Positionly SEO Software: Review
Search Engine Optimisation

Positionly SEO Software: Review

14th May 2014

Those that read my blog posts on State of Digital will have noticed that over the past few months I have focused my efforts on reviewing some of the many, many tools available online. Whether it’s for conversion rate optimisation, competitive intelligence, lead generation or more developed SEO suites, tools are essential for many of us and help us to work more productively, and assist us all in our digital marketing efforts. It’s not irregular to see many of our peers sacrificing some of our budget to know that some areas (in terms of monitoring and tracking) are ‘taken care of’.

In this post I will be looking into Positionly, a new SEO suite developed by their Poland-based team. Positionly has already seen some relative successes, raising $300,000 from angel VC Point Nine Capital in 2012, while their software is not unique and they exist in a crowded marketplace, they boast TD Bank, ESPN and TUI as some of their clients, so you know that you’re not in bad company. So without further ado, let’s dive in…

Setup & Dashboard

Setting up Positionly is fairly straight-forward, and first impressions show a very attractive and well-designed interface:

Positionly Dashboard

Integrating with Google Analytics pulls through traffic and visit stats and lets you see your monthly visits and daily trends against your Positionly keywords.

Positionly Google Analytics Logo

Importing your keywords is made easy too, either adding them on an individual basis or via CSV-based import for bulk operations.

Positionly Keyword Upload

Positionly works across both desktop and mobile (an area that I haven’t seen many competitors offering) with a well designed and easy-to-use iPhone app

Positionly Mobile AppAvailable for download on the App Store

Features

Positionly isn’t revolutionary in terms of what features it offers, many of you will have seen a plethora of other tools offer, however their attractive and incredibly easy-to-use interface definitely sets it apart from some that I’ve used previously. In order to explore these features one-by-one, I’ve provided more detail on these below:

Multiple Search Engines and Territories

It’s no secret that many SEOs now support campaigns across multiple territories and even have to be aware of different search engines too (focusing simply on Google can lead to large oversights). Positionly offers support for multiple territories, allows you to specify your target markets and multiple search engines, including:

  • Google
  • ?Bing
  • Yahoo
  • ?Yandex

Competitor Tracking

Positionly either lets you input your own, or advises you on possible competitors to track your website rankings against. Positionly will then analyse each keyword and group performance on a competitor graph.

Keyword Rank Tracking & Campaign Management

Dependent on your subscription plan, you can group, test and compare keywords very easily in Positionly.

positionly keyword monitoring

Similar to Google Analytics, Positionly also offers an annotation feature, through which you can view (on hover over) what changes were made at what date, meaning that you can keep up-to-date on all projects no matter what size or distribution of your team.

positionly annotations

Backlink Analysis

The well designed interface continues on the backlinks analysis area, where all newly developed links are recorded alongside useful information such as date acquired, link quality, source URL, target URL, anchor text, follow type and country of origin:

Positionly Backlink Monitoring

This feature is somewhat reminiscent of Ahrefs and while it is great in terms of monitoring any progress in link development, it certainly doesn’t provide the level of detail that a tool like MajesticSEO does.

Technical Site Analysis

In addition to keyword rank tracking and backlink analysis Positionly also offers the a useful ‘site review’ feature that provides advice on technical changes that you can make to a site, providing a optimisation score (out of 100) and listing the changes according to importance.

Positionly On-page Optimisation

Reporting

In combination with its sleek and well-designed interface, Positionly extends this to its reporting, where you can completely white-label the exports (should you wish), select from the templates available (see below) or create your own.

Positionly Reporting

API

Positionly also offer a well documented API, should you wish to utilise the data in a more robust or flexible way.

Add-Ons

Positiontly additionally offers a number of plug-and-play add-ons, including:

Membership Perks

Presumably in a move to separate themselves from some competitors, Positionly is offering membership perks, giving discounts for a number of services, including: Treehouse, PayLane and Mention (listed as coming soon at the time of reviewing), these perks are reminiscent of the somewhat more developed Moz perks. This is one indication that shows that Positionly are clearly focused on winning users of the system for the long term.

Knowledge Base & Blog

Aside from a good robust, all-round tool, Positionly also practices what it preaches and maintains a very good blog and knowledge base. Useful tips and information from this blog are shared in a stream on the left hand side of the tool dashboard:

Positionly Blog Posts
Aimed at keeping you inspired but also aware of the great features that Positionly offers.

Plans and Pricing

I have to say, while you could argue that it may seem somewhat confusing having a large variety of pricing models and options, I really like the approach that Positionly has made. They provide plans from the very basic, starting at just $5 a month:

Positionly Micro Plan…to the flexibility based on what kind of client you’re likely to be, allowing you to choose between plans created specifically for:

  • Local & Small Business
  • E-commerce
  • Freelancer
  • ?Startup
  • SEO Agency
  • Large Business

Positionly Price PlansPrice plans vary from as little as $5 a month and stretch to $99 per month, or higher if you wish to negotiate a custom plan, dependent on your requirements.

Conclusion

Oftentimes digital marketing tools fall victim of trying to do too much and over-complicating their platform. Because of this, I’ve noticed that sometimes the simpler the tool the better. Positionly sits firmly in this camp. Keyword ranking and backlink analysis tools are readily available and, without getting into a discussion with regard to their importance or accuracy, many still utilise them as part of their SEO reporting process.

There’s no doubt that the benefits of Positionly are somewhat similar to others out there. However, deliverance is key. Positionly’s good-looking and easy to use dashboard, well maintained blog and membership perks certainly go some way to separating them from their competitors. The variety of price plans available offer an competitively affordable proposition for many.

They offer a 14 day free trial, for those that may be questioning their current SEO tool setup, and I’d strongly recommend giving it a whirl. It’s definitely up there as one of the better tools that I’ve seen (and reviewed) available on the market today.

Your Thoughts

I’m interested in hearing feedback from the StateofDigital readers:

  • What tools do you currently use?
  • Have you used Positionly before?
  • Would you consider giving Positionly a go?

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Written By
Ned Poulter is CEO & Founder of Pole Star Digital, a Digital Marketing Consultancy he runs alongside a number of entrepreneurial ventures. He spends his time developing and overseeing digital strategy for a number of well reputed international clients, developing creative approaches to achieving organic search results, increasing inbound traffic,...
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