digital marketing tools

The Marketeers of the Digital Age

Ahrefs: The Marketeers of the Digital Age

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Quite frankly, SEO is simple. But the thing is simple doesn’t always translates into easy. In this context, it just means that black hat methods of the past simply don’t work. The desired ranking is simply a matter of quality writing and engaging content—content that will compel people to share. But the thing is, irrespective of the quality, people can’t share something they don’t know exist.

ahrefs

SEO tools aren’t anything to fawn over. It is simple analytics that helps us understand the digital demographics of our audience and strategically funnel our content in order to get it to our desired target audiences. Simply put, you won’t find a comedy sitcom on a news network simply because of behavioral patterns and expectations.

SEO is simply a way to understand the digital dynamics of human behavioral patterns. We can use it to strategize according to the digital environment. Without these tools, it would be akin to blindly shooting in the dark and hoping for the best, which anything but a good business strategy.

Let’s take a look at Ahrefs, a complete digital analytics tools suite. After looking at all of the features the suite offers, we will also look at one of its competitors in order to get a better idea of the product.

Ahrefs Features

What is Ahrefs you ask? Ahrefs is a digital marketing company and a digital analytics and SEO tools provider. The company dates back to 2011 when it was launched as a site explorer. The launch of the powerful tool stimulated the rather moribund field of backlink analytics and spurred a race for backlink development. Today, Ahrefs’ site explorer tool is considered as one of the best backlink analytics tools on the world wide web.

Despite the company’s humble and recent beginnings, it has grown at a neck break pace and is no longer considered as a mere startup. The company used its initial windfall to heavily invest in digital infrastructure, which is the primary reason for its current dominant standing.

As of 2017, the company’s indexing software updates with the newest backlinks every 15 minutes. What’s more impressive is the crawler, which can process up to six billion pages a day, a feat to be reckoned with.

The following are some of the information Ahrefs’ SEO tools can provide to its data-hungry customers:

  • Keyword Research
  • Position Tracking
  • Backlink Analysis
  • Technical SEO
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Organic Traffic Analysis
  • On-page Optimization
  • Link Building
  • Data-Driven Ideation Process
  • One of the best UX and UI

Some of the other features worth mentioning include an extensive database for backlinks, which can help a fledgling website to build a foundational structure to stand on. Its SEO web crawler is by far the most powerful tool on the internet, which allows us to acquire valuable insights into keyword mentions almost instantaneously.

The company uses all of its data to offer extensive databases for clickstream data, as well as pay-per-click ads. All of this enhances the effectiveness of the social media tools and considerably increases a company’s ability to target its targeted audiences. Moreover, customers can also benefit from a simple domain rank features, which can help assess the quality of its backlinks.

Pros

  • By far the most extensive web crawler on the internet
  • Ability to craft bespoke alert and reports for daily consumption
  • Comprehensive coverage of all of the major social media platforms
  • Offers metrics exclusive to Ahrefs
  • SERP analysis and features
  • Real-time update of vital information

Cons

  • Limits of the basic plan can limit the extent of research that can be conducted
  • Lacks integration with other major analytics tools such as Google Analytics
  • Keyword analysis lacks an automated relevance score and requires manual work
  • Web traffic analysis tools a bit dated compared to competitors

Summary

One of the key features that accurately summarizes Ahrefs is its user interface. Despite the plethora of analytical tools and metrics, the user interface makes the process so simple that you don’t need to be a data scientist to make use of all of the data. It truly embodies the potential of big data for the casual user.

The full SEO Suite is filled with almost every tool you could think of. The suite contains all of the bells and whistles that come with digital data analytics. If you get the complete package, you’d probably not have to worry about getting another software. However, if you do wish to run another analytics software, you’d probably have trouble syncing data from both software.

Comparison

Moz, an SEO consulting agency, is considered as a direct competitor to Ahrefs. Moz is considered as a powerhouse of SEO analytics suite. It is considered as an industry standard bearer. Aside from Google, Moz has been around for longer than any other digital analytics firm. It offers pretty much all of the tools that Ahrefs does. However, it is important to note that its crawler lags Ahrefs in terms of the number of pages crawled per day.

Similar to Ahrefs, its most basic plan offers just the bare bones and is not suitable for extensive research. It does, however, offer much greater ease of use as it internally ranks all of the data it collects, which is a way could be a turnoff for those who prefer raw data for their research.

As far as the user experience is concerned, both companies offer a clean and crisp UI. Ahrefs does stand out a bit in its design. The keyword management and reporting tools will help you get almost any job done, just like Ahrefs. The company recently revamped its site crawler, in order to match Ahrefs’ crawler, but Ahrefs still boasts the most powerful crawler after Google.

Verdict

There is no doubt that Ahrefs and Moz both offer incredible value to digital marketers. Both companies are constantly vying for the top spot and constantly innovating and improving their services in order to offer the greatest possible user experience. The fact is, both of these companies will help you get the job done.

However, if you’re looking to get the most and indulge in some serious digital research, it would be hard to deny that Ahrefs should be your choice. Despite offering similar tools, the company does everything just a tab bit better and is considered as the superior product, at least by our standards.

ahrefs

AWeber Review: Digital Marketing for All Businesses

AWeber Review: Digital Marketing for All Businesses

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Businesses have changed a lot over the past years 30 years. A couple of ads and a smart location would have guaranteed the success of a company, but that’s not the case anymore. Consumers have gotten both smarter and lazier—a side effect of having 24/7 access to information.

Companies, especially small businesses, must adapt to the new age, opting for client-outreach solutions to boost their visibility and sales.

Over the past years, digital marketing has become a must for small and medium businesses. Engaging in virtual dialogue is the way to go, and there are plenty of solutions to achieve this goal.

Email marketing, for example, is a great and less-invasive way of engaging a business’ target audience. Email automation is particularly good at keeping an audience engaged or informed due to its user-trigger system.

Typically, to make things easier for the small business, these marketing solutions include a wide range of features, like easy-to-access tech specialists and a lot of different email customization options. Some also include analytics to ensure that the message is being delivered and well-received by the target audience. 

AWeber Review

AWeber offers digital marketing solutions—with their main service being automated emails. Automated emails are pre-written messages that are sent at a specific time to a client or potential client base.

Such allows small business owners to manage their audience easier. In addition to this, AWeber solutions also include analytics, allowing the users to adjust their message or change their audience in order to achieve optimal results.

Features

  • Solution for automated email series; a great way of sending mass updates regarding a product or service to those who are interested
  • Includes templates that are both desktop and mobile compatible (over 700 templates)
  • Ability to send single emails for sales, deals or newsletters
  • Provides analytics regarding the number of people that have accessed the links, the number of sales generated by the service (if applicable), the number of subscribers and unsubs and how many people have opened the message
  • Has a free unlimited 30-day trial

Pros:

  • Comes with a wide variety of templates
  • Ability to set up and integrate different WordPress elements
  • Great for planning promotions and other events that will undoubtedly increase traffic and business in general

Con:

  • Doesn’t offer much flexibility outside of the automated email services

A Detailed Look

AWeber is an excellent way of setting up different systems that will allow blogs and other types of websites to grow. If users manifest an interest in a product or service that’s being advertised on a webpage, then they might sign up for it.

aweber reviewAfter doing so, they will be part of a list of recipients for the automated email system. The system will then send the messages on the scheduled times, either in one batch or multiple batches.

That is a very good tool for some neat practices that contribute towards growing one’s domain. For example, a blogger can offer his or her readers a free book or series of books. By signing up, the email will either send them a message instantly or on a predetermined date.

For small retailers, this is a great method of sending clients billing and shipping information, especially if they work with their own payment processing service.

AWeber comes with an interesting offer. Along with automated email solutions, they provide a range of utility-oriented services that improve and solidify the quality of their primary service. All of the plans come with the same perks which include:

  • Daily access to customer support
  • An unlimited number of emails
  • Image hosting
  • Access to over 6,000 stock photos
  • Access to over 700 templates
  • Educational materials like videos, blog posts, and guides regarding digital marketing techniques
  • Can integrate with blogs, payment services and more
  • Allows the user to migrate from a different service, importing their old subscriber list

To put it plainly, it’s a very good deal since the plans start relatively low in price. For those who want to avail plans anywhere higher than the maximum, AWeber’s representatives can be contacted to establish a custom, enterprise-level rate.

Comparison

AWeber is truly great, but that is easy to say without taking a look at what the digital marketing solutions market looks. To better paint the picture, so to speak, it’s important to take a look at a similar service.

QuickMail is a similarly-priced email automation service, but there are some key differences between the two.

For starters, QuickMail charges more for the basic subscriber plan offered by AWeber. While price alone shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, QuickMail offers the plan in both basic and “Pro” versions—the basic one being severely limited in features.

It’s becoming clear that AWeber has more consumer-friendly practices in this regard, as they offer the same features across the board for all of its pricing options.

Lastly, QuickMail offers a basic trial version, which is pretty much a watered-down version of their premium service. Interested users can try out the service but won’t get the full extent of the experience without digging into their pockets.

On this level, AWeber pulls ahead once again with their fully-featured, 30-day, unlimited, free trial (16 days more than what QuickMail is offering), which is plenty of time for the user to get accustomed to how the service works and how to maximize results.

Verdict

AWeber reviewSeeing as most of the services out there are driven by increasing their own profits, AWeber seems to be a breath of fresh air or an oasis. The level of transparency that is present in their offers is unparalleled on the market, and their customer support services are stellar. In addition to that, many businesses will make good use of their solutions.

They offer a wide variety of services, including image hosting, stock photos, software and app integration, analytics and more. Further, every service will make the life of the users easier.

That is because most of their needs are covered by a team of professionals that is backed up by a hefty amount of educational and productivity-oriented resources.