6 Free Google SEO Tools to Boost Your Search Visibility

We broke down six of Google’s free SEO tools, testing how each one helps you understand demand, uncover technical blockers, measure user behavior, and keep pages visible without drowning in disconnected data. And because search is shifting toward AI-generated answers, we also added a bonus tool to help you go beyond traditional SEO and start tracking true AI search visibility where decisions are already being made.

TL;DR

Google Keyword Planner: best free Google SEO tool for mapping real search demand

Key Google Keyword Planner standout features

• Finds keyword ideas from simple seeds like one word, a phrase, or a page URL.

• Shows monthly search volume ranges so you see how often people search each idea.

• Gives ad style metrics like competition level and bid range that hint at keyword value.

• Lets you filter results by country, city, language, or network so ideas match your market.

• Works inside a free Google Ads account, even when you do not run active ad campaigns.

Google Keyword Planner helps you turn vague topic ideas into a list of search terms that real people use. You start from the pain your reader feels, then you translate that pain into language, and Keyword Planner shows which versions people actually type into Google. This makes your content plan less about guesswork and more about clear demand that you can see in front of you.

The tool also helps you group ideas into logical clusters instead of chasing random keywords. You can see which terms share close meaning, which ones carry stronger volume, and which ones look too broad for your current goals. This makes it easier to design a content map where each page has a clear focus, a clear role, and a clear place in your funnel.

How to use Google Keyword Planner

First, sign in to Google Ads with your normal Google account and create a basic account, then skip building a full campaign. This step feels odd when you only care about SEO, yet it is the only way to unlock the planner. After this first setup, you can reach the tool from the “Tools and settings” menu without touching any ad budget.

Next, pick “Discover new keywords” and start with a seed that reflects a real pain, not just a vague topic. You can type a phrase like “ai search visibility tracking” or paste a key page from your site that already speaks to that problem. The planner reads this seed and returns a long list of related searches that people use when they face something close to that same pain.

Then, apply filters so the data matches the audience you actually serve. Choose the main countries, languages, and date range that matter for your product or service, and remove search networks you do not care about. This keeps your list focused on the people who might really buy from you, instead of a random global crowd.

After that, sort and scan the list for patterns that match your content strategy. Look for mid to high volume phrases that clearly express a problem, a comparison, or a job to be done, because those phrases often fit bottom of funnel pieces. Save these ideas into groups that match your planned topic clusters, so each cluster starts from one seed pain and expands into clear related terms.

Finally, export the list into a sheet or directly into your planning tool and add notes about intent. Mark which keywords fit problem posts, which ones fit “best tools” pages, and which ones fit feature deep dives. This simple layer of judgment makes the planner far more useful, because you stop seeing a flat list of phrases and start seeing a map that guides real content choices.

As helpful as Keyword Planner is, it still carries limits that you must keep in mind. The tool was built for advertisers first, so it optimizes for ad planning, not for organic search analysis, and that shapes the metrics you see in every view. When you know this, you can use its data as a demand signal and not as a final truth about how hard a keyword will be to rank.

Another important limit comes from the way Google groups search terms and reports volume. Many close variants share one volume range, and low volume ideas often appear as rough buckets instead of clear counts. This can hide long tail demand, blur nuance between similar phrases, and push you toward big head terms, so you need other tools or manual SERP checks to understand the real shape of the field.

Pricing plans

Google Keyword Planner is free to use through a Google Ads account, and you do not need to spend money on ads to access keyword ideas and basic volume ranges, which makes it one of the easiest ways to tap into Google search demand without adding a new line item to your SEO budget.

Best use cases

• Planning topic clusters around one core pain and its related search terms.

• Validating if a bottom-of-funnel idea has enough search demand to justify a full page.

• Building local or language specific SEO strategies using location and language filters.

• Finding mid-volume, medium intent keywords that you can realistically target with current authority.
  

Google Analytics 4 (GA4): best free Google SEO tool for tracking what happens after a visitor lands on your site

Key Google Analytics standout features

• Tracks where your visitors come from, including organic search, referrals, paid ads, and direct traffic.
  

• Monitors how users behave once they land: sessions, pageviews, engaged sessions, engagement rate, time spent, and bounce or exit patterns.

• Lets you define and track conversion events such as signups, purchases, downloads, and form submissions so you can measure real outcomes.

• Offers segmentation and custom reporting so you can break data down by device, country, traffic source, landing page, or behavior.

• Supports deeper lifecycle metrics like retention, user value, cross-device activity, and returning behavior, not just raw visits.
  

Google Analytics 4 shows what users actually do after they arrive on your site, and this makes it different from every keyword or ranking tool. GA4 does not just count clicks; it shows how many users stay, how many leave, which paths they follow, and which actions they complete. When you see these patterns, you learn which pages help your SEO efforts and which ones waste your traffic.

The tool also helps you shift from traffic reporting to revenue or lead reporting. By setting up conversion events, you can see how organic traffic behaves compared to other channels, and you can learn which pages move users forward. This turns SEO from a guessing game into a measurable part of your business, because GA4 makes it clear which actions drive value and which ones need work.

How to use Google Analytics for SEO and growth

Start by installing the GA4 tracking tag on every page of your site. Once the data flows, open the Traffic Acquisition report to see where your visitors come from and filter the data for Organic Search to isolate your SEO impact. This shows which pages pull traffic and whether the traffic grows or drops over time.

Next, open the Engagement section and study metrics like sessions, engaged sessions, engagement rate, average engagement time, and pages per session. These signals tell you which pages hold attention and which ones push people away. Then, create conversion events for actions that matter to your business — form fills, signups, sales, or downloads — and monitor them in the Conversions report to learn how much organic traffic drives real outcomes.

For deeper insight, use Explorations to build custom comparisons. You can compare behavior by device, landing page, country, or traffic source and uncover patterns you would miss in basic reports. Pair GA4 with Search Console to link what users searched with what they did after landing. This connection gives you a full funnel view from query to conversion and exposes why some pages win and others fail.

GA4 does have limits you should respect. It does not help with indexing issues, keyword tracking, or technical SEO, because it only measures what people do after they reach your site. For those needs, you still must use other tools. GA4 also requires careful setup. If you do not configure events, filters, and tags correctly, your reports may show incomplete or misleading data.

Another limit comes from GA4’s flexibility. It has many settings, segments, and custom report options, so beginners often feel overwhelmed. Some businesses also need to adjust reports for their specific logic, which takes time and a clear understanding of how GA4 structures sessions and users.

Pricing plans

Google Analytics 4 is free to use. You only need a Google account and a tracking tag on your site. Advanced features like enterprise export or additional analysis layers exist in paid versions, but the core reporting, tracking, and conversion measurement are completely free.

Best use cases

• Measuring how much organic traffic turns into leads or sales.

• Finding which landing pages perform well and which need optimization.

• Comparing behavior across devices, countries, or traffic channels.

• Testing the impact of content updates, UX changes, or redesigns.

• Reporting SEO results with real business outcomes, not just keyword rankings.
  

Google Search Console (GSC): best free Google SEO tool for seeing how Google really sees your site

Key Google Search Console standout features

• Shows how your site appears in Google Search, including impressions, clicks, CTR, average position, and the queries that drive traffic.

• Lets you submit sitemaps or individual URLs so Google can crawl or re-crawl your content after updates.

• Provides detailed URL inspection data that reveals index status, crawl behavior, canonical tags, structured data, and rich-result eligibility.

• Reports technical and SEO issues such as indexing errors, coverage problems, mobile-usability issues, Core Web Vitals warnings, rich-snippet errors, and security or manual-action alerts.

• Displays internal and external link data so you can see which pages link to you and how your site’s link structure appears to Google.
  

Google Search Console acts like a direct health report from Google. It does not estimate or guess; it shows exactly how Google indexes, interprets, and serves your pages. That makes GSC the most trusted source of data for understanding what works in search and what holds your content back. Instead of reacting to drops with guesswork, you can see the real reasons: blocked pages, slow indexing, coverage issues, or weak click-through rates.

At the same time, GSC helps you find and fix technical SEO issues before they become costly. Small problems like broken pages, incorrect canonicals, missing structured data, or poor mobile usability can quietly push pages out of search. GSC surfaces these issues early so you can correct them, resubmit URLs, and maintain a stable, healthy presence in the search results.

How to use Google Search Console

Start by adding and verifying your domain or property through HTML tag, DNS record, or another verification method. Once verified, submit your sitemaps so Google can discover all important pages. This one step ensures new content does not sit unseen for days or weeks.

Next, open the Performance report to study impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position. Review results by query, page, country, or device to learn which topics bring attention and which ones need improvement. Then use the URL Inspection tool when you publish or update content. This tool shows if a page is indexed, which canonical Google selected, whether structured data is valid, and whether you need to request re-indexing.

Finally, check the Coverage and Page Experience sections to monitor indexing errors, Core Web Vitals issues, mobile usability problems, structured data warnings, or security alerts. Fix each issue and watch GSC for confirmation that your updates were processed correctly. When you follow this workflow, you keep your site clean, fast, and fully indexed.

GSC, however, has limits you should consider. It only shows data for your own property, so you cannot use it to study competitors or external sites. Many query reports are sampled or filtered for privacy, meaning long-tail queries sometimes disappear from the data.

The interface also limits you to smaller exports unless you use the API, which can be a challenge for large sites. And some data — especially search performance reports — can lag by one to two days, so real-time troubleshooting is not always possible.

Pricing plans

Google Search Console is completely free for all sites. There are no usage limits or paid tiers, and every feature is available without subscription or upgrades.

Best use cases

• Tracking search visibility and performance trends after publishing or updating content

• Diagnosing why a page is not indexed or why traffic suddenly drops

• Checking structured data, rich-result eligibility, and canonical tags before pushing pages live

• Monitoring mobile usability, Core Web Vitals, and site experience to maintain stable rankings

• Exporting performance and coverage data or using the API for enterprise-level reporting
  

Google Trends: best free Google SEO tool for spotting interest shifts and content demand over time

Key Google Trends standout features

• Shows how interest in keywords or topics changes over time and across regions, helping you see when a topic rises, peaks, or declines.

• Lets you compare multiple keywords on a single chart to evaluate which idea holds stronger or growing interest.

• Allows filtering by region, country, and language so you can tailor research to the exact market you want to reach.

• Surfaces related and rising queries, revealing emerging topics, long-tail variations, and new search patterns.

• Provides real-time and historical search-interest data, giving you both immediate trend insight and long-range content signals.
  

Google Trends helps you see the movement behind search behavior instead of just static numbers. It shows how interest shifts: when a topic starts gaining attention, when it fades, and when it is most active. This focus on change over time makes it a natural tool for content timing, trend monitoring, and opportunity spotting. Because it supports country- and region-level data, it also becomes a practical tool for teams targeting specific markets or multilingual audiences.

It also helps you choose between similar content ideas based on real demand. When you compare keywords side by side, you see which direction each term is moving — upward, stable, or downward. This ensures you put effort into topics that are gaining relevance rather than those losing momentum.

How to use Google Trends

Start by entering a keyword or topic in Google Trends. Adjust the region and time range to match your market. Look at how the interest curve behaves — rising, steady, or falling — to understand whether demand is current or fading.

Next, add one or more comparison keywords to see how their popularity stacks up. This helps narrow down which topic is more likely to deliver traction.

Scroll to the Related queries section. Rising queries often signal early-stage opportunities — long-tail variations, new angles, or emerging questions around a topic. These can become quick content wins or timely additions to your calendar.

Finally, apply location and language filters if your audience is local or non-English. This ensures you plan content based on the search behavior of the people who actually matter to your business, not a global average.

Why Google Trends matters for content strategy & search visibility

Teams that build editorial calendars around real interest — not guesswork — see stronger performance over time. Trends gives you the earliest signals of what people care about right now, which is especially powerful in fast-moving markets, AI-driven topics, or seasonal cycles.

But Google Trends does have limits. It does not show absolute search volume; instead, it shows a normalized index from 0–100 based on peak popularity. This means you cannot rely on it to judge true traffic potential.

It also struggles with very niche or low-volume keywords, often showing “0” when interest is too small or privacy-filtered, making it less reliable for micro-topics unless paired with a volume tool.

And because data is relative, comparing unrelated topics can be misleading. A “100” in one topic does not equal a “100” in another — the value depends on timeframe, location, and baseline query selection.

Pricing plans

Google Trends is completely free. There is no account required and no subscription tier — every feature is available without restrictions.

Best use cases

• Identifying trending topics or breaking-interest spikes for timely content

• Choosing stronger keyword variants before writing a piece

• Planning seasonal or cyclical content across the year

• Localizing content strategies for specific countries or regions

• Building calendars around real demand rather than guesswork
  

Google Lighthouse: best free Google SEO tool for auditing page quality, performance, and web-standards

Key Google Lighthouse standout features

• Audits web pages for performance, accessibility, SEO best practices, and progressive-web-app (PWA) standards.

• Runs inside Chrome DevTools, from the command line, or as a Node module — useful for quick checks or large-scale automation.

• Produces detailed multi-category reports with scores and clear recommendations based on code, markup, load behavior, and best practices.

• Measures modern performance signals such as render time, interactivity, blocking time, and visual stability aligned with user-experience metrics.
  

• Includes accessibility checks and SEO audits (meta tags, markup quality, mobile-friendly behavior, PWA readiness) to ensure your site meets modern standards.
  

Google Lighthouse gives you more than a basic speed test. It audits your page across many areas that shape quality: performance, accessibility, SEO hygiene, code health, and PWA structure. This wider audit scope helps you understand not only how fast a page loads, but also whether the page is built in a way that works for users, screen readers, browsers, and modern search engines. When a page fails across multiple categories, Lighthouse shows exactly why and how to fix it.

Lighthouse also helps teams that work on many pages or frequent updates. Because it runs via the command line and Node, you can connect Lighthouse to your build or deployment pipeline. This means performance and SEO hygiene checks happen every time you ship new changes, not just once a quarter. Doing this prevents slowdowns, layout issues, or broken markup from slipping into production and hurting the user experience over time.

How to use Google Lighthouse

Start by opening the page you want to test in a Chromium browser such as Chrome or Edge. Right-click the page, open Inspect, and select the Lighthouse tab. Choose the categories you want to audit — Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO, or PWA — then choose mobile or desktop mode and click Generate report. Lighthouse runs a series of tests and returns a detailed report for each category.

If you need to audit many pages or run checks regularly, install Lighthouse via Node or run it through the command line. This lets you script batches of audits and include them in your CI workflow. Many teams use this approach to catch regressions early, especially after design changes or code deployments.

Once Lighthouse generates your report, scroll through the Opportunities and Diagnostics sections. These show which issues slow your page or harm usability, such as unoptimized images, unused CSS or JS, render-blocking scripts, poor layout stability, or broken markup. Each issue includes a suggestion and often links to documentation. After you implement fixes, run the report again to confirm your improvements.

Because Lighthouse uses lab-based tests, treat the scores as a baseline rather than an exact match to real-user behavior. It tests under controlled network and device conditions, which helps you find clear problems but cannot reflect every real-world scenario. For full insight, pair Lighthouse with field data or analytics tools.

Pricing plans

Google Lighthouse is fully free. It runs inside Chrome DevTools or through open-source packages with no tiers, limits, or subscriptions.

Best use cases

• Auditing new pages or redesigns before launch to avoid performance or accessibility issues

• Running scheduled site-wide audits to catch regressions after updates

• Improving UX and technical compliance for content-heavy or PWA-ready sites

• Supporting developers with actionable quality checks rather than generic lists

• Benchmarking your page quality before using advanced or paid optimization tools
  

Analyze: The best alternative to Google SEO tools for measuring AI visibility, traffic, and conversions

Google’s SEO tools are foundational for understanding how you perform in Google Search and what happens on your site after someone clicks. They were not built to explain how AI answer engines surface your brand, which prompts drive discovery, or whether that visibility turns into meaningful business outcomes.

Most GEO tools claim to solve that gap, but many stop at the mention. You get a visibility score and maybe a sentiment snapshot, with no clear connection to what happened next. A brand mention in Perplexity gets treated the same as a citation in Claude, even though one might drive qualified traffic while the other sends none.

Analyze works alongside GA4 and Search Console to connect AI visibility to measurable performance. It identifies which answer engines send sessions to your site (Discover), shows which pages those visitors land on and what they do next (Monitor), and ties that activity to conversion rates, assisted revenue, and ROI by referrer. You also get prompt-level insights across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, plus visibility into which sources models trust so you can build authority where it actually changes outcomes. From there, Analyze helps you improve performance over time while monitoring broader market positioning and sentiment shifts (Govern).

Your team then stops guessing whether AI visibility matters and starts proving which engines deserve investment and which prompts drive pipeline.

Key Analyze features

• See actual AI referral traffic by engine and track trends that reveal where visibility grows and where it stalls.

• See the pages that receive that traffic with the originating model, the landing path, and the conversions those visits drive.

• Track prompt-level visibility and sentiment across major LLMs to understand how models talk about your brand and competitors.

• Audit model citations and sources to identify which domains shape answers and where your own coverage must improve.

• Surface opportunities and competitive gaps that prioritize actions by potential impact, not vanity metrics.

Here are in more details how Analyze works:

See actual traffic from AI engines, not just mentions

Analyze attributes every session from answer engines to its specific source—Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini. You see session volume by engine, trends over six months, and what percentage of your total traffic comes from AI referrers. When ChatGPT sends 248 sessions but Perplexity sends 142, you know exactly where to focus optimization work.

Know which pages convert AI traffic and optimize where revenue moves

Most tools stop at "your brand was mentioned." Analyze shows you the complete journey from AI answer to landing page to conversion, so you optimize pages that drive revenue instead of chasing visibility that goes nowhere.

The platform shows which landing pages receive AI referrals, which engine sent each session, and what conversion events those visits trigger. 

For instance, when your product comparison page gets 50 sessions from Perplexity and converts 12% to trials, while an old blog post gets 40 sessions from ChatGPT with zero conversions, you know exactly what to strengthen and what to deprioritize.

Track the exact prompts buyers use and see where you're winning or losing

Analyze monitors specific prompts across all major LLMs—"best Salesforce alternatives for medium businesses," "top customer service software for mid-sized companies in 2025," "marketing automation tools for e-commerce sites." 

For each prompt, you see your brand's visibility percentage, position relative to competitors, and sentiment score.

You can also see which competitors appear alongside you, how your position changes daily, and whether sentiment is improving or declining.

Don’t know which prompts to track? No worries. Analyze has a prompt suggestion feature that suggests the actual bottom of the funnel prompts you should keep your eyes on.

Audit which sources models trust and build authority where it matters

Analyze reveals exactly which domains and URLs models cite when answering questions in your category. 

You can see, for instance, that Creatio gets mentioned because Salesforce.com's comparison pages rank consistently, or that IssueTrack appears because three specific review sites cite them repeatedly. 

Analyze shows usage count per source, which models reference each domain, and when those citations first appeared.

Citation visibility matters because it shows you where to invest. Instead of generic link building, you target the specific sources that shape AI answers in your category. You strengthen relationships with domains that models already trust, create content that fills gaps in their coverage, and track whether your citation frequency increases after each initiative.

Prioritize opportunities and close competitive gaps

Analyze surfaces opportunities based on omissions, weak coverage, rising prompts, and unfavorable sentiment, then pairs each with recommended actions that reflect likely impact and required effort. 

For instance, you can run a weekly triage that selects a small set of moves—reinforce a page that nearly wins an important prompt, publish a focused explainer to address a negative narrative, or execute a targeted citation plan for a stubborn head term.