When it comes to free SEO tools, nothing beats what the Google search console offers. However, there are only limited things you could do with the Google search console, and you have to be a partial nerd to make sense out of it.
Well, if you have been wondering if there is an app that could make Google search console data more meaningful, then you are in luck today. A while back I have bumped into this not-so-popular yet original tool called SEOTesting, which a lot of you would love to learn about and use for optimising your website.
The first time I bumped into SEOTesting (earlier it used to be called Sanitycheck) was when I was researching about Keyword cannibalization. However, recently the site has gone under a major rebranding, and a lot of user-friendly features have been added.
In this guide, we will look at how to use SEOTesting tool, and how to use the data provided by this tool to drive more traffic and improve website conversions.
The best thing about SEOTesting tool is, it can be used by content creators, e-commerce website owners or even a service website owner. As long as you are using Google search console (Highly recommended step for SEO), you can use SEOTesting webapp.
Also: Check out ClusterAI – Automated Keyword research process
SEOTesting tagline is “Do more with Google Search Console data”, and this is exactly what it does. Once you add your website to SEOTesting and connect it with your Google search console account, it fetches the data to give you a lot of actionable tasks to improve your search engine position, and also helps you to increase the CTR.
Here is a screenshot of SEOTesting dashboard where you could clearly see the kind of data you would get after connecting with GSC:
Those who are in the field of SEO can easily see how valuable this data is, and how quickly it can help you grow your website traffic.
According to their “Producthunt” listing, SEOtesting can:
“Easily track the changes you make to your website, to see if they have an effect on Google rankings and clicks.Get actionable data from Search Console to build out the content on your site, improve CTRs, solve thin content & keyword cannibalization issues.“
We will dwell deep into all the benefits and features in the upcoming section of this review, but for now let me answer the most burning question.
And that is; what about the security of my data?
Well, according to the founder Nick Swan, they don’t share data with any 3rd party, and your data remains with you.
Now, if that is no more your apprehension, I would recommend signing up for their 14 days free trial (Unlimited website), and start using the tool.
Follow the steps to learn how to add your website.
How to Start Using SEOTesting:
- Once you have added your website, the next step is to give access to your Google search console account. This is how the tool would fetch the data, and suggest you changes to improve your search ranking and CTR.
If you have multiple websites under your Google search console account, then it would ask you to select the website from which you want to fetch the data.
Click on Add site and it would instantly fetch the data to start showing you variois reports.
Now, lets move to the part where we will learn how to use the data from SEOtesting to make meaningful changes to the website.
Benefits of using SEOTesting:
Check when your website was impacted by Search algorithm update:
This is the first thing you could do with SEOTesting, where you could see if your site is impacted by any of the last few search engine algorithm update. To use this feature, simply toggle on the “Algo updates” button.
As you can see from the screen above, my site was impacted with May 2020 update, and there was no sign of recovery after December 20 update. Sigh, A lot of work needs to be done, but more on that later…
Now, there are a lot of features that you can use by clicking on the left panel, but for the simplicity of this SEOTesting review, let’s focus on the “Reports” section, where you can find a lot of actionable data.
Winners and loser:
This report is straight forward which shows you improvements and drops in the number of clicks and impression generated by individual search queries and by your individual web pages over the last 7 days.
Find Click Through Rate Opportunities:
This report alone is worth paying for this tool, as it helps you to identify the pages with low CTR, and the data would help you to improve the CTR. For example “Top Queries Missing from Page Titles and Meta Desc’s” report will find pages that do not have their top query (based on impressions) in the title or meta description.
You can often improve click through rates by making sure a page’s top query is in the title and meta description.
Also see: 6 Proven Steps to Boost Your Organic CTR in Google
Here is a video that shows how to use this feature:
Another good thing about SEOtesting tool is the help guides. There are help guides and tutorials that would help you learn about every single feature, and implement it for your website. This not only help you to improve your SEO skills, it improves the ROI. After all, learning a new tool is an investment.
Content Ideas:
Next in the section is content ideas, which is a combination of more than 6 tools, and each one of them is worth using.
My favourite in this is “Question to Answer” where I can find direct questions which users are querying to find my pages.
I can further use FAQ schema to add those questions to my pages and thus improve the impression and CTR.
If you are unaware of how to use FAQ schema, you should watch this video:
This feature is available on all the popular SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, RankMath and others.
“Find low quality content” is another great reporting tool that will help you to find pages that are not getting any search engine traffic. You can then prune, merge, or no index such pages to improve the overall SEO score of your website. Read about “Low quality content” to understand different action points that you could take.
And then there is a feature to find “Keyword cannibalization” which helps you to identify pages on your website which are competing for same keyword. I have talked about this in-depth over here.
Well, this is just the glimpse of the “Reports” feature of SEOtesting tool, and there are many more features and benefits that you would like to explore. And, I believe 14 days is a significant time for you and your team to explore all the features before you decide to become a paying customer.
For example, SEOtesting also offers “Rank tracking” feature where it let you track the ranking data, and shows you the average of your page ranking. This is where I also realized it would be nice if they offer feature to check data based on the specific country.
Here is what Nick suggested to do:
So if I have to check the data for ShoutMeLoud and only for USA, I need to add it as a new site, and select USA in the option, while adding the site.
Another main feature of SEOtesting is to track site SEO changes, and here is a 10 minute video by the founder “Nick Swan” where he has given a detailed overview of this feature:
Pricing of SEOTesting:
Pricing is usually a deal maker or a breaker for any SEO tool, and with only $19/month, SEOtesting is complete value for any profitable blog or a website. The best part, you are not bound to stay in recurring billing for ever, as you can pay monthly and cancel your subscription anytime.
More over, 14 days free trial is good enough for you to try this tool before committing for a paid plan.
Conclusion: SEOTesting Review
I take pride in discovering great tools which enhances our digital marketing journey. After using SEOtesting tool for a while, I could highly recommend this tool to my readers. The tool puts your Google search console data on steroids, and if budget is not an issue, this tool would definitely help you to amp up your website SEO.
Now, it is your turn to let me know your feedback and review of SEOTesting tool. What do you like about it, and what more features you would want to see next in the future updates?
While you are at it, here are a few more SEO tools that you should check out:
Keep reading the article at ShoutMeLoud. The article was originally written by Harsh Agrawal on 2021-03-03 10:22:25.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.