If your website is young and you are early on in your brand’s journey, you probably want to save as much money as possible.
This can lead to many questions, such as, can I fit an SEO audit in my budget? Should I wait a few months? But what could change in that time?
Source: Esperanza Magazine
We understand how ultimatums like these can be crushing for motivation and morale; that’s why Serpwizz offers free tools that anyone can use no matter where they are in their SEO journey.
There is a stigma that free tools are either shady or ineffective, but I can guarantee that our tools are neither.
It is good to know what you are using and getting into, especially for free products, so let me help you by breaking them down.
While I could list every SEO tool, I think a more effective way is to group them and give examples.
To do this, though, we need first to establish the different SEO types.
You can find many different categories and subtypes, but these are the 3 most commonly agreed on types of SEO;
On-Page SEO refers to the content on your page and what the visitors interact with. The goal of this is to make it simple and help search engines better understand it.
Off-page SEO refers to everything that brings in more visitors but doesn’t appear on your site.
The goal is to build exposure, gain more traffic and increase the conversion rate (the people who interact with your brand/products compared to the traffic you are getting.)
Technical SEO refers to back-end work that makes sure your website is practically up to scratch, which tells search engines that your website is high quality and that more people should use it.
This alone should give you an idea of how to start manually checking your SEO.
However, I still recommend using tools offered by SEO audit companies such as ourselves. Firstly it will unquestionably be more accurate due to its thoroughness.
Secondly, it will always be less biased than you, the creator, no matter how objective you try to be.
Also, it is just more time-efficient, freeing up your timeable to either better your company in other ways or for non-work-related activities.
A good SEO audit, free or not, should be thorough and check every aspect of the website to optimize it.
I can’t list all of them, but I’ll name a few and show you how they relate to the different types of SEO.
The on-page content focuses on making your page as wide-reaching as possible while still being accessible and clean.
Source: Alexa Blog
An example would be the keyword checker, which makes sure you use keywords that will respond to what people are typing.
However, picking the most common keywords isn’t an easy solution, as more established brands will outrank you significantly.
The right keywords will strike a balance between targeting many people and being niche enough to give you a ranking chance.
It makes sure that you are using the right words and that you are using them correctly – this means consistently and clearly enough for the search engines to notice.
Another example is a meta title and description. Metadata directly tells search engines what your website is about, giving you another opportunity to rank in multiple searches.
There is a focus on keywords here, but this is because they are SEO’s best friend.
These should highlight how the content you put on your actual website is essential for your SEO, and this is without mentioning URLs, pictures, videos, etc.
In terms of off-page content, the most prominent tools are the link checkers.
Link checker is quite broad as there are usually a few different parts involved in this, but to simplify, it checks your website’s internal and external linking.
Internal linking is crucial as it shows search engines that your website has a good and clear flow, which increases the likeliness of a higher ranking. Therefore, you need a good amount of internal links, which is what the link analysis tool is for.
External linking is equally as important as this is different websites linking to you. The more reputable sites that use your links, the better, and the opposite goes for shady & illegitimate links.
This is what the backlink counter does – it shows you where your links are being used so you can strengthen the positive ones and cut off the bad ones.
This ties into another benefit of SEO tools which is that they can give you a good idea of the landscape of your chosen sector.
This can include keywords, links, techniques, or anything that your competitors use that you can utilize for your benefit.
Last but not least are the technical SEO tools. This would be something like the GZIP checker, whose goal is to minimize file sizes, decrease page size, and ultimately make the load times as small as possible.
There are also other tools like the domain age checker, whose goal is to ensure your domain has as much authority as possible.
The effect your domain can have on your SEO is very understated but is noteworthy nonetheless. While initial domain authority is most likely quite low, it is something smaller companies should focus on early to futureproof your website.
Just to remind you, all the tools mentioned above are offered for free by Serpwizz and can be found here!
Paid packages can indeed offer more utility, and we offer these as well. However, free tools are not pointless and can be a viable alternative to a paid SEO audit.
Don’t let these big price tags fool you; the choice is always yours!
