SEO Software

SEO Software Buying Guide

The success of any online business depends on the traffic and conversion that it gets. The more traffic that comes to your website, the more it can turn into profit for your business. While more traffic doesn’t mean more conversion, it is the first step for you to gain more revenue for your business. Thus, it is said that traffic is the lifeblood of your website, and therefore, it is the lifeblood of your online business.

Free vs Paid Traffic

There are two main methods of attracting more traffic to your website. The first method is free traffic, and the second method is paid traffic. Free traffic can come to your website from various sources, such as search engines, social media, blogs, forums, and so on. You don’t need to pay for the traffic. On the other hand, paid traffic can only be gained by paying for it, such as through a PPC campaign, social media ads, media buying, and more.

Search Engine Traffic

The biggest and targeted source of traffic that you can get to your website is search engine traffic, because it is free and targeted. The traffic that comes from the search engine can bring more profit to your business because it converts better. But, it is not easy to attract traffic from the search engine, due to the big competition that you have. Thus, it is important for you to use a kind of software that can help to give you the upper hand over your competitors, and allow you to get more targeted traffic from the search engine. This is called SEO software. Here are some important aspects you need to consider before choosing a good SEO software for your business.

Actionable Steps

Most SEO tools give you a comprehensive report on your website performance. But, what you have to take a look is the actionable steps that you get along with your performance report. For instance, if the software gives you a report that your website is having a low ranking in 2 main keywords, it should also give some suggestions about how to improve your website ranking and climb to the top position in search engine. A good SEO software provides you with a complete action plan that helps you to increase your search engine ranking.

Feature Limitation

Many SEO tools offer you with a good pricing plan, but they also give you only a fraction of the features of the software. The basic plan might be cheaper, but you have to take a look at the features offered in that plan as well. Do you get most of the features of the SEO software? What are the features that you don’t get? How much do you need to pay to get all the features that you need for your business? You should keep these questions in mind when choosing for a good SEO software to use.

Target Audience

Some SEO tools are only targeted for enterprise users (searchmetrics for example), and some others are targeted to all types of users. You have to know the target audience of each SEO software, and think about the purpose of the software for you. Do you want to use it to increase your website traffic? Or, do you want to use it for your own SEO service? Choose the software that is suitable for your business.

Special Features

Some SEO tools provide special features that are not available in other similar products. You need to take a look at those features and determine if those features are relevant for your business. Some SEO software may provide SEO services to ease your search engine optimization process, whereas some others may provide additional tools such as keyword research and spam link analyzer tools. Pick the best SEO software with special features that you need the most.

Keyword Research and Analysis

Keywords are certainly at the core of an SEO campaign. Finding out the phrases in use by your customers helps the old and new customers to spot your site in search results quickly. Therefore, choose a product that finds the most commonly as well as frequently used keywords in your niche. Ideally, it should suggest keywords of high search volume for each page of your site as well as the change in the keyword as well as page rank over time.

Competitive Analysis

Without spying at your competitor’s SEO campaign, you may never outrank them on search engine result pages (SERPs). Therefore, the most comprehensive SEO software allows assessing your competition profoundly by comparing your page rankings, keywords, inbound links, authority, and traffic with those of your competing sites. In addition, it provides insights into the most successful campaigns of the competitors so that you can make a plan of action to improve your SEO campaign for outranking them.

Social Media Analysis

Social media is certainly one of the most reliable and essential ways to get popular online. Therefore, choose a comprehensive SEO software that shows social media statistics such as Facebook likes, Twitter shares, +1 on Google+, and more, which is updated automatically and frequently.

Reporting & Tracking

No SEO software can be complete without the ability to report. For SEO professionals, an accurate report is indispensable for taking right decisions. Choose a product that comes with custom templates to generate reports on various statistics and SEO metrics at regular intervals, say monthly. Such reports also tend to highlight areas of errors or improvements as well as recommend strategies for the same.

Support

An ideal SEO software is the one that not only offers diverse customer support means such as phone call, live chat, ticket system and email, but also offers a wide knowledge base, active forum, FAQs, and tutorials online along with built-in videos in the tool for understanding and implementing SEO. After all, SEO is a complex topic!

Conclusion

Choosing the best SEO software for your business might be as difficult as doing the SEO process itself. But, by looking at those aspects, you can pick the best tool for your business easily. First, make sure that the tool provides actionable steps for you to follow in order to improve your website ranking. Second, be aware of features that you get from the software. Third, make sure that the software is targeted for your business type. And fourth, choose the one that provides useful special features that are not available in other similar products.