Behind every SEO Pro, there are some great digital tools…
Andrew is the Associate Director of SEO at Edit, the agency behind the largest search marketing event in the north of England, SearchLeeds! Specialising in CRM, Media and Technology, Edit is a full-service digital agency with an impressive client and partnership list.
Andrew has been with the Edit team since 2011. He joined as an SEO Analyst and has progressed his career internally, gaining a lot of experience and honing his skills on the journey.
But which digital tools have helped him along the way? Here are his top 10…
- Screaming Frog – Used daily throughout the team. It has been part of my toolset since I started in SEO in 2011 and the features and updates that have been added since then have been excellent. It remains my go to thanks to its features and versatility.
- Google Search Console – yes, even the new version! The best place to get information on how Google is interacting with your site. It is used in audits, reporting and performance audits.
- Screaming Frog Log File Analyser – The second-best place to get information on how Google is interacting with you site (once you have managed to get these from your client’s grasp). A surprising amount of our recent success stories originate from log file analysis.
- SEMRush– I know SEMrush, Searchmetrics and Sistrix have overlap but I think SEMrush nicks top spot just because of its range of features and usability. I use it for a wide range of stuff, from ad-hoc ranking checks on any site, content gap analysis to historic landscape shifts at keyword bucket level.
- SEOMonitor – Who doesn’t love daily ranking updates!?
- Little Warden – Monitors critical items like robots.txt and the cost is tiny. Support from Dom Hodgson is top notch and we have it pinging alerts to an internal Slack Channel so the whole team can see issues at a glance.
- Link Explorer – Probably going get shot down for this one but I think the new index Moz has built is cracking. The size of the database is seemingly larger than the others and I find it easier to find dodgier linking practices with LE than Majestic and Ahrefs. Luckily, we have all three at Edit.
- GT Metrix – A tool that allows configuring variable tests on the same URL and setting up of recurring monitoring has proved invaluable in showing improvements to our clients but also being able to pinpoint to the hour exactly when a release broke something.
- Google Analytics – Obvious choice is obvious! All other analytics platforms are either too lightweight or overly complex and you need to blow budget on lengthy configuration. GA is accessible and has all the data you need to show value, make business cases and report accurately if you set it up right.
- Ayima Redirect Plug In – Can’t beat it for analysing chains at a glance. Plenty of other tools offer the same info but in a much clunkier way.
Big thanks to Andrew for this comprehensive list! This year’s Search Leeds conference is being held on June 20th 2019. Use this opportunity to gain more knowledge, network in the industry and make new friends. Find out more and register for the event here.
Keep an eye out for future ‘10 Digital Tools I Couldn’t Live Without’ as we regularly publish new lists from equally inspiring digital marketing experts. If there are any whom you’d particularly like to have a list from, don’t forget to message clockworkTalent your suggestions. In the meantime, are you considering your own career progression? Before you start sending your CV out, did you know we offer a Free CV Critique? Get yourself a confidential 1-to-1 discussion to help make CV improvements by sending your most current version to jobs@clockworkTalent.com.
