The SEM Tracking Tool That Got It Right

I have played with a ton of SEM tools to help me track progress for myself and clients projects, and until last week have had to use a combination of 2 or 3 along with some manual tracking to pull the data together.  Well no more!!

First let’s talk about metrics to be tracking:

• Keyword ranking status and how each term has progressed each week or month.
• Competitor keyword ranking status against your own
• Backward linking, how many links you have, if they are still active and new links you have recieved or requested
• The quality score of the sites you have backward links from
• The quality score of your own website
• Your Social Media reach
• If your site is being referred to in forums
• And of course website traffic analytics

That is a lot to keep on top of every week, or even every month, especially if you are an SEM agency with quite a few clients.  I spoke with an agency last week that said they could spend as much as 8 hours per month per client just pulling together stats for reporting.  This tool will automate that! 

The list I put together above is a nice rounded snapshot of the health of a website as well as it’s reach across multiple channels of the Internet.  Your backward linking strategy is not just about scouring the Internet for websites and directories to link back to you, you need to take a more active roll.  And in order to verify if that role is working you have to track it.  There is some manual work even within this tool, but it takes more of the work out of it than any other tool I’ve found to date.

Some may say that tracking your competitors is a waste of time, I can see both sides of the coin.  My view is if there is a drastic change in your competitors rankings, up or down, it is an indicator to you that something is happening either to their business or the landscape of the keyphrase.  If you’re not tracking them to some degree that is valuable information you could overlook.

Tracking Social Media may be the toughest, keeping track of how many retweets you recieve along with comments and follows … that could take a day each month alone.  But it’s an important metric to track if you’re using this tactic in an SEM strategy, without tracking it’s all just guesswork.

Raven SEO Tools has created a tool that combines ALL of the list above in its tracking program, along with access to keyword research (pulling database data from Wordtracker, SEMRush or Google Adwords).  You can also tag keywords for segmentation or grouping.  Say you have keywords for mustang’s and camero’s, you could add tagging to each set of keywords and report on just one segment at a time.  The monthly fees are super affordable for all of the tool access you get, and there is a fantastic 30-day free trial with no credit card required!

After you sign up for the trial be prepared to recieve an e-mail offering a demo, I strongly recommend you take them up on it.  There was no sales hype, only help and guidance.  Great company, EXCELLENT SEO Tool!  If you check it out come back and leave me a comment on your experience, I’d LOVE to hear it!

~ Emily Leach, SEO Analyst

Note: The above post is my true review of this online SEO tool and I use it in my daily work, and as a professional in the Internet Marketing world there is an affiliate code within the link. I was not paid or requested by Raven to review their product.

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Tags: keyword research, ranking tracking tool, raven, raven for seo, search engine markerting tools, seo tool, SEO Tools