What is an SEO tool? 

SEO tools provide information and alerts about the overall health and success of your website. They assist in identifying areas of opportunity as well as weaknesses or issues that may prevent you from ranking and earning visibility in the SERPs.

Also, you can list your startup in Google my business listing to get customers/clients from google maps.

Here is the list of the best SEO tools that are free and ideal for startups.

1. Google Keyword Planner Tool:

Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool offered by Google with the goal of finding new keywords relevant to your business.

While Keyword Planner is part of Google Ads and is frequently used to conduct keyword research for search ads and view pay-per-click (PPC) bidding data, it may still be useful for SEO, as you can create a Google Ads account and access the tool for free.

Features of Google Keyword Planner:

• You can use Keyword Planner to discover new and related keywords that people are searching for and bidding on in Google Ads, which can help show keyword search volume and competition levels when choosing keywords and related topics to write about.

• Rather than searching by keyword, you also can enter your website URL or the URL of a competitor's website to find targeted keywords to target.

• Whereas Google Keyword Planner provides average monthly search figures for keywords, you can only see ranges such as 1k-10k unless you have an active Google Ads campaign, where in case you will see exact search volume data.

• Google Ads Keyword Planner is a great starting point for keyword research before moving on to an SEO tool that offers additional keyword search data, such as Semrush, SE Ranking, or Ahrefs.

• Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that your company should use to get a general idea of search volume and competition for keywords related to your business.

2. Google Analytics:

Every small business owner should make sure their website has a Google Analytics (GA) tag. Google Analytics is a no-cost tool for analyzing website traffic.

Google Analytics is a valuable free resource for better understanding your website visitors. Discover where your visitors are coming from, how they are navigating your site, the most popular pages, the average session length, and much more.

You can create up to 100 Analytics accounts, each with 1 to 50 properties. A property in Google Analytics is a website, mobile application, or device.

Features Of Google Analytics 

• You can see which channels visitors come to your website from with Google Analytics, such as organic traffic from Google and other major search engines, social media platforms, and other sites. 

• You can however view physical geolocation such as city and state, which can help local or service-area businesses assess traffic quality and relevance.

• Google Analytics makes it simple to investigate how visitors interact with your site, such as which web pages are viewed, in what order, and how long they stay on your site.

• You can link Google Search Console (GSC) to Google Analytics to view insights for pages and keywords from GSC in Google Analytics.

• Goals in Google Analytics can be used to track desired conversion actions such as website form submissions and whether a specific page or set of landing pages was viewed, a link was clicked, or a phone call was made (call tracking software required).

3. Google Search Console: 

Another free SEO tool that small businesses should use to monitor, maintain and troubleshoot site presence in Google Search results was formerly the Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Search Console assists you in managing your website's visibility in Google Search and detecting potential issues. Simply sign in to your Google account, create a new website property, and verify your site using one of the methods provided.

GSC can be used to submit sitemaps, update pages, see which pages are correctly indexed in Google Search, ensure pages are mobile-friendly, analyze keyword positions, clicks, and impressions identified by Google, and more.

A Google account can hold up to 1,000 properties. Google suggests that you create separate Search Console properties for each domain that you want to track separately.

Features of Google Search Console

• To request quick indexing of your site content into Google Search, submit your website's XML sitemap file (usually auto-generated by your website platform or a plugin like RankMath or Yoast if using WordPress) and new website pages.

• Search Console can help you identify which pages are indexed and visible in Google SERPs, as well as which search queries or Google searches are generating search impressions for your website pages and driving clicks to your website.

• Search Console detects pages that may be blocked from being indexed by Google, as well as any website penalties based on issues such as link spam or keyword-stuffed content.

4. SEOquake: 

Semrush, a leading all-in-one SEO software platform, offers SEOquake as a free Google Chrome browser extension.

SEOquake offers free tools for instantly checking website SEO metrics.

While not as comprehensive or feature-rich as the full Semrush platform, SEOquake is a useful free tool for obtaining high-level domain insights for sites that appear in Google search results and performing basic web page audits.

Features Of SEOquake:

• SEO quake offers a free basic SEO audit to diagnose any web page, along with some brief tips next to the completed page analysis, to help you ensure your company's website is free of critical issues.

• Based on the number of pages indexed and estimates of the number of backlinks pointing to the site, you can get an idea of the size and prominence of a website.

• Examine the keyword density of a website page to analyze the keyword phrases you are using on your site pages as well as the words used by competitors that you may want to include.

• All of the above SEO insights can be obtained by scanning competitor pages with the SEO quake browser extension.

5. SEO Minion:

SEO Minion is a free SEO tool that provides a complete on-page analysis of a website. It is an Ideal tool for small businesses 

Features of SEO Minion:

• Gives a complete analysis of on-page SEO such as URL, title, description, heading tags, etc.

• Checks for broken links

• Gives SERP preview of your website

• Checks for SERP location 

Conclusion: The SEO tool can assist you in saving money and resources while increasing your company's visibility in results from local searches over competitors, resulting in far more leads and increased sales.

This comprehensive list of the Top 5 Free SEO tools for small business should provide you with everything you need to build a strong SEO strategy and foundation, monitor progress, as well as helps in achieving desired digital marketing results for your company.