A Step-by-Step Checklist for Setting Up Free SEO Tools — From Zero to First Insights

This checklist is written for three types of people:

• Business owners doing their own SEO — you've read enough to know you need data, but you're not sure which tools to install or in what order
• Marketing managers inheriting a site — you need to quickly understand what's already set up, what's missing, and where to fill the gaps
• Freelancers onboarding a new client — you want a repeatable process that gets you from access to insight in the shortest time possible

This is not a guide for enterprise SEO teams managing hundreds of properties. It's designed for single-site setups where the goal is to move from no data to actionable data using only free tools.

You don't need technical experience to follow this checklist. Each step includes what to do, why it matters, and which tool handles it. If you get stuck at any point, the most common cause is a verification or permissions issue — both of which are covered in the FAQ below.

By the end of this checklist, you'll have a working measurement stack, a first crawl of your site, and at least one insight you can act on this week.

Most people open Google Search Console, get confused by the interface, and close it. That happens because they skipped the foundation. There are three phases to a proper free tool setup, and they need to happen in order:

1. Verify ownership and access — Before any tool can show you data, it needs to confirm you own or manage the site. This step is skipped or rushed more than any other, and it's the #1 cause of missing data.
2. Connect and configure — Each tool needs to know which property to track, what to exclude (like admin URLs or staging environments), and how to report. Default settings are almost never correct for a real business site.
3. Set a baseline — Pull your first reports before you change anything on the site. This gives you a comparison point. Without a baseline, you can't measure whether your SEO work is actually moving the needle.

After these three phases, you move into active use: crawling for issues, reviewing keyword performance, tracking ranking changes. But none of that matters without clean setup underneath it.

The checklist in the next section follows this three-phase model exactly. Each step is tagged with its phase so you always know where you are in the process.

One practical note: plan for 90 minutes to complete the full setup on a site you already have access to. If you're waiting on access from a client or colleague, complete steps 1–4 first, then pause until access arrives.

Phase 1 — Verify Ownership and Access

1. Add your site to Google Search Console — Use the Domain property type (not URL prefix) if you want data across http, https, www, and non-www variants in one place.
2. Complete DNS or HTML tag verification — DNS verification is more reliable long-term. HTML tag verification works but breaks if someone edits the site header. Confirm verification status shows as active before moving on.
3. Grant additional users access — If anyone else needs to see this data (a developer, a manager, a client), add them now at the correct permission level. You can't retroactively share historical data with users added later.
4. Create or connect a Google Analytics 4 property — If GA4 isn't already installed, add the base tag via Google Tag Manager or direct script. Link the GA4 property to Search Console inside GA4 admin settings.

Phase 2 — Configure Each Tool Correctly

5. Submit your XML sitemap in Search Console — Go to Sitemaps, enter your sitemap URL (usually /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml), and submit. This tells Google which URLs to prioritize for crawling.
6. Set your preferred domain and check for crawl errors — Under Settings in Search Console, confirm your canonical domain. Then check the Coverage report for any Excluded or Error URLs that need attention.
7. Configure GA4 data filters — Exclude internal traffic (your own IP or office IPs) from GA4 reports. Without this, your own visits inflate session counts and distort engagement metrics.
8. Install Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free tier) — The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which is enough for most small sites. Download and install from screamingfrog.co.uk. No account required.

Phase 3 — Set a Baseline

9. Run your first Screaming Frog crawl — Crawl your own site and export the full URL list. Flag any 4xx errors, redirect chains, missing title tags, or missing meta descriptions immediately.
10. Pull your Search Console Performance report — Filter to the last 3 months. Note your top 10 queries by clicks and your top 10 pages by impressions. This is your organic baseline.
11. Check Core Web Vitals in Search Console — The Core Web Vitals report shows pages that need performance work. Even if you don't fix them today, document current status.
12. Export and save your baseline data — Screenshot or export the Performance report and crawl summary. Store them somewhere dated. You'll reference this in 30, 60, and 90 days.

Matching the right tool to each task prevents duplication and keeps your workflow clean. Here's how the free stack divides the work:

• Google Search Console — Owns: keyword performance data, crawl coverage, index status, Core Web Vitals, manual actions, link data. Use it for any question that starts with "What does Google see?"
• Google Analytics 4 — Owns: user behavior data, session counts, conversion tracking, traffic source breakdown, engagement rates. Use it for any question that starts with "What do visitors do after they arrive?"
• Screaming Frog (free tier) — Owns: on-page technical audits, redirect chain detection, missing tags, duplicate content signals, internal link structure. Use it for any question that starts with "What's wrong with the pages themselves?"
• Google PageSpeed Insights — Owns: page-level performance diagnostics. Use it to investigate specific URLs flagged in the Core Web Vitals report.
• Google Keyword Planner (free) — Owns: search volume estimates and keyword discovery. Use it to validate whether a keyword you're targeting gets enough search volume to be worth the effort.

A common mistake is using Search Console to diagnose on-page issues, or using Screaming Frog for traffic data. Each tool has a lane. Respecting those lanes keeps your analysis faster and more accurate.

Once you're comfortable with these five, you have the foundation to run through this checklist with our free SEO tools and extend your stack based on what gaps you find — without ever paying for a subscription.

Setup checklists fail when there's no clear definition of done. Here's what each phase completion looks like in practice:

Phase 1 complete when:

• Search Console shows "Ownership verified" with no warning banners
• GA4 is receiving live data (check the Realtime report — open your site in another tab and confirm a session appears)
• Search Console and GA4 are linked (visible in GA4 Admin → Search Console links)

Phase 2 complete when:

• Your sitemap shows "Success" status in Search Console with at least one URL discovered
• GA4 data filters are saved and active
• Screaming Frog has completed at least one full crawl of your site

Phase 3 complete when:

• You have a dated export of your Search Console Performance report
• You have a Screaming Frog crawl export showing your current technical baseline
• You've identified at least one quick-win issue to address (a 4xx error, a missing title tag, or a redirect chain)

That last point matters. The goal of this checklist isn't just to have tools installed — it's to arrive at a specific, actionable next step. If you finish Phase 3 and can't name one thing to fix, go back to the Screaming Frog crawl and look at the Response Codes and Page Titles tabs. There's almost always something to address.

From here, the natural next step is scheduling a recurring review cadence: check Search Console weekly, run a new Screaming Frog crawl monthly, and compare against your baseline quarterly.

Once your tools are set up and your baseline is saved, there are specific actions that tend to have the most immediate impact. These aren't designed to results — what moves the needle depends on your site's current state, competition, and how long the site has been active. But in our experience working with new setups, these tend to surface the highest-priority issues fastest.

• Fix all 4xx errors found in the Screaming Frog crawl — Broken internal links send users and crawl budget to dead ends. Either redirect them to the correct URL or update the linking page.
• Write missing title tags and meta descriptions — Search Console's Coverage report and Screaming Frog's Page Titles tab both surface these. A missing title tag means Google writes one for you — which is rarely better than what you'd write.
• Identify your highest-impression, lowest-click queries in Search Console — Filter by impressions, then look for queries where you rank on page one but have a low click-through rate. These are candidates for a title tag or meta description rewrite.
• Check for redirect chains longer than one hop — Screaming Frog flags these. A chain like A → B → C should be collapsed to A → C. Each extra hop adds load time and dilutes link equity.
• Verify your sitemap only contains indexable URLs — Open your sitemap and spot-check a sample of URLs. Noindexed pages, paginated URLs, and parameter URLs shouldn't appear in the sitemap you submit to Search Console.

None of these require paid tools. All five are executable with the free stack described in this checklist. Start with whichever your crawl data says is most widespread on your site.