Choosing an International SEO Tool

As an LSP, chances are you’re going to need an SEO tool to help you provide international SEO services to your clients. But, which tool do you go for? With so many tools on the market, it’s often hard to know which is right for your business. So, to help you make a more informed decision, we’ve put together some advice to help you choose the right international SEO tool for you.

Important questions to ask before you start

As with language services, every LSP has their own unique SEO offering. Before you even start looking for an SEO tool, it’s vital that you conduct a needs analysis. To do that, there are a number of questions you should be asking internally, ensuring that you’re including every single role that handles SEO.

Who are your main stakeholders?

In order to ensure that your SEO tool is the right fit for everyone, identify the key stakeholders who will be using it. This could be salespeople, PMs, account managers, linguists, etc. depending on the structure of your company. 

What tasks are we currently doing?

Once you’ve identified all of your stakeholders, make sure you ask them what SEO services/tasks they’re currently working on and what they’ll need in an SEO tool. If you have an SEO expert in-house, this is where their expertise will be invaluable as they’ll know what sort of features SEO tools have and what you as a company will need. You can also ask your vendors, too, if you’re sharing access with them.

What services do we want to be providing in the future?

As the LSP world is facing a shift away from traditional translation services, demand for global content and international SEO is going to continue to rise exponentially. As changing tools is no easy feat, it’s important that you future-proof your new SEO and ensure that it can handle everything on your five-year roadmap. 
 

There’s a lot of investment and training costs that come with a new tool, which is why it’s not a good idea to change every few years. Also, certain SEO tools charge extra for some of their features which gets very pricey. This is why we always recommend getting a tool that comes with access to the whole platform so that pricing is transparent and you’re not left with any nasty surprises.

What languages and countries will we be targeting?

This is actually one of the most important points you need to be considering. Not all SEO tools can handle every market, and quality often varies by language, too. You also need to remember that not all countries use Google as their primary search engine, so you need a tool that is able to handle the likes of Baidu and Naver, etc.
 

Some tools say they target China, but only support Google, which isn’t very useful. Some have rank tracking for Baidu but no research features. Again - this is where you can get advice from your vendors as they’ll know which tools have good databases for their markets and which features they need.

How many clients will we be servicing?

The way SEO tool pricing normally works is that each subscription comes with a set number of campaigns you can track. To put this simply, if your subscription comes with 10 campaigns (sometimes known as projects), that means you can track the rankings (and use other features) on 10 different websites. If you only have a couple of clients you’re tracking monthly, that keeps things easy as most tools come with a minimum number of campaigns. However, if you are servicing large numbers of clients and tracking large amounts of keywords, you need to find a tool that’s affordable and offers easy upgrade options so that you can handle projects that come in on the fly.

How many seats will we need?

Unfortunately, not all SEO tools come with multiple user logins, which has led to many companies having to resort to password sharing. This is not ideal because you risk being logged out and losing all of your progress half-way through a task, or worse, locked out of your account completely. This is why it’s vital that when you’re choosing a tool, you need to work out how many people will need a login - making sure that you also include seats for linguists too! You should also check the price for additional seats because sometimes they’re a pricey add on.

What’s our marketing department using?

A good question to ask is what tool your marketing department is using. There’s no point in paying for multiple tool subscriptions when you can join forces, controlling user access levels so that vendors can’t see your internal data. It’s surprising how many companies we see who have multiple tool subscriptions which leads to extremely large costs - money which could be better spent invested into your business.

Types of SEO tools for LSPs

Now that you have your needs analysis done, you can start looking at what type of SEO tool you need. Just to make things complicated, there are lots of different types of SEO tools to choose from, with multiple players specialising in different areas. However, to keep things simple, we’re just going to focus on what you likely need as an LSP.

Google tools are the bare minimum when it comes to SEO. If you’re selling SEO services, you should already be proficient on Google Search Console, Google Ads, and Google Analytics. However, to manage SEO properly, you need to go a step further and invest in a dedicated SEO tool.

All-in-one SEO platforms

All-in-one SEO platforms like Dragon Metrics cover pretty much every aspect of SEO. Using what we do as an example, you can see that users are able to handle multiple areas of SEO within the Dragon Metrics platform:

• Keyword research
• Competitor analysis
• Rank tracking
• Technical SEO
• Linking
• On-page Optimization
• Content creation
• Reporting
• Google Analytics & Google Search Console integrations 
• API for big data reporting

There are other types of SEO tools out there, such as enterprise SEO tools, or ones that solely focus on a particular task like rank tracking. However, due to the nature of work that the majority of LSPs handle, an all-in-one tool is likely to be the best fit and will grow with you as your service offering matures.

Technical SEO tools

If you’re handling more complex SEO tasks, you might be helping your clients with in-depth technical SEO fixes that involve tasks like log file analysis. If this is the case, then it’s best to invest in an all-in-one SEO tool and couple that with a dedicated technical SEO tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb.

Enterprise SEO tools

You may be contacted by enterprise tool providers who offer carefully marketed packages designed for large companies. While it may be tempting to take this route, in all honesty, you can do exactly the same with an all-in-one SEO platform (and sometimes even more), while saving up to $10,000 dollars a month on subscription fees.

Not all international SEO tools are created equally

When choosing an all-in-one SEO tool, it’s important to check that it can handle your international needs. Unfortunately, while many SEO tools market themselves as a good global solution, in reality they’re not quite geared up to the complex needs of LSPs. In order to make sure that the tool of your choice is as international as you need, here are some common issues you might come across:

• Not supporting all the languages you need
• Poor databases for certain languages, which impacts your ability to perform keyword research
• Not being able to handle non-Google search engines
• Lacking features for global campaigns

 

 

To give you an idea of the sorts of things to look for, here are some of Dragon Metrics’ dedicated international SEO features which our global corporate clients love:

• Supporting 238 language/country combinations
• Rank tracking across 9 global search engines
• Unparalleled research capabilities for Baidu & Naver
• In-built keyword translations
• Great databases for minority languages
• 13 different hreflang reports
• In-depth global reporting
• Viewing local SERPs within the platform
• Tracking content across different international domains
• ROI forecasting for potential global growth

 

 

A bit of myth busting

To finish off, let’s address the elephant in the room and dispel some common iSEO tool myths as this knowledge will help faint a better picture of the kinds of tools you can be looking at.

The more tools I have the better

A lot of companies believe that the more SEO tools they have, the more impressive it looks. However, in reality, it doesn't really make much of a difference. As long as your tool set is able to meet your needs and enables you to provide a quality service to your clients, that's all you need.

Your tool’s data is different to mine, therefore it must be wrong

Another common myth is that if there’s any variation between data, e.g. search volume, one tool is correct and the other must be wrong. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Every single tool collects data in a different way, so neither is right or wrong, as there’s no one source of truth. The only ones who know exact search volumes are Google and the user themselves, meaning that variation between tools is completely normal, and as long as they’re in the same range, there’s nothing to worry about.

 

 

This leads quite nicely into another point. There’s a lot of people out there that think of an SEO tool as a piece of software that does everything for you, and you must follow every single recommendation. However, rather than relying on what your SEO tool is telling you, you should be using it as a guide and using your own experience and expertise to inform what decisions you make.

My vendor has to use the same tool as me

This is quite a common belief among LSPs - with agencies often thinking that vendors have to use the same SEO tools as you or your client, just like you’d expect with CAT tools. In fact, you should be encouraging just the opposite, because some tools may have better databases for certain languages and search engines, so allowing your vendors to use the tool they recommend actually helps you get better results (as long as it’s a reputable tool).

 

Need a hand with choosing an SEO tool?

We hope that we’ve helped you learn a bit about the world of international SEO tools, and in turn enabled you to make a more informed decision when you’re thinking of making a purchase.

If you’ve been inspired to take a look at a new tool, or you’d just like some friendly advice, the Dragon Metrics team is here to help. We’ve got years of experience running international campaigns and have worked within the language industry before as well.  You can either get in touch with us via LiveChat (link opens in new window) (we promise we’re human there!), or you could book a no obligation demo (link opens in new window) and take a look around.