If you’re looking for a way to grow your online visibility, then you should be investing resources in SEO.

But if you’re on a budget, you may struggle to find affordable SEO tools.

Since you found this blog, though, you’re in luck. 

We’ve got a list of affordable SEO tools to get your site ranking without having to worry about maxing out your credit card, or selling your kidneys.

(P.S. We’ve also featured free alternatives if you don’t need all the functionalities of the affordable ones).

So, without further ado, let’s get into this list of affordable SEO tools (and 3 free alternatives).

(Actually) Affordable SEO Tools + 3 Free Alternatives

For this list, the tools are broken up into functions.

These functions are on-page, off-page, or technical SEO.

On-page SEO

Ah, on-page SEO.

Even though it’s a lot more people-focused now, you’ll still spend 90% of your time trying to rearrange shit just so that you get a gold star from Google.

On-page is my favourite branch of SEO, and it’s what I spend the majority of my time doing.

And the thing that takes up a huge chunk of that time is keyword research.

Keyword Research

I’m a nerd for SEO tools, but keyword research tools are my favourite.

There’s so much functionality, and you can spot a good from a bad one really quickly.

At its core, for a keyword research tool to be good, it’s got to be reliable.

And there are a ton of affordable SEO tools out there that can tackle keyword research reliably.

But I had to go with just one which stood out as the most reliable and cost-effective.

For that, I chose…

Ubersuggest

Cost: $29/month (Individual Plan)

The Ubersuggest extension for Google Chrome was the very first SEO tool I ever used.

And it’s the keyword research tool I suggest as far as affordability goes.

With the Individual plan, you get:

• 150 searches a day

• Setting up tracking for 1 domain

• 125 tracked keywords per domain

• 5 competitors per domain

• 1,000 pages a week for site audits

• 1 user seat

The tool also only uses organic data, which (in my opinion) makes it a better tool for SEO keyword research than other tools.

Especially considering that paying for data that’s not purely linked to organic search seems pointless if you’re on a budget.

I managed to snag a lifetime deal which gave me access to an Individual plan and AnswerThePublic for $120 as a once-off.

It’s the most I’ve ever spent on an SEO purchase, but it was worth the investment.

The only drawback to this is that you don’t get search intent with your keywords, which can be tricky if you’re still learning the ropes.

But, if you’re looking for a reliable (and affordable) keyword research tool, then I (uber)suggest you take a look at Ubersuggest.

Free Alternatives

You won’t find a truly free alternative – keyword research is a valuable part of SEO, so most companies tend to gatekeep it a bit.

That being said, there are some free plans (though they are limited).

Here are the top 3:

• Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool (Free plan)

• Keyword Tool

• Ahrefs’s Free Keyword Generator

If you’re doing paid search, you could also use Google Keyword Planner.

But that’s effort.

Once you’ve found your keywords, it’d make sense to put them to use in some content. 

Which means content optimisation.

Content Optimisation

Content optimisation tools help you refine and improve your content.

They make sure your stuff’s a better fit for your audience, and for search engines.

Optimising content can be a real bitch to deal with sometimes, so having tools like this come in handy.

As far as content optimisation goes, the most affordable SEO tool for the job is…

GrowthBar

Cost: $36/month (Standard Plan)

GrowthBar is an AI writing tool.

It’ll help you to write your content, make sure it’s optimised, or write it for you.

I did a lot of research for this, and I can say that it’s the most affordable content optimisation tool.

Especially when you weigh up what it brings to the table.

With the Standard Plan, you’ll get access to the following AI Writing Tools:

• 25 AI articles a month

• 500 AI paragraphs a month

• Unlimited AI meta descriptions

• Unlimited AI blog ideas

Free Alternatives

Considering the bang for your buck with GrowthBar, it’s a pretty affordable SEO tool.

But if you’re really strapped for cash, you can look at:

• Yoast’s Real-time Content Analysis

• Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant

• Copy.ai

Optimised content’s gotta go somewhere. 

Like a site.

But before you go flinging your content into the aether, you should make sure you give it a once-over.

Pre-publishing

Pre-publishing is the most important step in the content-creation process (in my opinion).

This is the point where you make sure everything’s up to scratch and that there aren’t any mitsakes.

There were a lot of tools for this list, but I had to go with…

Rank Math

Cost: $5.75/month (Pro Plan)

I gave this one a lot of thought, and I was really conflicted.

I love Yoast.

It’s what I started with, and it’s still a tool I highly recommend.

I even wrote an article about Yoast lights.

But I found Rank Math, and it’s been a game-changer for me.

The Pro Plan gives you:

• Unlimited personal websites

•Tracking for 500 keywords

• A custom schema generator (and templates)

• Tracking Google Index status

• Google Trends integration

• Tracking the top and bottom 5 keywords

• Tracking the top and bottom 5 posts

• Check ranking keywords for each post

• Automated find and replace for alt tags

It’s also more lightweight than the main competitors, which I consider a pretty big bonus.

Free Alternatives

Most (if not all) of the affordable SEO tools in this category also come with a free alternative.

I recommend Rank Math’s free plan, but here are some others:

• Yoast

• SEOPress

• The SEO Framework

And that covers on-page SEO.

Next up: Off-page SEO.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is like a popularity contest, but with “pretty please” emails and gossiping about competitor sites.

It’s also the only time when I consider it necessary and acceptable to interact with people outside of you, the lovely visitors to this site.

When people think off-page, they usually think backlinks. 

And that’s where we’ll begin.

Backlink Analysis

I know how important backlinks are, but they’re still a ton of effort.

So it really helps to have a tool to do that for you.

And it helps even more if it’s one of those affordable SEO tools.

I’ll be honest in saying that I don’t really know a ton about what makes one backlink analysis tool better than another, apart from the quality of the backlinks it finds.

So if you do, let me know.

I’d love to learn more.

Back to the topic, though.

Majestic

Cost: $49.99/month (Lite Plan)

Launched back in 2008, Majestic has solid reporting and deep crawling capability. 

It’s also got a cool name.

The Lite Plan gives you access to:

• A site explorer

• Link graphs

• Link context

• Related sites

• Trust Flow

• Topical Trust Flow

• Referring Domains

• Referring IPs

• Referring Subnets

• Backlink Campaigns

• Bulk Backlink Checker

• PDF Reports

It also refreshes links on a pretty regular basis.

So if you’re one of those people who emphatically checks their stuff, you’ll enjoy Majestic.

Free Alternatives

If Majestic isn’t majestic enough, you can try these free alternatives:

• Backlink Checker by Ahrefs

• Linkody (30-day free trial)

• SEO Review Tools

Now that we’ve analysed our current links, it’s time to build some new ones.

Link Building

Link building has always been a contentious avenue within SEO.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that, for a long time, paying for backlinks was a great way to boost your site’s visibility.

Nowadays, though, paying for backlinks won’t lead to much growth.

Apart from having your site’s visibility reduced.

So growing downward.

Which isn’t really a thing, but I’m keeping it in because I’ve committed to it now.

There are a couple of affordable SEO tools to handle link building.

Unfortunately, they’re pretty limited, and hide a lot of functionality behind paywalls (which we hate).

Luckily, we found one that didn’t have too steep a wall to scale.

The most affordable backlink building tool I’d suggest is…

Buzzstream

Cost: $24/month (Starter Plan)

Buzzstream labels itself as “The world’s best outreach CRM”.

Now, I don’t have a lot of experience with it myself.

But I do know that it’s one of the most affordable link building tools out there.

The Starter Plan gives you access to:

• Contact info discovery

• Open, click, & reply tracking

• Email templates

• Email scheduling

• Automated followups

• Publisher metrics

• Influencer metrics

• Twitter conversation tracking

• Email performance reports

• Link monitoring for 1,000 links

• 30 prospecting searches a month

I don’t know if it really is the world’s best outreach CRM.

I’m not an outreach expert.

But I do know that you’ll be hard-pressed to find SEO tools that’ll help you build backlinks for the same price as Buzzstream.

Free Alternatives

If you’re looking for something with less functionality (like purely email scraping), then you’ll probably get by fine with these alternatives:

• Hunter

• SEO PowerSuite’s Link Assistant

• Snov.io

If you prefer a more active approach to off-page SEO, you could have a go at your competitors.

Competitor Analysis

If you can’t beat ’em… Figure out how you can.

And that’s what competitor analysis is for.

Finding out what your competitors are doing (and where they’re fucking up a little bit) is how you get ahead in the SEO game.

Because it’s such an important part of SEO, you’ll find competitor analysis as an add-on to just about every SEO tool.

But for the sake of this article (and because I did a stupid amount of research to find info this specific), I’m only going to consider either:

• Solely competitor analysis tools

• Or tools that lean heavily on competitor analysis as a feature.

And the one that came out on top for that was…

SpyFu

Cost: $39/month (Basic Plan)

SpyFu is one of the most well-known names in the SEO industry.

Partly because it sounds cool.

And partly because it’s one of the most affordable SEO tools on the market.

The Basic Plan includes:

• 100 domain overview PDF’s

• 250 sales leads & domain contacts

• 5,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings

It doesn’t have the biggest toolset – but it’s seriously good at competitor analysis.

Free Alternatives

SpyFu’s good for competitor analysis on a budget, but if you’re looking for something cheaper, you can look at:

• SimilarWeb (Free trial)

• Vaizle

• ISearchFrom

Another important aspect of off-page SEO is local SEO.

So that’s up next.

Local SEO

Who doesn’t love spending hours trying to convince Google that their (insert product) store is better than the other (insert product) store?

I don’t.

Which is why tools to handle the job of local SEO are a godsend.

And what’s better than local SEO tools?

Affordable local SEO tools!

So, without further ado, the tool for the job is…

Semrush’s Listing Management Tool

Cost: $20/month (Basic)

Semrush’s Listing Management Tool is pretty helpful if you’re looking for bulk uploading on multiple directories.

The Basic Plan does that for one business location.

But we’re here for affordable SEO tools, so $20 for listing alone isn’t good enough.

Which is why it also gives you:

• NAP management

• 70+ directories cleanup

• Google Business Profile integration

• Voice search optimisation

• Keyword optimisation

• Analytics reviews

• Responding to reviews

Semrush definitely isn’t known for being cost-effective.

But it’s got one of the most affordable SEO tools in the local SEO game.

For that reason, it’s on this list.

Free Alternatives

If you’re looking for something that costs less, you could try:

• Localo’s Local Rank Checker

• Google Business Profile (who woulda guessed this’d be here)

• BrightLocal

Now that both your on- and off-page SEO are covered, it’s time for the least favourite of the SEO family.

Technical SEO.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is like hunting for treasure.

Except, instead of a treasure map, you’re looking at a robots.txt file.

And instead of finding anything of value, you find 404s and noindex tags.

People also consider it the most difficult.

Which I’d say is due in part to the fact that when one thing breaks, you:

a) Don’t know what broke

b) Fuck up more stuff trying to fix it

c) Fix the thing but have no clue how you did

d) Have the process repeat

e) Realise you didn’t back up the site so now you can’t rollback (always back up your site, folks)

If you don’t know what you’re doing here, you’ll see a really big domino effect.

And watch, slowly, and one thing leads to another.

Where, finally, you end up with a clusterfuck of 404s and error messages.

And your site collapses, along with your dreams.

Technical SEO is a mission, so we’ll start with the most fun bit: rank tracking.

Rank Tracking

The digital equivalent of watching paint dry, rank tracking is a “hurry up and wait” kinda thing.

So, it really helps if you can go do literally anything else and have something track your ranks for you.

And, while it’s doing that, why not make it affordable?

So, the most affordable digital eyes to watch your digital paint dry belong to…

Serpple

Cost: $19/month (Side Hustler Plan)

Serpple is a super sleek, simple (and affordable) SEO tool that’s really good at tracking ranks.

The Side Hustler Plan includes:

• 100 tracked keywords

• 1 tracked domain

• 2 tracked competitors

• Content audits for 10 pages

• 50 keyword suggestions

• Monitoring for 50 backlinks

It was built by a guy called Adam White.

So, just for context: the dude’s got 7 kids and he directs movies in his free time.

And he STILL managed to make a tool that beats out most competitors.

AND he kept it affordable.

Guess you could call him a White knight.

Free Alternatives

If you’re not a side hustler (maybe you’re a side-side hustler), you may want to look at these alternatives:

• TheHOTH’s Free Rank Tracker

• SEOTesting

• Good ol’ Google Search Console

Alright, alright.

Let’s get to the part of technical SEO that actually is fun. 

Criticising things.

Site Auditing & Reporting

I love on-page SEO. But I also love one very specific part of technical SEO.

And I love that part because it’s all about telling people what they’re doing wrong.

And that’s why I love site auditing and reporting.

Only problem is, there aren’t many affordable SEO tools that actually do the job.

But after searching and searching (and personal experience), I can say that the most wallet-friendly way to tell people their site sucks is…

SEOptimer

Cost: $19/month (DIY SEO Plan)

Super simple, super sleek, super affordable. 

SEOptimer is my go-to for site audits and reports.

It doesn’t provide a complete site audit, but it gives you an incredibly good idea of what’s wrong.

If you level up to other plans, you can white-label the tool, and even embed it into your site.

The DIY SEO Plan gives you access to a site audit that checks 100 different website points in the space of around 30 seconds.

If you’re looking for affordable SEO tools to handle auditing and reporting, they don’t come much better than this.

Free Alternatives

This one’s also tricky to get alternatives for, since $19 is pretty cheap for this much functionality.

But there are some options you could look at, even though they’re more limited.

• Semrush’s Site Audit (Free trial)

• AIOSEO’s SEO Analyzer

• SEOMator

A Conclusion? Yeah, Why Not.

Well, that wraps it up, folks. I had fun writing this.

I hope you had fun reading it.

If you enjoyed it, why not try some of the tools?

Or leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts and feelings.

There’s plenty more from Poor Man’s SEO, so stay tuned.

Or don’t.

I can’t tell you what to do.

I’m not Google.