Five Essential SEO Tools
Businesses rely on their websites so it’s vital to get SEO right. This article looks at how to build a website SEO strategy by reviewing five tools which help to increase rankings.
Majestic SEO is a vast index of web links available at www.majesticseo.com. From an SEO perspective, this is a useful weapon in your war against poor backlinks. The Backlink History tool enables analysis of your profile, your link gaining frequency and whether everything looks non-suspect.
Pros
You’ll get a swift report showing your backlinks. This provides an opportunity to do reverse marketing and request that rogue sites remove their links, quickly improving the quality of your profile.
Cons
You’ll need to register for this service and there is a site verification requirement. But it’s a puny price to pay for such a handy utility. Those who want a more powerful service will have to pay upwards of £30 per month.
Ahrefs analyses the anchor texts of links pointing to your site so you can determine their quality and take action to remove any dubious specimens. You can also visit www.ahrefs.com for legitimate industrial espionage by researching competitor keywords.
Pros
Super simple to use, the intelligence is easy to understand and you can use it practically to develop your SEO strategy.
Cons
You can only use five queries per day unless you register for a service beginning at £40 per month.
The Panguin Tool helps you determine whether your website has been penalised by Google’s recent Penguin and Panda algorithm updates. These updates are essentially a big move against bad linking policies. It is vital that you carry out this check because without it, you may be in danger of being blacklisted by Google.
Pros
It’s easy to use, and it’s free, simply visit www.panguintool.com and give the site permission to upload your Google Analytics data. There is no need to register, log in or sign up. Within seconds, your site traffic is analysed against the Google updates so you can compare any traffic reductions.
Cons
Although handy, it’s a fairly blunt tool. For example, you’ll need to manually account for any marketing activity and seasonal fluctuations.
Search Metrics is a powerful gizmo that you can use to analyse the keywords your site ranks against. It means that you can understand your own placements, but also those of your competitors.
Pros
It is a faster and more efficient method than the rather low-tech method of googling your site. By understanding the keywords that work best for you (and your competitors), you can remodel your site in order to take advantage of this intelligence and boost your rankings.
Cons
This service is really valuable, but it’s not cheap. The cheapest version weighs in at around £70 per month. It is possible to get a free trial, but it’s laborious and you need to actually deal with the company as it’s not an instant sign-up.
Raventools offers an umbrella service at www.raventools.com which brings together a range of information from a variety of trusted digital marketing intelligence sources.
Pros
Raventools make life very easy for SEO professionals and agencies. With a few clicks, it’s possible to conjure up in-depth reports on a host of metrics which can be used to improve SEO. The reports are transparent, easy to understand and come with a white label option so you can use them with clients.
Cons
Unfortunately, the best things in life are not free and this service will cost around £50 per month. That being said, there is a free 30 day trial which doesn’t require anything beyond your email address.
This was a guest post by Webeden, a free website builder for small businesses.
