If things felt busy before, SEO has officially shifted into overdrive.
With AI on the lips of every search marketer, large language models have earned their spot in the SEO toolkit.
Google’s AI Overviews and Bing’s Copilot are rewriting huge sections of the SERP, and privacy regulations have ratcheted up again.
Against that backdrop, teams are watching budgets more closely than ever.
Yet the right mix of zero-cost software still covers most everyday SEO tasks – from technical audits and speed checks to content ideas and competitive research.
The trick is knowing which free tiers deliver real value, and which ones are just cleverly disguised upsells.
The list below has been fully updated with fresh features, new tools, and smart ways to squeeze maximum insight without spending a cent.
1. Google Search Console
This is still the go-to free tool for SEO.
Google Search Console (GSC) remains the single most important free data source for anyone focused on organic visibility. Two updates make it even more powerful.
- Search Console Insights now shows GA4 engagement rate, average engagement time, and event conversions alongside click and impression data. You can finally see which queries bring in visitors who stick around or convert without exporting two separate reports.
- GSC has rolled Interaction to Next Paint (INP) into the Core Web Vitals overlay. Pages that hover near the 200-ms “good” threshold now get amber warnings well before rankings take a hit. If you’re monitoring speed at scale, connect the Core Web Vitals API to Looker Studio and use conditional formatting to flag any URLs slipping into the “needs improvement” zone.
Don’t overlook the Compare filter. Toggle “Last 28 days vs. previous” and sort by click difference to find pages hit hardest by AI Overviews.
It’s a fast way to spot posts that need stronger FAQs or fresh expert quotes to win back the click.
Bing’s market share is still small compared to Google, but the users who arrive often carry higher buying intent, especially in B2B, finance, and higher-age demographics.
Copilot is now built into Bing Webmaster Tools, an AI assistant that analyzes your crawl, backlink, and keyword data and surfaces clear action items (like “15 blocked resources slowing CLS on product pages”) in plain English.
You can even ask follow-up questions, which is really handy when a stakeholder wants to know why something matters.
Performance data now stretches back 16 months, matching GSC’s window, so seasonal trend lines finally align across both engines.
And because Bing integrates directly with Microsoft Clarity, you can watch heat-maps or session replays for Bing traffic only – a fantastic way to see if Copilot-generated SERP summaries create different on-page behaviour.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs’ free tier still allows three verified domains and up to 5,000 URLs per crawl – a generous ceiling.
What’s new is the lite Content Gap feature.
Drop in up to three competitor domains, and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) will list the keywords they rank for that you don’t, along with search volume and keyword difficulty.
It’s ideal for mapping out a full quarter of blog briefs without springing for the full Ahrefs setup.
Another underused gem is AWT’s Link Opportunities report, which scans your pages for unlinked brand mentions (yours and partners’) across the web.
Send a quick, polite email, and you’ve banked easy authority without firing up an outreach tool.
4. Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free license)
Screaming Frog remains the Swiss Army knife of technical SEO.
The free version still crawls up to 500 URLs, which is often enough to sample health on big sites or fully audit brochure-style domains.
Because GA4 is now mandatory, Screaming Frog’s validator checks for the correct gtag or GTM container ID and flags pages silently dropping events.
If you inherited a half-migrated GA4 install, this single feature can save hours of detective work.
If you have a small website, then you can crawl in “list: mode” with your top-traffic URLs from GSC.
This way, you’ll stay under the 500 URL cap and test the pages that matter most.
5. Microsoft Clarity
Clarity delivers unlimited recordings, heat maps, scroll maps, and funnel visualization with no per-site quota.
Microsoft recently rolled out rage-tap detection on mobile.
This means if a user taps the same element rapidly, Clarity labels the session, surfaces the snippet, and counts the rage taps so you can prioritise UX fixes.
Turn on the Insights beta and Clarity’s AI clusters similar sessions and auto-summarizes them each week.
You can then paste the text summary straight into dev tickets, a big time saver.
6. Semrush free tier
Semrush’s entry-level plan still offers one project and five keyword searches per day.
That looks stingy until you combine the new AI Content Outline Builder and the existing Keyword Gap tool.
Feed in three competitor URLs, export clusters plus rough H2/H3 structure, and you have a ready-made brief.
Change project next month, rinse and repeat for another site.
The free Backlink Audit is also a useful feature. It now lists toxic links plus the top 100 referrers by authority, enough to build an outreach list without paying for link building tools.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
7. AlsoAsked
AlsoAsked scrapes Google’s People Also Ask boxes and maps each question into a visual tree, three layers deep.
Even with the free quota (three searches daily), you can cover a full product line over a week.
A recent standout: scheduled queries. Set a weekly run for your cornerstone keyword and get updates by email.
It’s like a content-gap early-warning system: if “How much does X cost in 2025?” appears, you know it’s time to update pricing pages before competitors do.
8. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic delivers two free searches a day.
The refreshed UI automatically groups results by intent buckets (“why,” “where,” “can I”) and overlays keyword difficulty (KD) from UberSuggest.
Toss the export into Sheets, filter KD under 30, and you’ve identified easier wins to target with your content.
Combine with AlsoAsked’s hierarchy to decide which queries deserve stand-alone posts versus inclusion as FAQs or H2s on existing content pages.
9. SEOquake (Chrome / Firefox extension)
SEOquake is one of my personal favorite browser extensions. It provides a wealth of SEO metrics, including an on-page SEO audit, keyword density analysis and social metrics.
SEOquake can be integrated with Google Search Console and Google Analytics, making it a versatile tool for quick SEO checks and analyses.
10. Google Business Profile and GBP Insights
Local optimization matters more and more with Google’s move to serve more personalized results.
Previously, you may well have overlooked these tools for non-local businesses. It is even relevant for B2B firms running from serviced offices.
Map packs monopolize above-the-fold real estate. GBP Insights now charts calls, chats, and direction requests in GA4-style graphs and lets you download 18 months of data (up from 6).
You can also add social media profile links, and by adding regular update post,s you can promote current offers or important news directly in the SERPs.
11. Large language model helpers (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and friends)
LLMs aren’t traditional SEO tools, but ignoring them in 2025 is self-sabotage.
GPT-4o and Claude 3 both offer free or cheap tiers that deliver:
- Keyword expansion and clustering: Paste your seed list and ask the model to group by intent, map to funnel stages, or suggest missing modifiers (“best”, “near me”, “for 2025”).
- Rapid content briefs: Drop two top-ranking competitor URLs and prompt: “Draft a content outline that’s 20 % more comprehensive.” The result won’t be perfect, but it beats staring at a blank doc.
- Schema and regex generation: Ask for an event schema snippet or a GA4 regex that matches multiple sub-folders.
- Sanity checks: paste your meta description and prompt “Would you click this? Suggest two stronger alternatives under 155 characters.”
As always, fact-check everything.
LLMs are assistants, not authorities, and best used for the grunt work.
It’s your job to edit and refine; only a foolish SEO takes their output as gospel.
Industry context: Why these tools matter more than ever
Since Universal Analytics has been retired, GA4 is now the only game in town.
If you missed the migration deadline, your UA data has already started to disappear, so you will need to rely on tools that feed directly into GA4, such as Search Console Insights, PageSpeed Insights, and Microsoft Clarity, to maintain a clean and consistent view of performance.
INP has also replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital, which shifts the focus firmly onto real-world user interactions.
Free tools like Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights, and SEOquake now report INP out of the box, so there is no excuse for ignoring this metric.
AI-driven SERP features like Google’s AI Overviews and Bing’s Copilot are already siphoning off top-of-funnel clicks.
You can keep a close eye on their impact by using Search Console’s date-range comparison and Bing’s extended 16-month performance history to spot impression drops before they erode traffic.
The ever-tightening privacy rules and the gradual disappearance of third-party cookies make first-party data more valuable than ever.
Tools that run on first-party scripts, including Microsoft Clarity, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools, help ensure your insight remains intact even as external tracking options fade.
With smart choices and a little creativity, free tools can still power serious SEO. Use them well.
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