SEO tools

havoc

Some of you crafty fellows are presumably knowledgeable on this.

Lots of tools exist to do a static analysis on what's good/bad like Google's PageSpeed.

The SEO analysis flavoured tools seem quite expensive though. e.g. ahrefs 99 USD pm.

Bit heavy for someone getting started. How do others approach this? I'm guess I'm not the only one interested but not ready to spend 1k+ a year on this

deank

Nowadays, one designs a website for either of two audience.

You either design for bots or humans.

1. If you are designing for bots, stuff like Google pagespeed matters.
2. If you are designing for humans, nothing else matters other than quality content and words of mouth.

You don't design a website for both because, if a site is good at #2, #1 follows.

AlwaysSkint

havoc said: ahrefs

B'stard scanners from hell - blocked using mod_sec.

notty

Mangools seem to have a offer on ... perhaps worth a look?

InceptionHosting

There is 1 SEO tool that works beyond any other, and I mean like magnitudes better and that is quality and varied evolving genuine content.

There are some platforms that are more friendly than others.

mfs

AlwaysSkint said: B'stard scanners from hell - blocked using mod_sec.

they always identify themselves correctly and they give you an option to opt out/present you a list of IPs to block, also they won't crawl your server at ludicrous speeds. There's way worse.

AnthonySmith said: quality and varied evolving genuine content
deank said: if a site is good at #2, #1 follows

That's usually true and I'm such old school to believe it to be true, yet (especially for sites not structured as forums, blogs and the like) one has to at least choose their words carefully since there won't be a constant flux of content. Some tools may help in this venture, even if I generally agree that rem tene, verba sequentur
Some tools also let you give a peep at competitors and trends in your area. I've seen objective results for a quite large firm (I don't do SEO myself) which was indeed penalised from a previous management even if they were dropping 800€/mo for a simple "premium" listing via an exclusive yext partner (no ads)+ a simple B2B CRM (a tool that identified businesses looking at their page even if they bounced, so they had a chance to consider to cold-call them). Problem was that nobody curated jack shit about the actual text on their listing, not to mention their social profiles.

havoc said: 99 USD

Some people like to continuously sign up for demos indefinitely in order to get the demo price... You'd be better imho to

• curate your technical SEO (without going too obsessive about it, but you can certainly try to improve it without being stuck in the paradox of focusing on bots and forgetting about humans)
• meet humans in your field (live or over the internet) and exchange ideas
• if you're in an industry that requires some form of communication with customers, don't forget to engage on socials... possibly without showing that your enthusiasm for that social is fake and you'd rather be dead than having to deal with end customers

That's why professional figures like "SEO specialist" or "Social media manager" thrive: it's a time-consuming activity

Some analytics (self-hosted or not, professional or not) may give you some deeper insight; yet too much data you don't have a use for could be a waste of time

havoc

@AnthonySmith said:
There is 1 SEO tool that works beyond any other, and I mean like magnitudes better and that is quality and varied evolving genuine content.

I've tried the monetization first, content 2nd route. Unsurprisingly that went nowhere.

So looking at doing it right this time - content first. But doing it right extends to SEO optimised too. I'd like it if people actually see the content

Plus I opted for something a bit more hardcore than WP - wagtail - so the usual training wheels aren't there. I could use a tool to look at that...but spending 10x as much on the SEO tool vs everything else also doesn't make sense.

havoc

mfs said: Some people like to continuously sign up for demos indefinitely in order to get the demo price.

Might do that once. But repeatedly rolling demo doesn't sit right with me personal ethics wise.

someshzade

There are many group buy tool options available. You can get ahref @ ~10 USD per month I guess....