The 10 Best Free SEO Tools For Blogging Beginners

If you don't already know, I love free things.  And, on top of that I love to research.  And because of this, every one of my blogging for beginners readers are in for a treat today.  Out of the kindness of my heart, I am going to give away some of my trade secrets.  I have my 10 favorite free SEO tools, and I am going to give them to you in one big, fancy list.  I like to call them The 10 Best, but they are my 10 favorite.

There are hundreds of SEO tools available on the internet.  A lot of them are wonderful.  But generally speaking, those wonderful tools are not cheap.  They, in fact, could end up costing you a small fortune, especially for us beginners that are still trying to learn how to do this thing called blogging.

So, since we are not forking out dollar after dollar, in order to get a whole lot of data that, generally speaking, we won't understand anyway, these tools are going to be more than adequate for you.  For you and me both.

Google free SEO tools are something I would always forget about.  But we are talking about the search engine that decides where are blog should be ranked.  Something tells me that they know what they are talking about and they are more than willing to provide us with tools that will help us succeed.  I am going to include Google on this list a couple times, and figure I should let everyone know, it's not because I have some love or connection to Google, it just happens that they provide useful tools for free.  And there UI is getting better.  In the years past, their tools were hard to understand and even harder to use.

SEO tools:

#10 Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a must for any blogger who wants to improve their search engine friendliness.  There is way too much for me to give a lesson on such a powerful SEO tool today, but, needless to say, this tool is nearly a must have.  You will be able to force Google to crawl your web pages and report to you any errors it finds.  Eliminating these errors can have a great impact on your blog’s location in the most powerful search engine in the world, not to mention improving your overall Search Engine Optimization.  It is also not solely for Google properties, any of your blogs or websites can be added to your account, and I would recommend that all of them are added as soon as possible.
#9 SEO Quake Toolbar
The SEO quake toolbar is pretty awesome, to say the least.  It is going to give you critical information to any website you visit.  This means you can go snooping around any websites that are competing in your own niche.  It is going to give you backlink quantities, pages indexed by google WhoIs data, robots.txt, Keyword density reports and a whole lot more information.  You can install it as an extension for Chrome or Firefox.  I am not sure about Microsoft’s browser, as I do not really ever use it.
It is an invaluable, free SEO tool.  It is a must as far as I am concerned.

#8 Keywordtool.io
This tool is not a must have, it is along the lines of Google Keyword Planner.  It is free, but offers a premium account which will offer up more information about keywords, things like search volume and cpc and competition will be blurred out with a free account, but even so, basically what Keywordtool.io is, is a keyword suggestion tool.  You will enter your primary keyword and it will give you a list of related keywords and search terms you could use as well.  I like it for its simplicity.  Google’s Keyword Planner is a bit overwhelming for someone who doesn’t know what they are looking at or doing.  This provides a simple way to do some basic keyword research, which, of course it critical in your SEO, and blogging endeavors.

#7 WooRank
WooRank is similar to Google Webmaster tools.  But again, it is a little easier to navigate.  You lose some of the functionality with the free version of WooRank, but there is enough information there for you to improve the inner workings of your blog.  It will also give suggestions to make improvements, and it gives you a score you can work to improve upon.  I use this as often as Google.  It may be a comfort level, but in general, I find it more useful for me.

#6 lsigraph.com
Latent Semantic Indexing, if you don't know this term, I completely understand.  You shouldn't ever have to know what that means!  Actually, I'm kidding.  It's actually a very important. LSI Keywords is actually what the term is that you will usually see.  It is basically alternate keywords that will reaffirm your primary keyword in any particular blog post you write.  There are often times, you may feel like you’re cramming the same keyword into places it just makes your articles cumbersome
#5 Google Keyword Planner
#4 Jaaxy
#3 Google Trends
#2 Screaming Frog
#1 Chrome Developer Tools

e7b3ce0c5b67d2b8aba28da7ae9d6266b1198cc28ee56568a2

5 General Blogging Tips for Beginners

Blogging is, in general, an easy thing to do.  At least the concept of blogging is easy.  All you are really doing is writing about things you like.  So, why does anyone really need blogging tips?  Well, because removing an engine from a car is easy, but you cant lift it out with your hands.  Learning to blog successfully is a process, it requires practice and understanding and it requires help.  Tips for beginners are always useful, so I decided to offer you 5 basic blogging tips for beginners today, to help you get started.

Creating your Own Popular Blog

There was a time when I would advocate forced popularity of your blog.  I believed you couldn't achieve a popular blog by natural means.  I was impatient.  It is my nature to want immediate satisfaction.  Your not generally going to get that when it comes to grass roots style blogging.  In fact, many people will lose interest in their blog long before they find the popularity that they are looking for.  It keeps the folks who spend money for success, at the top of the food chain.  It makes others say it is impossible to rank well in search engines.  It is what most people attribute to failures.  And this is correct.  This is why my point of view changed.  I realized that if I insist on continuing in the fashion that I do, that I need to make sure what I say and how I say it are unique, well thought out and of my own doing.  And also, I must practice what I preach.

Welcome back to Blogging for Beginners

I have held off from writing on Blogging for Beginners for a long time now.  In fact, for almost two years I have not written a post here.  It mostly was due to life getting the best of me.  I have been busy and back a couple of years ago, Google made some drastic changes to the ranking system, which caused this blog to fall from graces.  I assumed that they would shut it down, but I honestly had no understanding what it was that caused my blog's fall.  It caused me to be disheartened, and i lost interest when i saw the income from the site to drop off.

How to Blog Successfully in an ever Changing World

Blogging is easy.  At least it is if you have any interest in writing.  You don't need any other special skills really...... If you just want to blog.

Blogging successfully is a completely different beast all together.  But, what does that really mean? The idea of being a successful  blogger will differ between individuals.  But, in general the essence of what makes a good blogger is the same.  A successful blogger is one who is able to keep up with the times in his or her own demographic.  One who stays a little ahead of everyone else, in order to produce fresh posts that are different from anyone else on the blog.  A successful blogger understands that there is more to blogging than just writing an occasional post.  In fact, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Are there really hidden Blogging Secrets?

I am angry. A certain search engine has dropped off the radar with this blog.  And I am finding it really hard to sit here and not say anything about it.  I have been de-indexed or something for some reason or another and I have no clue what has happened.   It made me wonder if I was missing some sort of big secret in the world of blogging.

I am not really sure about any big secrets.  I am not sure about what happened to this blog, but I am going to plug on, this is going to be my 49th post on Blogging for Beginners and I am looking forward to hitting the Big 5-0.

Blogging for beginners, please help me name my blog!

Okay, okay.  If you really want to know this, I will teach you in the ways of developing a name for your blog.  I cannot outright give your blog a name, I don't want that kind of responsibility, if your name fails you, I do not want to be held responsible.  But, I can help you understand, I can give you some of the principals I use to name my blogs.  It is really nothing so fantastical, it will just take some knowledge and study. 

This is a beginner blogging tip.  It may seem inconsequential, but it has value.  Your blog name offers a key location to creatively pack as many keywords into a single phrase as possible without being grammatically correct.  All you need for it, is to sound catchy or make it easy to remember.

Of course, for some out there, you can take the easy approach and use your name as your blog name.  Problem with this is it really does nothing for you in the search engines, unless you happen to have some good name recognition, and more than likely, if you are hear, learning how to blog, you do not have that yet.  So, that brings us back to the real process of giving your blog a name.

What I mean is this. Depending on your blog topic idea, you will most likely have 3-5 primary keywords that you intend will generate the bulk of your search engine traffic.  These keywords and the traffic they will drive are directly related to your blog topic idea, and the amount of effort you put forth to ranking well in search engines.  So, here, we are not going to talk about actual traffic numbers.  only that you should have your set of primary keywords already established before you name your blog.   If you ahave not yet figured your keywords out you may want to check out this post.  Understanding Keywords and Phrases.

Anyway, this process of building your blog name is aplicable to any size of the blog you intend to create.  Whether you are expecting one visit a day or ten thousand visits a day, you will determine your blog name by the same process.

Now, look at your list of keywords.  Find the primary "action" words within that list.  And try to use as many of them in your title.  And if you can pepper in some of the lesser important words as well.  Using filler words to make sense out of the new blog name.  The goal here is for the search engine to place you in as many of the search queries as possible through the name of the blog alone.  Don't get too carried away, the name is not a short story within itself, you will have the chance to give a brief overview of your blog in most blog platforms that you use.  But, make sure you use as many as reasonably possible, and if the same word appears in all of your primary keywords, you really only need to use it once. 

That is pretty much the trick.  It may be easier than it appears by my poor excuse for an explanation, so, lets make an example.  This is an example I use for many things because I have no intention on using this for a blog of my own any time in the near future.  Lets use fishing.  Lest say you want to start a blog about fishing.  So lets begin how I would begin.

I open googles adword keyword tool. and type "fishing" in the word or phrase box.  And I would click the only show ideas closely related to my search terms.

You will learn a few things about the keyword fishing.
1.)It is searched over 9million times per month locally.  (always use the local number as a point of reference)
2.)It has low competition, relative to the amount it is searched.
3.)But this is the important part, you are going to get a list of relative keywords below this one.


This is where you are going to refine your idea for your blog.  You will want to find about 5 keywords below that will be your primary focus of your blog.  You will most likely choose keywords that have less monthly searches, in fact I would recommend that you find a couple that are below two thousand monthly searches and have a low competition.

Here is what I have chosen.

1.)Fishing Buddy
Low competition
22,200 monthly searches

2.)Carp fishing tips
Low competition
1,000 monthly searches

3.)Take me fishing
Low competition
5,400 monthly searches

4.)Fly fishing tips
Low competition
4,400 monthly searches

Ok, so I ignored my suggestion here about picking a couple keywords with less than two thousand searches, but I instead looked at the words and how I would use them.  I would stay away from keywords that incinuate that I am going to sell a product like fly fishing hats or free lures or anything like that, your competition is much more ruthless in those markets.

I also have Carp and Fly fishing listed, but I am not really sure if they are related in any way.  This is for illustration only.

Now with my words let me see what I can come up with......

1.)Take me fishing, Buddy - Fly fishing tips from a average Joe

And as far as a URL, I would try to go with something like BuddyJoeFlyFishing.whatever

So, with this, I have three of my four keywords within my title.  I think that is solid.  Does this help you name your blog?  Okay, there are some more steps involved in choosing keywords, but this is not an article about keyword research. 

I am sure, that for anyone who needed help with their blog name that this will give you a fairly decent idea as to what is involved with naming your blog.  I know that this blog does not follow those lessons, but I started this blog at a time before I really considered the importance of my blog title.  I assumed I would be able to add on new keywords to the blog as I went, but I think I would have been better suited with a name that included more of my primary keywords. 

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

Blogging Tips to make blogging easier

Here at blogging for beginners, I have made it my point to bring my readers as many blogging tips as I can possibly think of.......

Okay, I lie sometimes also. I have a treasure chest of information that I continue to hold to myself. I have reasons. I have been saving the good stuff for the book.  Yup, gonna be releasing a book.  I still have a bit more writing to do, I am expecting it to be a rather lengthy thing, one that covers a lot of ground.So, until then, I figure I will give up some more of my blogging tips I use to make my job easier.

But, before that, I have to tell you, Do Not Use Automatic Backlink Generators for any of your blogs you care about!  Let me elaborate, the backlink generators do create links.  Depending on the service you find, there are many different types of backlinks they create. But from what I have found, they are junk links, search engines will not like them, and, at the bare minimum, they will look at them indifferently, and if they want, they can and will deindex your blog, for using spammy links.  So, if you use these blackhat blogging tactics, you are taking a chance.  Its better to play with these tools on properties that have less value than your blog.  I just wanted to get that out there, I had said I would go back to the topic. But don't think its worth its own post.  So on to the blogging tips to make your job easier. And these tips will be revolving around keywords and how they can help you find new blog topic ideas.

I use Googles adword keyword tool religiously. It is one of my favorite tools. And what makes this tool so valuable is the suggested keyword ideas the tool gives you when you enter a specific keyword.  This is how you can find some new post topics. This is a great tip for those bloggers who are suffering from writers block. Topics that this tool will suggest are related to your primary keyword, or the keyword you enter in the space provided. And if you select the box that asks you to only show suggestions that are closely related to the keyword you entered, it will give you strong options for keywords that are related to your primary keyword.

So, in some of my previously written blog tips posts, I have talked about the different types of posts you can write on your blog. One of these is a pillar blog post. Which is a very large post with a lot of information and lots of words. Some of these pillar posts would be well suited to be keyword articles that are highly related to your primary keywords, or only slight derivatives of your primary keyword.  An example would be something along these lines:
Primary keyword for your blog: River Fishing
Derivative of that: Fishing in rivers

This creates articles that can drive large amounts of traffic all on thier own to your blog.  They should be keywords that are as popular as your primary keywords and that will give you the opportunity to highly increase your traffic.  Of course you will still need to market this post in order to get it to rank well in the search engines.  But the first step in the battle of adding a highly popular to your existing blog is to write a keyword rich pillar blog post.

So is this enough blogging tips for the day?  I think not.  I have more to give.

Now lets look at the less closely related keywords that the tool can give. If you type this new keyword into the Google tool, you will get a new set of suggested keywords, from this, you can choose another, fairly popular keyword, that is a more focused search term, say, saltwater river fishing.  And from that, write another blog post on your blog, not the same day, maybe a few days later, and link back to that pillar post, using a properly anchored keyword backlink.

Now, from that secondary keyword, the saltwater river fishing, enter that into the adwords tool.  What you are doing now is drilling down through your keywords.  So, now from this list. Now with that list in hand, choose three or four keywords for new articles.  These should be even lesser popular, but still be searched terms, and with these write articles.  Now one or two of those articles as a new hub or lens.  And link back two the pillar post and the secondary post that are your blog.  Using, again, properly anchored keyword back links.
 .
After you have that done take the last of your articles and submit them to article directories,  adding backlinks to that article that point to the hub and/or lense.

Wow, did you get all that?  The reason I would consider this a blogging tip that will make your job easier is, all these articles and posts will be related to a very similar topic.  That means you will be in the mindset, and the writing will be much easier than sporatic writing about random topics. 
Its a lot of writing but blogging is, by nature, a whole lot of writing.  And this is just thr tip of the iceburg in blogging well. 
Yeah, this blogging tip is not something that makes your job as a blogger simple, but it does make your job easier
Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.  And again, look for my first book, coming soon.