One of the most common questions we get asked is “what tools do you use for SEO”. Usually we start that answer with “well the tools we use are mostly enterprise and can be costly”! Not really what people want to hear.
The cost of some of the tools we use – even at the lowest price levels are usually prohibitive for smaller organizations and businesses, but having access to some sort of SEO tool is not an option anymore – it is really a necessity. Which is why we wanted to talk about SEO PowerSuite – which we think is the perfect option for nonprofits and small businesses who want to tackle their own SEO!
This post does have referral links – so if you click on a link and purchase SEO PowerSuite we will receive a commission. At 2 Dogs Media we will never promote or recommend a service just to earn a referral – we only recommend services we have used ourselves or have clients who use it and love it. We will never promote or recommend anything we have not personally used or believe in! Puppy promise!
So, why should you have an SEO toolset?
- To get a general overview of your keyword rank
- To better understand your current backlinks and get ideas for new ones
- To be able to audit your website throughout the year to ensure it is technically in great shape
- Competitor analysis
These are a just a few things that a good SEO tool can help you with. While there are a few free ones that offer some insight into some of these areas, they are usually not a comprehensive look at how your website is doing in all of the key areas you should be reviewing frequently.
What does 2 Dogs Media use when doing SEO?
When we do SEO we use a LOT of tools. It is one of the reasons SEO can be a little costly too! Between the time investment and the cost of the tools to be able to grab the data we need – it all adds up.
We have subscriptions to a variety of services and use a few free tools including:
- SemRush (our preferred keyword/phrase research tool)
- Ahrefs (backlinks backlinks backlinks)
- Screaming Frog (technical audits)
- Search Console – insight into click through rates and rank position
- Analytics – review traffic, website flow, time on site, pageviews and more
- SEO PowerSuite
Then there are MORE tools for content exploration (like BuzzSumo and ePictions), social metrics and it goes on and on.
So what about the little guys who cannot afford all those fancy tools?
We get it – $99 a month for a backlink tool, $149 a month for a keyword tool (and these are the lowest packages) – these are just too costly for most website owners to invest it. That is why there is SEO PowerSuite!
I have been a user of SEO PowerSuite for MANY years! I have seen the improvements in their software over the years and the passion they have for brining us exactly what we need when we need it. When I first started with them it was a bit of a clunky tool that ran really slow and I never felt it returned all the data I really needed – but that has changed 1000x over.
So, what is SEO PowerSuite exactly?
fIt is a package of tools that you download to your computer (it is available for PC and Mac) – that gives you everything you need to improve your website!
It offers 4 unique tools in this package, listed in order of what we use the most:
- Website Auditor – a must have tool that helps you find technical issues with your website! Helps you find pages that have crawl issues, redirect issues, broken links and so much more. It can also help you determine how well your content is optimized for the search engines. This is our go to tool with content audits!
Learn more about Website Auditor - SEO Spyglass – a backlink tool that can give you insight into all the backlinks your website has as well as if they are good or bad backlinks. It pulls from a variety of different sources to get one of the largest backlink profiles, we have seen a huge improvement in this tool recently. You can also view the backlinks of competitors which can help you with procuring new backlinks!
Learn more about SEO Spyglass - Rank Tracker – a full keyword tracking and research tool to help you see where you rank as well as find new keywords and phrases to bring new traffic. You can se how competitive a keyword is, who currently ranks for it and track your progress with their easy to understand graphs and charts.
Learn more about Rank Tracker - Link Assistant – this one we have not used as much, but are starting to! It is a link outreach tool that can help you find opportunities for building backlinks. Type in a keyword and you have an array of options for researching opportunities on forums, blogs, guest posts, commenting and more to get backlinks to your website.
Learn more about Link Assistant
The tool is a top choice for solo-preneurs who need to have a better understanding of their website!
We will be doing a mini-tutorial on each of these 4 tools in the coming weeks so we can share the tools we think our nonprofit community and business owners would use the most.
SEO PowerSuite – the bad!
As with every tool there are good and bad things about it. So we wanted to share both sides in this overview.
- Speed – The main issue with this tool is that it can be slow to pull the data. Because it is a downloaded software that runs on your computer, if you have a slow internet connection it may be cumbersome and take a while to get the data – especially if you have a big website. If you run a report – we suggest you run it when you do not need to do anything else on the computer. Also there are options that SEO PowerSuite suggest to ensure your processing is as fast as it can be.
- Learning curve – this tool has some amazing features – so there will be a learning curve to really get the most benefit from it. SEO PowerSuite has done an exceptional job with tutorials and they offer great support as well. But you do need to learn about how to properly use it to get the information you need. But it is worth it!
SEO PowerSuite – the good!
- Cost – this tool has a ONE TIME flat fee cost. You buy the software and it is yours. There is a small additional fee they implement called a “Search Algo Update” fee and you will need it to keep the software up to date. As you can imagine it is costly to keep the software updated and to pull the data from the sources they access to bring that data to you so they do need to recoup that cost. (This is why software like Ahrefs and SEMRush are so expensive and limit their data based on price levels). SEO PowerSuite does not limit data you can retrieve – the Algo update pricing can be seen here and ranges from a monthly fee of $29.95 and goes down if you bulk order for more months at a time.
- Accuracy – this toolset is one of the most accurate we use. We use Website Auditor and SEO Spyglass often and find the accuracy is spot on with other tools we have been using.
- Service – having been a part of the SEO PowerSuite family for years, I can attest to their level of support – whether through their website, on FB or Twitter – you will get answers fairly quickly.
- Training – they have an amazing set of blog posts to educate you on the various ways you can use their SEO toolset to help you grow your website. They are easy to read with great imagery and you can follow along really easy!
Have Questions?
If you have questions about this tool – we will do our best to answer them so ask away! Seriously, this is a great deal – and at this price is a steal for what it offers!