Tracking data is an essential part of understanding how your law firm’s website is performing. There are many free tools available that can help you understand the general performance of your website as well as how your website is performing organically in search engines. Below, you’ll find some of the best free tools your law firm should be taking advantage of.

Google Analytics

One of the most well-known and most often used tools is Google Analytics. Analytics provides a vast amount of valuable information in terms of traffic coming to your site, user behavior and so much more.

Google Analytics tracks a user’s journey on your website to help you better understand your client’s behaviors across different channels and devices. In addition, this tool allows you to track goal or event completions so you can keep track of relevant conversions. For example, if someone filled out a contact form, Google Analytics could tell you when the form was filled out and what channel (organic, direct, ads, social, etc.) the person came from when they filled out the form. This allows you to understand which channels are most effective in driving traffic and conversions to your firm’s website.

Google Search Console

Another extremely valuable tool that Google provides for free is Google Search Console. This free tool from Google will help you understand how the search engine sees your site as well as provide you with insights on how to improve your rankings.

Search console allows you to see your top ranking pages in organic search in terms of clicks and impressions. In addition, you are able to see what keywords users are typing that are triggering your site to appear. This helps with understanding user intent and provides you with relevant keywords to optimize for.

Google Keyword Planner

As you may have noticed, Google has an abundance of valuable free tools for you to utilize – another one being the Google Keyword Planner. While this tool is intended to perform keyword research for a Google Ads search campaign, it is also useful in performing keyword research for your website in terms of optimizing to improve organic rankings. It allows you to see the monthly searches the keyword gets and even how tough the competition for the keyword may be on a scale of low to high. It will also show you the average cost per keyword if you decide to run a search campaign through Google Ads. There are other free keyword research tools out there, which we’ll dive into in just a bit but the Google Keyword Planner is always a good choice.

Page Speed Insights

Page speed and core web vitals are key metrics in Google’s algorithm. If you are failing core web vitals, this will negatively impact your rankings. In addition, if your page speed score is low, that will not only affect your rankings but impact the user experience negatively because in this day and age no one wants to wait more than three seconds for a website to load.

Page Speed Insights is a free tool that informs you whether your website is passing core web vitals, provides you with your page speed scores on both mobile and desktop, and will provide you with courses of action to improve those scores.

Semrush

Semrush is a valuable tool that is available for free. There are paid versions that provide deeper insights but, if you are just beginning, a free account should do the trick. Semrush features an abundance of capabilities that can help you understand both your own and competitor positions within search engines. For example, you can perform keyword research, create content templates and so much more.

If you are interested in learning more about SEO, Semrush also features Semrush Academy, which is a great place to learn!

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is similar to Semrush in its functionality providing valuable information about your site and allowing you to analyze competitor sites. This tool has similar features such as keyword research, link building, competitive analysis and more.

Ahrefs also has excellent training and learning resources with their academy and beginner’s guide to SEO.

What Other Tools Are Out There?

These are just some of the free tools that are available for you to use. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with these tools as they will help with understanding where your firm stands organically and discover opportunities for improvements. At 9Sail, we use most of these tools daily so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!