Tools
10 official tools + Claude or ChatGPT
Price
Free
Time
1 hour the first time, 30 min after
Level
Beginner

You have a website, a few visitors, and a feeling that you should "do some SEO". Paid tools require a subscription, and free tools show you charts and warnings without telling you where to start. This tutorial fixes both problems: we stick to official free tools and let AI do the sorting.

It is meant for freelancers and small businesses who run their own site, or who want to understand what their provider is doing.

The 10 tools and their limits

  1. Google Search ConsoleGoogle's free service for monitoring your site's presence in its results: queries that bring you clicks, indexed pages, errors. Limit: it keeps the last 16 months of data, no more.
  2. Bing Webmaster ToolsMicrosoft's equivalent, free. You can import your sites and sitemaps from Search Console in a few clicks. It includes a technical audit (Site Scan), keyword research with volumes, and since February 2026 an AI Performance report, in preview, that counts citations of your site in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. Limit: Bing states that the queries shown are a sample and that citations do not indicate a position.
  3. PageSpeed InsightsMeasures page speed from two sources: real Chrome user data over the last 28 days, and a simulated test. Google's "good" thresholds: main content displayed (LCP) in 2.5 s or less, responsiveness (INP) in 200 ms or less, stability (CLS) of 0.1 or less. Limit: a low-traffic site may not have enough real-user data.
  4. LighthouseThe testing engine built into Chrome (right-click, Inspect, Lighthouse tab). Open source, it scores performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO. Bonus: it also works on password-protected pages.
  5. Rich Results TestChecks whether a page's structured data (reviews, FAQ, product and so on) can produce an enhanced listing in Google. Accepts a URL or pasted code. Limit: only the types Google supports.
  6. Schema Markup ValidatorHosted by Schema.org, it validates all structured data, beyond Google's types alone. Useful to check what other engines and AI tools can read too.
  7. Google TrendsCompares interest in several terms over time and by region. Key limit: the 0 to 100 values are relative, not numbers of searches.
  8. Microsoft ClarityClick maps and session recordings, free with no traffic limit. Limits: recordings are kept for 30 days, and visitors from the EU, UK and Switzerland must consent to cookies.
  9. Google Business ProfileYour free listing in Maps and Google Search: opening hours, photos, reviews. Google reserves it for businesses that meet customers in person, not online-only businesses.
  10. IndexNowA protocol that notifies participating engines (Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam, Yep, Amazon) as soon as a page is added, updated or deleted. You only need to host a key file at the root of your site. Google is not on the list of participants.

Gather the right exports

No need to export everything. For a first plan, three sources are enough:

  • Search Console, Performance report, last three months: Export button, Queries and Pages tabs.
  • PageSpeed Insights on your three most important pages (home, main service page, contact): note the three metrics and the top recommendations.
  • Bing Webmaster Tools, Site Scan: the list of errors found.

The prompt that builds the action plan

Paste it into a new conversation, then add the exports (files or text). Replace the brackets.

Prompt
You are an SEO consultant for a small business. You work only from the data I give you.

My business: [activity, city or area, type of customers]
My main goal: [e.g. more quote requests from the website]
Time available: [e.g. 2 hours a week, no developer]

Data:
<search_console>[Queries and Pages export]</search_console>
<pagespeed>[results for the 3 pages]</pagespeed>
<bing_site_scan>[list of errors]</bing_site_scan>

Your task:
1. Summarize in 5 lines what this data says about my site.
2. Give at most 10 actions in a table: action, page concerned, data that justifies it (quote the line), expected impact (high, medium, low), effort (under 1 hour, half a day, more), who can do it (me, my provider).
3. Rank them: high impact and low effort first.
4. For the top 3, write the concrete steps.

Rules: do not invent any figure, search volume or competitor. If data is missing to judge, write "missing data" and say which tool provides it.

A real-life example: a tradesperson sees in Search Console that their "bathroom renovation" page gets many impressions but very few clicks. The plan will usually suggest rewriting that page's title and description before anything else: a one-hour task, backed by a specific line of the export.

Run the same prompt every month with fresh exports, adding last month's plan: the AI can then tell you what has moved.

Good to know

  • The AI ranks and explains, it does not see your site live. Check each action on the page concerned before starting it.
  • SEO effects are measured in weeks. Do not change everything at once, or you will not know what worked.
  • Search Console exports contain searchers' queries, aggregated and anonymous. Do not add your customers' data to them.

Be careful. Microsoft Clarity records visitor behavior: install it together with your cookie consent banner, and mention it in your privacy policy. For IndexNow, follow the official documentation or ask your provider.

Sources

If the site itself is holding your SEO back (slow pages, poor structure, missing pages), that is where I can help with a properly rebuilt website.