Introduction
Finding the appropriate SEO tool for your business can be daunting. This buyer's guide compares the offerings from leading vendors.
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from "Enterprise SEO Tools: The Marketer's Guide". You can download the report here free or become a Search Engine Land PRO Member.
The Benefits of Using SEO Software Platforms
With hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of pages, sites, and keywords to manage and optimize, enterprise SEO has become increasingly complicated and time-consuming. Using an enterprise SEO software platform can increase efficiency and productivity while reducing the time and errors involved in managing organic search campaigns. More specifically, automating SEO through a toolset or platform can provide the following benefits:
- Many tools, one interface.
- More efficient management of global operations.
- The ability to stay up-to-date with the search engines
- Automated reporting to provide data in near real time
Enterprise SEO Platform Pricing
Licensing an enterprise SEO platform can be a significant investment, particularly for ecommerce or retail marketers with hundreds of thousands of SKUs or product pages. Marketers typically spend tens of thousands of dollars each month in licensing fees, and pay for installation and staff training to maximize the value of the platform and its capabilities.
Virtually all SEO platforms are provided on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis, i.e. the vendor makes the software available online and is responsible for all maintenance and system administration. Pricing models vary significantly from pay-for-performance, to keyword- or page- volume based, to completely customized based on volume and program scope.
Determining your overall cost can be more art than science and based upon your brand’s keyword, link building, international coverage and other SEO activities. As a result, few vendors require an annual contract, preferring month-to month licensing that is flexible as programs grow or contract. Several vendors offer a free trial lasting from 14 to 30 days. It may be beneficial to ask for an SEO pre-analysis, even if it means paying a modest fee for it, to determine the actual costs and benefits of licensing an SEO platform.
Does Your Company Need an Enterprise SEO Platform?
Deciding whether or not your company needs an enterprise-level SEO platform calls for the same evaluative steps involved in any software adoption, including a comprehensive self-assessment of your organization’s business needs, staff capabilities, management support, and financial resources. Use the following questions as a guideline to determine the answers.
- Do we have the right human resources in place?
- Do we have C-level buy-in?
- Do we have the right technical resources?
- Who will own enterprise SEO?
- Can we invest in staff training?
- Do we have realistic expectations?
Enterprise SEO Platform Capabilities
SEO software comes in many shapes and sizes, from rank-checking tools to keyword research toolsets to full-service platforms that manage keywords, links, competitive intelligence, international rankings, page optimization, and workflow rights and roles. Enterprise-level platforms may also provide keyword and site analytics that include predictive scoring systems to identify the potential opportunities to improve brand websites, link authority and keyword rankings. Several vendors, namely BloomReach and Altruik, are implementation -- rather than analytics -- applications. Altruik proxies websites to automate many SEO implementation tasks. BloomReach optimizes page content to drive incremental new traffic to websites by improving content relevancy to search visitors.
Virtually all enterprise-level SEO platforms available today offer these capabilities:
- Keyword research and rankings
- Link (also called backlink) research and analysis
- Competitive intelligence
- International search tracking
The platforms begin to differentiate by offering additional or expanded capabilities, sometimes requiring additional investment, that include but are not limited to:
- Key performance indicator (KPI) and management dashboards
- Workflow and task management
- Universal search rankings
- Social signal tracking
- Web analytics integration
- Scalability to manage thousands or millions of pages and keywords
Six Questions to Ask Potential SEO Platform Vendors
Ready to talk to SEO tools vendors? Here are six questions you should ask:
- How is your search volume calculated?
- Can this system track millions of searches, visits, site pages, etc?
- Do you support international search?
- How robust and flexible are your reporting options?
- What other meta-information does your system collect that may be made available to me via API?
- Is there a workflow built in that allows me to coordinate the work of my marketing, content, web development, social media and PR teams across the organization?
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