Being a SEO developer is not cheap
I frankly hate January. It’s not because of the new year, but because is one of the months with the harshest effect on my wallet. Why? Well… taxes, imposits, hostings, domain registrations, etc, all have to be paid now. And, if you happen to be involved in the SEO business, perhaps you should have some additional $3000 just for this little thing.
How come? Well, you’ll see. These $3000 dollars are going to be spent just for the basic program licenses and memberships every SEO developer must have. Now let’s see how are these money going to be spent.
This is a program good at one thing and only one: check rankings and return results. No page critics, no forums or blog links, only ranking. Has lots of complex functions but strikes the user with it’s simplicity, being one of the best SEO applications a beginner can use.
Like other programs, this one has a huge list of engines in which to search data, but unlike other programs, this one has a filter. If you want to check your Google rank simply type Google in the filters box. If you want to see the UK engines, type UK. And so on. Your projects’ progress in time and various graphs and statistics can be saved and looked upon with just a couple of clicks.
Advances Web Ranking Enterprise Edition usually costs around $399, but as i checked the site today, you can get a $100 discount if you buy it til the end of January. Payments can be made via Paypal (my favourite) or VISA/MasterCard card
I’ve been using WEB CEO for more than 5 years and i must say this one is the program i like the best. perhaps because it has became so familiar to me. Anyway, WEB CEO is a software package of around the main tools that help you promote, analyze and understand the traffic of your sites. Some of the best features include:
- Keyword research tool: up to 1000 keyword phrases (with daily search count) per search query
- Search engine optimization tool: analyzes your web page and compares important ranking elements with top 10 ranked pages in major search engines, to find out how to improve your rankings.
- Check your rankings: a huge time saver for search engine specialists and Website owners who need relevant data.
- Link checker: quickly and easily check who’s linking to you, who’s linked to your competitors, and much more.
- Always know the status of your site: real time monitoring of your sites (and you can be emailed or telephoned when something goes wrong).
All these can be yours for $389, payable via Visa card. You do get a 30 days money back guaranteed option in case you don;t like the program and its features, but i doubt that could happen.
If you’re into SEO and not using keyword research tools like this one and Nichebot… well, perhaps you shouldn’t have been here 
Wordtracker was the first and still is the best keyword research tool available. It offers a massive 300 million keywords database from which you can find out what your target audience are entering into search engines and how many times each keyword has been entered.
There’s a Free Trial version of Wordtracker that can be used to see just how useful this program is. But the vast number of limitations will make you press that buy button pretty soon. Cause you’ll get :
- When you type in your main keyword phrase, the paid version brings back 300 words in the left hand column - all related to your main phrase and each one can be clicked on to bring up a list of up to 500 related words in the right hand column.
- Keyword basket can hold 5000 keyword phrases compared to only 30 in the trial.
- Paid version can give you common misspellings of words. This is superb for PPC campaigns where you want cheap clicks.
- Paid version allows you to search for competition in all major search engines, the trial version only works on Altavista
- Paid version allows you to set up multiple projects that you can work on at the same time.
Should we say more? This are surelly the best spent $329 you’ll get rid off this year.
Nichebot is a cheaper keyword analysis tool that brings together some (but not all) of the data offered by Wordtracker and coraborate it with data from Overture and Google. NicheBOT allows users the ability to create an account to save their keyword searches (called Keyword Basket). This could be handy but it lacks a lot of functionality that would make it a true asset. So all in all, NicheBot can be a pretty good tool if you’d like another keywordd research tool besides Wordtracker.
Seomoz Premium Membership - $399
I’m sure most of you read the top quality materials posted by Rand and Vanessa on Seomoz. You ned an ordinary account for that, but they also offer some premium content and tools for $399 each year. You get access to unique industry guides, tools, tips, tricks, answers, videos and exclusive events. These features and tools make it easier to understand the inner workings of web sites, search engines and other forms of Online marketing that Webmasters constantly use within their business advertising and branding strategies.
If you’re not sure what this SEO Book, perhaps you should take a look at this review. For those of you who know, Aaroon Wall’s book takes you in a journey through SEO and SEM strategies, being a perfect guide for newbies but a good reading material for experimented developers too.
Here are some of the most important chapters on the book:
- A brief history of Search Engine Optimization and the Web.
- How to choose a domain name that can help you rank high for your selected keywords.
- How to design your site from a search engine perspective.
- How to optimize the individual pages of your site.
- Why is the anchor text on incoming links important.
- How good usability can help your site.
- How pay per click works.
Also, as a great plus, SEO Book comes with free updates for life. And since search engine optimization is such a dynamic field, where the rules change every day, it is reassuring to be able to buy an informational product that will always be kept current by one of the most renown experts on the field.
SEO Book also comes with a personalized free 15 minute consultation with Aaron.
I’m sure most of you won’t agree with me here, as $1000 an year spent for a Black hat Forum membership might seem like fool spent money. But, you should take into consideration sometimes Black is the new White, and great results (from the financial point fo view) can be obtained through those methods known only be very few people. And since most good Black Hat communities work behind closed doors, you’ll find some great knowledge in here. I so agree though $1000 is a little expensive so buy this only if you want to use what you’ll learn here.
That being said, you see we’re getting pretty close to the $3000 margin. And we only have a bunch of programs and memeberships. But all of them are a must have for a good SEO developper. Don;t you think so?
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