15 Free SEO Tools That I’ve Used to Get Page One Rankings on Google

August 21, 2011 - Last Modified: March 28, 2013 by Pavan Katepalli 6,252

These are free SEO tools that I’ve used to get page one rankings on Google. Best of all, they’re all free. The ratings on the free SEO tools below were determined by me by the following factors: how well the product works, how easy it is to use and how well it compares to the other tools.

Analysis tools:

1. Traffic Travis

How it rates: 10/10

This is a great tool to use to compare websites against each other automatically. It also pulls anchor text and page rank of back links easily. In addition, if you want automatic ranking reports this is your tool. It’s free but can be used for a limited number of campaigns unless you upgrade. This is the best analysis tool that I have ever used. It’s easy and fun to use.

2. Backlinkwatch.com

How it rates: 9/10

This is a great website where you can type in a URL of a web page and see all the back links to that web page and the anchor text of those back links. It also shows the outbound links on that web page. This is a great way to evaluate how much off site optimization a site has done to achieve a particular ranking on Google.

3. XENU Link Sleuth

How it rates: 9/10

I use this tool to check if a site has broken links. You can also see if there are redirect detections, endless loops and much more. It’s like you have a detective at the click of a button.

4. SEO Tool Bar (SEO Book FireFox Extension)

How it rates: 8/10

I use this tool to quickly see the page rank of web pages and quickly see where the back links to a page are coming from.

5. SEO Quake (FireFox Extension)

How it rates: 8/10

SEO Quake does an excellent job of creating a quick SEO Report for any client. Combine that with CutePDF Writer and you can print a comprehensive SEO Report with two clicks of the mouse for free.

6. MajesticSEO.com and OpenSiteExplorer.org

How it rates: 7/10

These are nice back link analysis tools, but you have to register and I feel that they aren’t as good as Traffic Travis. For these to be really effective you need to buy the paid subscriptions.

7. LinkDiagnosis.com

How it rates: 6/10

This is a great way to do a back link analysis on a web page. I prefer backlinkwatch.com, but I’ve used this tool too to see if backlinkwatch.com missed anything.

Rank Checkers:

8. CuteRank.net

How it rates: 10/10

This is a little nicer than Rank Checker and automatically checks keyword rankings – only catch – it’s free for only one site.

9. RankChecker (SEO Book FireFox Extension)

How it rates: 9/10

I use this tool to check the rankings of a domain. You can check multiple keywords at the same time and if you keep the keywords in a column of an excel sheet then it’ll be easy to copy and paste the keywords from excel into this tool.

Link Building Tools:

10. AutomaticBackLinks.com

How it rates: 10/10

If you have a site with a page rank of 1 or higher, then AutomaticBackLinks.com can get you back links for free on PR 1 or higher web pages. You pretty much just insert a code that they give you at the bottom of your page and then the site puts links related to your site there. You get credits for each link you put on your page and you can use those credits to put back links on websites in their network.

Common Tools:

11. Google External Keyword Tool

How it rates: 10/10

This is the basic tool to use to generate key words, find search volume for keywords and see how popular the keyword is for Google Adwords.

12. Google Analytics

How it rates: 9/10

It’s pretty common place to use this tool to track your traffic and where it’s coming from, but it’s also nice to use the goals feature and track conversion stats. Why didn’t I give this a 10/10? Because I feel that Google Analytics should buy www.kissmetrics.com up and integrate those features into Google Analytics. Then Google Analytics would be a 10/10.

13. Google Webmaster Tools

How it rates: 10/10

I use this to submit my XML sitemap to and get my site indexed on Google properly. You can also submit your robots.txt file and check broken links.

Random Tools:

14. Unbounce

How it rates: 10/10

This isn’t an SEO Tool, but before I spend a ton of time doing SEO for a website, I like to test the waters with PPC, because getting on page one of Google doesn’t exactly pay off unless the people finding you convert into users/customers.

15. Jing

How it rates: 11/10

I love this tool. It’s awesomeness in a can. Ok this isn’t an SEO tool either, but it lets you take a screen shot and video of whatever’s going on your screen easily. After taking a screen shot, you can easily edit it, and after taking a video, you can easily edit it in Camtasia (another free to try program). You can also upload the screen shot/video online with one click and it puts the URL of the screen shot/video on your clip board. This way you can copy and paste it easily on Skype. This tool is really useful when showing outsourcers how to do a specific link building task.

Use a free tool that I didn’t list? Comment below and let us know.

About Pavan Katepalli

Follow @pavankat

Pavan Katepalli is the Co-Founder of INRtracker.com. The site features tools like a vitamin k foods meal tracker, which is important for a coumadin diet. It also features an INR Tracker to manage warfarin side effects.

{ 83 Responses }

Trung Nguyen says:

I think Traffic Travis is a great FREE SEO tool is perfect replacement for Market Samurai - thanks for the share.
Daniel says:

A nice list for sure, but for those serious about SEO it would be much better to find one tool that provides all or multiple functions in one place even if there's a fee.
Daniel says:

Nice collection of tools, Pavan. I have been going through keyword SEO tools(Free and paid) lately and have really seen some major differences in the data being returned. What surprised me was that some of the free "not so big named" Keyword rank checking tools seem to be far more accurate than the big boys(Including paid versions). I am also factoring the fact that, certain tools will only return really outdated data( around 30 to 90 days) . So their update rate, is a little bit of a pain. Other tools would say fresh( within last 30 days) yet, after cross referencing the results, they were way off. Some tools would give accurate data for a % of your keywords, yet others(though ranking well) were literally off the map. Okay, we cannot expect miracles(100% accuracy) all the time, though there needs to be more consistency. And to add, I currently get far more accurate ranking results with a free tool, than I do with one of the " Top of the crop" names. And I get the results much faster..
Deoraj Chaudhary says:

very healthy links of SEO tools, following instantly to have some good results of my page ranking. thank you
Cherie says:

I already knew some of these tools, such as Backlink Watch or the SEO Toolbar for Firefox, but most of the were unknown to me. Great list!
Danielle McGaw says:

Thanks for this list Pavan. I've never used AutomaticBacklinks.com so I will for sure check those out. Since you mentioned Jing you should check out Screencast-o-matic.com - totally free to use and you can upload automatically to YouTube. I've used it for most of my screencasts on my YouTube channel. And it is nice to see someone else talking up Traffic Travis. I have used that and I have used Market Samurai and I much prefer Traffic Travis to be honest.
Robin Jennings says:

I love using the Jing screenshot program. Especially when you are reporting to clients its a great way to prove the ranking of a keywords quickly and easily.
Thomas says:

Surprised that Open Site Explorer by SEO Moz did not make the list. Best tool I use!
Igor says:

A great collection of tools. I use the majority of them for my blog but some of them are new to me and I want to say thanks for sharing.
Scott says:

Great list. I have heard of and used many of these resources but some of them I am not familiar with so I'll have to take a cloer look when I have a bit more free time. This is a powerful list of ranking tools. DO you find data from each is comparitive to the others? Even tools like webmasters and analytics show me very different info for my own sites.
sai krishna says:

backlink watch is my all time favorite tool for check backlinks
Saket Jajodia says:

I tho use Google Analytics And Google WMT all the time also I have use SEOBook and going to give a try to rest of them also..
Harry Sehgal says:

Its a Huge Collection. I only use 3 of it. I will check the rest ones soon.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Sweet deal Harry. Let us know how you liked or disliked them ;).
Aritra Roy says:

Thanks for this wonderful list of SEO tools...knew about some but was unaware about most of them...
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Your welcome Aritra. Hope I helped :).
Satrap says:

Those are all great tools and all (except utomaticBackLinks.com) are tools that I myself used to get on first page of Google for my keywords (make money online, ways to make money online...). A lot of people think paid tools are a necessary part of getting a site to rank high. But, the truth is a lot of free tools (specially tools from Google) do a much better job than the paid ones. I mean, who better to tell you about keyword and search volume than the search engines itself?...
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Rock on Satrap! Learning the free way is great because it forces you to learn EVERYTHING. Usually paid services are for agencies and big time Companies.
Taylor says:

Thank you for taking the time to compile these for us. I've been using rankchecker almost exclusively since I got into the game, but I do find it to have either delayed or inaccurate results most of the time. It's just very user friendly, and usually catches up to real time results before too long. What would you say are the pros the other tools you listed have as a direct comparison to rankchecker? Also, regarding Cute Checker, once you register one site it will only work for for the one? Again, thanks for this great list. I'll be forwarding around the office.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  You're totally welcome Taylor. For ranking reports try out Traffic Travis they let you track 5 websites. Only catch is that the free version only tracks the first 50 positions. It's a beautiful piece of software. I like it a lot better because it feels like a cartoon and is just as technical as any other SEO Software out there.
Akshay says:

Actually, I made a comment on Aug. 23, and you asked which WP Plugins I was talking about. I found no reply button, so i made a new comment! Anyways, I was telling you about thos simple yet powerful wordpress plugins which drastically increase your blogs seo. Those include All in one seo/platinum seo pack, seo search terms tagging, google xml sitemap generator, and there are some more vital ones! Maybe, i could make a post and post it on my blog! Anyway, I think i answered you..!
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Dude you rock. Thanks for adding value to this post. The all in one seo pack is awesome. I use it on my blog venturelateral[dot]com. But I've never used the seo search terms tagging and the google xml sitemap generator. I didn't know there were plugins . Sick.
neo says:

Hello Pavan I have started using backlink tools from AutomaticBackLinks.com and getting good response. Need some time to get know it good for my site or not. BTW thanks for all the list you provide in this post, need to give a visit some of them.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  You got it dude. I hope it works out well. use a multitude of tools. SEO is about integrity. The more diverse your off site optimization it is - the higher the integrity your site will be viewed. Maybe try myblogguest.com to build some back links from reputable blogs.
Jason says:

Thanks for the heads-up on Backlink Watch. I've been using Link Diagnosis for awhile, but more is better :)
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  exactly my motto Jason. Rock on!
Jamie Northrup says:

Great tools Pavan, thanks for sharing, I had only heard about 6 of the 15, will definitely take the time soon to try out the other 9.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Sounds awesome Jamie. Thanks for checking out the article. If you find any other free tools that have worked really well for you then share them here when you get a chance :)
Ivan Dimitrijevic says:

Really great list of SEO tools. I am using backlink watch, open site explorer, SEO quake, link diagnosis and Google tools on every day basis. I am not so sure about automatic backlinks.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Ivan, automaticbacklinks.com is black hat but works. It's good as long as the links are coming from niche sites like yours.
hatim says:

hi nice article. Let me go through everything and will check out each of it. Thanks for sharing
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Can't wait for your feedback on which tools you like the best or hate the most (lol) Hatim.
Stevey says:

Some good tools there, but there is a lot of ambiguity in the results from these tools. For example Traffic Travis will tell you that the niche your trying to dominate will have a difficulty level of 1 star which carries a rating of very difficult. Ive manged to get top spot within a couple of months with moderate levels of time invested. Just saying do your due diligence before dismissing or accepting the info presented from these tools as gospel!
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  that's a really good point Stevey. People should do in depth analysis on keywords. Look at the back links. If there are 10,000 back links then take a look at the content. If the content isn't spot on, then you've got a good shot at beating the competitor by just writing great awesome content and doing 100 specified anchor text back links from high PR sites.
JC says:

I have to say automaticbacklinks.com looks potentially dangerous - links with the purpose of gaming Pagerank are one of the things Google frowns upon most. I don't rely much on search traffic, but I use serpiq.com for keyword research - it's free for the first 5 keyword reports :)
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey thanks for the tip on using SerPiq. It's not dangerous as long as you get back links from sites that are similar to yours. If getting back links was frowned upon, then the whole concept of blog rolls would be deemed black hat.
Priyangshu says:

These are seemed to be great tools which can rank your blog on the 1st page of Google !
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Thanks Priyangshu :). Which analysis tool is your favorite?
Barrie says:

Only a 7/10 for MajesticSEO.com?!? It deserves better :D
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Barrio thanks for checking out the post. I just don't think MajesticSEO compares to Traffic Travis in terms of being easy and fun to use.
Akshay says:

The tools in this list are really great, but I think you missed out some vital plugins one should have in his wordpress blog. Most of the backlink analysis tools here are amazing and it's fun using them. Thanks for sharing this helpful list..keep it up!
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Akshay thanks for checking out the post. I totally missed every Word Press plugin. What Word Press plugins have you had success with on your site?
Christopher West says:

Hey Pavan Really good collection - will take a look at a few of those you suggested and perhaps write some followup reviews.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Thanks Chris. Looking forward to your followup reviews :).
Menachem Lifshitz says:

Of all the tools you listed, I think Google Analytics has the most comprehensive features that could help you in analyzing your website statistics.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  I definitely agree Menachem but when using Google Analytics a lot of times it's hard for me to figure out if a visitor converted into a customer, fortunately kissmetrics.com solves that for me. Also Google Analytics doesn't have heat maps to see where users' mouses are clicking on and the path that a user takes on a page. Fortunately, clicktale.com does that. Google Analytics is nice, but not everything in a can.
Psychic Me says:

This is an outstanding resource... just what I was looking for. Thanks for sharing!
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Glad you liked it Psychic :)
Nasif says:

I have started using backlink tools from AutomaticBackLinks.com and getting good response. Don't know whether it is a good from Google's point of view or not ! Btw anybody tried similar automatic backlink tools like monopolinks.com ? Reply appreciated.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Glad you're using them Nasif! I haven't tried monopolinks yet but I found this thread using a discussions search on Google that could help you: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1993899
  - Nasif says:
    
    Thanks for sharing the link, Pavan :)
Kathleen says:

Awesome list of tools! I use backlinkwatch.com a lot, and I used to use SEO Quake some. My husband - who shares my laptop - got flustered by the toolbar, so I had to remove it. Therefore I forget the tool is available. I bookmarked this post - will be checking out the rest.
Blazing Minds says:

Great selection of tools/websites I've used a few of these myself in the, but never used Automaticbacklinks, I'm not to sure about that myself ;)
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Blazing Minds thanks for checking out the post. Awesome name btw. There's no getting around that it's black hat, but used properly it can help a campaign. AutomaticBackLinks allows the person to choose the category of the site the links come from. All in all, BlogGlue.com is better, but their free version is lacking.
  - Nasif says:
    
    Have you tried blogglue ? If so, how effective is it ?
Will says:

Great list.. but why would you say that Cute Rank is better than Rank Checker? Also Jing is cool however the free version is a bit of a letdown because the video format it comes out in isn't easily uploaded to Youtube.. I think its deliberate so you want to buy the full version. But the full version is cheap as chips anyway..
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Will thanks for checking out the post. I think Cute Rank is better because it's a lot more accurate than Rank Checker. I'll be honest, I like Rank Checker's UI better, but in terms of getting accurate rankings, Cute Rank is better. Yeah Jing is annoying with that, but it has a one click import into camtasia, which is nice.
shan ali says:

Hey thanx pavan, these are really helpful tools for bloggers. It looks that u have good knowledge about seo and u know the way to generate traffic. I need help as my blog is 2 months old and i was getting 100 visitors daily but suddenly from 1 week i getting only 20-30 visitors daily.... don't know what to do... Hope to get help from here;...... Thanx
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Shan. Getting 20 to 30 visitors a day isn't bad at all. Especially since you just started. You're on to something big dude. Most people would tell you to write a lot, but I think that pisses off your subscribers, so I'd just stay at the pace you are for content writing on your blog. Here are my suggestions on how to increase your traffic: Start guest posting and use myblogguest [dot] com. Run a contest on Facebook using offerpop.com and have 2 requirements to enter the contest - 1 would be like the page and 2 would be to subscribe to your blog.
Hung Hong says:

I used half of these tools and loving seo quake.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  SEO Quake is awesome. Coupling it with CutePDF Writer makes it a powerful Report tool if you need to quickly throw something to a client.
Nasif says:

How is AutomaticBackLinks ? Do they really work ?
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Only if you use them strategically. I replied to a comment below where I describe the strategy.
hugh williams says:

this is a great list thanks i have used some of them but i will check the rest out. shows that you don't need to spend big to get to the top of google
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hugh I've always believed that it's quality over quantity and if there's good quality content that's optimized with the author of the content constantly engaging with other sites' communities, then that beats out spam SEO any day.
Faissal Alhaithami says:

I have checked the Backlinks watch and I love it, it gives the backlinks and show us the Follow and No follow ones!! this is what i was looking for! thanks for sharing these tools with us!!
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Glad you love it Faissal! I'm enthusiastic about it too. Whenever someone brags about their organic rankings achieved through link building, I always use back link watch literally while they're bragging to me on my phone and just read off to them their back links. It scares them and shows them that I know my stuff lol.
Mark says:

Traffic Travis is a great one. I have used it extensively and still do to rank my sites and my friends sites on the first page of Google. Excellent recommendation. Mark
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  My favorite part of Traffic Travis are the videos. Glad you're using it Mark :)!
Gera says:

Hi Pavan, Great list and I use several of them. The Firefox extensions are useful. I wonder about the AutomaticBackLinks.com - Is this a reciprocal links automation tool? I don’t think is effective nowadays for the quality of the links you can get. I'd to hear your experience with it. Cheers, Gera
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Hey Gera I used them in 2009 and early 2010 they work well, but only if you use it strategically. So let's say you have a site you want to get ranked high on Google, then do not put the automatic back link html code on that site. Use another site in your arsenal that has Google PR and scatter automatic back link html codes on that site. If you don't have another site in your arsenal then you can buy a site on flippa for anywhere between 10 to 50 dollars, which is worth it if it has Google PR on multiple pages. Use the AutomaticBackLinks credits you build up from those sites to get back links toward your prize site.
  - Nasif says:
    
    Sounds like a good strategy !!!
Edgar says:

I use very few of the tools you've mentioned here. I mainly use SEO Quake, Market samurai "the free version" and SEO powersuite "the free version" as these seem to fulfill most of my SEO needs. I use other paid SEO tools but these doesn't seem to fit in this "free SEO tools" post. Thanks for sharing
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  I have to check out Market Samurai and SEO powersuite. Thanks for mentioning them Edgar!
Atulperx says:

I use SEO Quake once in a week and satisfied with its all features and tricks to discover high page rank pages. Wonder wheel is now no more and Google analytic is in daily use list. But thanks for sharing some unknown sources too and I will sure check them out.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  You're welcome Atulperx! Yeah SEO Quake is a great way to scrape do follow high PR blogs on Google. I heard scrape box does it better because you can look up foot prints better, but I haven't put it into action yet to verify this.
Ray says:

I like link diagnosis and seo toolbar for firefox much more than seo quake. But, these are all great tools thanks for sharing. These will likely appeal to a bunch of us even if we don't use them all.
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Yeah it's all based off of personal preference. We all have a different way we like to see and experience data. I wonder what the psychology of that is.
Imran Hunzai says:

11 out of 10 for Jing is kinda strange.
- Hesham says:
  
  Maybe a good way to get attention :)
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  Yeah I'm a Jing enthusiast. I use it a lot. For product testing, to explain errors, to explain a technique i want someone to repeat, to explain stuff (see the main page of BloggersCompete.com).
Haru says:

hey thanks 4 sharing dude.. i just asked my friend about this.. :)
- Pavan Katepalli says:
  
  You're welcome Haru :). I checked out your blog post on the Google PR update. I was totally psyched too! My site BloggersCompete.com has a Google PR of 2 and we just launched last month. I think it's because we launched a blog contest the day the site went live.

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