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PixelRocket
06-24-2014, 10:31 PM
Hello, all! Just looking for suggestions on some new tools we should be using in the SEO field.

So far we're doing everything through HubSpot really, but we're looking at Moz as well now.

Thanks!

vangogh
06-25-2014, 11:25 AM
I find your brain is the best seo tool available. The only tools worth looking at are those that collect data, but even then you still need to use your brain to analyze and interpret the data. I haven't used HubSpot and I've only checked the free tools at Moz. As far as either goes I think both are trusted sites that many people in the seo industry use. A couple more tools I've seen others recommend are Raven Tools and SEMrush. I haven't used either myself.

Even though I'm not using any seo tools, I do get a nice amount of traffic from search engines. Most of the tools aren't really necessary, especially at the prices they charge. I took a quick look through your site and I'd suggest there are things you can do that are more important than worrying about expensive seo tools just yet. Mainly I think you're going to need a lot more content on the site, before you're going to see meaningful search engine traffic. Unless you're willing to advertise. Until you have more content I'd say the money you'd have to spend on the tools each month would be better spent on AdWords or similar.

I don't mean to knock seo tools. Some definitely provide useful data. However, I think most people looking for seo tools would be better off spending their money on other things that will have a greater impact. There's a not so secret, secret about seo. If you create content people want to consume and tell others about, most of your seo takes care of itself. You still want to make sure your site is developed in a way that doesn't cause problems with search engines finding or understanding your content, but the main thing is to get real people interested in it and sharing it.

PixelRocket
06-25-2014, 05:29 PM
Excellent advice, thanks! And I completely agree on the content. We're working harder to get our blog posts up, and build out our pages within the site.

I'll check out the tools you recommended as well. Thanks!

Harold Mansfield
06-25-2014, 06:23 PM
I'm not a big fan of Hubspot. Have had and have many clients who used to use their services and were not happy.

I agree with Vangogh. Your brain is the best tool. Knowing how the web works and how to capitalize on it yourself is going to be far better than any tools.
I will say that having good analytics tools are essential. You can't fine tune your approach if you have no idea which skid to turn into, or which to bail out of.

Brian Altenhofel
06-25-2014, 06:30 PM
I'm not a fan of Hubspot, either. But I am a fan of Moz. Moz is all about analytics.

Diplomat
06-27-2014, 04:39 AM
I have been doing SEO past 5-6 years and I believe as well, that your brain is the best tool. I own pretty much all of the best tools that you can find right now and they all work good.
They just make your life little bit easier. Having an opinion that manual work is the best is not very smart because manual work takes time and time is money. Replacing manual work with tools that can produce same thing is a good idea.

I'd suggest Senuke/Magic Submitter/UltimateDemon for building good quality contextual links and GSA for building tier 2 and 3.

michelle222
07-03-2014, 01:43 AM
For SEO reports, analysis and tracking I love to use Traffic Travis, Moz and Affilotools
For linkbuilding: I use Senukex and Ultimate Demon

I do use all the tools above, however most of the time I do manual linkbulding instead and I prioritize on building content by doing guest posts and several social media marketing stuff.

Additionally, I also focus on posting good, quality content on my site. On page SEO counts more in terms of rankings these days. So yes, you could rank well if you both do good in your on page and off page SEO.

Specialty Business Checks
07-20-2014, 09:43 PM
So many keywords that you could use. You can use BING webmaster tools to find the best keyword(s). Make sure you have good content that is relevant to the keywords on the page or category. You can use Meta Tags Analyzer, SEO Analyzer, Website load Time Checker, Keyword Density (http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/) and its free tool(s) to assit your needs. Keep your sitemap updated, and blogs helps alot. I dont do any PPC or anything, but blogs are very useful and helpful to promote your business.

CoolHandCol
08-05-2014, 02:55 PM
MOZ is good but expensive. I use Market Samurai and Majestic SEO to analyse the competition and find good linking opportunities. On page SEO is very important and there are plenty of free tools out there - just Google on page SEO tool

Dimolimo
09-02-2014, 10:03 AM
I like to use keywordspy and ahrefs. Besides the tools I use my imagination to create and improve. It's all about being creative.

singhabhishek251
10-06-2014, 02:59 AM
I have never used any tool apart from rank tracker and that also some free tools as the paid tools are very expensive. I do not think that you need any tool to tell you that something wrong with your website, yes broken link checker can be used because it is difficult to check manually and I use Xenu for the same.

CoolHandCol
10-26-2014, 01:52 PM
For analysing links I use Majestic - it's great for finding link opportunities from your competitors. A good cheap tool which checks on page and off page SEO id Traffic Travis

SFI_Business_owner_87
11-01-2014, 10:17 PM
I have always done good with yellow page ads,directories and free classified. You should also be sure that if you have a website make sure that you have a keyword savvy meta tag and use thous keywords also in the context of your home page, because when people type in keywords to search for things on the search engines they use thous words to search for sites that are easy to find thous words on the site itself.

chrismarklee
11-02-2014, 03:01 PM
I run ahrefs on websites to get do follow back links. They are hard to get now for me.

vangogh
11-12-2014, 11:00 AM
I run ahrefs on websites to get do follow back links. They are hard to get now for me.

If your goal is dofollow links, I think you need a better seo strategy.

MarkPoppen
11-13-2014, 01:37 PM
SEO Tools are just indicators if you ask me. They're a handle to help you optimize a site. I've used MOZ in the past and so far, the best I've used.

FirstPortMarketing
12-08-2014, 08:50 PM
Hubspot is useful if you have cash to "spare" (it is expensive). Moz is the tool I would suggest everyone find room for in his or her budget. It's THAT good.

For a quick and free SEO audit, I've found QuickSprout to be very helpful. And if you have an AdWords account, the keyword tool is pretty good.

FirstPortMarketing
12-08-2014, 08:51 PM
If your goal is dofollow links, I think you need a better seo strategy.

Ding ding ding ding! Exactly this.

MattAmbrose
12-16-2014, 01:18 AM
Guest posting! I've spent the last few years trying to build links the black hat way and reached the decision it was all a waste of time and money. I think it can be done with Ultimate Demon, GSA etc if you're very strategic about it, technically minded and invest in good quality content, but considering the time and money I invested, I'd have been off much better guest posting - you get a high authority link, traffic and it can grow your list. Just remember to change your bio for each one, as technically speaking Google frowns on guest posting as purely a link building tactic.

Harold Mansfield
12-16-2014, 01:42 AM
Guest posting! I've spent the last few years trying to build links the black hat way and reached the decision it was all a waste of time and money. I think it can be done with Ultimate Demon, GSA etc if you're very strategic about it, technically minded and invest in good quality content, but considering the time and money I invested, I'd have been off much better guest posting - you get a high authority link, traffic and it can grow your list. Just remember to change your bio for each one, as technically speaking Google frowns on guest posting as purely a link building tactic.

You have some of that mixed up. I used Ultimate Demon years ago when it was called bookmarking demon. What I discovered was that bookmarking sites carry little weight, were getting phased out and failing left and right, and most of the sites were just Pligg clones that had no traffic. Whatever good ones remained had blocking scripts to prevent automated submissions. So whatever strategy used to work, was obsolete at least 3 years ago.

Second, Google doesn't frown on guest posting. It frowns on link building. Some sites are known article dumps so posting on them is a waste of time.

The last thing is, changing your bio on every site hurts your authority more than it helps. The inconsistency also hurts your SEO and your branding. Every strategy isn't the right move for every purpose. If you're trying to build your reputation as a knowledgeable expert in your field and therefore gain readers, and a list, bouncing around with different bios all over the web will not do you any good.

connectfortutors
03-04-2015, 03:46 AM
If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better.

Phil Gregory Seo
03-05-2015, 06:08 AM
Tools are expensive for what they offer. If you have a business turning over a decent amount of money, you should invest in them to get all your client sites audited, make a list of fixes and best practises and then go forward. Like any other tool/ service, keep looking for the best deal.

Kumar Palani
06-17-2015, 06:35 AM
Personally I don't feel the need to use any tool and never had I recommended any specific tool. In terms of SEO I still believe that it is actually not that hard to implement automation.(neither will automation be feasible for SEO)

Most SEO tasks are not that painful or hard to complete, (including link building) the toughest part of SEO is understanding how it works (monitoring change in trends and strategies) and changing gears to get back on track. And that means it's developing strategies, analyzing how it goes, and staying updated to trends and updates (Google updates) are the real deals in SEO, and frankly there is no tool that can be applied here apart from the 6th Sense of Human beings. And hence the possibilities of using tools in SEO is neither possible nor is it feasible.

Yet since some of my clients ask me to a detailed link building report every month or week, I prefer to use some Link analysis tool such as Ahref or so on.

Linchpinseo
07-30-2015, 02:34 PM
it all depends on what strategy you are trying to implement. I think for overall SEO use semrush (http://semrush.com) is one of my favorite tools to use.

The challenge is that a tool will just give you data, knowing what to do with that data is the real key to getting the most out of any SEO or digital marketing tool you use.

Kumar Palani
08-01-2015, 02:25 AM
Your knowledge in Domain, marketing skills and SEO exposure are the only available tool to achieve results. If you want to save your time you can outsource it to SEOs around the world, but never think of a software, Mr. Google never likes. Today Search Engines can understand and process a lot of previously complicated stuffs with ease, they can understand text content, analyze the quality of links and more with much more accuracy. Since most search engines dislike SEO tools, your website could be penalized for using tools, so be warned.

Beyond SEO: There is more to the story, forget the SEO angle, what if your potential customer visits a link or submission that your software made? The chances are it will look far less professional and could even get submitted on the wrong place (site). Try to avoid the tools, your brain or money (outsourcing) are the best tools for SEO.

Most SEOs including me will never recommend tools for SEO beyond tracking, analyzing and monitoring tools (like Google analytic or web masters tool). Besides such tools are never worth the effort or money.

canirank_mel
08-05-2015, 11:11 AM
Moz is great, they give quite a bit of information but only drawback is not enough in our eyes for people that really want to tackle SEO. Our team created a tool (CanIRank) that incorporates Moz in the analytics aspect of your report and then use that information to generate action plans specific to your site and targeted keywords. If you do check it out and have any questions, don't hesitate to PM me.

MikeSweeney
08-30-2015, 01:19 PM
Build content, lots of it. Start with google tools, they are free. Analyze your site with Google analytics and webmaster tools. Find out where your traffic is coming from, then consider adding another tool.

Mike

janefirst
09-11-2015, 07:17 AM
I use google webmaster tools and these tools are reliable than that other available on the Internet. There is no any perfect tool for getting good results. They are based on some algorithms and do not provide exact results.

profitlabs
09-11-2015, 04:47 PM
I assume you are referring to seo management tools rather than automation tools.

I recently have become a big fan of Ahrefs. They have alot of really cool features you can't find under one roof with any other tool

For Examples:

1. They tell you every keyword you rank for automatically. This takes care of the google anlaytics issue where most keywords are private and not shown. Ahrefs shows you every single keyword google ranks you for and the position along with the url.

2. They have a content explorer that works alot like Buzz Sumo. Really useful for finding popular and trending articles.

3. Keyword explorer lets you break down keywords by theme and volume numbers. Very cool for keyword research.

4. Of course the Ahrefs rank and charting which shows you how your link building efforts are going.

5. Keyword Tracker lets you track specific keywords as well and shows you 3 month historical ranking charts of your keywords.

6. Domain health report with full detailed actionable audits of how to improve your onsite.

And tons of more really cool features.

I tried everything including Moz, SEM Rush, SEO Powersuite, etc... Ahrefs (while a bit pricey) is the king of seo tools in my opinion.

fullflavor
09-12-2015, 12:05 PM
Link Assistant have some great tools. They are a little expensive but well worth the cost.

dewalds86
09-14-2015, 05:37 AM
I find your brain is the best seo tool available. The only tools worth looking at are those that collect data, but even then you still need to use your brain to analyze and interpret the data. I haven't used HubSpot and I've only checked the free tools at Moz. As far as either goes I think both are trusted sites that many people in the seo industry use. A couple more tools I've seen others recommend are Raven Tools and SEMrush. I haven't used either myself.

Even though I'm not using any seo tools, I do get a nice amount of traffic from search engines. Most of the tools aren't really necessary, especially at the prices they charge. I took a quick look through your site and I'd suggest there are things you can do that are more important than worrying about expensive seo tools just yet. Mainly I think you're going to need a lot more content on the site, before you're going to see meaningful search engine traffic. Unless you're willing to advertise. Until you have more content I'd say the money you'd have to spend on the tools each month would be better spent on AdWords or similar.

I don't mean to knock seo tools. Some definitely provide useful data. However, I think most people looking for seo tools would be better off spending their money on other things that will have a greater impact. There's a not so secret, secret about seo. If you create content people want to consume and tell others about, most of your seo takes care of itself. You still want to make sure your site is developed in a way that doesn't cause problems with search engines finding or understanding your content, but the main thing is to get real people interested in it and sharing it.

Raven SEO Tools i well worth using if you are an SEO agency and managing many clients. It makes the whole process of auditing sites, tracking keywords, analyzing analytics data, creating weekly seo reports and measuring social signals easier. Believe me you also need to use your brain when using raven seo tools but it does make things easier as it puts everything you need in one pace.