What tells you why you are not being found, and what to fix?

Not at first. The free data on your own site from Ahrefs Webmaster Tools answers whether you have a technical problem or a content problem. Pay for a tool once you know which job you need done regularly and someone has the time to do it.

For a site you own, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which gives you audit and backlink data without a subscription. The Semrush free account is real but narrow: enough to look something up, not enough to work in. Neither will let you research sites you do not own for free.

Ahrefs if your work is links: digital PR, link building, or working out why a competitor outranks you on authority. Semrush if one person does all of marketing and needs keywords, audits, local listings and paid search in one place. Neither is cheap, so buy for the job you actually have.

It is the gentlest entry point on this list that still does real work. Rank tracking, crawls and keyword research are laid out for someone learning, and the guides are the clearest in the category. Specialists will hit its edges sooner than they would with Ahrefs or Semrush.

Domain Authority is Moz’s own score for comparing sites against each other. It is useful for that, and it is not a metric Google publishes or uses. Treat it as a relative gauge, not a target.