone.

Reply

41 Paul September 11, 2012 at 2:37 am

Hey Karen, I appreciate your effort that you managed to put up a list of these free SEO tools. It will be really helpful for all those people who use the SEO tools and that too free of cost. Among these my favourite is the ‘Backlink Watch’ tool. Thank you so much for the post.

Reply

42 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 3:22 am

Glad to hear that, thank you so much. BTW, the other tools are also useful, please try.

Reply

43 Vijayraj Reddy September 11, 2012 at 3:03 am

Hi Karen,

Thanks a lot for sharing this valuable information with us. I personally feel that, Google Trends and Google Insights are too good. HTTP Request and Response Header is a solution for the problems frequently faced by netizens.

Regards,
Vijay
Vijayraj Reddy invites you to check out ..Why Do Currency Exchange Rates Fluctuate?My Profile

Reply

44 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 3:24 am

Thanks, personally, Google Keyword Tool, Google Trends and Google Insights give me a lot of inspiration.

Reply

45 Aditya September 11, 2012 at 8:15 am

Hi Karen,
Great review of the free tools used for SEO purposes.I have used all of them and loving what they provide.One can easily use these tools and make things work for their better.
Aditya invites you to check out ..ERP Software DevelopmentMy Profile

Reply

46 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 6:48 am

Correct, proper tools always make our work easier. I’m glad that you like these tools.

Reply

47 Adeline Yuboco
Twitter:
September 11, 2012 at 8:48 am

I’ve been using quite a lot of them, particularly CopyScape, Google Adwords and Google Analytics. This is the first time I’ve heard about Google Trends and Backlinks Watch. They intrigued me. Google Trends looks like it could help you find some really great ideas based on what people are talking about in your particular niche. The Backlinks Watch might just be exactly what I need to make sure that my blog doesn’t get slapped by Penguin. Thanks, Karen!
Adeline Yuboco invites you to check out ..4 Reasons to Go on a Yoga RetreatMy Profile

Reply

48 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 6:59 am

Definitely, Google Trends always give me lots of inspiration, and CopyScape help me to check whether the content is original or not.

Reply

49 Pressa September 11, 2012 at 5:34 pm

I would like to add SemRush as a part of free seo tools.

Reply

50 Karen
Twitter:
September 12, 2012 at 7:08 am

Thanks so much, awesome tool, but i have to pay money for more valuable information, so it is not totally free. Thanks anyway.

Reply

51 erda September 12, 2012 at 11:33 am

Thanks for sharing offline tools. Would you like to share more with us?

Reply

52 muazfaris
Twitter:
September 18, 2012 at 5:30 pm

thanks you for the info.. i already used all the free tools and is work for my SEO blog.
muazfaris invites you to check out ..Pageviews Tinggi bukan penentu klik Iklan TinggiMy Profile

Reply

53 Bhushan
Twitter:
September 20, 2012 at 9:41 am

Google Analytics is one tool that telling us How many traffic comes on my page and which one site gives the more traffic. That website gives the more traffic for our website that more work that website and gather more and more traffic on our website. SearchStatus provide us a quick way to get page-rank of page. Thanks for sharing valuable article!!

Reply

54 Karen
Twitter:
September 27, 2012 at 3:25 am

Yes, all these free tools provide me valuable information about my site, and make my job easier. I will share more tools if i find some like these.

Reply

55 Karen
Twitter:
September 27, 2012 at 3:01 am

Thanks so much for your feedback. I will share more valuable information on iblogzone.com

Reply

56 Steve Noriega
Twitter:
November 24, 2012 at 10:08 pm

The free tools that Google has to offer should definitely be taken advantage of. Some people that are new to the world of small business internet marketing sometimes over look them since they don’t fully understand them so it’s good to see them explained first.
Steve Noriega invites you to check out ..Real Estate Marketing: Outsmart Your CompetitorsMy Profile

Reply

57 Karen
Twitter:
November 26, 2012 at 1:43 am

Thanks for your comment. i will try my best to share more valuable information here.

Reply

58 Adam Beaumont
Twitter:
November 26, 2012 at 1:52 pm

Be nice to get a few more free tools apart from google ones, in particular a free rank tracking app would be good.

Reply

59 Karen
Twitter:
November 27, 2012 at 1:38 am

Yes, actually, i am looking for this kind of tools for a while, but failed, do you have any recommendation?

Reply

60 Anchit Shethia
Twitter:
December 11, 2012 at 4:46 pm

SEO Pressor is another great WP plugin also called as Mandatory plugin for WP.
Anchit Shethia invites you to check out ..How Wireless Charging WorksMy Profile

Reply

61 Duyu Nimey
Twitter:
April 8, 2013 at 6:21 pm

Thank you ,I was searching for free seo tools. I thinking of trying google keyword tool and insight.
Duyu Nimey invites you to check out ..Blog promotion strategies for newbieMy Profile

Reply

Leave a Comment

  Twitter (ID only. No links or "@")

CommentLuv badge

Previous post:

Next post: