Three Tools You Should Be Using to Analyze Your SEO
You wouldn’t keep using a certain type of fertilizer on your roses if you didn’t notice them growing. The same is true of search engine optimization. You can try all the tricks in your magic SEO bag to help a website, but they’re of no use if the site isn’t seeing the results you or your client are looking for.
To find out if your tactics are working, you should be using search-analytics tools that can dig up dirt — please excuse the fertilizer-related pun — on virtually anything you want to track, from how a certain keyword is resonating to whether your meta description tags need some tweaking. Here are three excellent SEO tools that you should add to your virtual toolbox.
We’ll take a look at each one using the example of 12 Keys Rehab, a website for a rehabilitation center in Florida.
Google Webmaster Tools
It always comes back to Google, doesn’t it? That’s for good reason. Google Webmaster Tools offers a comprehensive overview that can help improve the technical features of your website, including HTML, content keywords and sitemaps. Here are just a few ways the tool could assist our example site, 12 Keys Rehab:
- HTML Improvements: This section, found under “Search Appearance,” alerts you to potential HTML problems. For 12 Keys, this might mean identifying duplicate or missing title tags.
- Content Keywords: You know what keywords you want Google to pick up on within your site, but is that what the search engine is seeing? This Google Index tool will tell you. For instance, if 12 Keys is targeting the keyword phrase “private drug rehab center,” this tool will indicate if more content should be created around this keyword.
- Data Markup Helper: The Helper automatically tags data on different parts of your site. The 12 Keys site might use it by tagging information in an upcoming event that’s just been added to the website.
CrawlerFX Tool
The internet marketing company WebpageFX has a neat tool called CrawlerFX that runs an in-depth analysis of how well a page does on searches. You type in your website and the keyword you want to use. For instance, 12 Keys might be targeting the keywords “private rehabilitation center” and want to see how it stacks up against the competition.
The CrawlerFX tool spits back a huge amount of information based on search traffic, Google page rank, domain authority, page authority, number of incoming page links and more. It scores your website on a scale of one to 10, then gives individual ranks for different categories. It also offers great explanations for why a score was achieved. Best of all, it takes just minutes to generate the report and it’s free.
Moz Pro Tools
Another crawl tool, Moz Pro Tools, offers some very telling insights about your business, including a breakdown of where each page on your site ranks as well as more in-depth information about the URL, title and meta-descriptions of your site. It can pinpoint SEO problem areas, such as URLs with duplicate page content or titles, overly long URLs or server errors.
For our example site, 12 Keys, this is especially helpful because the rehab center is doing a lot of SEO work right now. The Moz dashboard tracks changes the company has already made and what needs to be done going forward to improve the site. Plus Moz offers the ability to analyze competitors’ sites and compare them to your own, an invaluable tool in any industry. Still, there are downsides to Moz: It can take a week to generate a report, and the service is free only for the first 30 days.
Whether you are looking to improve your own SEO or working on behalf of a client like 12 Keys, using the right SEO tools is essential. By tackling your project with a mix of the Google toolbox and private companies’ crawl tools, you can get the results you’re after.
Three Tools You Should Be Using to Analyze Your SEOReviewed by Adrienne Erin on
Feb 26
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Three Tools You Should Be Using to Analyze Your SEO
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