Blogging Tips

SheerSEO contacted me recently about trying out their online SEO software. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the site as their logo looks identical to Awebers, but I downloaded the 90 day trial anyway and was impressed with the stats it brings up so I thought I would share it with you all.

SheerSEO offers 4 monthly packages, which cost $7, $10, $15 and $40 respectively. The more expensive packages allow you to track more URLs and keywords. Though their 90 day trial allows you to try out their software for free to see if it’s worth signing up.

Let’s look at the sign up process

Signing Up

The sign up process is quick and easy. First thing you need to do is enter your name and email, your domain url and where you want results to be localised to. Then just choose a username and password.

Next you need to enter the search terms you want to monitor. They suggest search terms for you to track but I found these to be very inaccurate, bringing up irrelevant search terms such as 2007, 2008 and 2009. So it’s best to just enter some keywords relevant to your blog.

With the trial package you can choose up to 40 keywords.

Next you enter the URLs of the pages you want to track. Obviously the first one you want to track is your home page but it’s worth adding main sections of your blog and popular posts you have written.

With the trial package you can track up to 40 URLs.

SheerSeo

SheerSeo provide information in 9 different areas. The data from each section can be downloaded in Excel format.

Rankings

The Rankings shows you where your pages are listed on your chosen terms on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The results are saved so that you can see how your standings change in time. This section is a quick way of seeing how your blog is ranking for your main keywords.

Main Referrers

The main referrers section is one of my favourites. It displays a large list of links which are linking to your blog. For each link it shows you

• The source URL (i.e. who is linking to you)
• The PageRank of the page linking to you
• The link text they used to link to you
• The target URL (i.e. the page on your blog they linked to)
• Whether the link used a nofollow tag or not
• The PR Boost. This shows links which didn’t use a nofollow tag. It is calculated by 10^PR/(number of outgoing links).

I found this section incredibly useful, particularly for the PR Boost figure as this shows you exactly where your PR juice is coming from. It also highlights who is attaching nofollow links when linking to you. Very handy indeed!

Number of Backlinks

This section simply shows the number of backlinks to your blog. The details are saved so you can see how this figure is changing over time.

Twitter

SheerSEO also shows you who has been tweeting about your blog. There are other scripts which show you this information though it’s a welcome feature nevertheless.

Social

This section shows you how many of your blog posts are listed in social media sites. It only listed Digg and Delicious for me but I’m not 100% sure if it lists bookmarks on other social bookmarking sites (perhaps it does and BloggingTips just isn’t linked there).

Keyword Density

The keyword density highlights the most common words and phrases which are used on your blog. I’m sure some of the results your blog brings up will surprise you!

It shows you occurrences of single keyword, two word phrases and 3 word phrases. It should add some weight to your SEO research and help you understand why you are ranking for some phrases over others.

Indexed Pages

This section just shows you how many pages you have indexed in Google and Yahoo. I found it strange that they didn’t include Bing in this section as it was included in the rankings section.

Supplemental Index Ratio

The supplemental index ratio shows you how many of your pages are listed in Googles index. Pages listed in this index are less likely to appear in results compared to pages in the main index.

Backlinks Watchdog

The backlinks watchdog lets you keep track of important of incoming links and lets you know if that status of that link changes. Here’s how they explain it:

The “guarded backlinks” is a feature which enables you to guard your site’s valuable backlinks. The chosen guarded links will be monitored daily and if there will be any change in the back link status you’ll be notified.
To add more back links use the “Add new guarded backlink” link, which opens to a web form.

To delete a guarded link press the “remove” button – this will completely erase the guarded link from our records.

Each guarded link has a status icon. A warning status means that there are alerts regarding the link. Alerts are created when there was a downgrade in the link status. You can press the “more info” link to get more information regarding the link and it’s alerts.

This could be used in conjunction with the main referrer stats. All you would have to do is track the links which are passing you the most PR juice.

Pricing

SheerSeo doesn’t give you a lot of stats compared to some other SEO scripts. Many stats like the number of backlinks to your blog can be checked manually, though obviously this gets more time consuming when you are tracking more than one domain, so I can see the need for it. In particular I found the PR Boost information helpful as it’s something I haven’t seen elsewhere before.

I recommend signing up and checking the stats I have spoken of to get a better idea of what SheerSeo offers. If you do find it useful then you may be interested in staying on after your 3 months has run out. If so, there are 4 premium services available to you.

With all premium packages you download your reports via excel and get customer support directly from SheerSEO.

• Light ($7 a month) – 20 keywords, 20 URLs and 5 guarded backlinks.
• Standard ($10 a month) – 200 keywords, 200 URLs and 20 guarded backlinks.
• Advanced ($15 a month) – 400 keywords, 400 URLs and 100 guarded backlinks.
• Professional ($40 a month) – 400 keywords, 400 URLs and 100 guarded backlinks. Also includes extensive competitors analysis.

Overview

I’m not sure if SheerSEO offers value for money. I haven’t signed up to too many online SEO tracking services so I can’t compare it to other pay per month services. Thankfully, I don’t need to, as you can try it out for free for 90 days. If you find it useful during that time then you should consider looking at the premium service.

If you are not keen on signing up and want to see what SheerSEO can do then I recommend checking out their demo page.

Link: SheerSeo