The 15 Best SEO Tools For Small Businesses In 2021 (Both Free & Paid)

Search engine optimization tools are not just for big companies and enterprises who can afford the time and resources for equally big-name platforms. Even the smallest businesses benefit from SEO. And SEO tools for small businesses make optimization easy. The higher quality your SEO, the more visitors you will get to your site and the more potential for converted leads and increased revenue.

When you use these SEO tools for small businesses, you can make the most of the time and resources you have to remain competitive in your industry and location. Of course, we recognize that smaller companies usually have a smaller budget too, which is why we have included a large sampling of free tools so you can optimize without blowing the budget.

Free SEO Tools for Small Businesses

1. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

A free SEO tool for small businesses with an unforgettable name, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a web crawler that can perform a basic audit on your site for free. For larger companies, there is a paid version, but most small businesses will find the 500-page free limit enough to get through their entire site.

There are many things this free tool does that can help you optimize your site.

• It finds broken links and server errors, which impact your link authority.
• You can export the errors and fix the problems with a redirect, ensuring visitors are pointed to relevant content.
• Screaming Frog will audit your redirects too, to ensure they are working as well as they can be.
• The crawler looks at content to find duplicate information, low content pages, and issues with titles and metadata.
• It can even make an XML sitemap, ideal for showing search engines exactly what is available on your website.

Those are just a few of this tool’s powerful features. It’s well worth checking out for yourself.

2. Google Analytics

We have a lot of good things to say about Google when it comes to offering free SEO tools for small businesses. Google Analytics is the gold standard in free metrics tools, giving your business data you can use to monitor your SMB SEO and improve it.

One of the best things about Google Analytics is the ability to set goals, so you can track information, like how much organic traffic a page is getting through SEO and how much of that traffic is converting, such as through people filling in a contact form.

You can also sync Google Analytics to Google Search Console, which we will talk about next.

3. Google Search Console

Make the most of Google Analytics by syncing it to Google Search Console, another free SEO tool. Google Search Console shows you how people are finding your content, particularly the keywords they are using, and where that content is ranking. With the information, you can see how your targeted keywords are performing versus how people are organically finding your site. And you can then adjust as needed.

4. Google My Business

This is a must-have tool for any small business concerned about local results. With Google My Business, you can fill in your information and have it show up in Google maps and searches when people are searching for relevant local information.

5. Google PageSpeed Insights

Yes, another Google SEO tool! PageSpeed Insights does exactly what it says, giving you information about how well your pages are responding on both mobile and desktop devices. It also gives you suggestions on improving a page. This matters for SEO because nobody is going to stick around for a page that is slow or buggy. If you want to convert visitors, you need a site that works well.

6. Google Trends

Google Trends shows you what people are searching for based on the parameters you set. You can use it for keyword research, finding those that are becoming popular over time and getting in on the trend before it truly takes off. You can also do the opposite, looking for trends that are decreasing over time and choosing a different keyword rather than one that is dying off.

7. SEO Quake

SEO Quake is a great free SEO tool for when you want something that works on the fly. It’s a browser extension, which means it gives you SEO information and auditing in real time as you navigate through sites. You do not have to worry about a program or interface, and can use the in-browser setup to compare sites quickly.

Paid SEO Tools for Small Businesses

8. SEMrush

In our opinion, SEMrush is the best overall multipurpose tool. It combines a lot of the features of many other tools listed, creating a comprehensive platform that offers analytics, market and advertising research, backlink analysis, and keyword research. SEMrush also comes with tools that utilize that data, helping you find keywords with less competition, create charts and reports, and even optimize your writing for SEO as you create content.

While SEMrush is ideally suited to overall SEO for small businesses, it’s also excellent for managing and monitoring specific projects, from competitor analysis to social media posting and ad building. There is not much this tool can’t do.

9. AHrefs

AHrefs is the best tool for all things related to linking and backlinking. It, too, is an all-in-one toolset, but linking is where this system shines.

It boasts the second-most-active web crawler after Google, meaning it comes with the best backlink database in the industry with over 19 trillion known links. You can monitor domain and page-level metrics, backlink profiles, and get a complete breakdown of all outbound links, among other features.

The broken link checker is as robust, offering an easy way to unbreak what has been broken, eliminate dead internal links, and keep on top of your site with scheduled crawls for new dead links.

10. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is perfect for finding long-tail keyword opportunities, using Google Autocomplete to determine what users are searching for based on what actual searchers want. While there is a free version of Keyword Tool, the paid version offers twice as many keywords, on average. It also allows for parameters like search volume, competition level, and cost per click data.

11. Mangools Suite

Mangools Suite is one of our favorite SEO tools. It is very easy to use. Keyword research, for example, can be as simple as inputting a competitor’s website and letting Mangools evaluate it. When you analyze search engine results with Mangools, you can do it in over 52,000 locations, ensuring local accuracy on top of the already powerful SERPWatcher features. Mine comeptitors’ backlinks, check the SEO authority of any site, and identify the content that offers the most value, all through one robust system.

Overall, this suite of SEO tools offers great bang for your buck. Even better, it comes with scalable pricing options. Choose the free version, which works well, upgrade to the basic paid option, or splurge on premium or agency versions that add more power to the toolset.

12. SEOJet

SEOJet is a great new tool for backlink creation and management. This SEO tool for small businesses creates a link map or backlink plan for every page of your website to show you where to build your backlinks next. Set it up based on other sites who are in the top 10 for your selected key phrase or mimic all first-ranked pages across all categories. Either way, you will not have to guess what anchor text to use, what link to build, or how you can work to create a top-ranked page yourself.

This platform also shows you opportunities to create those backlinks, with outreach tools and potential link partners organized and ranked. A guest post service, built-in and heavily discounted, ensures even more chances to get those all-important backlinks going.

There are countless valuable features packed into SEOJet and it does something we haven’t quite seen any other SEO tool for small businesses replicate so far. It is well worth a look to get your backlinks in the best shape possible.

13. Answer The Public

SEO professionals and marketers can guess what people want to know, but there are often questions we could never imagine. These are the queries people have that are important to them, but they might not share it aloud. And, these are the queries that will drive the most traffic to your site.

Answer the Public positions itself as a direct line to your customers’ thoughts. It looks at autocomplete data from search engines, listing the phrases and questions surrounding a specific keyword. With this information, you can tailor your advertising, SEO, and web campaigns around the answers people are actually seeking.

Ultimately, Answer the Public helps your company be more relevant to your customers. It helps you monitor how people are talking about your keyword, and how that conversation shifts so you can keep up. You might even find hidden niches as you dive into the questions your customers have.

14. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an all-in-one SEO tool, with pricing for individuals, businesses, and enterprises. Its focus is generating new keyword ideas, based on long tail versions of search terms. These are the search terms with low search volume and competition levels. Ubersuggest will also provide stats and data on keywords, like search volume.

Ubersuggest also offers ways to use a keyword in the form of a question. This is helpful in marketing to determine what solutions you can provide to searchers. The tool is also great for comparisons and prepositions, showing how you can extend your keyword into phrases.

Perhaps one of the best features of Ubersuggest, users can reverse engineer competitor SEO. Simply typing a competitor’s domain, users get insight into the strategies they use, including page rankings for popular keywords, top-performing content, and keyword suggestions.

15. Local Falcon

Local Falcon is a great tool for local SEO, displaying Google My Business rankings for listings that show up in maps. Instead of returning results based on a general zip code or central geographic location, Local Falcon represents mobile searches from where they occur. Local search is critical to any small business, catering to a local market.

Local Falcon ensures that your business can take advantage of local search in the way that it should, showcasing your share of local voice and average rank position in Google Maps. With their highly visual interface, you can be aware of how you rank and see it compared to the competition.

If Local Falcon’s visualizations show that your rank is not where it should be, it’s a sign that your local SEO needs work. A lot of that comes down to Google My Business and improving your profile with posts, photos, real-time response to reviews, and more. Knowing how you fare locally is the first step, which is why Local Falcon is so helpful.

Local Falcon pricing ranges from a starter account, up to a premium account, all charged monthly. All options provide unlimited keywords and locations, service area business scans, competitor reports, automated scanning, and variable grid sizes.

Time To Get To Work!

We hope this helps you get a start in creating a strong SEO strategy for your small business. For more information or to find out what else we can do for you, reach out to our team. Get in touch online, call us at 973-317-8765, or email [email protected].