Most small businesses need only a handful of free SEO tools: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to see how search engines read your site, Google Business Profile for your local listing, and PageSpeed Insights to check speed. Add a crawler, a structured data tester and a few keyword and backlink tools, and you can check almost everything an SEO audit covers without paying for software.
You don't need expensive software to look after a small business website. The free tools below are the same ones professionals open first, and each is listed with what it does, what it costs or where its limits are, who it suits and a link to its official page. Set up the first group, then work through the others as you need them.
Start here. These three tools show you how Google and Bing see your website and what visitors do once they arrive. Everything else on this page is easier once they are set up.
Shows the searches that bring up your site in Google, with clicks, impressions and average position, plus which pages are indexed, which have errors and whether your sitemap was read. You can also ask Google to recrawl a page.
The Bing version of Search Console: search performance, indexing, sitemaps, a backlinks report, keyword research and an on-demand site scan that flags technical problems.
Shows how many people visit your site, where they came from (search, social, ads, other sites) and what they did, such as calling, filling in a form or booking.
If customers find you on a map, your listings matter as much as your website. All three of these are free, and each one controls how your business looks in a different maps app.
Controls how your business appears on Google Maps and in local search results: hours, services, photos, posts, reviews and your replies. Its performance view shows searches, calls and direction requests.
The Bing equivalent of a Business Profile: your name, address, hours and photos on Bing search and Bing Maps.
Manages how your business appears in Apple Maps and on iPhone place cards: hours, photos, links and actions such as calling or ordering. It replaced Apple Business Connect in April 2026.
These tools find slow pages, broken links, missing titles and pages search engines can't reach. They report problems; fixing them usually means editing your site or asking your web developer.
Tests one page at a time and shows how fast it loads, with suggestions. Where your site has enough visitors, it also shows real-user speed data from the last 28 days.
Built into the Chrome browser's developer tools. It audits a page for performance, accessibility, best practices and basic SEO, and explains each issue.
A desktop program that crawls your whole site the way a search engine does and lists broken links, redirects, missing or duplicate titles, thin pages and more.
Structured data (schema markup) is code that tells search engines what your page is about: your business, your services, your FAQs. These two testers show whether yours is written correctly.
Shows which Google rich results (such as FAQ, product or review snippets) your structured data qualifies for, and lists errors and warnings.
Checks any structured data against the full Schema.org vocabulary, not only the types Google uses, and shows how each item is read.
Keyword tools show what people type when they look for a business like yours. Free tools give rough numbers rather than exact counts, which is usually enough for a small business choosing which services and towns to write about.
Suggests keyword ideas and shows estimated monthly searches, competition and ad bid ranges for terms you enter.
Compares how search interest in terms changes over time and by state or city, which is useful for spotting seasonal demand.
The Performance report inside Search Console lists the real searches where your site already appears, with impressions, clicks and average position. Sorting by impressions shows terms where you are close to page one.
Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Free tools show most of the links pointing at your own site; looking at competitors' links is where paid tools take over.
Gives verified site owners free access to a site audit, plus the backlinks and keywords for their own site.
Lists the pages and domains that link to your site and the anchor text they use, from inside Bing Webmaster Tools.
There is no free tool yet that reliably shows how often AI assistants mention your business. What you can do for free is make your site easy for them to read, and one emerging way to do that is an llms.txt file.
A proposed format for a Markdown file at /llms.txt that summarizes your business and lists your most important pages, so AI assistants and agents can find them. You can read ours at /llms.txt as an example.
There is no single free tool that checks everything, so a free SEO check is really three tools used together. Start with Google Search Console for indexing problems and errors Google has found, run PageSpeed Insights on your key pages for speed, and crawl the site with the free version of Screaming Frog for broken links, missing titles and redirects.
The honest limits: Screaming Frog stops at 500 URLs, PageSpeed Insights tests one page at a time, and none of them tell you which problems actually matter most for your business. They are good at finding issues and silent on priorities.
For your own site, use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and the backlinks report in Bing Webmaster Tools together, and compare them with the Links report in Google Search Console. Each tool finds a slightly different set of links, so using two or three gives a fuller picture.
The honest limit: free tools show links to sites you own and have verified. To see who links to a competitor, which is how most link-building ideas are found, you need a paid tool or an agency that has one.
The Search Console Performance report is the most reliable free rank checker, because it shows your average position for real searches where your site appeared. Filter by page or by search term, and compare date ranges to see whether a change helped.
The honest limits: positions are averages across locations and devices, so they won't match one search from your own phone. Search Console doesn't show map pack positions by neighborhood, and it can't show terms where you don't appear yet. Tracking map rankings across a service area needs a paid tool.
Every tool on this page in one table. All are free to use; the limits column says where the free version stops.
| Tool | Job | What it's for | Cost and limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Set up and monitor your site | Google search performance and indexing | Free from Google. |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Set up and monitor your site | Bing search performance, backlinks and site scans | Free from Microsoft. |
| Google Analytics | Set up and monitor your site | Visitor behavior and conversions | The standard version is free. |
| Google Business Profile | Local listings | Your listing on Google Search and Maps | Free to create and manage. |
| Bing Places for Business | Local listings | Your listing on Bing and Microsoft maps | Free. |
| Apple Business | Local listings | Your listing on Apple Maps | Free. |
| PageSpeed Insights | Speed and technical checks | Page speed and Core Web Vitals | Free, no account needed. |
| Lighthouse in Chrome | Speed and technical checks | Page audit for speed, accessibility and basic SEO | Free and open source. |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free version) | Speed and technical checks | Full-site crawl for technical problems | Free for up to 500 URLs per crawl. |
| Google Rich Results Test | Structured data | Checks schema for Google rich results | Free. |
| Schema Markup Validator | Structured data | Checks schema against the full Schema.org vocabulary | Free, no account needed. |
| Google Keyword Planner | Keyword research | Keyword ideas and search volume estimates | Google describes it as free, but it lives inside Google Ads: you need a Google Ads account, access comes after you create a campaign, and the volumes are rounded. |
| Google Trends | Keyword research | Search interest over time and by region | Free, no sign-in. |
| Search Console Performance report | Keyword research | Keywords your site already appears for | Free with Search Console. |
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools | Backlinks | Backlinks, keywords and a site audit for your own site | Free for sites you verify. |
| Bing Webmaster Tools backlinks report | Backlinks | Referring pages, domains and anchor text | Free with a verified Bing Webmaster Tools account. |
| llms.txt | AI search | A plain summary of your site for AI tools | Free; you write the file yourself. |
Checked against each tool's official page on October 1, 2026. Free plans change; check the official page before you rely on a limit.
Free tools find problems. They don't fix them, and they don't tell you which fix will make the biggest difference for your kind of business in your town. A crawler can list 200 issues on a small site; most of them don't matter, and a few matter a lot.
That is the part we do. A professional SEO audit turns tool output into a ranked list of fixes. Local SEO services handle your listings, reviews and map rankings, technical SEO services fix the problems crawlers find, and monthly SEO plans keep the work going every month with a plain-English report.
Answers from the Rank Radiantly Team.
Google Search Console. It is free, comes straight from Google, and shows the searches that bring people to your site, the pages Google has indexed and any errors it found. Set it up first, then add Google Business Profile if you serve a local area.
For finding problems on a small site, mostly yes. Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, a 500-URL crawl and a structured data tester cover most of what an audit looks at. Where free tools fall short is competitor research, tracking many keywords in many towns, and full backlink data for other sites.
Yes, for searches where you already appear. The Performance report in Search Console shows your average position for each search. It is an average across locations and devices, so it won't match what you see when you search from your own phone.
They answer different questions. Search Console shows what happens before someone clicks, in Google's results. Analytics shows what visitors do on your site after they arrive. Most businesses benefit from both, though Analytics sets cookies and may need a consent banner.
Google describes it as free, but you need a Google Ads account, and Google says access comes after you create a campaign. Its search volumes are rounded estimates. Google Trends and the Search Console Performance report need no ad account at all.
It is a short Markdown file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt that describes your business and links to your key pages, written for AI assistants. It is a proposal rather than an official standard, so treat it as a low-cost extra, not a guarantee of being mentioned by AI tools.
No. We don't earn anything from the tools on this page, and none of the links are affiliate links. We list them because they are free and useful.
Free tools find the problems. We tell you which ones matter for your business and fix them. Share your website in a short chat and we reply within one business day.
