The boom of the internet has really helped businesses get their products out there. The development of websites and social media has helped business owners connect with their customers more easily, and the development of software to help businessmen gain more popularity for their business through the internet is, in itself, a thriving market. One of those software that can help you with your business is the search engine optimization software otherwise known as SEO software. Be warned though. There are a lot of SEO tools available in the market. Having a lot of choices is both a blessing and a curse. With the many options available, you have a lot to choose from. On the down side, it can be difficult to choose which one will suit your business the best. One of the things you can consider when choosing a software is the features that the tool has. Here are the top features that your software should have to have a good SEO experience.
Keyword Targeting and Discovery
How does an SEO software work exactly? There are a lot of factors that are to be considered for the SEO to work effectively. One of those factors is selecting keywords that are relevant to your business and are highly visible when searched. When you are looking for the top SEO software, one thing that it has to have is an effective keyword targeting and discovery.
Before the development of SEO tools, you would have to scour the internet to have the perfect keyword. It was tiresome doing all the research, and at the end of the day, you might still not have the best keywords for your business. That is why keyword targeting and discovery is an important feature your SEO tool should have. The tool would be in charge in getting you the best keywords, and it will be ensured that they are relevant to your business and will help you get more views for your site.
Analysis of Competition
Just like the many software available in the market, you also have a lot of rivals in whatever area of business you are in. That means, they also have their SEO marketing and their own SEO software. One feature that could come in handy is the completion analysis. This will help you discover your competitors, especially the new ones. This feature will not only help you discover new people that are in the same business as you but would also be able to know what kind of strategies they are using. Their targeted keywords will be included in the analysis report. Scouting the enemy might seem like an underhanded tactic, but Management Study Guide enumerated some objectives and significance of why competition analysis is very important when doing business.
Auditing of Website
Other than searching for the keywords for you, the top SEO software will also tell you what part of your site you can improve to get more visitors. This feature is called website auditing. The software will go through your site and suggest changes you can make to get a more optimized website. With this feature, you can always learn new things and discover stuff that you can do to improve your website.
This is an amazing feature and one that might cost you a pretty penny. So you should do a lot of research before you pay for one specific service provider. Reading reviews of SEO software from reputable review sites will help you figure out which software has this feature at an affordable price.
International Capability
This feature is not a necessity if your market is based solely in one country or locality, and if your business is for locals only, then, you don’t have to have this in your SEO management software. The international capability means that the software offers support for an international market.
International SEO, according to Pit Stop Media, is the setting up of a website in such a way that certain countries will be sure to be able to see your site. Basically, the same methods, techniques that are used in domestic SEO, can also be used in the international optimization. There are practices where domestic and international differ. An example would be the language used in the site. You can read reviews of SEO software to know what vendors offer international capability.
Scalability
According to Search Data Center, scalability is the ability of a software or application to continue to work even if the volume of the data input is larger than before. This is an important feature that the best SEO tools are supposed to have. There are marketing campaigns where it can be helped that keyword volume and ad groups will grow bigger. The ability of a software to handle more complex and larger campaigns is a must have. Your software should be able to handle changes. You wouldn’t want one that will stutter once you handle more multifaceted campaigns. Pick a software that you can use for the long run and is scalable.
Another part of scalability is the transparency of the whole SEO lifecycle. That would include the organizing and planning, execution, and the tracking of the results. Many SEO platforms fail to show the transparency of these steps in the process.
SEO Execution
SEO is vital to the success of the businesses. Your SEO software should be able to help you with the execution of your SEO. That would include social, desktop, and mobile execution. More and more people are using their mobiles to search for products. Tech Crunch reports that mobile users have overtaken the number of computer users in 2014. That is why it is important that your site is optimized for mobile use. This is so you won’t lose out on potential customers.
There are software that do not offer the platform to optimize mobile sites. This is an important feature and one that should be present. The whole SEO life cycle includes the social, local, and mobile executions. Read reviews of SEO software to know if your chosen software has this feature.
Change Tracking
There are metrics that are used to measure the success of your SEO campaign. These metrics are indicative of the health of your site. The most important are keyword rankings, backlinks, traffic, average time, usability, returning users, and bounce rate. There are other metrics that wasn’t mentioned here. Your SEO tool should be able to monitor these metrics and track any changes that might be significant to your search engine optimization.
When changes are tracked, you will be able to see where you might be lacking and therefore make the necessary changes. Change tracking will help you save a lot of time because you no longer have to manually assess the situation for changes. Your software will do it for you automatically. Other than change tracking, you should learn other best practices for effective SEO campaigns.
Reporting
There are software available solely for reporting purposes. You could find free SEO report generator online, and there are also paid reports. But the best SEO tools will have a reporting function integrated. This feature will make it easier for you to see changes, improvements, and the status of your site. A summary is fine, but you need software that can provide a detailed and comprehensive report, which will include audit pages, competitive comparisons, rank checking, and analysis of your links. These information will be significant to changes you might have to employ to further improve your SEO program.
Part of the report is the data and analytics gathered by the software from your site. The software should provide you with an initial report and an ongoing weekly report.
Referrals
Although this is not a feature, this is worth mentioning. The best form of advertisement is through the word of mouth. Seek referrals from other users for the software you are planning to choose. Read their reviews to know what the real score about the software is. Ask them how easy the software is to use and is the dashboard easy to set up. There are other platforms that requires complicated processes just to set up the dashboard. Another important thing to ask is if there are fees that you might not know about. Some service providers are known to have hidden fees. These are things that the vendor might not mention but is important when you are using the software already. Ease of use is one important thing that you should not overlook. You don’t want to spend so much time learning how to use the tool when you can spend that time more productively.
Once you have figured out that you want to use search engine optimization to promote your website, the next step is to look for a reliable SEO tool. More features that software includes, the more you will pay. So although the top features mentioned above are must haves, you could still leave out some especially if you won’t be using their functions for your business. Hopefully this article has helped you in your search for the best SEO software.
Want to know the rankings and read reviews of the top SEO software? Head on to CrowdReviews.com to check the top software and their corresponding reviews.
John Tovar
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