Stop paying through the nose for Ahrefs. Here's a free stack that does most of the same job

THIS WEEK: Ahrefs costs upwards of £120 a month. For a small business owner doing their own SEO, that is a remarkable sum. This week we look at the three free tools that together cover most of what Ahrefs does, how to use them properly, and where the free stack genuinely falls short.

SEO tools have always had a pricing problem. The good ones cost what a small business owner might spend on a member of staff. Ahrefs starts at around £120 a month. Semrush is similar. Moz is not much cheaper. The assumption is that if you are serious about SEO, you pay.

That assumption is wrong, or at least it is much less true than it used to be.

Google now gives away Search Console for free, which tells you exactly which search terms your site is appearing for, how many people are clicking, and where your pages are ranking. Ahrefs has its own free tier, called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which gives you a proper site audit, backlink data, and organic keyword insights for any site you verify ownership of. Ubersuggest has a free plan that gives you keyword research, competitor analysis, and basic rank tracking. None of these tools are Ahrefs. But for a small business owner managing one website and doing their own SEO, they cover the essentials without a monthly bill that makes you question whether SEO is actually worth doing.

The myth here is not just that SEO is expensive. It is that you need one all-in-one tool to do it properly. You do not. You need keyword data, site health monitoring, and rank tracking. The free stack below gives you all three.

Three free tools. Used in order, they tell you how fast your site is, why it is slow, and how to fix the biggest single cause of slowness on most sites.

TOOL 1: Google Search Console

Google Search Console replaces rank tracking and performance monitoring. It is a completely free tool from Google and it is the most accurate source of data about how your site performs in Google search, because it comes directly from Google. Set it up for your site and you can see exactly which search queries are bringing people to your site, which pages are getting impressions and clicks, how your average position changes over time, and whether Google can actually crawl and index your pages properly. It tells you about technical issues like mobile usability problems, core web vitals failures, and pages that are blocked from being indexed. For small businesses, this alone is worth more than most paid tools because it is telling you what Google actually sees, not an estimate. If you have not set it up yet, this is the first thing to do.

Link: https://search.google.com/search-console

TOOL 2: Ahrefs Webmaster Tools replaces site auditing and backlink analysis. This is the free tier of Ahrefs, available to anyone who verifies ownership of their website. It scans your site for over 170 technical and on-page SEO issues: broken links, missing title tags, duplicate content, slow pages, redirect chains, and everything else that can quietly hold your rankings back. It also shows you your backlink profile, which sites are linking to you, and which of your pages attract the most organic traffic and from which keywords. The data is the same quality as the paid Ahrefs product. The limitation is that you can only use it on sites you own, so you cannot spy on competitors the way you can on a paid plan. For a small business focused on their own site, that limitation barely matters. It also now includes web analytics free up to one million events per month, which is a sensible alternative to Google Analytics if you want something simpler.

Link: https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools

TOOL 3: Ubersuggest replaces keyword research. The free plan gives you limited daily searches, one project, rank tracking for up to 25 keywords, a site audit that crawls up to 150 pages, and competitor tracking for two competitors. It is genuinely limited compared to a paid account, but it is enough to find keyword opportunities, check search volumes, understand how difficult it would be to rank for a given term, and see what your closest competitors are ranking for. For a small business doing occasional keyword research rather than running daily SEO campaigns, the free plan covers what you need. A free account is permanent and does not expire. Link: https://ubersuggest.com

If you have never set up any of these tools, here is how to spend your first half hour in a way that will actually tell you something useful.

Start with Google Search Console. Verify your site and then go to the Performance report. Look at the Search Results tab and sort by Impressions. You are looking for keywords where you have a lot of impressions but a low click-through rate. That means Google is showing your page to people searching for that term but they are not clicking. Those pages are your quickest wins: they are already ranking, they just need better title tags and meta descriptions to get the click.

Then go to Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and run a site audit. This will tell you about the technical issues on your site. Do not panic when you see a list of errors. Focus on the ones marked Critical first: broken pages, pages blocked from being indexed, missing title tags. Fix those before anything else.

Finally, open Ubersuggest and type in the main keyword you want to rank for. Look at the keyword ideas section. You are looking for keywords with decent search volume and a low SEO difficulty score, ideally under 40. Those are the terms where a well-written page on a small business website can realistically compete.

Between the three tools, you now know what you are ranking for, what is broken, and what you should be writing about next. That is more than most small businesses know about their own SEO, and it cost nothing.

NEED HELP? In over your head? Wearing too many hats already? No idea where to start? I can help you.

Google Keyword Planner (ads.google.com/keywordplanner) is free if you have a Google Ads account, even one you never actually spend money on. It shows search volume data directly from Google and is particularly useful for understanding seasonal trends and local search volumes. The data is accurate because it comes from Google itself.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider (screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider) has a free version that crawls up to 500 URLs. It is a desktop application rather than a browser tool and it is more thorough than most free site audit tools. For small websites it is completely adequate on the free plan. It is not glamorous to use but it is extremely useful.

There is a version of SEO where you genuinely need Ahrefs or Semrush. If you are running a content operation, tracking hundreds of competitors, doing deep backlink outreach at scale, or managing SEO for multiple clients, the paid tools pay for themselves quickly.

That is not most small business owners. Most small business owners have one website, a handful of pages they actually care about, and a rough idea of what keywords they want to rank for. For them, the paid tools are expensive, overwhelming, and full of data they will never act on.

The free stack above is not a consolation prize. Google Search Console is indispensable at any level. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is the same product as paid Ahrefs for your own site. Ubersuggest is limited on the free plan but useful for what most small businesses actually need to do.

The real barrier to SEO is not the tools. It is understanding what to do with the data once you have it. All the Ahrefs subscriptions in the world will not help you if you open the dashboard, feel overwhelmed, and close it again. Start with the free tools. Learn what the numbers mean. When you have outgrown them and you know exactly which paid feature you need, that is when you consider paying.

Got a tool you want me to review? Reply to this email. Need actual help with your business's systems or digital setup? I have been doing this for 17 years. Get in touch.