As an independent SEO, it’s important that I continue to be efficient with my time and communicate effectively with my clients. Dare I say that these 2 things are just as important as my SEO experience/ability.

So when I use a tool that helps me on both fronts; well…I gotta share it.

The tool I speak of is the SEO task management¬†application called “My SEO Tool.”

From their site you can read:

My SEO tool was formed in late 2009 by Joe Kindness & Blake Acheson… we sensed a need for a tool that simplified the search engine optimization process.

Touted as a tool that “instructs you on how to optimize your website, one step at a time” I find it to be a lot more than that; offering me a solution to quickly setup ranking reports, and allow easy access to pertinent campaign information at a glance for my clients.

Let’s talk details.

The Overview

Track Rankings

If you’ve used a lot of rank-checking software, you know what a pain it can be to setup schedules, download and edit the reports, put them into an easily read format and then send them off to a client. If you have a handful of clients with just a few keyword, no big deal. Get a bunch of clients with hundreds of keywords, things get tricky.

As soon as you create the campaign you’ll setup your keywords. My SEO Tool will check the rankings and display them in your front page. I hurried 10 search terms to track, and the information was populated (accurately I might add) in about 10 minutes.

Cool tip:

If you click on one of the keywords for which you have rankings, My SEO Tool will show you which of your pages ranks, along with a cool bit of tips on key SEO metrics.

And don’t forget to check/uncheck a few of these boxes to get a glance at a few more details on your report.

Analytics

A few simple steps, and My SEO Tool will interface with your Google Analytics account:

Again, you have quick access to information, and can drill down a bit with some of the options on the right. And again, a pretty cool quick glance part of the software.

Backlinks

Ok, so the first “weak” spot I found. I checked the backlinks on a site with which I am intimately familiar. My SEO Tool only found a portion of the links I know of (and I know to be of high quality). The thing is, it’s hard to get a good amount of link information on a site from an external source (Google doesn’t like to share). And for being just one click to check this stuff (I have tools that require hours of pouring-over to understand the link landscape), this is yet again another great “at a glance” look.

The super cool part though, is that you can monitor the results from your link-building efforts. Add links to your monitor, check a few boxes and bam, My SEO Tool will keep track of that stuff for you. Pretty handy.

Social Monitoring

Continuing with the ease-of-use theme, My SEO Tool has a page for your social information. Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc. are all here; as well as your updates/mentions/likes. You can even post a message straight from your dashboard.

PPC

Ok, so I don’t like messing with PPC stuff (it’s like cheating), but there’s a page for that as well. I’m gonna take a blind bet here and say it’s probably pretty cool. I would love to here if anyone has experience with it though.

SEO Task Management

Another cool feature of My SEO Tools is the task lists that can be created and managed for your clients. Right off the bat you’re given 2 categories of tasks (Directory Listings and Social), which are populated with a few common steps most SEOs would take for a new client. You can add categories and tasks to the system, allowing you easy access to your “initial setup” steps.

The Rundown

Ok, so let’s talk the nitty gritty.

The Good

Right off the bat you can tell that ease-of-use was important to the developers. From the moment you login, you know what you’re looking at, and can easily find what you’re looking for. Pretty cool.

But I like it for a totally different reason.

You see, I’m an SEO. I don’t need easy. I need vast amounts of extremely detailed information. The more, and more detailed the better. But my clients don’t want to see that stuff. They want quick answers to what are usually easy questions.

My SEO Tool is simply the perfect solution for providing your clients with a login to access their SEO reports. The great thing is, you can manage what parts of the white-labeled (your logo, your domain if you desire, etc.) reports they can see. Not doing social media work for the client? Sweet, just uncheck a box and they won’t even know those reports exist.

If you’ve worked in this business for any length of time, you know what a huge savings in time it can be to alleviate calls regarding simple ranking or traffic inquiries.

As a freelance it’s a huge savings; but it will grow exponentially if you run an agency with many clients. Customer service is expensive. And being able to offer a simple way for your clients to check on things is worth quite a bit.

I’m also blown away at the price. I wasn’t expecting a lot considering the amount of money I pay for some other SEO tools; and was pleasantly surprised. Super easy to use, super easy to understand.

The Bad

Again, I stress how cool this app is. But there are a few points you should know.

  1. This isn’t your be-all solution for SEO reporting. Internally I simply need too much data, and need to be able to manage and pair that data up with other sources of data. For example, for a lot of my higher-end clients, I need some pretty extensive link data that My SEO Tool isn’t able to provide.
  2. Speaking of link data, I again refer you to my comment on the links it found. It’s difficult to hold this against them, being that this data is hard to get that info. But it is important to know that.
  3. The task management is pretty cool, but it doesn’t solve your project/time management needs. Because of my client type, internal processes and need to analyze detailed information about the profitability of my projects, I still need to refer to my internal project management system.

It Would Be Cool If…

Given the price point, I’m amazed that this tool is what it is, so at this point im just picking/fantasizing.

Let’s see…

Instead of simply removing access to areas you don’t want your client to see, it would be pretty awesome if you could instead customize a message to the client. For example, if you aren’t providing social media services to a client, you could leave the tab there, and if the client were to click on it they would get a message written by you. Something like:

It looks like you aren’t taking advantage of your social media monitoring services. You can read more about them here (link to your SMM services page).

That would be a pretty sweet upsell feature.

This is Perfect for

If you’re like me, you’re in a weird middle spot that requires a little bit more on the internal/analysis side of things. So for me it’s perfect for solving my need to allow clients to see top-level metrics on their site’s progress.

If you’re a larger agency (like more than 50 clients) then My SEO Tool is going to save you a ton of time answering the inquiries that can simply be accessed by your client. A one-time walkthrough with your client should keep them from sending you emails for this stuff. One login, access to many points of data. Can’t beat that.

If you only work with super small businessses, then this may very well be able to also replace you project management software, as well as most other SEO software you’re likely using.

It’s also perfect for anyone who needs a simple solution at an awesome price. If that sounds cheesey, consider that there isn’t a single affiliate link in this post and they haven’t paid me for this post. It really is that cool.

So that’s it. If you have any experience with My SEO Tool, I would love to hear about it. Let me know what you think.

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