SEO courseModule 1 of 10: Start HereLesson 1.3
Your Free Toolkit (Set This Up First)
Almost every test in this course uses the same handful of free tools. Setting them up once, now, takes about 90 minutes and makes every later lesson much quicker.
01What it is
Before a mechanic can tell you what’s wrong with a car, they plug in the diagnostic kit. These tools are your website’s diagnostic kit.
The essentials (do these in order)
1Google Search Console
FreeWhich of your pages Google has indexed, which searches show you, problems it found, links to your site, and security warnings. The single most useful free tool in this course.
How to set it up
- 1Sign in with a Google account that you control, not only your web agency.
- 2Click Add property. Choose Domain (covers every version of your site) if you can edit your domain's DNS settings, or URL prefix if you can't.
- 3Domain: Google shows a TXT record. Log in to wherever you bought your domain (GoDaddy, 123-reg, Namecheap, Cloudflare), add the TXT record exactly as shown, then click Verify. It can take from a few minutes to a day.
- 4URL prefix: choose HTML tag, copy it, and paste it into your homepage's <head> (on WordPress, Yoast or Rank Math have a box for it), or ask your web provider. Then click Verify.
- 5Open Sitemaps in the left menu and submit your sitemap (usually yoursite.co.uk/sitemap.xml).
- 6Give your web provider, and anyone doing SEO for you, access under Settings, Users and permissions. Keep ownership yourself.
2Bing Webmaster Tools
FreeThe same kind of information for Bing, which also feeds Microsoft Copilot. Five minutes if you've done Search Console.
How to set it up
- 1Sign in with a Microsoft account.
- 2Click Import to bring your site (and its verification) straight across from Search Console.
- 3Submit your sitemap under Sitemaps.
3Google Analytics 4
FreeHow many people visit, where they come from, and which ones enquire, call or request a valuation.
How to set it up
- 1Create an account and a property for your site, then a web data stream. Copy the Measurement ID (it starts with G-).
- 2Install it with Google Tag Manager, your site's Google plugin (WordPress: Site Kit by Google), or ask your web provider.
- 3Under Admin, Data display, Events, mark your important actions as key events: valuation form sent, contact form sent, viewing booked, alert sign-up, phone number tapped.
- 4Link it to Search Console under Admin, Product links.
4PageSpeed Insights
FreeHow fast your pages load on a phone, and what's slowing them down.
How to set it up
- 1Paste a page's address and press Analyze. Read the Mobile tab first.
- 2Test at least five pages: homepage, a listing, your search results, your valuation page and a guide.
5Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Free up to 500 pagesCrawls your site the way a search engine does and lists every page, status code, title, heading, canonical tag and image. The best tool for finding technical problems.
How to set it up
- 1Download and install it (Windows, Mac or Linux).
- 2Type your homepage address in the top bar and press Start.
- 3When it reaches 100%, use the tabs along the top (Internal, Response Codes, Page Titles, Canonicals and so on). Export any list to open in Excel or Google Sheets.
6Your business profiles
FreeGoogle Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. Claim and verify all three; lesson 6.1 covers them in full.
Open Your business profiles (opens in a new tab)7Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Free for your own siteA free site audit and backlink report for your own verified site. Quickest to verify by importing from Search Console.
Open Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (opens in a new tab)8Chrome DevTools
FreeAlready in your browser. Right-click any page and choose Inspect (or press F12). The phone icon previews mobile layouts; View page source lets you check titles, canonical tags and noindex tags.
Open Chrome DevTools (opens in a new tab)When you outgrow the free tools
| Tool | Best for |
|---|---|
| Semrush or Ahrefs | Competitor research, keywords, backlinks, rank tracking |
| SE Ranking | Lower-cost rank tracking and audits |
| BrightLocal or Local Falcon | Your Google Maps ranking at points around your office |
| Whitespark or Moz Local | Finding and fixing business listings across directories |
| Screaming Frog (paid) or Sitebulb | Crawling sites over 500 pages, scheduled audits |
Using AI as your helper
Most lessons include a ready-to-copy prompt for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot. A few rules make them far more useful:
- Give it the data, don't describe it. Paste the exported list, the error message or the page text.
- Tell it your platform: "My site is on WordPress with Yoast" or "My site is built by [your property software provider]".
- Ask for steps, then ask it to explain anything you don't understand.
- Check its answer. AI can be confidently wrong, especially about legal rules, tool menus and anything recent. For anything risky (robots.txt, redirects, canonical tags, legal pages) check the official help page or ask a professional.
- Never paste passwords, client data or personal information.
Keep a testing log
Make one spreadsheet with these columns and fill it in as you work through the course. By the last module it's a ready-made audit of your site.
| Lesson | What I tested | Tool | Date | Result | Evidence | Fix chosen | Who | Done? | Re-test date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | Valuation page indexed? | Search Console | 12 Oct | Issue: noindex | Screenshot | Remove noindex | Web provider | Yes | 19 Oct |
That's lesson 1.3
Worked through it? Mark it done and we’ll keep track on this device.
← Back to 1.2 Your Four Audiences: Buyers, Tenants, Sellers and Landlords