Raven Tools is a suite of SEO management software that helps you get your SEO work done more efficiently and more effectively. By gathering all of your activities into one place, you’ll be saving time keeping things organized. Also, by tracking what you’re doing you’ll be able to account for what you’ve done, and analyze how it’s going. With a quick glimpse you can see whether or not you should stay on your current path, or try something new. So how well does this work at organizing and measuring your SEO activities?
Overview
The big problem when doing Search Engine Optimization is that there is a big lag between you taking the action, and then seeing the results, if any. This is why it’s one of the hardest things to do as a website owner. There’s definitely no immediate gratification, and sometimes no gratification at all. Summoning the motivation to go out and spread the word on your site can be really difficult. If you had some way to measure how well your actions are having an effect, it would help you stay on task and could actually bring some fun into it.
The Claim
Raven Tools says that with their system in place you will be able to make better decisions about what steps to take with your website. They also say that you’ll be able to free up time by doing things smarter. If you work in a team, you will be able to work better by sharing information with those that need it, and having everyone be on the same page at all times, so there’s no duplication of effort, or no instances of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
They also state that even during your trial they treat you as if you’ve already signed up. This is the way a company should do business, if they want to gain you as a customer. You can sign up with no credit card, set things up and try them out before you have to make a purchase decision. And since they don’t require a phone number either, no harassing sales call. Nice.
The Hype
This is just a tool, so don’t get carried away by the thought that all of your SEO work will be handled by it. As they say, a tool is only as good as its user, and while this does a decent job of putting everything you need into one place, you’ll still have to be the one to make it all worthwhile.
The Cost
It’s $100 a month if you go with the Pro version which gets you 4 users across an unlimited number of domains. If you are running an SEO company, their Agency license gets you as many users as you need and some other upgrades for $250 a month.
The Commitment
This is not really a set and forget kind of tool that will do things on autopilot for you, so you’ll have to commit to doing SEO tasks, or having someone do them for you, but you’ll be able to do them more efficiently than you currently are. Perhaps the biggest feature here is being able to analyze your efforts, so it’s important to take action so you have something to measure and analyze later.
Evaluation
Raven Tools has a nice interface, and can make order out of chaos if you have a ton of different sites to track, with different social media accounts for each one. We signed up for their free trial and were pretty impressed with how easy it was to get started. Even the welcome email was actually helpful, instead of your standard fare. This one gives you video tutorials and downloadable guides on how to get off on the right foot and get the most out of it. If you’re going to try it, you’d better go all out, right?
With SEO moving more and more towards social media signals, you have to not only get involved with it, but track and analyze how well you’re doing. The insight that you can gather by using something like Raven Tools could prove invaluable to the success of your business, and at the very least will stop you from pulling your hair out wondering why your audience isn’t responding to your messages the way you want them to.
Final Raven Tools Review
As a website owner, it’s your job to make sure that your site gets visitors and shows up in the SERPs. Raven Tools can help you organize your strategy, and get all of your ducks in a row so that you don’t seem like you’re running around aimlessly, doing random tasks. By taking a measured, strategic approach to SEO, and by measuring the effectiveness of the actions you’re taking, you will start to get excited about it, instead of dreading your daily dose of drudgery.
Our Recommendation
The 30 day trial is worth it, especially if you’re already running a website and are feeling overwhelmed by all of the SEO tasks you have to complete, and trying to keep track of all of your social networking activity across several platforms. Since you don’t need a credit card, and it takes about 10 seconds to sign up, you can be trying it out for yourself and seeing all that it entails. If you decide to go with it, all of the data used in the trial will remain intact, and you will just be able to use all of its features.
