10 Free SEO Tools to Check Your Site and Backlinks

Using the right tools is always better, especially when you want to create something efficiently. It is the same when you build your SEO strategy.

Don’t misunderstand me, having the right SEO tools doesn't mean that your website will automatically rank higher on Google. To do so, you must have a good SEO strategy and implement it correctly.

However, using the right SEO tools can undoubtedly save you some time, be very effective, and in the long term help you you have notable results in terms of rankings.

We recently published a list of free SEO tools to search keywords.

Below is a list of top free SEO tools that enable you to check your website, as well as your links, including backlinks:

1. Google Webmaster Tools

As a webmaster or a web marketer, you must use Google Webmaster Tools (yes you read correctly "must", not "should").

This free SEO tool enables you to quickly check crawl errors such as 404 pages and redirection problems, duplicate content issues, backlinks, and site indexation status including sitemap and crawl frequency.

2. Pingdom Tools

Pingdom offers a free and effective SEO tool that helps you monitor your server, network and website.

For instance, Pingdom Tools can test the load time of a web page, DNS servers and settings for a domain name, and network connectivity to a server. Alerts can be enabled and sent via SMS and email.

3. SEO Site Check Up

As its name suggests, SEO Site Check up gives you a very complete and free analysis of your onsite SEO.

Plenty of elements are checked, including page statistics, site data, meta tags, page notes, objects, site security, and many more. The tool also helps you check your backlinks.

4. SEO Workers

SEO Workers is a free and very powerful SEO analysis tool that helps you analyze and measure the ranking potential of your web pages.

Not only does it audit and analyze the head elements such as title and meta description tags, and the keywords, it also offers you advice on what to correct on your website.

A Firefox SEO extension is also available for download (read more about SEO extensions for Firefox).

5. GSite Crawler

Gsite Crawler is a free program for Windows featuring a generator for Google sitemap files. It allows you to help Google index your web pages optimally.

The GSite Crawler enables you to generate an excellent Google sitemap file for your website. Having a relevant sitemap is crucial for SEO.

6. Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool

Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool is an online SEO tool that allows you to see how search engine robots see your website. Indeed, you can see your web pages in Lynx, a text-mode web browser.

In addition, Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool helps you check which of your web pages are accessible to the vision impaired. You can also download the full version of the tool to get better results.

7. Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is one of the most popular free SEO tools by SEOMoz. It offers a strong analysis of onpage signals such as HTML tags, outbound links and their respective authority, and many more.

The tool is really similar to Google Webmaster Tools but also features time evolution tracking. The SEOMoz Pro (premium version) offers more features. You can have a free trial.

8. Xenu Linksleuth

SEO experts like Xenu. It detects problems on your website. For instance, Xenu checks your links (to see whether there are broken links), redirections issues, duplicate content (title, meta description, etc.), and loading time.

Another interesting feature offered by Xenu is the ability to know all pages that point to a given page. Very useful when you want to know all the links pointing to a deleted page.

9. Link Diagnosis

Link Diagnosis is a very popular free SEO tool that checks your backlinks and their anchors. The Firefox Extension can be downloaded and enables you to benefit from many more additional features.

10. Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO is a very useful free SEO tool, notably for backlinks analysis. Their majestic site explorer gives you a summary of all referring domains and external backlinks. 

Their backlink history tool allows you to determine the number of backlinks for your website and tracks their evolution over time. You can therefore easily control and manage your linkbuilding campaigns. More features are available in their premium plans.

Do you use any other free SEO tools you would like to share?