Review: Unknown Online SEO Tools You Need to Know
Wow. I started practicing search engine optimization consciously more than a decade years ago. Oh boy! It was pretty hard in the early days. We did not have many tools yet.
Despite all the nonsense we have been hearing from publicity hungry mainstream media search engine optimization is growing.
Therefore a plethora of in many cases virtually unknown Web based tools appear on the market. You need to know about them though!
These modern tools are both easy to use and visually appealing while still very helpful to implement actual website improvements.
I have been approached by numerous tool vendors so that I decided to review a few promising online tools at once. I chose four of them: SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer and Monitor Backlinks.
Full disclosure: take note that I got paid by SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer to write this review and Monitor Backlinks have offered me an extended free trial for testing.
Thus I’m completely biased towards these tools. On the other hand I wouldn’t have written about them and accepted the money and freebies in case I didn’t like them or care at all.
People in the SEO industry know by now that I’m on the look out for progressive tools.
That’s why they approach me in the first place. I have also worked for other SEO tools vendors like Ahrefs, Positionly, Raven in the past. There is barely an SEO software I’m not affiliated with.
SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer
What is it?
SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer (formerly WebMeUp) boasts to be “Web’s freshest and fastest growing backlink index”. It’s like an old school browser based backlink checker tool but with added visualization and analysis.
It shows you the sites that have linked to you. It also visualizes the way they link to you, for example showing anchor text.
What features offers it?
The premium version of SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer lets you check backlinks, allows you to see anchor texts, IPs, nofollow status of the links. The free versions hows only two results per view.
You can see where the the links come from geographically (in m case from the US and Germany (where I come from):
You can also see that I have lots of links from South Korea – possibly due to some nefarious “negative SEO” or rather Google sabotage attack.
It also does analyze the sites that link to you. You can study your competition too of course.
For whom is it?
This backlink checker tool is intermediate webmasters in my opinion. In case you are aware what you want to know and what all the data means you get served.
You won’t need many other tools for finding your incoming links or checking out where your competition gets theirs.
Even die hard SEO professionals who already use Moz, Majestic, or SEMrush will find some links their favorite software doesn’t show yet. Thus
you can use it additionally to your favorite existing tool.
In case you are building links for your won projects you might consider SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer along the industry standards tools. At least SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer aims to reach the same people it seems.
Best use cases
The best use case is of course finding out who links to you but also the neat visualization of anchor texts.
They will allow you to quickly see whether there are potential issues with the backlink profile that may lead to a penalty from Google.
Pricing and quality
There are actually three different plans to choose from. The first one is free but very limited and you have to sign up. The other two paid ones should be enough for intermediate and advanced users alike.
The “Standard” plan may not yet be attractive enough to convert existing users of other more popular SEO tools yet.
The other – more advanced – packages look promising for all those not yet investing in web based SEO tools.
Monitor Backlinks
What is it?
As the name suggests this tool allows you stay tuned to your incoming links. It doesn’t simply check backlinks.
There is a free backlink checker on the site too but it actually “monitors” them. this way you can see when new links arrive.
Some of the new links are just freshly discovered old links but it also accurately finds truly new links.
Later the tool has added some non-link related features so that it’s almost a full fledged SEO software now.
What features offers it?
It offers a plethora of features but it seems the most important aspect of Monitor Backlinks is the automation.
It checks our inbound links in the background so when you log in you just watch the developments like in Google Analytics.
You can also connect the latter so you end up with a SEO dashboard offering you an overview of your “progress”.
You can also monitor competing sites and their backlinks. It even checks your rankings on Google while at it.
For whom is it?
I think the best audience for this tool is the intermediate one. In case you know what SEO is and how it works without spending all day or week on dealing with it then this webware is for you.
All bloggers, webmasters, web designers and developers, publishers who want to get automated reports on their whereabouts in the Google landscape.
Best use cases
Finding out who linked to you recently, what links are worthless for SEO (nofollow, 302 redirects etc.) and overview of ongoing changes.
The longer you use Monitor Backlinks the better it gets at noticing new links it seems to me. They index some of them after a while.
Price and quality
This is a premium tool built on top of data from Ahrefs. Ahrefs is pretty complex by now an doesn’t offer that level of automation so it’s not the same offering as Ahrefs.
It has to pay for its large data set obviously so that it’s no free either. Advanced reports allow you dig deeper into your backlink profile too.
The “start” plan costs $25 but it’s limited to one domain and 2500 links.
The cheapest offer may suffice for small businesses and new sites. The “plus” version costs roughly $50 per month for up to two sites plus 4 competing domains and 12,500 links. The even bigger professional plan is yours for around 90 bucks a month.
This “start” plan should already be enough for most people who do not represent agencies or larger companies.
I have been trying the 30 Day trail of Monitor back links, but was not able to make full use of that. Ok this post reminds me and encourage me to have a try again…
Yeah, they offer a lot of features and reports I couldn’t make use of really yet. The 30 days are not enough.
SEO is not easy. The 30 days are not enough. Please post a good free SEO tools. Thanks.
Really great list of tools you have listed on this post. Have used several of the tools on this list. There are a few others not listed on here that I would recommend as well. Such as SEOProfiler and WebAnalytics.
I must have tried dozens of SEO tools and plumped for Majestic and Advanced Web Ranking (AWR). I use Majestic for their comprehensive link analysis, can’t be beaten in my opinion. AWR for rank monitoring and the onsite analysis – cloud version so I don’t get kicked off my laptop for too many queries. And no, I wasn’t paid by them to say this!!
Colin: Yeah, Majectic and AWR both rock. I have used them already a few years back. They both require a knowledgeable user though.
I am using Yoast SEO for my onpage seo works.
Yeah, Yoast is the most popular WordPress plugin and SEO tool overall with millions of downloads. I use it here on the blog as well.