SEO Software Tools

Why You May Need SEO Software

Beyond the fundamentals we here at FreeSEOScorecard.com focus on, SEO can get really complicated quickly.

Consider a site like StateFarm.com (Alexa.com traffic rank: #5120). State Farm offers many types of insurance like life, auto, apartment/rental, RV, etc. They sell their policies to individuals and businesses across a broad spectrum of age, gender and income groups. From a website perspective, this translates to a huge number of keywords and web pages. Even small changes to the StateFarm.com website can have a dramatic upside (and downside) impact.

Keeping your eye on the ball isn’t easy. It may be nearly impossible to manage all aspects of your SEO in an Excel spreadsheet and simultaneously keep up with the constant changes in Google’s algorithm.

And even smaller websites that sell a wide selection of products and services may face many of the same challenges as State Farm. Where State Farm has a huge staff of dedicated web professionals, you may not be so lucky.

If either of these scenarios describes your situation, you probably should consider adding specialized SEO software to your arsenal.

SEOmoz

At the top of the heap sits SEOmoz. Why do I say “top of the heap?” Because they eat their own dog food. The only proof I needed was to look at their own Alexa traffic rank (#374). What websites does SEOmoz, a tiny company of 80 employees, beat out?

• FedEx.com (#394)
• USAToday.com (#409)
• HomeDepot.com (#490)
• RetailMeNot.com(#561)
• Priceline.com (#673)
• LifeHacker.com (#795)
• CBSSports.com (#885)

 

Now, while Alexa is (more or less) a popularity contest, it’s hard to argue with the results SEOmoz delivers for their clients (and themselves).

Run by resident SEO genius Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz provides a complete set of software, tools, and resources to maximize search engine optimization. They offer dozens of SEO tools for tracking keyword rankings, monitoring competitors and analyzing your sites’ content along with membership in their forums, access to their Q&A database and training webinars.

SEO consultants and in-house marketing professionals say they started with SEOmoz because of the software and stay because of the community.

 

SEOmoz Competitors

There are loads of competing SEO software companies. Do your own Google search and you’ll see what I mean.

But using my “Alexa-rank litmus test” (combined with professional SEO recommendations), there are just two other providers worth consideration.

SEO PowerSuite (Alexa #2689) Unlike SEOmoz, this is installed software for PC, Macintosh and Linux. Single payment of $249 with 30-day money back guarantee.

Raven SEO Tools (Alexa #6655) Pricing starts at $99/mo.

 

Keyword Research Tools

In addition to SEO software, if you’re really serious about your ranking, sooner or later you’re going to need help with keyword research. Here are two worthy contenders (included here, again, based on professional recommendations and their Alexa rank).

SEMRush (Alexa #843) Pricing starts at $69.95/mo.

Market Samurai (Alexa #9182) This is installed software for PC and Macintosh. Single payment of $149 with 30-day money back guarantee.