Top SEO & PPC Tools For SEO Pros
Overall SEO Analysis
Woorank
Woorank is a fantastic analysis tool as a whole. This tool is most valuable in early stages of an SEO campaign.
The reason that we use this tool the most is because of how easy it is to present to clients and give them a broad understanding of the trouble areas that we need to improve. It also provides more than just on-page report cards and link analysis, it provides an insight into social and local ecosystems. We recommend using this tool not only for research, but as a great report to present to clients or potential clients. You can export the report in slide, PDF or embed which gives you a lot of flexibility on how you want to present the information.
On-Page SEO
Moz On-Page Grader
Moz’s On-Page Grader is part of their Moz Pro Suite. This is a great tool to check individual pages on your website and make sure that your content is relevant to all on-page factors as well as technically sound. The only potential issue with this tool that we have come across is that clients see their reports and encourage over-optimizing to get an A score for every keyword. Our recommendation would be to use this tool, but do not focus only on the report. You must always consider the user of your website first and foremost, hold that principle true and you will have great success.
Competitor Analysis
SpyFu
SEO – This tool is great for early phases of an SEO campaign when developing a keyword list to focus on. One method that we use is to pull and merge lists from the top 5 ranking sites for a main keyword we are targeting and discover the competition level and search volume through other tools such as Moz and Google’s own Keyword Tool. We use this tool to discover new keywords as well.
Paid Search – SpyFu is a great tool for paid search as well. This tool allows you to see what your competitors are spending their money on, their ads and which keywords are most profitable. This tool has improved much over the years, however is still not 100% accurate. We have found that the competitor ad spend range is generally 30% higher than reality. Either way, its a great paid tool and would recommend anyone that is managing an ad campaign.
Keyword Ranking
Positionly
Positionally is not only a keyword tracking and monitoring tool for your website, but a great tool for competitive analysis and optimizing. The main reason that we recommend this tool for SEO professionals is the UI. There are a lot of ranking platforms out there from desktop apps such as Rank Tracker to Moz, but none of them have a beautifully designed UI. Positionly presents the information in a beautiful way that makes it easier to read and analyze faster. We recommend this software for all rank tracking needs.
Local SEO
Moz Local
Local citations used to have no transparency or organization. This all changed with Getlisted.org and David Mihm. David Mihm provided valuable content and visuals that explained the local search ecosystem and combined forces with Moz. Moz Local took everything great about Getlisted.org and built a local citation checker as well as a toolset to import your listing information to their platform and they handle the rest. Moz disrupted the local listing space this year, thankfully, and only charge $49 per location to do so, compared to Yext and other services that are significantly more expensive. If you are a local business owner or a local SEO professional, this is a MUST.
Enterprise Level SEO
Conductor
Some corporations and franchises require a larger suite of software to properly manage their locations. Conductor is a great toolset that allows the manager to dive into each location and manage everything in one platform. They also provide quite a bit of insight on phrases and ways to improve the site to get them on page 1. Their platform is great if you manage a lot of locations, but comes at a cost. This is a very expensive platform and requires you to contact a sales rep to get pricing, but valuable if you are the right business.
