The best SEO tools for a freelancer cover the four jobs you bill for: rank tracking, site audits, keyword research and client reporting. MrKeyword does all four in one workspace from $10 a month, and the Free plan never expires, so you can run a first audit on a client site before you charge for it.
Pay for the tools you open every week, not the ones you open once a quarter. For most freelancers that means rank tracking, a technical site audit, keyword research and a report you can send a client. MrKeyword bundles those four on first-party data: your client's own Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools properties, the official Google Keyword Planner and Bing keyword APIs, and MrKeyword's own crawler.
That makes it cheap and honest, and it makes it narrow. There is no bought backlink index, no competitor traffic estimate and no PPC research. If a retainer depends on those, keep the suite you have. If most of your week is checking positions, finding broken pages, choosing the next article and writing the monthly update, this replaces the expensive part of the stack.
One loop, repeated for each client site. Every step reads from data the client already owns.
Connect the client's Search Console and Bing properties read-only. MrKeyword stores average positions daily by device and country, so history outlives Google's 16-month window, and it calls out keywords sitting just outside page one.
MrKeyword's own crawler runs 68 technical checks, scores the site out of 100 and sorts issues by how many pages each one affects. Critical, warning and notice severities each come with a plain-English fix, and a crawl-over-crawl diff shows what is new, fixed or still there.
One seed returns matching terms, related ideas, questions, modifiers and clusters. Monthly demand comes from the official Google Keyword Planner and Bing APIs, never blended, and difficulty is labelled an estimate because it is one.
Pick from nine sections, a period and a comparison, then run the report on demand or schedule it weekly or monthly. Recipients get the numbers with the source printed at the bottom, and the document matches the dashboard because both render the same stored rows.
The Free plan is a real working plan, not a trial. Paid plans add websites and monthly allowances, not a different product.
| What you need | Free ($0) | Starter ($10/mo) | Growth ($19/mo) | Agency ($49/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client websites | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Tracked keywords | 25 | 500 | 1,500 | 5,000 |
| Audit pages a month | 100 | 2,000 | 10,000 | 40,000 |
| AI page audits | No | 20 | 60 | 200 |
| Scheduled reports | No | 2 | 10 | 50 |
| Seats | 1 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| White-label reports | No | No | No | Yes |
Start on Free with your own site or a single client site. Move to Starter when you need more keywords and AI audits, Growth when you take on a third website, and Agency when you need ten client sites and white-label reports. Yearly billing gets 2 months free on every paid plan, and a $5 credit pack tops up one allowance once without changing the plan.
When a client asks why the report says position 8.4 and their phone says position 3, you need an answer that survives the follow-up. MrKeyword's answer is that the figure is the impression-weighted average position Google Search Console reported for the property over the period, across every device, location and personalisation that real searches carried. It is not a live check from one browser in one city.
Every metric carries a label - Measured, Derived, Estimated or Not available - a confidence level and an as-of date. Search volumes come from the official Google Keyword Planner and Bing APIs and are never blended into one number. Keyword difficulty is called an estimate everywhere it appears, because it is one.
Four jobs cover most freelance SEO work: rank tracking to show movement, a site audit to find technical problems, keyword research to choose what to write next, and client reporting to explain the work. MrKeyword does all four in one workspace, so you are not paying for four separate subscriptions.
MrKeyword starts free with 1 website, 25 tracked keywords and 100 audit pages a month. Paid plans are $10 a month for 1 website, $19 for 3 websites and $49 for 10 websites, each also available yearly with 2 months free. Prices are in US dollars.
Yes, for one website. The Free plan never expires and asks for no card, so you can run a first audit or rank check on a client site before charging for it. When you take on more than one client site, Starter or Growth covers the extra websites.
From the client's own Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools properties, which you connect read-only. Positions are impression-weighted averages over the period, not a live check from one browser. Search volumes come from the official Google Keyword Planner and Bing APIs, and keyword difficulty is labelled an estimate.
Yes. Reports can be run on demand or scheduled weekly or monthly, exported as CSV, or printed to PDF. Starter includes 2 scheduled reports, Growth 10 and Agency 50, and Agency adds white-label reports with your brand and no MrKeyword branding.
No. MrKeyword reads the properties you have connected, so it reports only on sites your client has verified. Competitor rank tracking would need SERP scraping or a bought index, and MrKeyword has neither.
Free forever, no card. Paid plans from $10 a month when the client list grows.