Ranksense Review - Point & Click SEO Software
October 1, 2008 - Written by Gyutae Park
If you own a website or Internet business, you know how important SEO can be especially if you’re on a tight budget. High rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN can bring in mind-boggling traffic to your site - all of which is extremely targeted. With that kind of benefit, it’s really no wonder why SEO is a billion dollar industry despite its often tarnished reputation.
Working as an SEO specialist at a top search marketing agency, I know how complicated SEO campaigns can get especially when working with large Fortune 500 companies. It’s a long process that requires a lot of technical know-how and customization. In the end, nothing can take the place of a well-qualified SEO consultant to improve your search traffic.
However, I recently discovered an SEO software package called Ranksense, created by the popular SEO expert Hamlet Batista, that comes close to automating the process. Ranksense is a “point and click” program that guides you through the best practices of an entire SEO campaign to optimize your pages and improve your search rankings.
The process used by Ranksense is very similar to what I use in optimizing my own sites as well as client sites through my agency. If you’re new to SEO or are unfamiliar with what it takes to achieve high rankings, I highly recommend you try out Ranksense. They have a 30-day free trial, which is just enough time to see if your rankings actually improve. (The 30-day free trial also comes with a 90-day money back guarantee. You do need to enter in your credit card information, but you won’t be charged until the 30 days are up.)
As for the SEO process Ranksense uses, I’ve outlined it below. Now you can easily do what most of the best search marketing professionals do on a daily basis.
Search Engine Friendliness
Discover Rankings
Ranksense uses your site’s log files to determine which keywords you’re ranking for in the search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Search Engine Coverage
Which of your site’s pages are actually being crawled and indexed by the search engines? Which pages are being ignored? This tool shows you.
Detect Problem Pages
This tool is a good companion to Search Engine Coverage. You’re able to see why your pages are being ignored by investigating the roadblocks to crawling caused by server errors, redirects, and faulty links.
Market Research
Search Engine Selection
Which search engines do you want to target? Google has close to 70% market share followed by Yahoo and MSN. You can use Ranksense to pretty much target any search engine you want.
Keyword Selection
Keywords form the foundation of every SEO campaign. It’s important to get your keywords right from the start and Ranksense helps you to do that with a unique keyword selection tool that takes into consideration search frequency and relevancy. You can then map those keywords to specific pages on your site.
Competitive Intelligence
Who are your main competitors? What will it take to overtake them? SEO is relative to the competitive landscape so it’s important to assess what else is out there. Ranksense uses the top rankings for your basket of keywords to find the SEO competitors in your niche.
On Page Optimization
On-page Analysis
This SEO analysis tool shows you how well your targeted keywords are being used on both your own site and competitors’. This analysis is based on keyword frequency, prominence, weight, proximity, and uniqueness.
On-page Optimization
In this component, you can actually edit your site following the on-page SEO recommendations made by Ranksense. You can even publish your changes to the web once you’re done.
Sitemap Builder
A sitemap is an XML file that tells the search engines about the pages on your site and how frequently they should be crawled and indexed. Creating an optimal sitemap is a great way to ensure that search engines are able to find all of your content. Ranksense builds your sitemap for you.
Off Page Optimization
Link Structure Analysis
Links are a huge part of the algorithms search engines use to rank pages. Because of this, it’s important to closely monitor inbound links and to accumulate as many as possible. Ranksense allows you to peek into your competitors’ link structure and gain an advantage.
Link Text Analysis
Link anchor text is the text that is displayed within a link and is important in relaying context to search engines. A link that uses your targeted keywords to point to your site is better than one that does not.
Overall, Ranksense is an extremely valuable tool that can definitely get you on the right track for your SEO efforts. Nothing can compare to custom SEO expertise, but Ranksense is a great option if you’re not an SEO professional and want to try it out for yourself. The 12 integrated tools simplifies the SEO process and easily enables you to optimize your pages for higher search rankings and traffic.
Try out the Ranksense 30-day free trial. As for prices, they range anywhere between $25-150 depending on which package you choose.
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Looks like a cool software
Let me try the free trial version of it..
Yeah it is pretty cool, especially if you’re not really familiar of what goes into an SEO campaign. Try it out, you might find it useful in gaining search rankings for your sites.
Interestingly you missed out the prices. I investigated and it does seem reasonably priced. Although I failed to see much that this package does which isn’t available for free online. It’s just this is a more combined package of tools which maybe worth $25 a month just for the convince.
Whoops, sorry about that. I think it ranges anywhere between $25-150 a month depending on the features and resources that you need. I would say that that is reasonably priced based on potential ROI you can get from increased search rankings and traffic.
You’re right, there probably are free tools out there that do similar things to Ranksense. However, Ranksense ties everything together extremely well and delivers a package that makes it easy for anyone to engage in and more importantly learn about a professional SEO campaign.
I suppose you can never go wrong with a free trial, might investigate to see if it can help at work.
Hey Danny, yeah try it out. I think it’s a 30-day free trial - although you do need to enter in your credit card info from the start. I think it has potential especially for non-SEO’s.
Gyutae,
Thanks for the review
Clog - The biggest benefit of the software is not the individual tools, but the significant time you save by having all the tools closely integrated.
There are some features you won’t find in other free or paid tools like our passive rank checker that does not need to constantly pool the search engines to determine your rankings, and has the ability to tell you which keywords are the best converting ones and which ones send the most traffic.
All the tools share information automatically, requiring very minimal input from you.
And Gyutae forgot to mention that we include advanced SEO analytics, more than 80 professional reports you can use to track your progress. We also have integrated support for most blogging platforms like wordpress, livejournal, typepad, etc.
PS: The 90 days are a money back guarantee. We do offer the first 30 days absolutely free but you need to provide a credit card. If want to try the software for review purposes, I can give you access to a “press” copy.
No problem Hamlet. I like what you’re building over there. I especially like the passive rank checker you mentioned as well as the flow of the interface. Nice job!
How much is it after the 90 days are up? It looks like its got some pretty handy tools… I might have to give this one a try.
I believe it’s actually a 30-day free trial and then as low as $25 per month with a 90 day money back guarantee. Give it a try. If you don’t like it, you can always cancel before your free trial is up and not pay a cent.
Hi,
Great review on a great product. We have just done a major PR release regarding Superb Internet partnering with Ranksense offering their SEO software to our hosting customers in order to help them to succeed online.
See:
As a hosting company, we release that just having great hosting is not enough to ensure our clients stay - that their success online is paramount to them staying. To this end we wanted to give our clients regardless of their online marketing smarts, some tools that would benefit them. I myself use it and find it very helpful and I have been doing SEO as long as anyone.
The price is very inexpensive and the time and effort it saves is incredible. Thank you RankSense. Glad to see you are getting the recognition.
Curtis
Hey Curtis,
That’s very cool what you’re doing. Hosting companies partnering with software packages like Ranksense is good for the SEO industry in my opinion. Could help both of your businesses as well. I’d be interested in learning more about the results.
90 day risk free trial sounds appealing. Looks like some good tools as well.
Yep, my recommendation would be to at least try it out. Could pay off big in your SEO efforts.
It’s actually a 30 day free trial and a 90 day money back guarantee. I don’t think I made that clear in my review.
Has anyone tried this yet? I actually just read a few other positive reviews on some other sites, so I think I’ll give it a go.
Give it a go and let us know what you think!
This looks like a great tool and the 90 day trial seems really good, has anyone tried this yet?
Looks like a great tool! I will sign up for the trial. Thanks for the link and info.
That is just outstanding… Thanks.
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