Four ‘Obvious’ SEO and Two Social Tools You Can’t Miss
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Four ‘Obvious’ SEO and Two Social Tools You Can’t Miss

11th March 2013

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Last week we showcased several tools on State of Search and even though the week is over, our content sure isn’t! This week you will see some more content around tools, as a sort of ‘bonus track’!

Today we are looking at the tools that some of the State of Search bloggers use. Which ones are important to them? And which one should you take a look at? An overview of not to miss tools for any SEO, brought to you by the State of Search blogging team. The interesting thing is, it seems obvious you can’t miss out on these but it still is a good reminder of what you should be using and if you are using them correctly!

Google Analytics

Brought in by Michel Wester this one seems an open door. Who doesn’t use Google Analytics right? It is a no brainer, but still somehow it is ignored very much in list of tools people should use. Maybe because everyone uses it? But the ‘problem’ doesn’t lie in if people are using Google Analytics, but how they are using it.

Google Analytics can be used for tracking the number of visitors, but more importantly probably is the behaviour of those visiting your site, which pages they visit and which they don’t and what path are they taking? That information will tell you a lot more about what to optimise than the actual page numbers. So dive in some deeper!

Here are some posts to help you with that:

Screaming Frog

Every SEO I talk to mentions Screaming Frog as one of the tools on their lists. And the State of Search bloggers are no exception to that.

Paul Rogers explains why it is his favourite:

“Screaming Frog is my favourite SEO tool because it’s easy to use and it’s great for identifying issues quickly. Screaming frog is brilliant for finding broken links, checking on-page factors and it’s user-friendly interface definitely adds a lot of value.”

The tool is also one of Jeroen van Eck‘s favourites:

“Screaming Frog, because it gives you an easy and complete insight in the way a website is structured and how much SEO efforts are already taken. It provides all the data you need in a good readable form and allows you to form your own conclusions from that. The great thing about is that it doesn’t try to qualify elements as good or bad. It let’s you be the judge but provides you with all the necessary data.”

Here are some posts regarding screaming frog that might be of use:

Excel

Excel? Really? Yes really. I think when it comes to technical SEO there are few SEO’s who do not ‘love’ Excel. Or at least, they love what you can do with Excel. Especially because it gives them the freedom to do what they want. They can play around with the data without being restricted to the features of a specific tool.

At SES London Richard Baxter showed the things you can do with it and I can safely say there were many SEOs in the room writing down the tricks and tips Richard gave them.

Within Excel there are different tools to use. Many SEO’s have created add-ons and many tools create the possibilities to export to Excel.

Kate Morris loves the “SEO Tools Excel Add In”:

“My favorite Tool is the SEO Tools Excel Add In currently for site reviews, pulls information for me that would normally take forever. Titles, Canonicals, etc.”

Here are some posts about Excel and SEO that might be of use:

Majestic SEO

In the top of many lists is also MajesticSEO. Just last Friday Dixon Jones demo’ed some features many don’t even know about, but within search Majestic is a tool used by almost every SEO these days.

The reason behind that is that it is probably that it such a big pile of data, it gives the SEO lots to play with. And not just the SEO, as Sarah Bradley points out. She uses Majestic SEO in combination with Tweetsmap:

“As 2013 is all about the combined Search, Link & Social strategies so I like to check Client’s backlink profile using MajesticSEO Map feature and compare it to the geographical locations of Client’s Followers via TweepsMap. Combine these two bits of data to the more popular geographical locations of Brand keywords on Twitter via Hootsuite and you have an interesting insight into the effectiveness of Backlinks and Social Signals geographically! It may even give you an interesting insight into what links are the most effective based on where the links are in the world and who in the world is talking about this brand.”

Here are some posts about Majestic SEO that might be of use:

The Social tools: Hootsuite and Tweriod

And since we are on the topic of Social, there are also some social tools to be mentioned by our newest recruit Sarah. She mentions Hootsuite and Tweriod:

Hootsuite Pro

“Being the Social Media nut that I am, I have tried and tested a number of Social Network management tools and find Hootsuite Pro to be the best of the bunch. Alright, so the geo-targeting has some ways to go in terms of UK-wide accuracy and their Weekly reports don’t offer any industry insight I think they will probably iron out these factors as we go along to make a tool that is truly insightful. I use Hootsuite to manage all of my Client’s social Media accounts as well as my own.Best features: The Auto Scheduling that will automatically find the optimum times to post your network updatesThe Keyword search targeting per Social network account – this is a great way to keep an eye on who is talking about a particular brand and is great when I’m putting together a customer profile or social media strategyRSS feed publisher: I don’t have to worry about scheduling my blog posts!”

Tweriod

“This is a free-Twitter analytics tool that, in a nutshell, lets you know the times of day you should be Tweeting based on the interaction times of your Followers. It’s great because it gives you your optimum tweet times for Mondays, Weekdays, Weekends and Sundays. I’d recommend using this tool once every couple of weeks or so per account; as your Followers grow and your relevant network strengthens, you will find the patterns totally change so it’s great to be aware of when they are more likely to see what you’re saying.”

And more!

The State of Search bloggers mentioned a lot of more tools they were using. Just take your pick:

The Web Developer Toolbar extension for Google Chrome
HTTP Header Viewer
Google PageSpeed
Webpagetest
Google Webmaster Tools
Colorzilla
Analytics SEO
SEOmoz Pro
Advanced Web Rankings
IIS Toolkit
Buzzstream
Followerwonk
Spyonweb
Citation Labs Broken link builder
Schema creator
HTTP Header compare
übersuggest
Google AdWords Keywordtool
SEO Tools Excel Add In
OpenSiteExplorer
Moz Toolbar
AHREFs
Raventools

Which one are you using?

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Written By
Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.
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