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Free SEO Tools For Law Firms: Monitor Your Website’s Performance
Whether you're just starting out or a full-blown experienced practitioner of SEO, you will need tools. There's so much data—from clicks to your links to location-based deviations in the search results—that cannot be seen in one look.
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You might see the total number of hits a blog post got or how many visits your site has acquired, but getting more details on them would be good. Sure, you know how many times a blog post was viewed, but where did those views come from? Did the site visitors stay around, or did they click out seconds after seeing your site?
Did you get more views during the holidays, or was it better during the summer? Are some keywords better than others, or are you using keywords popular in other states instead?
If you think only well-funded, decentralized SEO operations use tools, think again.
A lot of SEO practitioners (there's a whole community of them!) are very open to sharing tips and tricks, break out any new discoveries, and offer tools that everyone can use. So yes, you can use tools even when you're starting out.
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In this guide, we list free tools to keep you help you with your law firm SEO efforts.
The Must Have Tools
Google Analytics
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Google Analytics is arguably the most popular web-based analytics tool. Google Analytics is incredibly powerful for being free, and it integrates well with other Google products, including Optimize, Search Console, and Data Studio.
Enhanced Google Analytics Annotations
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This is a highly recommended Google Chrome add-on that superimposes additional information on top of existing analytics, allowing you to quickly submit screenshots to users showing how external factors affected traffic.
SEMrush
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SEMrush is a long-time SEO must-have. It has a complete set of all-in-one SEO tools, as well as a free account option if you only deal with one website or just need a quick look. The free account level allows you to work on one project that includes simple site auditing, keyword research, and domain tracking.
Search Console
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This is the most reliable source of data on how Google crawls and lists your pages. It is also one of the few places to get accurate keyword data. Since Downloads in Search Console are limited to 1000 rows, check out the free Search Console Data Exporter to access up to 25,000 rows at once.
Screaming Frog
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The most popular crawler available today is Screaming Frog. Many people don't know that there is a free version with a limit of 500 URLs per crawl. Although it isn't as feature-rich as the paid edition, it is ideal for smaller projects and site audits.
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Google's Lighthouse
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It's the most up-to-date open-source speed performance tool, especially when it comes to analyzing the output of mobile pages and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Not only does Google suggest using Lighthouse to evaluate your page's results, but it's also possible that similar assessments are used in their ranking algorithms.
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Google's Page Speed Insights
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Page Speed Insights is a Google tool (among many other Google tools) based on Lighthouse, with the addition of one main metric: Field Data. Field Data uses the Chrome User Experience Report's analytics to show you how the website performs with actual users all over the world. Data isn't on every tab, but when it is, it's extremely useful.
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Google My Business​This is an essential tool for Local SEO, particularly if you practice in a Google-served market. You can use it to claim your company, manage listing details, and react to reviews, among other things. It's critical to claim your business profile because it serves as the basis for most other local SEO activities.
The Basic Tools
Link Redirect Trace
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Many SEOs suggest Link Redirect Trace, a free Chrome plugin, as an all-in-one redirect path analyzer. The extension displays details about HTTP headers, rel-canonicals, robots.txt, and simple link metrics. The "Save Screenshot" option is also handy.
Answer The Public
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Answer The Public is a staple in free SEO tool recommendation lists. In there, you'll find everything you need to know about keywords and keyword research. This is also an excellent tool for when you're compiling them for future content.
Ubersuggest
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Ubersuggest has been here for a long time. If you haven't used it in a while, it now has many more features than just keyword tips, like simple connect metrics and top competitor sites.
Disavow Tool
Since most site owners don't need to use the Disavow Tool, Google makes it difficult to locate. However, when you do, it can help remove algorithm penalties, and some SEOs swear by it for combating negative SEO.
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This can help when you're trying to revamp your site. Remember how Google doesn't favor pages with backlinks from spammy, unreliable sites? You can't usually control other sites from linking to you, but you can disavow them by completely disclaiming your connections with them.
Link Miner
Link Miner is a free Chrome extension. You can use it to access broken links on a page quickly. Here, you can also see simple link metrics when searching Google. Simple, straightforward, and practical.
Optional Tools
Detailed
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Without the extra filler that can cause a time-consuming process, this report will focus on what is pushing links to the most common niches on the web.
MobileMoxie's SERP Checker
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The mobile SERP test from MobileMoxie allows you to compare devices side by side for just any location, right down to unique addresses. This is helpful since search results can drastically change depending on your location and phone model.
BrightLocal's Local Results Checker
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One of the most challenging things about Local SEO is determining rankings from any location, particularly when Google insists on serving results from the area you're currently in. BrightLocal solves this problem by providing a fast local ranking tool that allows you to digitally drop into any place on the planet to review actual local rankings. No need to spend extra money on VPN!
Google's Mobile-Friendly Test
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Why go to a third-party site when Google themselves can tell you if your site is mobile friendly? And according to their standards? This is always a handy tool, considering there are more users using search engines on their smartphones than there have ever been before.
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Zeo's Mobile Index Checker
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Zeo's mobile-first index is probably one of the most complete among those like it. Since Google has moved to mobile-first indexing, mobile versions of websites frequently vary greatly from their desktop versions. It's critical that key parts (links, info, and so on) are identical in both versions.
Chrome Dev Tools
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Some of the best aspects are tucked away but very useful, from JavaScript auditing to pace to On-Page SEO.
Marketing Miner
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If you need a lot of SERP info, rankings, database reports, or market research, Marketing Miner does all of the grunt work for you. It makes it less complicated by organizing all that data into easy-to-read reports.
SEO Minion
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SEO Minion is a Chrome extension that has more functionality than most SEO toolbars. Analyzing on-page SEO, checking broken links, a SERP preview feature, and a handy Google search location simulator are just a few of the fast tasks it offers. It's definitely worth a shot.
Nice To Have Tools
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SEOquake
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SEOquake is possibly the most effective SEO toolbar, with a multitude of configuration options for you to choose from. You can conduct simple on-page assessments, evaluate domains, as well as getting a ton of data for any URL you visit.
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Google's Structured Data Testing
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Not only is Google's Structured Data Testing tool useful for configuring your own structured data, but it can also be used to conduct comparative analysis on your competitors' structured data.
Google's Tag Manager
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The Google Tag Manager seems to be a basic tool for injecting "tags" into your HTML—but don't let its simplicity fool you. Tag Manager can also be used for a variety of SEO functions by experienced users. Though Google advises against using Tag Manager to insert critical elements such as structured data, it is still useful for a variety of SEO tasks.
View Rendered Source
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This straightforward JavaScript auditing tool only has one purpose, and it accomplishes it admirably. View Rendered Source is a free Chrome extension that lets you compare the incredibly detailed DOM of any URL to the original HTML. Auditing and troubleshooting JavaScript is a breeze with this tool.
BuzzSumo
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BuzzSumo is a fantastic SEO analysis tool. It is a Chrome extension that's one of the few that can reliably estimate the number of social shares for any piece of content. With a free account, you won't get as much data as you will with a paid one, but you will still have access to the top content and trending data.
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Treat BuzzSumo like your SEO trending page. It will give you ideas on what type of content is most likely to be considered fresh and relevant. It's on every other free SEO tools recommendations list for a reason.
Hunter
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Hunter is a well-known email finding tool, and it is unquestionably the most widely used free email searcher. It can be used to look up the email address of any organization or individual, as well as to check any email address you already have. You get 50 free queries every month—anything more than that will require payment—but that's a lot of free searches!
SimilarWeb
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Research your competitor. You can look at their traffic, top sites, interaction, marketing platforms, and more. There are only five results per metric in the free version, but that's usually enough to get a fast data set.
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Additional Helpful Tools
CloudFlare
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There's so much you can do on CloudFlare that can benefit you in your SEO strategies. They offer a free CDN, as well as simple DNS management and free DDoS security.
GTmetrix
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SEOs love to use GTmetrix for its site speed efficiency checks. It generates well-known reports like PageSpeed, YSlow, and Waterfalls. On top of that, it automatically visualizes historical data for each page it examines.
SpeedMonitor.io
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Consider SpeedMonitor.io if manually signing into a speed tool to evaluate your daily performance isn't your thing. It gauges output using Lighthouse data, then monitors it over time and stores the results. You can also slip in some competitor monitoring and audits on demand.
Webpage Test
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Another performance tool close to GTMetrix is Webpage Test. It provides some of the most comprehensive performance reports available, as well as breaking down results into straightforward grades.
Yoast SEO
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Yoast SEO has built a name for itself through the years. Much like Answer The Public and SEMrush, Yoast is a very popular tool among SEO practitioners. It is considered to arguably be one of the best tools for delivering structured data for all your SEO needs.
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Don't Know Where to Start?
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There are so many SEO tools out there that you can basically pick one and run with that. If you're just starting out, the super long list of tools might be intimidating, but don't worry; they're recommended for a reason.
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Most of the tools listed above are already talked about and regularly used by SEO practitioners. What you need to do now is look for the ones that your law firm needs. Are you focused on capturing the local market where you practice?
Start with Google My Business. Don't know which topics to center your next article on? Find ideas on BuzzSumo. Are you struggling to get traffic from mobile users? Check how your pages are doing on Google's Mobile-First Checker.
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SEO tools are all about discovering what you need to do as you are now—what strategies you need to integrate and what you need to change. While most of these sites can gauge how you're doing or suggest what you should do, they're still very much suggestions.
How you interpret and go about changing the numbers on your stats is up to you.
Better yet, if you're not sure how you're interpreting it right, consult our other SEO guides. It's never a bad thing to constantly learn and adapt.