9 Free SEO Tools That Actually Work for Small Businesses

Most small business owners hear “SEO” and immediately picture expensive software subscriptions with dashboards that look like mission control at NASA. And fair enough. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Pro run anywhere from $99 to $449 per month. For a local plumber or a three-person marketing team, that’s a tough sell.

But here’s what the SEO industry doesn’t advertise: the free tools have gotten really, really good. Google alone gives away more data than most businesses know what to do with. And a handful of independent tools fill in the gaps without asking for a credit card.

I’ve tested dozens of free SEO tools over the past few years. Most are junk, or they’re “free” the way a car dealership test drive is free. These nine are different. They give you real data, they’re actually free (not 3-day trials), and they solve specific problems that small businesses deal with every week.

Google Search Console

If you only set up one SEO tool, make it Google Search Console. It’s the only tool that shows you exactly how Google sees your website, because the data comes directly from Google’s index.

You’ll see which search queries bring people to your site, your average position for each keyword, click-through rates, and any indexing problems Google found when crawling your pages. That last part matters more than most people realize. I’ve seen businesses lose 40% of their organic traffic because Google couldn’t index half their pages, and they had no idea until months later.

The “Performance” report alone is worth more than most paid tools. You can filter by date, device, country, and search type. Want to know which blog posts are getting impressions but not clicks? That’s a five-second filter. Those posts need better title tags and meta descriptions, and now you know exactly which ones.

Setup takes about 10 minutes. You verify your domain, submit your sitemap, and wait a few days for data to populate.

Google Business Profile

For any business that serves customers in a specific area, Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is non-negotiable. It controls what shows up when someone searches your business name, and it’s the primary factor in local map pack rankings.

According to BrightLocal’s 2024 Local Consumer Survey, 98% of consumers used the internet to find information about local businesses. Your Google Business Profile is usually the first thing they see.

Fill out every single field. Business hours, service areas, photos, products, services, Q&A. Businesses with complete profiles are 2.7x more likely to be considered reputable by searchers, according to Google’s own data. Post updates weekly. Respond to every review. Upload new photos monthly. Google rewards active profiles with better visibility.

The built-in analytics show you how many people found you through search, how many requested directions, and how many called you directly from the listing. That’s conversion data most paid tools can’t touch.

Ubersuggest (Free Tier)

Ubersuggest from Neil Patel gives you three free searches per day. That’s not a lot, but if you’re strategic about it, three searches is enough to plan a week of content.

Type in a keyword and you get search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and a list of related keywords. The content ideas section shows you which existing articles rank for that term and how many backlinks they have. That tells you exactly what you’re competing against.

The free tier also includes a basic site audit that catches common technical SEO problems: broken links, missing meta descriptions, slow pages, duplicate content. It won’t go as deep as a paid tool, but it catches the low-hanging fruit that trips up most small business sites.

One tip: use your three daily searches on head terms, then use the related keywords list to build out long-tail variations. You’ll stretch those three searches into 50+ keyword ideas.

Yoast SEO (WordPress Plugin)

If your site runs on WordPress, Yoast SEO is probably already installed. The free version handles the fundamentals that matter most: title tags, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, canonical URLs, and basic on-page analysis.

The readability checker is genuinely useful. It flags passive voice, long sentences, and paragraphs that run too long. The SEO analysis tells you if your focus keyword appears in the right places. It’s not a substitute for understanding SEO, but it catches mistakes before you hit publish.

Yoast processes over 16 billion pages per month across its user base. That scale means the plugin stays current with Google’s algorithm changes faster than most paid alternatives. When Google rolled out the helpful content update, Yoast was one of the first tools to adjust its recommendations.

Don’t chase the green light on every metric. Yoast’s scoring is directional, not absolute. A post with an orange readability score that says something original will outrank a green-scored post full of filler every single time.

Screaming Frog (Free Version)

Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler that audits your website the way Google’s crawler does. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers most small business websites entirely.

It finds broken links, duplicate pages, missing title tags, redirect chains, thin content, and dozens of other technical issues. Run it once a month and fix whatever it flags. That simple habit puts you ahead of 90% of your local competitors who never audit their sites at all.

The tool runs locally on your computer, so it’s fast. A 200-page site takes maybe two minutes. You export the results to a spreadsheet, sort by issue type, and work through them. No account required, no data leaving your machine.

For small businesses specifically, pay attention to the “Response Codes” tab. Broken internal links (404s) and redirect chains (301 → 301 → 200) are the most common issues I find on sites under 500 pages. They’re also the easiest to fix.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights runs Google’s Lighthouse audit on any URL and gives you both lab data and real-world performance data from the Chrome User Experience Report. It’s the closest thing to seeing your site through Google’s eyes for Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals became a ranking factor in 2021, and Google has only increased their weight since. A 2023 study by Portent found that conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time. Speed isn’t just an SEO metric. It’s a revenue metric.

Run your homepage, your top landing pages, and your contact page through the tool. Focus on the “Opportunities” section, which tells you exactly what to fix and how much time each fix will save. Common wins for small business sites: compress images, defer offscreen images, and eliminate render-blocking resources.

The field data section is especially valuable because it shows how real visitors experience your site, not just how it performs in a lab test. If your field data shows poor LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), that’s a problem Google is actively measuring and using in rankings.

AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic takes a seed keyword and maps out every question, preposition, and comparison people search for around that topic. The free version gives you a limited number of daily searches, but each search produces hundreds of content ideas.

Type in “plumbing services” and you’ll see questions like “why are plumbing services so expensive,” “how to find plumbing services near me,” and “what plumbing services are tax deductible.” Each one of those is a blog post waiting to happen. And because they’re phrased as questions, they’re perfect for featured snippet targeting.

The visualization is nice, but export the CSV. Sort by search volume if available, then group related questions into content clusters. Five related questions often become one thorough blog post that ranks for all five terms.

AlsoAsked is a similar free tool that pulls directly from Google’s “People Also Ask” boxes. Use both together and you’ll never run out of content ideas.

Google Trends

Google Trends doesn’t show exact search volumes, but it shows something more useful for small businesses: relative interest over time and by location. That tells you when to publish content and which topics are gaining momentum.

If you’re a roofing company in Texas, Google Trends will show you that searches for “roof repair” spike every April after storm season. That means your blog post about storm damage repair should go live in March, not August. Timing content to search demand is one of the simplest competitive advantages a small business can have.

The “Related queries” section surfaces rising search terms that haven’t peaked yet. Getting content live before a trend peaks is how smaller sites compete with domain authority they can’t match. You won’t outrank HomeAdvisor for “best roofers,” but you can outrank them for a specific rising query they haven’t covered yet.

Compare up to five terms side by side to prioritize which content to create first. If “metal roof cost” gets 3x the interest of “shingle roof cost” in your state, write the metal roof post first.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (Free)

Most people don’t know this exists. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a free, limited version of Ahrefs that lets you monitor your own website’s SEO health and backlink profile. You verify your site (like Search Console), and you get access to Site Audit and Site Explorer for your verified properties.

The Site Audit crawls your site and grades it on a 100-point scale, flagging issues by priority. It catches things Screaming Frog catches, but with a cleaner interface and automatic re-crawls. The backlink data shows who links to you, which pages get the most links, and whether you’ve gained or lost links recently.

For context, Ahrefs’ paid plans start at $129/month. Getting even a slice of that data for free is a significant win. The main limitation is that you can only see data for sites you own. You can’t research competitors. But for monitoring your own SEO health, it’s more than enough.

Set up weekly email alerts for new backlinks and lost backlinks. When a valuable link disappears, you can reach out to the site owner before the ranking impact hits.

Stop Collecting Tools, Start Using Them

Here’s the real problem with SEO tools, free or paid: most businesses set them up once and never look at them again. A tool you don’t check is a tool that doesn’t exist.

Pick three from this list. Set up Google Search Console because there’s no substitute. Add one technical tool (Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) and one content research tool (AnswerThePublic or Google Trends). Run a monthly check on all three. That habit alone will put your SEO ahead of most competitors spending ten times your budget.

The businesses that win at SEO aren’t the ones with the most expensive tools. They’re the ones that consistently act on the data they already have.

If your website isn’t generating leads or you’re not sure where to start with SEO, we can help you build a plan that actually works. No fluff, no 47-page audit you’ll never read. Just clear next steps based on your site’s real data.