SEOptimer vs. RavenTools vs. SEOGadget for Excel

Monitor Backlinks is perfect for any small business that has a website. Every website gets hit with spammy backlinks, and being able to identify and remove them is critical to online success, and in preventing the Google penalty. In addition, it helps SEOs locate good backlinks they might not know about, which can then be posted on social networks and social bookmarking sites to generate more referral traffic. I would not recommend Monitor Backlinks for a business that does not have a website, or for a business that only has a blog.

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If you are looking for a one-stop shop for MOST things related to digital marketing, RavenTools is a great solution. You will be able to monitor social media, Google tools, email campaigns, and much more from one spot. It really cuts down on time spent moving from account to account. If you are looking for clean and easy to read reports for clients, RavenTools is perfect for that as well. It provides tools and reports that can be used by internal and external teams alike.

SEOGadget is ideal when using vendors like Moz and Majestic for analysis of your backlinks. It is not the tool to use if you need to gain more backlinks or want to increase your backlink. It can help you edit your backlink profile and understand where the links come from. It is probably ideal for in-house teams studying larger sites with lots of links and trying to understand their link partners, or an agency/freelancer that needs to import data from multiple sources to help clients with link profiles. It is not the tool to target new link opportunities, but with some ingenuity you could probably use it for this if you an access your competitor data. It's also good for anchor analysis which is something few teams really look into.

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• Backlink building
• On page seo
• Recommendations of topics for SEO based articles based on the keywords

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• RavenTools has teamed up with SEO services like Moz and Magestic SEO to provide detailed data about the SEO health of your own websites as well as how they compare to your competitors' websites. I can directly compare number of backlinks, page speed, domain authority, integration of Google Analytics, presence of robots.txt files, on-site social media engagement, and home page load time. This a great way to get an idea of how your site stacks up against others and what can be done to improve it.
• RavenTools' automated reports are mostly great (I'll cover the negatives later). You can create reports with as much data as you would like and schedule them to arrive as often as you would like. I have SEO, social media, and site performance reports delivered to my team and me every Monday covering the last 10 days, and a broader quarterly report arrives in the inboxes of a few executives once a quarter.
• RavenTools' graphs are often easier to read and decipher than graphs found in Google Analytics. Part of the reason is the graph height. Google Analytics graphs are fairly short, so it's difficult to see smaller variations in the data. Those variations are more pronounced within RavenTools using the data.

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• Authentication is simple and requires no real in-depth knowledge
• Importing of data into Excel saves time and saves us an extra step which is really important
• Working with the data we need to see is much easier and faster
• Collects multiple sources and saves time logging in
• Data analysis is simple and straight forward

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• The tool is very detailed, I did not think of any particular feature that could be needed but if I do, I will report back.

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• The data it gets from Webmaster Tools and Analytics is great and reporting on it is easy - however, when you're looking at the charts for keyword placement on screen the graphic can be hard to read and often I find myself just checking GWT and BWT separately for easier information if no report needs to be generated.
• RavenTools comes with an iPhone app so you can check on your campaigns and clients when you're not at your desk, however, the app crashes quite a bit when you get to the Google Analytics portion of the screen.

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• More flexibility in creating tables would be easier, as not all tables were able to be created this might be user error in some cases
• More data imports would be nice this could be more of a one-and-done package, right now it only imports links
• Added functionality to analyze data would be nice

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A year ago or so, Raven abandoned many of their organic rank reporting tools in an attempt to favor some Adwords intelligence. The market rebelled, as did I; in our desperation to find an alternative to Raven, none could be found and a great majority of users didn't want/need Adwords data. Months later, Raven reverted. I'd renew with Raven not just because nothing else cuts it, but because they are both trying to innovate, and listening to customers.

Certain areas, Social Media scheduling, could stand to undergo a complete overhaul. However, most of the RavenTools interface is easy to use. You will not have any issues getting up and running and should there be an issue, the customer service is really good. They also continue to preform updates that make the usability even better

They were fast, eager to help me out on my project and very knowledgeable on how to user their product and helping me to get up and running. This gave me the confidence to purchase the product and execute my projects knowing that I could ask for help whenever needed.

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RavenTools has some of the best Customer Support I have ever received. They are quick to respond and will keep you posted on the progress of your issue. You truly feel as if you are getting customized service. No human is perfect and I have had one situation in which I had to reach out multiple times, but overall I fully trust and approve of their process

Does not give the deep dive analysis that these other tools give but sometimes that's too overwhelming for a potential client. We use this tool to whet the appetite of a new potential client. This is a great tool to give them a White Labeled report that outlines the larger issues that will need to be addressed to improve a website.

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I don't have a lot of experience with other tools although we have had a lot of demos of other products. We have often found that by utilizing features in Raven that we didn't know about we could have the same functionality without using another reporting tool. This allows us to continue using one integrated reporting tool.

This includes more data and makes backlink analysis easier because you don't have to build sheets and tables from scratch. While it doesn't directly compare (it uses some of these services) it is better suited for the custom analysis of data and that is a big help when you do a lot of data manipulation. It's easier and more streamlined than Knime, and Knime does not allow you to import directly from Moz or Majestic so a step is saved here. It can't do as much as Knime but most of the things you want to do it can do, and you can do them faster.

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• Our website's domain authority increased about four months after we started using Monitor Backlinks. I identified a long list of potentially spammy links and submitting a disavow link request to Google, and they were disavowed after about two months.
• It would be too difficult to put a number on the ROI, but Monitor Backlinks has definitely helped make a positive impact on our SERP. Being able to quickly pinpoint bad links and disavow them helps improve our domain authority, page authority, and trust scores.

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• RavenTools has been invaluable in helping us improve ranking through website audits. The ease with which we can correct issues once they arise has resulted in approximately 35% increased productivity from our audit team.
• It would be helpful if the reports were nice enough that they could be customer-facing. We have to put the data into our own reporting forms for customer presentation.

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• It is hard to quantify this realistically but it does save time and that is big
• Importing data is a time suck, so the only real advantage here is the ability to do two or three imports instantly without downloading and visiting three sites, this could be expanded for even more ROI
• We haven't had any negative impacts as this is mainly a time saver

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