Decide who's doing the work first
Most advice on SEO tools starts with features. Start with this instead: who, by name, is going to open this tool every week and change something on your website?
- You, for an hour or two a month. Stick to free tools, and maybe one low-cost one.
- A marketer or an SEO specialist. Let them choose a research suite. They'll get real use out of it.
- An SEO consultant or agency. Ask what they already use before buying anything, because you may be paying for it twice.
- Nobody. Then a research tool won't help, however cheap it is. Look at tools that do the work, or get someone in to do it.
That one answer rules out most of what's on the market, which saves you a lot of reading.
The free setup everyone should have
These take an afternoon, and they tell you more about your own customers than any paid tool can.
| Tool | What it tells you or does | Who needs it |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Which searches bring people to your site, and whether Google can read your pages | Everyone |
| Google Business Profile | How you appear on Search and Maps, with reviews, photos and hours | Anyone serving customers locally |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | The same idea for Bing, plus free backlink data, keyword research and a site scan | Worth 15 minutes |
| PageSpeed Insights | How fast a page loads on phones and computers | Run it on your top few pages |
| Yoast SEO | A plugin with real-time SEO guidance and structured data | WordPress sites |
| Screaming Frog | Crawls up to 500 URLs for free and finds broken links and missing titles | A desktop app, so a little more technical |
If you do nothing else, connect Search Console and look at the queries once a month. Say you run a made-up tile shop and find people searching "heated floor tile" and seeing your site, but rarely clicking. That's a page to write, and a likely source of real orders.
If you've outgrown this list, or if you're leaving a paid tool, see free Semrush alternatives and free Ahrefs alternatives for more.
If customers come to you locally, buy a local tool first
If your calls come from people nearby, how you show up on the map matters more than almost anything a keyword suite will tell you. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and much of that comes from your Business Profile and reviews.
As of November 2026, these are the usual low-cost options for one location:
- BrightLocal Track is $41 a month, or $31 billed yearly, and covers local rankings, audits and citation checks. A citation is a listing of your business name, address and phone number on another site. Its Grow plan, $65 or $49 yearly, adds review requests and replies.
- Moz Local starts at $16 a month billed yearly ($199), and pushes your details out to 90+ directories.
- Semrush Local starts at $30 a month per location billed yearly, with Business Profile posts and review replies.
For how this plays out in specific trades, see the guides for roofers and dentists.
If you need one paid research tool
A research tool shows you what people search for, what your competitors rank for and who links to them. It's worth paying for when someone will use it to make decisions. Prices as of November 2026:
| Tool | From, per month | Choose it if |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Starter | $29 | You want light keyword and competitor research at the lowest price |
| Moz Pro Starter | $49 | You're one person running one site, and you want something simple |
| SE Ranking Core | $103.20 billed yearly, $129 monthly | You want a full suite with daily rank tracking and AI tracking included |
| Semrush SEO | $117.33 billed yearly, $139 monthly | You have a marketer who'll use it, or you may grow into its wider toolkits |
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 | Links are central to how you win work |
Our opinion: for most small businesses with one site and no specialist, the first two are plenty, and the free tools may be enough. Check what you're giving up on seats too, since most of these include one or a few users and charge for more.
If nobody has the time
This is the most common situation, and the one tool lists tend to skip. If reports pile up unread, more data won't help. There's a newer group of tools that makes the changes for you, and they differ a lot in how:
- Sojig is our product. Each week it drafts fixes, an article and outreach emails, and you approve what goes live through WordPress, Shopify, Webflow or a GitHub pull request. It starts at $99 a month for up to 100 pages. It's the wrong fit if you want to study the data yourself, or if map rankings and reviews are your main concern, where the local tools above do more.
- OTTO SEO from Search Atlas starts at $99 a month too, with higher limits and a much wider toolset, including local, and ads from its $199 plan. It's built more for SEO specialists and agencies.
- SEO.ai starts at $149 a month and mainly writes and publishes content for you, if that's the part you want off your plate.
Whichever you look at, ask how changes reach your site, whether you approve them first and what happens if you cancel. Our list of alternatives goes through each one.
A sensible order to buy in
Say you run a made-up four-person landscaping company. Here's the order that makes sense, spending only when the previous step is done.
- Set up Search Console and your Business Profile. Cost: nothing.
- Fill out the profile, ask recent customers for reviews, and fix what Search Console flags.
- Add a local tool for about $30 to $50 a month, once you want to see map rankings across your service area.
- Only then consider a research tool or a tool that does the work, and pick by who has time.
Run any paid tool's trial with one specific question in mind, like "which three pages should we write next?" If you get a useful answer, keep it. If you can't remember logging in, cancel.