SEO software

[Hammur IT]

Hi

I am interested to hear of people's experience with SEO software and the results from using it.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Define 'SEO software', otherwise we will be here for an eternity.

Are you considering any software in particular?

What do you want to achieve?

 

[Hammur IT]

I am to improve my ranking for my site, so something that would assist with keyword analysis and competitor watch. Is there software that does it all, or is it individual items I need?

 

[Louis Porter]

You won't find one piece of software that will cover everything, but for keyword research I always use Semrush.

 

[Vistatico]

I'm using all Google tools and I am really satisfied.

 

[bobrudolph]

Use Google Keyword Planner for your kw analysis - that will be enough for you at the beginning.

 

[Spock]

For keyword analysis and competitor watch try www.serpwoo.com

 

[DexSmart]

Always go for 2. I use ahrefs and moz.

 

[bijutoha]

I'm taking Cognitive SEO Tool to check my Search Engine Optimization....

 

[businesswebsites.eu]

ahrefs
semrush (it`s perfect for spying which keyphrases your competitors rank)
Market Samurai
FCS networker

 

[Deepanshu Gahlaut]

Hi

I am interested to hear of people's experience with SEO software and the results from using it.

SEO tools whether it is free or paid, always add some value to your work. Currently I have personal experience with the following SEO tools -
1. Google Webmaster Tool - (I'm saying it SEO tools because it gives more control on your website for better presence in Google results, where Google recommends what need to be done.)
2. Moz Pro
3. Keywordtool.io and Google Keyword Planner
4. Small SEO Tools
5. Majestic SEO
6. Xenu
7. Feed The Bot SEO Tools etc.

 

[Luckythelion]

Recently I tried Market Samurai, it seems to be a 'musthave' for webmaster.

 

[seowise]

I would recommend Rank Tracker from Link-Assistant.Com to improve ranking for your website, as I found it rather worthwhile.

 

[StevePoster]

I am to improve my ranking for my site, so something that would assist with keyword analysis and competitor watch.

when it comes to keyword analysis I would recommend Google keyword planner and for competitor backlinks analysis would be backlinkwatch.

 

[Codefixer]

1. Advanced Web Ranking - I use the cloud version rather than the desktop version.

2. Majestic - for link profile analysis

3. ScreamingFrog - There is a free version that will crawl under 500 URI's. Paid version is excellent. I prefer this to Xenu which I've always found awkward.

4. GWT - absolute must and best free tools.

5. Email - best tool for outreach

6. Excel

7. For Keyword Research - Google Adwords

There are some chrome extensions I'd use such as CheckmyLinks for broken link building.

Even with all the software and tools of the day, you still need to know what you are doing with them.

 

[jmwang]

1. MOZ pro
2. aherfs ，Majestic SEO - for link profile analysis
3. ScreamingFrog - There is a free version that will crawl under 500 URI's.Paid version is excellent
4. GWT - absolute must and best free tools
5. Email - best tool for outreach
6. For Keyword Research - Keywordtool.io and Google Keyword Planner，SEMrush

 

[AndrewS5]

Semrush is a good tool, as are searchmetrics, Majestic SEO & OpenSiteExplorer but there are many to choose from on the market.

 

[Louis Porter]

1. MOZ pro
2. aherfs ，Majestic SEO - for link profile analysis
3. ScreamingFrog - There is a free version that will crawl under 500 URI's.Paid version is excellent
4. GWT - absolute must and best free tools
5. Email - best tool for outreach
6. For Keyword Research - Keywordtool.io and Google Keyword Planner，SEMrush

I would actually say that AHREFs is best for keyword research now.
They've recently released two new tools: the positions explorer and keywords explorer. They're both very useful for identifying existing keywords for your landing page and identifying potential alternatives (if used correctly).
I've done a limited amount of testing on it with some of our clients and the positions it returns is actually accurate, and for the most part, up to date.

 

[Groggy]

Hi Hammur

My standard response to SEO: start simple and get the content and basics right first. We haven't found one tool for everything (that would probably be horribly complicated anyway), so we tend to work from a suite:

1) SEOQuake diagnosis (Firefox addon)
2) ScreamingFrog.co.uk (SEO Spider - we've only used the free version so far)
3) CartAngel.com (content)
4) SEMRush (keywords)
5) GWT (of course)
6) More tools ad infinitum....

 

[Lenka Pollak]

The all-in-one software is Link-Assistant .com. You might want to try it.

 

[Louis Porter]

rankingsignals.com for competitors backlink check, ahrefs for your backlink , alexa for seo and site reputation, google keyword planner for keyword research

Why wouldn't you use Ahrefs for competitor link profile analysis too?

 

[mary2222]

I love using different kinds of SEO tool since each tool provides you with pros and cons, and each tool also provides a different advantage or a unique function. Here are the tools I use and why I love using them:

1. Traffic Travis- a good tool for starters and for those who are looking for free SEO tools. It provides you with a lot of data like keyword research, competition analysis, onsite SEO data, etc

2. Ahrefs- love the bcklinking tool

3. Screaming frog- an easy tool to track the error pages, and duplicate pages/tags

4. MOZ- pretty much the same as Traffic Travis but this provides more data

 

[GoldenLeads]

Google Keyword Tool
Excel
Ahrefs, Majestic, MOZ
Market Samurai
Semrush
Source Hunter
Xenu

and few custom made softwares

 

[ukbf0001]

If you are just starting off - then for God's sake dont rush - do a little prep work - Good and meaningful SEO starts with Keyword Research (and not just a google adwords check - that will only tell you 1 tenth of what you need to know), once you have your exact keywords and you know that these keywords are getting lots of searches with not much competition - these are the ones to work on (as long as they are relevant to your business) -

You then start to build out your content - you need to be auditing your website to check it looks good (for Google) as well as Joe Public - cant be bothered to type the rest - as you need to basically do the work yourself - there is a good end to end step guide here

 

[GoldenLeads]

If you are just starting off - then for God's sake dont rush - do a little prep work - Good and meaningful SEO starts with Keyword Research (and not just a google adwords check - that will only tell you 1 tenth of what you need to know), once you have your exact keywords and you know that these keywords are getting lots of searches with not much competition - these are the ones to work on (as long as they are relevant to your business) -

You then start to build out your content - you need to be auditing your website to check it looks good (for Google) as well as Joe Public - cant be bothered to type the rest - as you need to basically do the work yourself - there is a good end to end step guide here

Yes, though, for main keywords that gets all the action Google keyword planner is more than enough.

 

[ukbf0001]

Google Keyword planner doesnt tell you how many competing webpages there are - or how well optimised those pages are either - so you think 'blue widgets' is a great keyword tool and lets say gets approx 5000 searches a month - you think 'great' I'll go for that keyword.

But in reeality you arent aware that there are 10,000 competing webpages for that keyword - so it's going to be a tough ride to rank with such large competition. But with the right tool you dig out research that tells you this in the first place and offers you alternatives eg "blue widgets by design" may get 2000 searches a month and only have 100 other competing webpages - so you are much better off going for that keyword and have a much chance of geting ranked for it - and you havent wasted your precious time / money going after something that may take forever to rank for - just 2pence worth.

 

[GoldenLeads]

Google Keyword planner doesnt tell you how many competing webpages there are - or how well optimised those pages are either - so you think 'blue widgets' is a great keyword tool and lets say gets approx 5000 searches a month - you think 'great' I'll go for that keyword.

But in reeality you arent aware that there are 10,000 competing webpages for that keyword - so it's going to be a tough ride to rank with such large competition. But with the right tool you dig out research that tells you this in the first place and offers you alternatives eg "blue widgets by design" may get 2000 searches a month and only have 100 other competing webpages - so you are much better off going for that keyword and have a much chance of geting ranked for it - and you havent wasted your precious time / money going after something that may take forever to rank for - just 2pence worth.

The number of competing pages are irrelevant, and no software can tell you the "SEO power" of a competitors websites, because you have to go out and look at hundreds of different things yourself.

 

[ukbf0001]

"The number of competing pages are irrelevant" - no it is not - it is an indicator of just how hard the keyword is to rank for.

"No software can tell you the "SEO power" of a competitors websites, because you have to go out and look at hundreds of different things yourself."

Rank Tracker does this for you - obviously you dont do work like this manually (there arent enough hours in the day) you get software to do it for you.

To quote them
"Rank Tracker's Keyword Difficulty shows you exactly how hard it's going to be to rank in top 10 results for any given keyword in the search engine of your choice. The metric can save you lots of time and trouble — in combination with search volume, Keyword Difficulty gives you priceless insight into keywords that are sure to bring you organic visits while being relatively easy to rank for.

To calculate Keyword Difficulty, Rank Tracker analyzes 10 top ranking pages for the keyword in question against a wealth of important SEO factors. Here are some of the factors used:

• Page PageRank/Moz's PA
• Domain PageRank/Moz's DA
• Number of sites that link to page
• Number of sites that link to domain
• On-page optimization rate
• Alexa Rank
• Social signals
• Page age"

 

[GoldenLeads]

"The number of competing pages are irrelevant" - no it is not - it is an indicator of just how hard the keyword is to rank for.

"No software can tell you the "SEO power" of a competitors websites, because you have to go out and look at hundreds of different things yourself."

Rank Tracker does this for you - obviously you dont do work like this manually (there arent enough hours in the day) you get software to do it for you.

To quote them
"Rank Tracker's Keyword Difficulty shows you exactly how hard it's going to be to rank in top 10 results for any given keyword in the search engine of your choice. The metric can save you lots of time and trouble — in combination with search volume, Keyword Difficulty gives you priceless insight into keywords that are sure to bring you organic visits while being relatively easy to rank for.

To calculate Keyword Difficulty, Rank Tracker analyzes 10 top ranking pages for the keyword in question against a wealth of important SEO factors. Here are some of the factors used:

• Page PageRank/Moz's PA
• Domain PageRank/Moz's DA
• Number of sites that link to page
• Number of sites that link to domain
• On-page optimization rate
• Alexa Rank
• Social signals
• Page age"

Well obviously you know something that I don't...

 

[ukbf0001]

I wasnt trying to score points mate just trying to show people you dont have spend hundreds of hours doing it - rank tracker does it all for you and gives you much more than adwords does - fantastic value for the money

 

[fisicx]

And also useless in many cases. The data it provides is generated from Adwords. It doesn't always relate well to organic searches and is hopeless if have a very narrow target. Use it as a vary rough guide only.

 

[samtaylorseo]

I use...

MOZ pro - onpage analysis/keyword research/competitor watching
Screaming Frog - onpage analysis
Majestic - offpage analysis
Google Analytics - traffic analysis
Google Keyword Tool - keyword research

I have also used Kerboo (formally Link Risk) for link building and link audits.

Work out exactly what you want before you find a tool, there are tons to choose from.

Regards,
Sam

 

[ldjames]

For keyword and backlink monitoring I can recommend Positionly but like others have said, there isn't a piece of software that will take care of everything you need to improve your rankings.

 

[Granulr]

You may be jumping ahead of yourself though, some people jump straight into trying SEO, but failing as their website isn't capable of being SEO friendly. I've seen a few websites that are still running on table framework with no meta tags on any of the pages, and the person is wondering whey they are not ranking for much.

First I would inspect your current website, make sure all titles, meta descriptions and what not are all there. I would use a tool such as OnPage to check every page for the basics. Then I would refine the keywords using Keyword Planner (Google), check the competition rates for them, and get ranking for high search but low competition to begin with. Once these are ranking turn up the keywords to something a bit more competitive. Then comes blogging, and backlinks, social media to build up the Google SERPs ladders.... It's a fine art, thats for sure, but there is no one tool or software that can do all of this, its spread across lots of tools depending on what is required at the time and what step you are on, on the SEO ladder.