SEO Suite 8 review: What does it do?

According to the Apex website, SEO Suite 8 is a ‘comprehensive’ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) programme doing a variety of SEO functions.

Some of the functionality of SEO suite 8 is new to me and quite useful (such as the external link checker) however much of it can be found in numerous free tools on the web.

The cost of SEO Suite 8 ranges from £75 to £300 pounds for a number of different versions. I tested the trial version (which is free) for about 20 minutes and there is also more functionality over and above the core functionality I will look at below.

On the sites I carry out SEO on there are already initiatives in place that cover a lot of the functions of this software – such as directory submitting from an online list monitored via an excel spreadsheet, a linking policy done in much the same way, a manual check of internal website structure, tags and links plus reporting done through a separate analytics programme.

As a result I won’t be buying SEO suite 8 but it’s not as bad as my cynical mind expected it to be.

Following is a break down of all the functions and overview of what they do.

SEO suite 8 is split into 4 tools:

1. Site Optimizer
2. Site Submission
3. Links Building
4. Reporting

Site optimizer consists of:

• Keyword builder
• Input in a keyword and it will give you more related keywords. Same thing as Google Keyword Tool or Quintura does.
• Plus a ‘keyword library’ – which is where the list is stored, much like copy/pasting into Excel.
• Site optimizer
• Based on the keywords you input on the previous page this will scan your webpage(s) and tell you the keyword density
• Page creator
• I didn't use this but apparently it creates a page containing all the keywords. You could just do this yourself.
• Meta Tag Editor
• Hook SEO suite up to your website, enter in the meta tags you want and it will change them all. Again you could just do this without SEO suite.
• Competitor Analysis
• Do the same for you competitors and compare where you lie, what keywords they use etc.

Site submission revolves around submitting to search engines

• This has a list of search engines. Essentially it’s a browser that will take you to each of these search engines where you go through the normal submission process.
• Of course if you get people linking to your sites you may well get indexed without resorting to this. (click image below to enlarge)

Links building does what it says on the tin.

• Backward Link checker
• Find sites that link to yours. Do this in Google by entering "link:www.yoursitename.com" into the search box. Update: This is actually inaccurate, read how to get backlinks here.
• Competitor Link checker
• Find sites that link to your competitors. Do this in Google by entering "link:www.yourcompetitorssitename.com" into the search box. Update: This is actually inaccurate, read how to get backlinks here.
  
• Internal link analysis
• In their words "this will analyse your internal linking structure to make sure that it complies with search engine standards. This will help to increase your link reputation." - I couldn't figure out exactly what this did, think it shows amount / proportion of links.
• This seems a bizarre and slightly pointless way of checking site structure - card sorting and user testing (video on user testing) are probably more useful – however i could be wrong.
• External link analysis
• Checks your external links – this will check all the links to your site and look at the keywords contained within those links. One of the few functions of SEO suite I really liked. (click image below to enlarge)

• Link directory creator
• Submit to directories – as useful or not as directory submitter.
• Reciprocal link creator
• "It will send "personalized" reciprocal link invitations to all potential link partners" – much like sending a "personalized" email to a list of websites.
• Article submitter
• I wasn't actually aware of this technology – it will submit articles to popular ezine websites. I've never seen an ezine website but imagine this submitter tool to be along the same lines as the link directory creator.
• Link partner checker
• Become an SEO Clouseau with your link partners. Once you've entered in your link ‘partners’ (the sites you've asked to link to you) this will check their site to see the link actually exists.
• Link validator
• I couldn't get this to work but if it checks internal links then it may well be useful. This would mean alerting you to links on your site (both internal and external) that return dead pages, 404s etc.
• This is something that Google Webmaster tools also does, just not very well.

Reporting

• Web Ranking
• Set up regular reports to monitor your 'ranking' on search engines.
• I've always been a bit dubious of the word 'ranking'. Surely what’s more important are whether people are clicking through, not leaving your site, visiting other pages within it, buying products, reading articles etc. See my post on measuring SEO effectiveness.
• Page Rank
• Gives you Google page rank for all your URLs.
• Link popularity
• I got bored by this point but the promo is just as informative as this post on the matter telling me that "[checking your link popularity] can be done easily with the SEO Suite" no less than twice in a three sentence paragraph.
• Index checker
• What pages are indexed on which search engines, not just Google.
• Ranking on each engine, not just Google.
• Submission report
• Remember that submission you did earlier? Well here's where you find out if it worked.
• Site statistics
• Didn't get into this but quite a stats package with everything from hits to unique visitors. Much like Google Analytics, webtrends etc.