Choose tools by the job, not the brand
Every SEO tool does one of five jobs: it measures, it inspects, it researches, it tracks, or it produces. Knowing the job tells you whether you need it. Most store owners who overspend on tools bought a product for a job they were not ready to do.
This page names the categories a store needs, says which ones are free, and tells you what each one can and cannot answer. It deliberately does not rank brands. The right tool changes as your store grows, and the methods for choosing between specific products are on another page, how to choose an ecommerce SEO tool, so we will not repeat them here.
One honest framing before the list. A tool is not a strategy, and none of them does the work of making your pages better. They show you where to look. If the real shortage is hours, not data, then a stack of subscriptions will not help, and when a person, not another tool, is what you are missing is the question to settle first.
The shape of the answer is in the diagram below: a small free base that every store needs, a middle layer that most stores add, and a specialist layer that only some do.
The free foundations every store needs
These cost nothing and answer the most important questions. Set them up before you buy anything.
Google Search Console
Answers: what searches your pages appear for, which get clicks, which pages are indexed and why others are not. It is Google's own report, so it is the only real source. See our entry on Google Search Console for the vocabulary.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Answers: the same questions for Bing, which also feeds some AI assistants and other search products. Setup is quick, and it can import your Search Console data.
PageSpeed Insights
Answers: how a page loads on a phone and what slows it down. Test your home page, one collection page and one product page, not every URL.
Google Business Profile
Answers: nothing by itself, but it matters if you also have a physical shop or showroom. A store that sells only online can skip it.
Your platform's own SEO settings
Most platforms let you edit page titles, descriptions, image text and redirects, and generate a sitemap for you. Learn what yours does automatically before paying to duplicate it. Check its help pages for the exact list.
Together these tell you what you rank for, what is indexed, how fast pages load and whether the basics are in place. That is more than many stores act on.
The middle layer: analytics and a crawler
Two more categories earn their place for almost any store.
Analytics
Search Console shows what happens before the click. Analytics shows what happens after: which pages visitors from search landed on, whether they bought, and how much. Without it you can measure clicks but not sales. Google's current free tool is GA4, and your platform has its own reports too. Check that purchase events are tracked, because without them the data stops at the visit.
A site crawler
Answers: what is wrong across the whole site at once. It visits pages the way a search engine would and lists missing titles, duplicates, broken links, redirect chains and pages that return errors. Free versions handle a small catalog. Paid versions handle larger ones and run on a schedule.
A crawler is the engine behind a self-run ecommerce SEO audit, and our audit page shows how to rank what it finds so you do not drown in a thousand warnings.
What these two cannot do is tell you what to write. For that you need research.
Research and rank tracking: useful, but not first
This is the tier where spending usually starts, and where it often gets ahead of need.
Keyword and question research
Answers: what buyers search for, roughly how often, and how hard it is to appear. Paid tools do this at scale. Free substitutes exist: Search Console's own list of queries, the suggestions search engines show as you type, the "people also ask" boxes, and the questions your customers send to support. For a small store, your own customers' questions are better than any tool's list.
Rank tracking
Answers: where you appear for chosen searches over time. It is handy, with a catch. Positions vary by person, device and place, so a rank tracker gives a reading under controlled conditions, not what every shopper sees. Track a short list of the searches that matter most, not thousands.
Competitor research
Answers: which pages rivals have that you do not. This is the main use for the bigger paid suites, and it is the one that pays back when a store is large enough to act on gaps.
A fair rule: buy this layer when you can name the decision it will change. If you cannot, wait.
Specialist extras: links, content scoring and AI answers
These sit at the base of the pyramid because they matter for fewer stores, or later.
Link analysis tools. They show which sites link to you and your competitors. Useful once your pages are strong and you are deciding where to earn mentions. Not useful for a store with thin category pages, where the first fix is the pages.
Content scoring tools. They compare a draft with pages that already rank and suggest terms to cover. They can help a writer who knows the subject. They cannot supply knowledge your store has and others lack, which is what makes a page worth reading.
Product data and structured markup tools. Some platforms and apps generate product markup, and Google's Rich Results Test, which is free, checks whether it reads correctly. Check what your theme already outputs before adding more.
AI answer tracking. Shoppers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude where to buy. Trackers exist that ask those assistants a set of questions on a schedule and record whether your store is named. You can do the same by hand: write ten questions your buyers ask, put them to each assistant monthly, and log the answers. The reasons assistants name some stores and skip others are in our piece on how AI assistants pick businesses.
What no tool does, and how that should shape what you buy
There is a gap between knowing and doing, and tools mostly live on the knowing side.
They do not write your pages. A crawler that finds 120 thin collection pages gives you a list. Someone still has to write 120 pieces of useful text, publish them and link them.
They do not decide priorities. A tool with forty alerts treats a missing image description like a blocked category. You decide, or someone experienced decides for you.
They do not know your products. Only you know that a fabric runs small or a part fits one model and not another, and that detail is what buyers and assistants both want.
That is why, for many stores, the right number of paid tools is small. A better use of money may be the hours that turn findings into pages. Where software fits and where it stops is the subject of the page on ecommerce SEO software versus a service.
A final check before any purchase: write down the question the tool will answer and the action you will take when it answers. If you cannot fill in both, skip it.
A starter kit by store size
Here is how the categories above add up for three common situations. It is a guide, not a rule.
A new or small store
Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, PageSpeed Insights, your platform's settings and your analytics with purchase tracking. Add a free crawler once you have a couple of hundred pages. Spend no money on tools yet. Spend time on your category pages and the questions your customers ask.
A growing store with a few hundred products
Keep the free base. Add a paid crawler or a research tool only if you can say what decision it will change, for example choosing which twenty collection pages to rewrite first. Consider a rank tracker for a short list of the searches that matter. Do the AI answer check by hand each month. Our audit page shows how to use the crawler's output.
A large catalog
A paid crawler that runs on a schedule becomes valuable, since problems appear at scale and need catching early. Competitor research and link analysis earn their place when you have people free to act on them. Log file reading and similar specialist work may be worth an in-house or outside specialist.
When to cancel a tool
Review subscriptions twice a year. For each, ask when you last opened it and what you changed because of it. A tool with no answer to the second question is a candidate to cancel. Tools tend to accumulate, and each new one adds a dashboard nobody checks.
A note on bundles inside your platform
Some platforms and plugins bundle several of these jobs, like titles, sitemaps and basic markup. That is convenient. Check that you are not paying twice for something the platform already does, and that you can export your data if you ever leave.
Free versus paid: where the line really falls
People ask whether free tools are enough. The honest answer is that free tools are enough for diagnosis on a small or mid-sized store, and paid tools become worth it at scale or for speed.
What free covers well. Real search data from Google and Bing, page speed tests, markup checks, basic crawling for a few hundred pages and analytics. These are not cut-down versions. The data in Search Console is the same data a paid tool would try to estimate.
What paid adds. Scale, history and convenience. A paid crawler handles a large catalog and runs on a schedule. A paid research tool estimates search volume for terms you do not yet rank for. A paid tracker keeps a long record of positions. A paid link tool shows who links to your competitors.
What paid does not add. Judgment, product knowledge and the hours to act. Nothing in a subscription changes those.
Estimates versus facts. Be aware that research and traffic figures in paid tools are modeled estimates. Search Console is a count. When the two disagree about your own site, believe Search Console.
A fair upgrade rule. Move from free to paid when you hit a specific wall, such as a crawl that is too big for the free version, or a research question your own data cannot answer. Buying ahead of the wall just adds a bill.
The same logic applies to tools built into your platform or sold as add-ons. Test whether they do something your free base does not already do, then keep them only if they do.
Mistakes stores make with tools
A short list of habits that waste money and attention.
Buying a suite before setting up the free tools. The free tools often answer the question the suite was bought for. Set them up first and see what is still missing.
Checking dashboards daily. Search data moves in weeks, not hours. Daily checking produces worry and rash edits. A monthly review with a four-week comparison is calmer and more useful.
Trusting a single number. Difficulty scores, authority scores and health scores come from each tool's own formula. Two tools will disagree about the same page. Use them to compare pages inside one tool, not to claim a result.
Leaving access with someone else. Your Search Console, analytics and tool accounts should be in your name. A freelancer or agency can be added as a user. If they leave, the history stays.
Collecting data with no owner. For every report a tool sends, name the person who reads it and the action they take. A report no one reads is a cost.
How RunOctopus handles this
Tools show you where the gaps are. They do not fill them.
RunOctopus is a done-for-you service. Its AI, Ollie, researches your business, then writes and publishes pages directly on your own website. A team plans, writes, reviews and publishes alongside Ollie. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix.
There is nothing to install, nothing to approve, nothing to upload and nothing to schedule. You do not approve each page, because pages go live on their own. In the first week you get 8 long-form articles, 6 pages and a custom interactive tool built for your niche. After that it is 175+ pieces of content a month, written, published and linked. You also get reports on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your business.
There is a 90-day promise: more visibility on Google and in AI answers within 90 days, measured against the 90 days before you joined, or every dollar back. For scale, an agency doing this work charges about $3,209 a month (2026 average, 439 providers) and publishes 4 to 12 pieces.
Paste your address into the free site read and Ollie reads the site and shows the plan. No account, no call.