Likelihood to Recommend It is helpful if you are trying to understand where a site stands in terms of the links coming to it from different websites. It is less helpful in terms of providing specific actions or steps to take to get more links. However, it is a part of a larger Moz package so other areas provide information that can help there.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Moz Link Explorer has a straightforward and easy to use interface. It’s very simple to navigate and understand the data. The anchor text tool gives you an idea of the most widely used anchor texts other websites use when linking to your site. It can raise a red flag when too many sites are linking to you using exact match keyword anchor texts. Read full review 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 Read full review Cons You need to subscribe to Moz Pro to get all features, which is pricey if you aren’t using the tool regularly. I’ve found that competitor tools give larger lists of inbound links. You’ll need some understanding of how SEO works to maximize the tool. Would non-SEO specialists understand the difference between domain authority and page authority, or the difference between follow back, and non-follow backlinks? Moz offers lots of training resources, but it takes time to learn what you need. Read full review 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 Read full review Likelihood to Renew No renewal is necessary with the free version!
Read full review Support Rating I put a middling score here because of the difference in support between the free and premium uses. The Free tool was a great service, but there wasn't much support. It was tool that was intended to have a skilled SEO utilize it and save time. The Premium version has great support, but also offered more information so that skilled SEOs and novices alike could benefit from the tool.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Ahrefs is much more comprehensive than Open Site Explorer. If you are in need of a deep backlink analysis there are better options out there for your money. If you need a quick look at the state of a client's backlink profile than OSE is for you. It will give you the top metrics you are looking for and then some. I find OSE to be more user-friendly than competitors
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment This has allowed me to bring more traffic to our website. This has increased our clients. This has increased our Domain Authority over 10. Read full review 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 Read full review ScreenShots