You can check your website’s SEO score for free using some online tools, but it’s important to understand that many of these platforms, like Moz, SEMrush, and Ahrefs, only offer very limited features for free. While they provide a quick glimpse of your site’s performance, the most valuable insights—like in-depth keyword research, backlink analysis, and detailed technical SEO audits—are often locked behind paid plans, which can be quite expensive.

Hiring an SEO specialist who has access to these premium tools and the expertise to use them effectively is often the best solution. A professional SEO can leverage the full range of advanced features and interpret the data to create a strategy tailored to your business needs. This ensures your site is fully optimized for search engine rankings, without missing any critical aspects that free tools often overlook.

Yes, you can technically do SEO for free, but it’s important to understand the limitations. There are free tools like Google Search Console and basic free SEO score checkers that can help you get started with keyword research, site audits, and performance tracking. However, optimizing your website effectively requires a deep understanding of SEO strategies, algorithms, and access to advanced tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs, which typically come with significant costs.

Even if you try to handle SEO without spending money on tools, you’ll end up investing a lot of time—possibly months—learning and experimenting, and you may still miss out on critical opportunities to improve your rankings. Additionally, free tools often offer only basic insights, and the free SEO score they provide won’t cover advanced aspects like technical SEO or in-depth competitor analysis.

Hiring a professional or investing in paid SEO tools can save you time, effort, and frustration, as well as offer a more effective and strategic approach to boosting your website’s visibility. Doing SEO for free may seem like a good idea, but in the long run, it can cost you more in terms of missed opportunities and wasted time.

Google doesn’t directly offer free SEO services, but it does provide a few helpful tools for improving your website’s performance in search engine results. Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics are invaluable for tracking your site’s traffic, performance, and issues like broken links or mobile usability. However, these tools alone won’t cover the entire scope of what’s needed for a fully optimized SEO strategy.

In the past, Google had PageRank, a public metric that showed the authority and ranking potential of web pages. Over time, this feature was hidden from the public, making it much harder for website owners to gauge their SEO score directly from Google. Today, many third-party services try to emulate PageRank by providing metrics like domain authority and trust score, but they don’t offer the same insights Google once did. These tools often come with a cost and require a deep understanding to use effectively.

While you can access some free Google tools, handling SEO properly still requires time, expertise, and often the use of paid SEO tools or services to stay competitive.

To calculate your SEO score, you’ll need to evaluate several factors that influence your website’s performance in search engine rankings. The SEO score is typically determined by analyzing key areas like on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO. Here’s a basic process for calculating your score:

1. Use an SEO Tool: Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Lighthouse can provide a free SEO score based on an analysis of your website’s page speed, mobile-friendliness, and overall optimization.
2. On-Page SEO: This includes assessing the quality of your content, the relevance of your keywords, and the use of meta tags like title tags and meta descriptions.
3. Technical SEO: You’ll need to check aspects like your site’s speed, indexability, crawlability, and structured data to ensure search engines can easily understand your site.
4. Off-Page SEO: Analyze your backlink profile, including the quality and quantity of external links pointing to your site. High-authority backlinks can significantly boost your SEO score.

While SEO tools calculate a score based on these factors, it’s important to remember that no single score guarantees ranking success. The free SEO score tools provide can be helpful for identifying areas of improvement, but optimizing SEO takes time and continuous effort, often requiring advanced strategies beyond free evaluations.