Whenever I think about starting a new project, I know in my mind that I’ll work faster and smarter if I have all the proper tools to work with. It’s amazing what a difference it can make if  we can get the work done quickly. Many of these tools didn’t exist just a few years ago…

The same can be said of online marketing. How can you work at your smartest and fastest pace? Here is a small collection of SEO tools to get you started down the right track. These tools are free and simple to use. Try a few and let me know which ones worked for you!

Free SEO Tools to Improve Productivity

1. Google Trends – Quickly browse through Google Trends to see how potential terms relate to rising trends in your niche. Fine SEO opportunities for your content and expand your audience. See changes in search volumes for every new key term you discover.

2. Google Keyword Planner – Enter your keywords or SEO search terms into this widget and let Google show you helpful statistics and strategies. In addition, learn about terms or search words that you might not have thought of using before.

3. Google.com in an Incognito Window – Use a little sleuthing to find out what kind of words are associated by Google to random keywords. Using an incognito window removes your own search history and the impact of your searches on results, giving you truly natural search responses.

4. Google PageSpeed Insights – This tool has the ability to test the loading time for desktop and mobile sites. It can also show you some ways to improve your times. Mobile results are accompanies by a user experience score that will grade your site based on usability, fonts and styles.

5. Google Analytics – Not only does Google track everything you could imagine about your website, it can also help you find new keywords that you might not have considered using before. You can also see what terms others are using to search with in order to get to your page. Use these complete stats and review your insights to gain an edge on your marketing techniques.

6. Google Webmaster Tools + Bing Webmaster Tools – You can use these two tools together to figure out what the internet thinks about your site. View different types of alerts and recommendations about your site, issues and indexing. If you use WordPress, add this webmaster code right into your site using Yoast or Jetpack.

7. Keywordtool.io – If you’re at your wits end searching for more SEO opportunities (and we’ve all been there) consider using this application to pull up over 700 keyword ideas from a single entry. Submit your known keywords to get a return list of long-tail keywords and alphabetically organized suggestions.

8. Open Site Explorer – If you wonder where your site link has traveled across the internet, Open Site Explorer can give you a look into that process. It can help you find the links, which influence your site traffic the most as well as the pages, that link to you most frequently.

Try these out and let us know what you think!
Have any of these programs positively influence your business?

Tell us how?!