If you want Google’s algorithm to love your site, then create free tools.
You don’t need coding knowledge and you don’t need a lot of money to make it work.
Unlike blog posts, free tools inherently contain value at scale and ultimately give Google
exactly what they want: useful resources for searchers that organically attract backlinks.
But here’s the thing: no matter how useful your tools are, they won’t reach their full
traffic potential unless you carefully follow a proven 3-part strategy.
And this strategy is responsible for possibly two of the greatest organic traffic growth stories ever.
And it all begins at part 1, choosing the right tools to create.
Now, it’s important that you choose tool ideas that are a) in demand, and b) relevant to your business.
And don’t compromise on either list item otherwise part 2 and 3 will be a waste of time.
Take our keyword generation tool as an example.
The main query definitely has tons of search demand with roughly 29,000 monthly searches.
And because it’s basically a free version of our paid tool, Keywords Explorer,
it’s very relevant to our business.
So to find a list of tool ideas for your site, start by brainstorming some broad keywords
related to your niche.
So if you have a personal finance site, you’d jot down things like credit card,
retirement, 401k, social security, bank account, and mortgage to name a few.
Now take that list and paste it into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.
And then head on over to the Matching terms report.
And to narrow in on just tool keywords, hit the "Include" box, then the “Any word” tab,
and type in these exact words: "calculator," "generator," "tool," "checker," "tracker," and "estimator."
Apply the filter, and just like that, I’ve got over 67,000 tool keywords with over 6 million total
searches in just the us.
Now, because a lot of these keywords will have very similar meanings, we need to extract
just the main tool ideas.
So at worst, you can manually sift through the keywords to find the unique tool ideas,
or at best, you can cluster them instantly by using the “Cluster by parent topic” feature
in Keywords explorer.
So now those 67,000 keywords have been brought down to 1,500 or so clusters –
or basically tool ideas.
Now, you might want to start creating tools right now, but that would be a huge mistake
because you’d be skipping one of the most important parts of this strategy.
And that’s planning your tool hub.
A tool hub is a set of related online tools that are connected to one another.
And in my opinion, the structure is the x factor to getting these quick vertical traffic graphs.
I’ll explain that in more detail soon because first, it’s vital that you understand two fundamental steps
to creating an effective tool hub.
So step one is to group your tool ideas together.
To do that, export your list of clusters, clean them up as needed in Sheets,
and then head on over to ChatGPT and say:
"Using only this list of keywords, organize them into a hierarchy with "main categories"
(like "Retirement"), sub categories, and sub-sub categories if needed.
And I like to see the output in Yaml.
And step two is to finalize and visualize your structure.
And this is important to do because it’s going to make sure that your tools are organized in
a logical structure, maximizing the impacts from part 3 which we’ll get to soon.
But we need to finish things up in part 2 first – creating these free tools.
Thanks to AI tools like ChatGPT, you can create just about any simple tools you want
without coding knowledge or money.
All you need is the idea and a bit of patience.
So we already have the ideas in our tree chart, so let’s build out the Roth IRA calculator.
To start, I’ll Google for my target keyword and I’ll hit up BankRate’s calculator.
Now, I’m going to make a note of the form fields, the default settings, and the result,
which I’ll use for testing in a bit.
So I’m going to open up ChatGPT and say:
"Create a Roth IRA calculator that calculates compound interest of a time period.
Use JS and HTML.
These are the fields and some default values.
Show me the estimated IRA balance when the retirement age is met."
And within seconds, our first tool is ready to test and we want it to return the expected
result that we got from Bankrate.
To test your tool, go to Jsfiddle.net, paste in the HTML portion here and the JS portion
here if needed.
Then hit Run.
And finally, I’ll hit the Calculate button which should return back the same result
from our test site.
And a big time fail!
Which is why you need to sprinkle in that bit of patience and help ChatGPT solve the problem.
And after about 10 minutes of doing some math together, we ended up with some successful code.
Now, you could technically go with this duplicate tool and put it on your site.
But it’s going to make your job very tough in part 3 so the best thing you can do at
this point is to find a way to improve on this tool.
And a great place to find inspiration is Reddit.
So I’ll search for something like "is there a roth ira calculator with",
and I’ll narrow the search down to just Reddit.
And this one looks super interesting.
The person said: “I’m trying to figure out how much money I should put in
per month to eventually reach 1 mil.”
That's brilliant! A reverse roth IRA calculator.
I’m definitely adding that to our tool.
Now, after your code is ready you’ve got to put it up on your site.
So let’s go back to ChatGPT and ask it to combine HTML and JS code into one snippet so I can copy
and paste it into a WordPress code block.
Nice.
Now all we need to do is add a new HTML code block to a WordPress page, paste in our code
without the additional body tag, and when ready, we’ll preview the page and test it out.
And everything is in working order.
Now all there’s left to do in part 2 is to: make your tool look not so terrible using CSS,
write some copy for your landing page using our SEO copywriting tutorial video, and to build out
the rest of your tools in your hub.
And now we have part 1 and part 2 of the strategy completed.
But it’s impossible for this strategy to be a success without part 3: links.
Now, backlinks are hyperlinks from one webpage to another website.
And they are and have been one of Google’s most prominent ranking signals for decades.
But backlinks impact pages – not websites.
So if you want to rank 5, 10, or even 50 different tools, then you’ll need to get backlinks to all of
them, which is no easy task.
But remember the x factor I was talking about?
You and I have already done something that’s going to make ranking our pages
much much much easier.
And it’s right here.
Each line here represents a reciprocal internal link.
And these connections actually help the pages to share the so-called “value” they get from backlinks.
For example, if my retirement calculator gets a bunch of backlinks, the page becomes more
‘authoritative’ in Google’s eyes.
And that authority helps it to rank higher in Google.
But there’s also some residual value that’ll be passed to the pages it links to - like these ones.
And even the ones that go further down the structure, but to a lesser degree.
So when one page gets backlinks, the whole hub is benefiting, helping all of the tools
to work together as a team to rank higher in Google and ultimately, get that vertical
traffic growth that we all want.
And both Canva and Veed, two of the greatest organic traffic growth stories have meticulously
created tool hubs growing into the millions of monthly search visits.
Now, in order for the structure to work its magic, we need to get some backlinks that will help us
get to the first page of Google.
And while pretty much any classic link building tactic will work, there's one technique that
stands out above the rest because of something we did earlier.
We took the extra time to make our tool better than our competitors.
And what that does is it gives us a unique angle for outreach when trying to “steal”
backlinks from inferior tools.
Let’s put it into action for our roth IRA calculator with the cool reverse roth function.
I’ll start by going to Google and search for my target keyword.
And then I’ll copy some of the top URLs to a notepad.
Next, I’ll paste one of the URLs into Site Explorer and go to the Backlinks Report.
Now, I’m going to visit these pages and see if there’s a way I can pitch my free tool.
For example, this page is recommending all sorts of Roth IRA calculators.
And having done my research, I know that none of them have a reverse Roth IRA function.
So I’mma email Alvin and tell him about my tool and the cool feature that no one else has.
And if he digs it, I’ll ask to be included.
Now, as you get more and more backlinks, you’ll start feeding that hub with link authority.
And if you do it enough and do it right, you’ll eventually start pushing some of those pages
to the top of Google’s search results.
And now here’s the best part of this whole system.
Once your free tools are ranking high in Google, backlinks will continue to organically come in
because free tools are inherently useful and people link to useful things.
And this will only continue to signal to Google that you have a great site with great resources,
causing them to fall deeper and deeper in love with your site.
Watch our full case study on how Veed used this exact strategy to get millions
of monthly visits from search.