SEO analysis of your site: guide to free tools

A website’s SEO is the first step and the priority for generating leads for free and therefore for your marketing. To do this, analyzing your site’s SEO is crucial. This comprehensive analysis, covering all the important criteria for the Google algorithm, is long and complex. Fortunately, many tools can help you better understand and summarize your site’s problems and strengths. You will also get ideas for improvement.  Spoiler alert: in this article you will find a summary table of the different free tools and their features! 

Why use an SEO tool? 

An SEO tool automates several measurements and analyses on a site to present organized and concrete results. Your SEO audit will therefore be fast and accurate, with useful advice that will considerably improve your rankings. Then comes the ultimate question: why improve your SEO at all? In short, traffic to your site is a gold mine. It is a place accessible to everyone, where you can identify all types of prospects, segment them, and nurture them to convert them into customers. To increase the number of visitors to your site, organic search is the best option. The higher your site appears in the results, the higher the number of clicks will be! So, to put all the odds on your side, an SEO tool can prove very useful.

Also read: Google Search Console: the guide to understanding the tool

Check Core Web Vitals 

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This is the measurement of the time it takes to display most of the content on a page. It is a very important criterion for Google, which considers an LCP below 2.5 seconds to be good, and poor starting from 4 seconds. From a user perspective, a page that loads too slowly naturally leads to a higher bounce rate! 

• First Input Delay (FID) 

This is the measurement of the time required to interact with the website. This time, measured in milliseconds, is good up to 100 ms and poor above 300 ms. For users, FID is the time it takes to be able to click on a button, for example. It is indeed important for a successful customer experience. 

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) 

This indicator checks the stability of a page’s content. Indeed, there is nothing more unpleasant for the user than moving text, interrupted by an ad that suddenly inserts itself. Google therefore takes this stability into account for your organic rankings. 

What criteria should you use to choose your SEO tool? 

There are many tools to analyze your rankings and carry out your SEO audit and… they are very different! How do you choose among all these tools? Here are the important criteria, before moving on to the tools in question! 

Loading speed analysis 

It is one of the Core Web Vitals; your site’s loading speed has a real impact on your Google rankings. Some SEO tools check it, others do not. Loading speed can be calculated on desktop and on mobile. This indicator is not enough on its own, but it is a good start. It will allow you to have a technically sound site. 

Content analysis 

Content is also extremely important. It is therefore about following the rules so that Google and its algorithm understand the subject of your page and its value for internet users. To do this, several things are taken into account: 

• H1, H2, H3 headings, which must be organized and clear (and contain the keyword) 
• content length 
• the words in the content, especially the words in the semantic cluster
• internal and external links 
• images
• meta description
• meta title

These are the main points that SEO tools check. 

Authority analysis

Here, the external links you have, their quality, and the domain authority score are analyzed. This corresponds to the trust that Google, as well as other search engines, places in you. This analysis is essential because a bad backlink can have consequences for your organic rankings. 

Error analysis 

Errors include missing tags, broken links, 404 errors, or even duplicate content! All of this also affects your site’s SEO and is part of SEO analysis. 

Competitive analysis

Analyzing your site’s SEO also partly means analyzing the rankings of the key players in your market! Competitive analysis allows you to track your ranking for the keywords of your choice, your competitors’ keywords, and positioning on the different search engines. A real boon for the evolution of your SEO. 

Free tools to improve your SEO 

SiteChecker 

Used by Airbnb, Accor, and Microsoft, this platform connects with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to give you comprehensive data. After analyzing your performance (every day), you will get a checklist of changes to make to improve your rankings! 

Ionos 

With Ionos, audit your site and receive precise advice to improve. They also offer personalized support, this time paid. You will find an analysis of your backlinks, your errors (broken links, titles that are too short, etc.), and your smartphone optimization. 

Thruuu

How this tool works is different. By entering a keyword, you analyze the SERP. Here, you understand the weaknesses and strengths of your site or your competitors’ sites. 

Cocolyze

Content, UX analysis, speed, compatibility with robots: these are the 4 main points of the Cocolyze SEO audit. Here, you will get a good overview of your site’s health, without necessarily knowing specifically which pages need improvement. 

Ahref

Studying keywords, your competitors, your site’s SEO, and your ranking: that is Ahref’s offer. You will find a free trial for an initial audit. 

Other paid tools can also be real assets. Among them, Semrush, SEranking, Autoritas, and Yooda have many features and very attractive pricing offers. 

Summary table of free SEO tools 

It is up to you to choose the most relevant tool for your current needs. With each tool, you will have the opportunity to improve your SEO and appear in the SERP.