SEO
Best New SEO Software I Use

I love tools and I have a pretty solid collection of tolls I am using daily. In this article I share my most recent SEO software that I really love.
[Disclaimer: I may be paid a commission if you buy the premium subscription after clicking some links below. Or I may be not]
All-in-One Marketing Dashboard Tools
There are a few comprehensive SEO suites that report on anything under the sun, from on-page issues to rankings and backlinks. Surprisingly, none of them is enough for me, so I use these four depending on the tasks I am dealing with:
Ahrefs | Semrush | Serpstat | Spyfu | |
Features | Ranking analysis, keyword research, on-page audit, position monitoring, SERP analysis, competitive analysis, backlink research | |||
Price | $99 | $99.95 | $19 | $39 |
They all have free trials, so you can totally check each of them before you decide which one you like best.
Here are my favorite features inside each platform (and actually why I have to use all of them):
Ahrefs: Advanced Keyword Research and Analysis
Ahrefs most powerful feature is their Keyword Explorer. Not only will it extend your keyword and calculate keyword difficulty (i.e. how high the organic competition is), it will also suggest related keywords. This helps a ton in finding alternative, less competitive keywords to focus on:

Advanced Keyword Research and Analysis
Semrush: Multi-Feature Position Tracking
Semrush is my very first SEO dashboard I’ve ever used. They have a ton of historical data and their tools are simply awesome. My favorite one is their ranking position tracker. I love the fact that you can track positions inside “Featured Snippets” and “People Also Ask” sections:

Multi-Feature Position Tracking
Serpstat: Keyword Clustering
Serpstat‘s Clustering feature is one of its kind. It helps you organize your keyword lists by relevancy, make sense of thousands of queries, understand your niche better and optimize for several keywords at a time. It’s a must-use feature for every topic research because it shows you how you can optimize one page for several queries.

Keyword Clustering
Spyfu: Indepth Position History
Spyfu is one of the oldest all-in-one marketing dashboards out there. Initially focusing on PPC tracking, the tool has successfully expanded into organic SEO. My by far favorite feature there is their organic history feature visualizing which pages were ranking for a give query throughout the years:

Indepth Position History
Web Analytics Tools
Finteza
Finteza is a great – and more importantly independent – web analytics suit that is both affordable and feature-rich. You can use Finteza to monitor your traffic channels, traffic quality and conversions. The tool also comes with a powerful feature set allowing you to create your own, again, independent, on-site advertising program as well as set up re-marketing campaigns.

Finteza analytics allows to slice and dice your data to research every demographic
Marketing Productivity and Collaboration Tools
I’ve tried hundreds tools to get organized and I’ve worked with many of them on a continuous basis, including Zoho, Trello, etc. Here I am featuring my currently favorite productivity and collaboration tool but I may expand the article with more options going forward.
Renderforest
Renderforest is a multi-feature content creation and branding tool that can help you create diverse content assets including videos, animations and branded mockups. Its online video creation platform is an exciting one because it can help anyone create professional videos without spending extra budgets on third-party creators or expensive software. You can create explainer videos, whiteboard videos, cartoon animations, and so much more.
Zenkit
Zenkit is the to-do list and mindmap builder with cool collaboration features. Zenkit is your marketing productivity Swiss knife: You can use it to organize just about anything, from content marketing editorials to a project timeline. Zenkit offers several ways to organize your lists, including lists (checkboxes), tables (my favorite one because I love tables!), calendars, and Trello-style Kanban view:

Marketing Productivity and Collaboration Tools
You can switch between layouts with one click of a mouse, copy-paste your to-do lists from excel or doc files, share your lists with your team, etc.
Social Media Promotion Tools
Social media strategy is an integral part of any digital marketing campaign.
The only tool I am currently using for social media promotion is Viral Content Bee, and yes it’s my own tool and the fact that I can totally recommend it as a secret social media marketing weapon makes me incredibly proud.

Viral Content Bee for Social Media Promotion
For every project I am promoting through Viral Content Bee, I make sure to:
- Retweet every VCB-driven tweet (to push it into my Twitter stream)
- Like as many VCB-driven updates on Linkedin, Pinterest and Tumblr
This way Viral Content Bee builds both my traffic and my social media interactions in a most meaningful way.
Branding Tools
Namify: Find a Cool Brand Name
Starting a new project? Use this cool business name generator to come up with some brandable domain names. Unlike any other name generator out there, this one utilizes Artificial Intelligence to find domain names which create cool niche associations. You will be surprised how many cool names are out there for your new site.
The tool takes care of other brand identity aspects on the fly:
- It will check social media sites to find whether your chosen name is still available
- It will create your logo right away
Easy to use and free!
Content Marketing Tools
There are lots of tools I am using for inspiration and topic research, including Google of course. Here are two of those tools I am using on a daily basis:
TextOptimizer: Content Optimization and Research
TextOptimizer is the semantic search tool that extracts related topics and entities from Google’s SERPs and lets you better research and optimize your content. It directs and empowers your writing and helps you structure your content in a most efficient way too. You can check my detailed review of Text Optimizer here.

TextOptimizer: Content Optimization and Research
Buzzsumo: Competition Research, Influencer Marketing, Content Inspiration
Buzzsumo is another tool that can be used in so many ways and improve so many processes.
My favorite features inside Buzzsumo are:
- “Content alerts” sending you emails whenever anyone mentions your keyword (e.g. your brand name in-content)
- Content Analyzer allowing you to see (recently) popular content around any keyword
- Question Analyzer allowing you to see questions around any keywords that are being asked in the discussion boards (including Reddit, Quora and Amazon Q&A)
- Backlink Analyzer allowing you to see people behind backlinks (there’s really no alternative to that!). You can also filter backlinks by date which gives you a solid list of bloggers to reach out to:

Competition Research, Influencer Marketing, Content Inspiration
Link Research Tools
Apart from the all-in-one SEO suites that are described above that include backlink research feature, there’s a free tool that lets you explore your competitor’s (or your own) backlinks: This Free Backlink Checker Tool
It works incredibly smoothly: Simply put your domain or URL and use filters to dig through the referring URLs, anchor texts, link types (follow/nofollow), etc.:
There are several more backlink checking tools that I am going to check but that one is a good place to start.
New Tools I Am Going to Dig in Next:
I don’t have time to play with all the tools I’d like to, but here are a few of those that look really promising:
- Content King: Content tracking and monitoring software that reports pages and consequent rankings impact
- Convert Kit: A cool email marketing and automation software which comes highly recommended
- Mailshake: A great email outreach tool that helps you send nice personalized emails
- Pitchbox: An influencer and outreach platform which you cannot buy unless you do a demo (which is why I haven’t tried it yet)
- Business process management tools for more streamlined operations
And which tools are you planning to try? Give me more ideas!
Please contact me if you think I may be interested in your tool


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SEO
How Data Is Reshaping The SEO & Digital Marketer’s Landscape

There is a new data revolution happening, and it’s sweeping across the industry so quickly that many SEO and digital marketers are struggling to make sense of the insights and intelligence at their disposal.
To utilize this opportunity, marketers need to evolve their mindsets and use technology to analyze multiple data formats and understand the new opportunities it can bring.
SEO marketers of today and digital marketers of tomorrow will need to extract, structure quickly, and manipulate data to drive the most critical business outcomes.
Data has always been mission-critical to digital decision-making.
The Economist, back in 2017, declared it the world’s most valuable resource.
Fast forward to today and the future, and we can see that the exponential growth of data fuelling this revolution is staggering.
According to the IDC, the amount of digital data created over the next five years will be greater than twice the amount of data made since the advent of digital storage.
Think about that for a second!
Flash drives, for example, were introduced in 2000.
This means that in the next five years, marketers will have to analyze and make sense of 2x the data created in the last 22 years!
The Data Revolution Means More Sources & Complexity For SEO
The data revolution has gone on for some time now, and it’s changed our concept of what counts as “data,” rightfully so.
In the past, we thought only numbers mattered.
But, in this new digital world where everything is converted into ones and zeros, data is broader and contains text, audio, and visual information – all bits waiting to be processed!
- Machine-based and human-generated data are growing at a rate of 10x faster than conventional business data.
- Machine-created data is increasing exponentially at a 50x the growth rate. This data revolution is primarily marketing-driven and consumer-oriented who are “always on.”
- In just the last 18 months, the volume of site processing data we have been generating at BrightEdge has increased by 11x!
As a result of these increasingly demanding trends, SEO and digital marketers need to adapt and become more like data analysts and scientists in approaching the extraction of structured data insights and business intelligence – without adding more manual work.
Fortunately, SEO is well-positioned to take advantage of this new data revolution.
- Increasing your keyword universe – More keywords mean more data points to look at with reporting and fuelling insights. While focusing on conversion rate metrics is very important, it wouldn’t be possible without opening the scope of your audience and getting more people in the door. SEO has drifted away from writing for a primary dedicated keyword and is now way more advanced with advancements in search engines like Google’s understanding of intent of searches through RankBrain and BERT.
- Increasing your search footprint – will also help you discover unexplored of informing your future content strategy or ideate new keyword ideas. However, sometimes you might miss the boat, like the transition of Content Management Systems slowly turning into “Experience Platforms” as they offer more functionality to meet the needs of today’s webmaster or marketer.
Read More On SEJ
Data Is The Currency Of An Accelerated SEO & Digital Age
By 2025, Worldwide data will reach 175 zettabytes.
But unfortunately, the human brain can’t process, structure, and analyze all that data.
So technology engines have to help, and digital marketers should be the driver.
There is a massive opportunity for companies that can utilize data to create more engaging experiences.
A recent study showed that 95% of business leaders recognize this as their biggest growth lever over the next three years, which means there’s plenty at stake here!
Robust data analysis ensures decisions are evidence-based and have more accountability.
Drawing on existing and new data sources to fully integrate business acumen and analytical skills into decision making, sourcing, managing, and analyzing large amounts of unstructured data will ensure continued use and success.
SEO began with data and has evolved.
From the introduction of real-time SEO in 2019 and Page Experience Updates in 2021, SEO’s future lies again with data and the creation of intelligent systems. Here marketers can leverage combined data sources that structures data for them.
As a result, they can achieve business objectives and stay ahead during all data and digital transformation stages.
Read More On SEJ
Technology & AI Are Helping SEO Evolve
Advancements in technology and, in particular, AI and Natural Language Processing has meant that SEO and digital marketers can become data analysts without having to become an actual data scientist.
This is key to unlocking structured insights from your company’s big data to make more precise predictions about what is coming next based on existing information.
Digital marketers can evolve, understand key trends, and learn in new areas such as:
- Predictive modeling of future trends and forecasting based on multiple types of data.
- Real-time identification of opportunities and intelligence.
- Digital research at scale with both historical and real-time data.
- Leveraging automated visualizations for various stakeholders.
- Improved data security and compliance.
- Market and business intelligence at a macro level.
- Consumer behavior at the most granular level.
SEO and digital marketers can learn critical skills such as statistics, data analysis, data visualization, and strategy.
AI, NLP, and machine learning are helping them do this without needing expertise in computer programming and software applications.
What digital marketers must do is combine their communication skills and analytics skills with stakeholders who cannot think outside of the advertising box.
Read More On SEJ
Data Analysis & Intelligence As Competitive Advantage
The application of technology will be the driving force behind the next generation of data analysis technology.
Therefore, SEO and digital marketers of today should learn how to better utilize insights from data analysis.
It’s becoming more apparent that the marketing platforms of tomorrow will require the capabilities of data analysis and science infrastructure at their core.
The future of marketing will blend technological know-how, business sense, and an understanding of data analysis.
The next generation of SEO will touch all components of marketing, from video, email, and voice, to digital performance of content.
SEO and data science will converge into one evolved discipline that drives omnichannel acquisition and democratizes data.
Marketers who embrace this new era of SEO will be well-positioned to succeed in the years to come.
Data is reconfirming its role as the new competitive advantage, and as SEO and digital marketers, you must evolve if you want to be part of the future.
More resources:
Featured Image: ra2 studio/Shutterstock
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