9 Free Google Tools for SEO Experts

If you're interested in search engine optimization, don't waste time and let your competitors outpace you. Instead, be proactive, choose the best tools, monitor your progress, and stay up-to-date with SEO developments. It happens that some of the best SEO tools are free.

I've already introduced you to various tools to strengthen your online presence, reach a wider target audience, and increase your revenue. For instance, my post on how to succeed in SEO in a world dominated by artificial intelligence was a big hit.

This time, I'm going to examine X of the best Google tools for SEO experts. Note that the most well-known tools will not be mentioned. Therefore, you won't find the Keyword Planner Tool, Google Analytics, or Google Search Console here.

I prefer to share tools that you may not be using and that could have a huge impact on your SEO.

Let's get started!

1. Google Mobile-Friendly Test

Did you know that about 60% of searches are now conducted from a mobile device? Ten years ago, this would have been hard to believe. However, it's the case. And it's not likely to change.

It's important to understand the impact this can have on search results. Google wants your website to be responsive, so it's not something you should take lightly. Fortunately, the search engine giant is doing its part to make your life a little easier. With the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool, it only takes a few seconds to determine whether your website is mobile-friendly or not.

After entering your URL and clicking on "Test URL," you should get something that looks like this:

As you can see, there's no uncertainty with this free tool. Your website is either mobile-friendly or it's not, and this will impact search results.

If your website fails this test, don't lose another day before making the necessary changes. Adapting your website to mobile format could do wonders for your search engine ranking, as well as the amount of organic traffic you generate.

2. Google My Business

Local SEO is important. No matter how small your business and its field, if you want to make yourself known on the web, you'll need a solid strategy centered on search engine optimization.

Most of the time, this starts with Google My Business and a Google My Business listing, which allows you to provide potential customers with more information about your business, including opening hours, address, and contact details. This tool is simple and free.

According to this statistic shared by Social Media Today, 50% of local searches on mobile lead the visitor to visit the location on the same day.

Creating a Google My Business listing doesn't guarantee an increase in online and offline visitors but definitely moves you in the right direction.

Here's an example of how a listing appears on the web:

Consider adding more photos as time goes by. In parallel, it's important to regularly generate positive reviews on social networks to improve your search engine ranking.

3. Google PageSpeed Insights

Is a website's speed really that important?

Well, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you want to find your site at the top of search engine rankings, then it's a crucial factor. And, if you want your visitors to have a positive user experience, it's also a good idea.

In other words, you'll need to ensure that your website is as fast as possible. Speed will impact your SEO and how users interact with your website. That's why you need to ensure that your website loads as quickly as possible at all times, in order to be well referenced.

Thanks to the Google PageSpeed Insights tool, you no longer have to guess whether your website is up-to-date in terms of speed. It also helps you make your website fast on all devices.

Running an analysis will provide the following:

Make sure to check the data for both mobile and desktop, as it's important to ensure that your website is up-to-date on each type of device.

Google also provides advice on things you should improve. With this information, you'll likely find several ways to quickly and easily increase your website's speed.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a service offered for free by Google when you have a website. It allows you to check the indexing of their website and thus contributes to the improvement of your website's organic SEO.

In concrete terms, Search Console allows you to know daily the keywords that led to a visit to your site.

You will find several types of information on the platform that will give you a fairly accurate idea of the health of your site and how it is perceived by the search engine.

Here are the main pieces of information available on your Search Console:

• The number of impressions
• The average position of your page URLs
• The CTR
• The number of clicks from the results pages (views by page, keywords, countries..)
• Link building and internal linking: the external links received by the site and the distribution of internal links

5. Google Trends

A very powerful tool, often underused by online marketing specialists, Google Trends can help you tackle topics that are popular right now.

In addition to exploring "featured" ideas, you can also conduct a search on any topic or keyword that comes to mind. It also allows you to track the search intent of internet users depending on the time of year. You will thus have an indication of the "best" period to highlight topics concerning your business.

In the example below, we can observe that searches around bread have greatly increased during the lockdown.

Google Trends doesn't always provide data that you can use to your advantage. But, from an SEO standpoint, it's worth using regularly. It can help you discover a topic that will generate a lot of traffic to your website.

6. Google Alerts

One of the best things you can do is set up an alert for your top three to five competitors. This way, you'll receive a notification every time they're mentioned by an online media. This is crucial for your long-term optimization efforts.

Why is this useful?

On one hand, it allows you to keep an eye on your competitors and what they're doing. It also gives you the opportunity to draw inspiration from your competitors in order to achieve the same type of visibility.

There's nothing wrong with following publications and bloggers who regularly talk about your competitors. Once you have a solid list, contact these people and introduce your business.

If you have something interesting to offer or if you can prove that your business is just as important as the competing businesses, don't be surprised if this leads to positive visibility and possibly a link to your website.

Using these alerts is very simple, just type in a topic and check the preview.

If you like what you see in the preview, it's time to create the alert and wait for the updates to arrive.

7. Google Lighthouse

Google Lighthouse is an open-source tool that will allow you to perform an SEO audit of your website. The goal is once again to optimize and improve the quality of your various pages on your site.

After analysis, you will get a score out of 100, which evaluates the progress of your optimization. This analysis is based on four central themes:

• site performance analysis
• site accessibility analysis
• SEO audit
• analysis of best practices

There is a Lighthouse plugin for faster analysis.

8. Keyword Planner, Google Adword's free tool

Your Google Ads are unlikely to produce results if they are not targeted at your target audience. To optimize the ROI of your Google Ads campaigns, good targeting and a choice of relevant keywords is essential.

Google Keyword Planner will allow you to identify the most relevant keywords for a campaign in order to optimize the performance of your ads.

Know that you can use this tool even if you are not running Adword campaigns. It's a great tool for finding the keywords that will be indispensable to you.

9. YouTube

Did you know that Google bought YouTube for over a billion dollars?

It's been over ten years, so I understand if you've forgotten that the most used search engine in the world owns the largest video sharing website (and the second most used search engine in the world).

If you want to develop a comprehensive online marketing and SEO strategy, it's essential to get involved in creating and sharing videos.

There are many benefits to dedicating most of your video marketing resources to YouTube, including the fact that it has the largest user base of all video sharing services.

In addition, YouTube videos often rank well in Google search results. I had even written an article on SEO on Youtube that many of you read. Thus, even if you can't appear on the first page of Google, you may have more success with your YouTube videos.

Youtube is also a very good tool for suggesting content related to your topic by simply doing a search in its search bar.

Conclusion