10 Free Tools for Optimizing Your Website in the Search Engines

10 Free Tools for Optimizing Your Website in the Search Engines

Search Engines are usually the main way that you get traffic to your website, by optimizing your site for them so that they will rank it higher. And in order for them to do so, your website needs to be optimized according to their Search Engine guidelines.

And webmasters can take advantage of free online tools in which to test their website to see ways that they can further optimize it. Not just for Search Engines, but for your sites visitors too.

So here's 10 Free Tools for Optimizing Your Website in the Search Engines.

1. Google Trends

Google Trends lets you see high performing keywords and and see into growing and emerging trends that you can blog about. This includes trends by search terms, forecasts and regional trends too.

See what's trending for the things you care about: https://www.google.com/trends/

2. Google Keyword Planner

Google's free Keyword Planner doesn't provide the most accurate results these days, but you can still use it to get an idea of search volume and come up with more ideas for things to blog about.

Check what's worth ranking for: https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

3. Robots.txt Tester

The Robots.txt file is usually very overlooked by a lot of webmasters but plays an important role in how Search Engines access and index your site. You should test yours at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/robots-testing-tool

4. HTML / XHTML Validator

The code on your website is what makes your website run. When there are errors in that code, your website might not run as it should. So the W3C Validator checks the code for validity. Make sure you test and fix all your code errors by running it through the W3C Validator. Check your markup: https://validator.w3.org/

5. CSS Validator

Just like how you want to check your markup for errors, you will also want to make sure your CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) doesn't contain any errors either.

You can check it at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

6. Structured Data Testing Tool

Using the Structured Data Testing Tool you can check that Google is correctly parsing your structured data markup and correctly displaying it in the Search Results. Check your Structured Data using the Structured Data Testing Tool https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

7. Mobile Friendly Tool

Is your website mobile friendly? Not sure? You can test it using the Google Mobile Friendly Tool. Test your mobile friendliness: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

8. Page Speed Tool

The Page Speed Tool will provide an insight into how each of the web pages on your site are performing across and on different mobile devices. Test your page speed using the tool at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

9. Search Console

Google's Search Console (Webmaster Tools) can tell you a lot about your site as well as help Google to index it better. And since it's free, there's no reason not to use it.

Add your site to Google's Search Console google.com/webmasters/

10. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is also another free tool that can provide you a lot of insight into your site and your sites visitors and how they are behaving on your site. Add your site to Google Analytics google.com/analytics

So that's 10 free tools you can use to optimize your website with today.

Do you make use of all of these tools?

What other free online website optimization tools do you make use of?