SEOs everywhere are constantly looking for tools to scale their programs and improve organic search traffic to their Website(s). But with thousands of SEO tools on the market, how does one find the right set of tools to fit their business needs? Where does one even begin the SEO tool evaluation process?
In this post, I will outline 10 questions you should answer as you begin evaluating the purchase of a new SEO tool. Whether you are a freelancer, work for an agency or in-house, if you answer these 10 questions you will ensure your next SEO purchase is not a waste of time and money.
1. What problem(s) am I trying to solve?
One thing I’ve learned from my years of working in search marketing is that unless you are willing to drop some serious cash for an Enterprise tool like BrightEdge, Conductor or SearchMetrics, no tool is going to solve all your SEO needs.
Most tools have one or two capabilities it does really well, but otherwise miss the mark on many others. For example, MozPro is great for monitoring back links, unlinked mentions and social signals, but their keyword ranking, technical auditing and content suggestions are rather weak. MajesticSEO is a great back link tool, but really doesn’t provide SEOs much past that. ScreamingFrog provides great technical auditing, but that’s about it. I could list a hundred SEO tools and it would be the same story.
That is why the first question you need to ask yourself before you begin your SEO tool evaluation process is what are the specific problems I need to be able to solve? Followed by: Is there one tool in my price range than can solve all my pain points or will I need to patch work several tools to meet my needs?
2. What critical capabilities do I need?
Most SEO problems that can be answered with software require very specific critical capabilities. You must identify those critical capabilities so you can cross-reference which tool on the market gets as close as possible to meeting all of them.
Also, if you build a side-by-side comparison checklist using these critical capabilities, you can better compare your top software choices. Believe me when I say this will help mitigate the risk of purchasing a dud. Do not skip this step!
For years, marketers have been trying to set trackable metrics around their activities to validate their value and business contribution. There are thousands of articles on the Web that say you should track X, Y, Z, and just as many articles that say you should be tracking A, B, C. So what marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should you actually be tracking?
When trying to answer this question, I believe you have to first take a look at what types of marketing professionals are on your team. Do you have a social guru? A communications/PR pro? An SEO? The answer to “Which KPIs should I be tracking for my team?” should always start with figuring out where your people are spending their time and energy.
This is essential because each of these job functions (Comms, SEO and Social Media) have very specific KPIs that are different from one another. If you try to evaluate your social media specialist the same way you are evaluating your SEO specialist, you are setting your team up for failure. Plain and simple.
For the rest of this post, I will run through what I believe to be the most important KPIs for these three marketing areas — Communications, SEO and Social Media. While there are dozens of other marketing job functions out there, these have become the main pillars of most digital marketing shops.
Marketing KPIs for Communication Professionals
Public Relations
I come from a PR agency background, so I know how hard it is for a communications professional to prove their value to a client or executive. It’s never been easy to prove how that awesome placement you landed on New York Times, Forbes or Entrepreneur actually drove business value past brand awareness. Below are some KPIs you should be tracking ASAP! (If you can present these stats during your next performance meeting, you will knock the socks off your client/executive.)
Share of Voice:
- The percentage of your brand’s coverage relative to your competitors.
Advertising Value Equivalency:
- The cost ($USD) to generate the same number of impressions/views through paid advertising. Many tools like Cision and Meltwater can help you calculate this.
Potential Reach:
- The total viewership of the Websites (blogs, news publications, associations, etc) where your earned media coverage appeared.
SEO has become part of the everyday vernacular of the digital marketing landscape, but how does one actually become an SEO professional? Does reading Moz or Search Engine Land a couple of times a week really make you an SEO pro?
If you are looking to expand your SEO skills and add SEO to your professional tool belt, here are 5 skills you should absolutely focus on:
1. HTML/ CSS
Example of HTML Coding
Coding is one of those skills every marketer knows they should learn, but often times neglect, because they end up leaning on their dev team. But if you plan to become a true SEO professional you need to be able to code, understand code and know when your Website is broken.
Why you ask?
If you are an in-house or agency SEO you cannot wait around for your dev or engineering team to fix every little bug on your Website. You need to able to go into the backend and correct coding issues on your own. This not only allows you to become more valuable, but it also saves you, your agency or business time and money. And who doesn’t like that?
Do yourself a favor and enlist the help of an online coding program like CodeAcademy to teach yourself the basics of HTML and CSS. Trust me, you will thank yourself for learning some basic coding!
Below are some of the must-read SEO articles form around the Web this week.
1. Which Sites Win the Most Featured Snippets – STAT
Have you ever wondered what steps you could take to help ensure your Website is selected for Googles’ answer box and knowledge graphs? You’re not alone.
STAT, a search analytics software company, recently released a white paper that presents the findings of an analysis of more than 1,000,000 high-CPC queries.
STAT Featured Snippet White paper
In their Whitepaper, they offer some great tips for optimizing your content to be selected in featured snippets. Here are few that stuck out.
- Make sure your content has more than 1,000 words
- Add tables tags (table tags)
- Add lists (ol and li tags)
- Make sure your H2s have exact match or partial match keywords
- Make sure these pages are shared out on your social media accounts
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