15 SEO tools to find out why your site is not ranking on Google

A site with good content can stall because its pages are not indexed yet, its topic does not match what people search for, its titles rarely get clicked, or its competitors are simply stronger. SEO tools help you separate those causes, so you do not have to guess by changing titles or adding keywords. Start with Google Search Console, and add other tools only when a question remains unanswered.

The prices and free-plan limits in this article were checked on the vendors' pages on 1 November 2026. Prices can vary by region, so check again before you subscribe.

Diagnosing a site that does not rank, step by step

Work through the checks in order, starting with the step the others depend on. A page that is not indexed will not be helped by a new title, and links from other sites do little for a page that does not answer the reader's question.

1. Use the page indexing report in Search Console to check whether the page is indexed. If many pages have problems, continue with a crawler such as Screaming Frog.
2. Use the Search Console performance report to check whether the page appears for the right searches. If it gets few impressions, the topic or the terms may be wrong, so open Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
3. Check whether impressions turn into clicks. Many impressions with few clicks point to the title, the description or a position that is still low.
4. Use Google Analytics 4 to check whether clicks turn into actions. If visitors leave without doing anything, check the page content and its speed with PageSpeed Insights.
5. Use Semrush or Ahrefs to compare your site with competitors. Look at the pages and links they have for the same searches.

A sudden drop in visits calls for a different sequence of checks. Google's guide to traffic drops names six groups of causes: algorithm updates, technical problems, security issues, spam, seasonality or changing interest, and site migrations. Compare periods in the Search Console performance report first, then check Google Trends to see whether demand itself is falling.

The 15 tools and their costs at a glance

Tool	Use	Free version	Paid from (1 Nov 2026)
Google Search Console	Indexing and performance in Google	Free	None
Google Analytics 4	Visitor behaviour	Free	Analytics 360 available
Data Studio	Report dashboards	Free	Data Studio Pro available
Bing Webmaster Tools	Indexing and performance in Bing	Free	None
Google Keyword Planner	Keyword volume estimates	Free, needs a Google Ads account	None
Google Trends	Search interest trends	Free	None
AnswerThePublic	Ideas for readers' questions	Not listed on the pricing page	US$5 a month billed annually, promotional price
Semrush	Competitor and keyword research	10 reports a day	US$139 a month
Ahrefs	Link and competitor research	Verified sites only	US$29 a month (Starter), US$129 (Lite)
Screaming Frog	Crawling and technical audits	Up to 500 URLs	£199 a year
PageSpeed Insights	Speed and Core Web Vitals	Free	None
Lighthouse	Page audits in Chrome	Free	None
GTmetrix	Speed tests and monitoring	Basic tests	US$4.99 a month billed annually
Yoast SEO	WordPress SEO plugin	Free plugin	US$118.80 a year, before tax
Rank Math	WordPress SEO plugin	Free plugin	€5.59 a month billed annually, €8.99 on renewal

Performance data in Google and on your site

Google Search Console

Search Console is a free service from Google. Its performance report shows the searches that bring up your site, the number of impressions and clicks, and the average position. The page indexing report, formerly called the Coverage report, shows which URLs are in the index and why other URLs are not.

A hypothetical example: an article gets many impressions but few clicks at a position that is already fairly high. A sensible first step is to rewrite the title and description before touching the body of the article.

Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics is free and measures what happens after visitors arrive: the pages they open, the paths they take, and the actions you mark as key events. Search Console explains how people find you, while GA4 explains what they do after that.

Learn the definitions first. In GA4, bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged. A session counts as engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, includes a key event, or views two or more pages. For that reason, the figure cannot simply be compared with the bounce rate in older reports.

Data Studio

The tool you may know as Looker Studio is now called Data Studio. Google's documentation describes it as a no-cost tool for building dashboards and reports, and it offers connectors to GA4 and Search Console. It becomes useful when the same report has to be shared regularly with a manager or a client.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing's counterpart to Search Console is free and has performance reports, URL inspection, keyword research, backlink data and site scanning. Since February 2026 it has also had an AI Performance report in public preview. How much time it deserves depends on your market: StatCounter, a web traffic analytics service, recorded Bing's share in Indonesia at 3.44 percent in October 2026, against 91.42 percent for Google.

Keyword and demand research

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is free, but it is built for advertisers. You need to finish setting up a Google Ads account, including the billing information. The volumes it shows are rounded monthly averages, so use them to compare the relative size of keywords, not as exact counts.

A hypothetical example: the owner of an air-conditioning service finds that "AC cleaning", "home AC service" and "AC freon price" reflect different needs, so each of them deserves its own page or section.

Google Trends

Google Trends does not show absolute volume. Its data is normalised on a scale of 0 to 100 by time and location. Use it to see seasonal patterns, to compare two terms, and to confirm whether a drop in visits comes from a fall in general interest.

AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic gathers questions, prepositions, comparisons and related searches around one topic. The results are good for finding follow-up questions when you draft an outline. When viewed from Indonesia, its pricing page shows a limited-offer Starter plan at US$5 a month, billed annually, for 100 searches a month. The page lists no free plan, and the price varies by region.

Competitor and link research

Semrush

Semrush is useful for finding keywords that bring visits to your competitors but that you have not targeted yet. Its cheapest plan is US$139 a month, or US$117.33 a month billed annually, for 5 sites and 500 keywords tracked daily. The free plan gives 1 demo project and 10 reports a day, enough for an occasional check.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is known for its backlink data and its Domain Rating metric. The Lite plan costs US$129 a month and Standard US$249 a month. There is also a Starter plan at US$29 a month. Ahrefs Free works only for sites you have verified, and shows up to 1,000 backlinks at a time. Analysing a competitor's site requires a paid plan. Cheaper options are covered in our list of free Ahrefs alternatives.

Technical audits and speed

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog is a desktop program that crawls your site and lists every URL with its status, title, metadata and redirects. It is most useful before and after a site migration. The free version is limited to 500 URLs, and a licence at £199 a year removes that limit.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights gives two kinds of data. Field data comes from real Chrome users over the last 28 days and covers LCP, INP and CLS. Lab data comes from a Lighthouse simulation. Do not be surprised when the two scores disagree.

Keep your expectations in check as well. Google states that Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, but a good score does not guarantee the top position. To fix a slow page, follow our guide to diagnosing a website that is slow on mobile.

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is available in Chrome DevTools, on the command line and as a Node module. It audits performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO, and it can be added to the release process so problems are caught before a new page goes live. It is usually a tool for development teams; business owners only need to look at the same results in PageSpeed Insights.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix tests pages in a real Chrome browser and shows a waterfall, a breakdown of every request made while the page loads. Its basic test is free. Paid plans start at US$4.99 a month billed annually, while hourly monitoring is only available from the Advanced plan, at US$24.99 a month billed annually.

Plugins for WordPress sites

These two tools matter only if your site runs on WordPress. On other platforms, you manage titles, descriptions and the sitemap in that platform's CMS.

Yoast SEO

The free version of Yoast includes canonical URLs, an XML sitemap, structured data, and SEO and readability analysis. Features such as the redirect manager and internal linking suggestions are in Premium, at US$118.80 a year before tax for one site.

Rank Math

The free version of Rank Math includes an XML sitemap, structured data and analysis for 5 focus keywords per post. The PRO plan is listed at €5.59 a month billed annually, then €8.99 a month on renewal.

Both help you fill in metadata, but a green score from a plugin is not Google's assessment. A plugin also cannot judge whether the writing really answers the reader. That question is covered in our explanation of what Google actually rates.

Tool combinations by need

Most businesses do not need all fifteen. Choose according to the question you are facing right now.

• A small business with a few pages: Search Console, GA4, PageSpeed Insights and Google Trends. All of them are free.
• A site with dozens to hundreds of pages: add Screaming Frog for regular audits, Keyword Planner for research and Data Studio for routine reports.
• A team actively competing in search: add one paid platform, Semrush or Ahrefs. Subscribing to both at once is rarely necessary at this stage.

Before you pay for a subscription, write down what decision you will make from the data. If there is none yet, the free tools are still enough. If you would like to run the audit with a team that is used to reading this data, see our SEO service.