The Best SEO Website Analyzer Tools | EP 679

The Best SEO Website Analyzer Tools

1. Ahrefs 03:10
2. SEMRush  04:20
3. Ubersuggest 06:25

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of wp the podcast i’m David Blackmon

00:29 Tim Strifler: And I’m Tim Strifler.

00:31  David Blackmon: Today in episode 679 we’re going to talk about the best SEO website analyzer tools. Tim and i have three of them, and before we dive into the three, we might want to talk a little bit about what is a website analyzer tool. I’ll let Tim answer that in a second and then we’re going to kind of talk about possibly when you might need to use one. Because you may not need to use it in your small business in your town, but so Tim why don’t you go what’s a website and azure tool.

01:15 Tim Strifler:  So i guess before we can answer that, we need to talk a little bit about how search engines work, because no one really knows how google’s algorithm works for ranking websites. Butt there’s common knowledge around best practices a lot that google has released, and talked about things . You should do and so website analyze SEO website analyzer tools will basically analyze and see if you’re doing those proper things right. So if your your header tags and stuff like that are set up correctly, and going after the right keywords stuff like that, and then they’ll also look at do be able to do competitive analysis to see. Okay well your competitors are ranking for this and this and this stuff they’re using complex algorithms to basically predict what how google sees you, and how you would rank and and do rank and stuff like.

02:16 David Blackmon: That based on common knowledge, that we do know portion c so search engines won’t disclose what percentage of their algorithm is weighted to a certain thing. However backlinks we know and google has said is an important thing now what how much weight that carries within.  Their algorithm is speculative that’s what nobody knows so i think i think Tim is right, and we that we know we know a lot of the things that the search engines look for. We just don’t know what the weight is on each one of those things because if we did obviously we could you know… everybody would have the perfect website and we’d all be number one I guess. Yeah yeah so exactly so what are some of our favorite tools Tim we’ve got three..

03:10 Tim Strifler: So Ahrefs which is a play on the html link a h r e f s hrefs is a tool that both David and i use that we we find to be the best, and it allows you to look at your competitors to see where they’re getting backlinks from, what their top pages are, stuff like that. And as well as uh analyze your your site and give you feedback on uh different things that you’re doing right or wrong. That sort of thing and so Ahrefs is great it’s expensive, i think i’m on like the 100 bucks a month plan, um which is not terrible but it is pricey. And so there’s times where i question whether i should continue because i might not use it for a couple months that sort of thing exactly, but yeah Ahrefs is awesome, they’re constantly adding new functionality and features and stuff like that so they’re they’re continuously innovating which is really impressive.

04:02 David Blackmon: And Ahrefs is a tool that we also use in Aspen Grove Studios and Divi Space as well. It is a great tool and it is the one that i’m the most familiar with. The other two that we’ve got are similar and they do a lot of the same things and and they’re equally as good you know. There’s you know people will be like a toss-up especially this. Next one which is SEM Rush you know Ahrefs and SEM Rush are two tools that do pretty much the same exact thing, and they’re for their paid services that you need to pay for and let’s you know, Tim’s right they’re not cheap you know. The cheapest Ahrefs is a hundred dollars a month i don’t even know what the cheapest Sem Rush is, but i would imagine they’re probably comparable and stuff. But i guess the benefits of these tools is for us as a business owner when you’re trying to when you sell digital products like Tim and I do,  and ranking and wanting as much organic search traffic as you can get to your site having some insight as to how the search engines view you is very valuable because you can take these tools and not only analyze your own site, but like Tim said it allows you to see your competitors and stuff. I can take a look at Tim’s site and say oh he’s ranking higher for me why is that and i can analyze his pages to see exactly what is he doing differently than I’m doing. Because obviously he’s got something just a little bit better than me, because he’s ranking higher than i am for this specific term that i want to rank for. That’s what i love about it i love the ability to go and spy on my competition without them even knowing it, and then optimizing my content on my website to try to you know rank higher than my competition. Which i think is is everybody’s goal and that’s where the true value in my opinion is. With these tools is more of the competitive edge and i’m not sure that a lot of people use it in that way they’re they’re more interested in analyzing their own website as opposed to analyzing their competition’s website so we got one more on our list. Tim which one is it?

06:25  Tim Strifler: Yeah Ubersuggest. Now Ubersuggest used to be a free SEO tool,  uh it didn’t get a lot of attention. And so it was actually acquired by Neil Patel. Neil Patel has been kind of one of the long-standing SEO gurus, and so he bought it and his goal was to invest a lot of money into it, and make it a um as good as the paid tools, like Ahrefs and Scm Rush. But continue to make it free. And um and then he was pretty open about the fact that he was using that as as lead generation for his agency . And so create a really cool software tool that other companies are charging for make it free. And it’s lead generation so that was that was his model. Right well he later revealed that the amount of of server resources that it was using up was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, and so it ended up not being feasible. And i was just looking at his pricing page, and so yeah. So then what he did was he added some paid plans with more features and and now it looks like there’s no more free plan, and so it’s only the paid plan and i don’t think he meant to do like a rug pull or anything like that. I don’t think that was ever part of his intention i don’t know him personally so i can’t say it it sounds like though it was just a lot more expensive to maintain than he thought to have this free plug-in. And let’s face it, he’s really good at promoting, so he of course made it super popular really fast and then it just wasn’t feasible uh long term. So now it looks like it’s only paid just like the other ones. However i think it’s cheaper than the other tools so you can get a 29 a month plan which is cheaper than the other ones so..

08:15 David Blackmon:  Yeah i’m looking at it too now i’m like Tim why in the hell aren’t we using this?

08:23  Tim Strifler: Yeah i haven’t looked at it in a long time. I remember testing it out when they had a free version and it just it wasn’t as like didn’t feel as robust and powerful as Ahrefs. Part of that might have been just because i’ve always been used to Ahrefs but um…

08:37 David Blackmon: Wow you know Ubersuggests looking at their private their pricing page and stuff. They have a lifetime option. Most of them are monthly and annually and he has a monthly and lifetime which i understand why he does that Tim. Probably does too and it’s probably a topic that we will talk about here this year on WP The Podcast. And why you know why people are going lifetime versus you know annual stuff because of the lifetime value of a customer and stuff.. Um all right Tim great episode we got another one tomorrow,  i have no idea what it is because i don’t have my spreadsheet open so you’re going to have to come tune in and and fake you know if hear it when we hear it, i don’t know if that made sense i do like being live though on video because people can see us like stumble and do whatever so..

09:40  Tim Strifler:  Oh yeah yeah we don’t we don’t we don’t do cuts right. And if we like royally screw up we might re restart the episode, but we never do like “hey cut that out” you know. And then have our editor cut it out like we just roll with it,  like this is raw or real. That’s right and that’s and that rarely happens where we have to re-record usually we’re just like that kind of sucked but oh well you know that’s this is who we are that’s right.

10:03 David Blackmon: All right. Well Tim, until tomorrow we’ll see you then

10:10  Tim Strifler: Take care bye-bye