Sheer SEO Review
Posted by Ben Sibley on Apr 18, 2012 | 21 commentsSheer SEO is a very useful and easy-to-use tool to monitor and manage your Search Engine Optimization campaigns. The SEO software is especially useful for watching rankings and the impact of your link building, as well as aiding you building links.
Sheer has many different features, I’ll go over a few that I found most helpful and useful:
Rank Tracking
Everyone needs a rank tracker to follow their keywords.
Sheer tracks your keywords and reports on their current ranking and also saves historical data so you can track your progress. In the past I have manually looked up and recorded rankings in a spreadsheet, so I always appreciate tools that have this functionality and automate the process.
Main Referrers
Sheer SEO finds all of your backlinks and ranks the top referrers. I like to sort the results by the “PageRank Boost”metric that Sheer has created to evaluate the helpfulness of a link for ranking. This way I know what kind of links are helping me rank the most.
(EDIT: Woops, I overstated when I said “all” backlinks. Alice called me out for it here and I responded)
Also, these are usually high authority pages and rank for some long-tail keywords. You can follow Ross Hudgens’ strategy for tiered link building and build links to these pages so they rank higher. If you have a prominent link on this page, then helping it rank higher will give you more traffic and make your backlink stronger.
Social Metrics
Social media has become an integral part of SEO – they are intertwined. While some other SEO products have neglected social metrics or been very late to get on-board, Sheer SEO already has social tracking implemented.
Sheer found and displayed Tweets for me that I actually didn’t see in Twitter itself. This data is useful because it gives me a better idea of who is sharing my content so I can build relationships with them which can eventually be leveraged for links.
The number of Facebook shares for each one of your site’s pages is also measured along with the number of Diggs and Delicious bookmarks your content has received.
Link Building
Sheer SEO has a few link building capabilities built in, but my favorite is the directory submitter. It’s extremely fast and easy to use for link building.
I created my profile in about a minute and I was ready to start building links. I’m not exactly sure how many directories Sheer has built in, but it looks to be a few hundred with PR 0-5. All you have to do is choose a directory, fill out the captcha, choose your category, and click submit. I like full-automation, but semi-automated tools like this are awesome because they are so organized, you have full control, and it still only takes about 1 minute per link.
There is a limitation – you can only submit to a certain number of directories per month: from 5-100 depending on the plan you choose.
Reporting
A lot of SEOs have a portfolio of client sites to work with and need reports to send them. Sheer SEO has a report generator that you can use to build and compile reports for a website’s performance and you can even have them automatically emailed to you.
They also allow white-labeling, so you can put your own company’s brand on it and send a crisp and professional performance report.
Is it worth it?
The one thing I didn’t like about the program is that it seemed a bit under-annotated. There were some tools that I would have liked to have more instruction for. Training videos or clearer instructions for a few of the components would be very nice, but for the most part the tools were pretty self-explanatory.
I started using Sheer SEO recently, but I have to say it is quite easy to use and the feature set is very robust. There is a lot of functionality and features that I didn’t cover in my review. You can see a full list of Sheer’s SEO tools here.
I would recommend Sheer especially to bloggers who need to monitor their rankings and improve their sites optimization, and SEO professionals who need to manage and report on a variety of sites.
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I’ve seen the demo video for Sheer SEO, and I must admit it looks pretty good, I think i will probably invest in it at some point soon.
brilliant review of Sheer SEO, never heard of it before but you`ve certainly wet my appetite
This tools seems very interesting, also taking into account that comes at a decent price. If it really does what it says, then I seriously consider giving it a change.
Jack Sander recently posted..How to build a barbeque pit
Sheer Seo software involves many tasks that require tedious and monotonous work. It automates many of the needed tasks, this is perfect for a very busy person.
I must admit it looks pretty good, I think i will probably invest in it at some point soon.
Carmen recently posted..Chamonix Skiing
Sheer SEO is an amazing software it is very helpful in increasing search rankings. every one want to be on first rank , in case sheer SEO is really very helpful.
Asma Khan recently posted..keylogger
Sheer seo software is best for busy persons to do their work in less time. Thanks for sharing this information.
Genelia recently posted..Bio-Pulmolife
Been using this tool for a while, was just trying my hands on the trial version. But I would say the tool could’ve provided some information, suggestions to overcome problems.
Rest the tool works great, have to grab the premium version.
Thanks for your feedback Amit, what sort of information in particular did you find Sheer was missing?
It finds ALL of my backlinks? That’s a serious claim. i’ve been using several different programs to track my backlinks- all of them pretty thorough- and they produce slightly different results, but obviously they still overlap when it comes to the most authoritative links.
How does Sheer Seo compare to, say, Majestic?
Alice recently posted..Edmonton Senior Housing Options – Retirement Communities and Retirement at Home
Alice, I’m guilty of hyperbole – wrote that part too fast
. Let’s get more technical…
Two popular tools I use and recommend for backlink analysis are open site explorer and SEO Spyglass.
SEO Spyglass finds 2,224 backlinks for my site and provides detailed metrics for each link.
Free Vs Paid: The free version lets you see details for 1,000 links, and the paid gives you full access ($100)
OSE finds 1,684 links and provides a separate set of metrics.
Free VS Paid: The free version lets you see all of the backlinks, but only provides metrics for the top 5. The paid version unlocks this and a ton of other tools ($99/month)
Sheer SEO says it finds 6,539 backlinks and allows me to see the top 50 – not sure if this increases with more expensive plans. I’m still utilizing a free trial which will soon become $7/month.
I would use the free versions of all 3 because they DO find different links. If you only want backlink analysis – SEO Spyglass is somewhat affordable and very good. If you want backlink analysis, rank tracking, and a TON of other features then you should choose Sheer or SEOmoz depending on your budget.
Okay, hope that clears things up! Also, I think I should probably make this a full blog post…
Thanks for such a detailed response!
I held a paid subscription for SEO Powersuite, but SEO Spyglass always either crashed or took soooo unbearably long to process any data, that I stopped using it altogether. Still not sure what the problem was there.
I’m a fan of OSE- due to all the provided metrics – but that data is also incomplete. OSE data is great for competitor link analysis as it gives a great overall picture of their link profile, fast, but when using it to track the changes to my own profiles, I found it’s often out of date.
Majestic, of course, brings up a lot of irrelevant junk that I wouldn’t want to sort through
(These are all still good tools though!)
If Sheer SEO really finds that many links and only costs $7/month, then it may be definitely worth looking into.
(I know what you are thinking- why would someone need SO many tools for seeing a link profile. What can I say, I am a data nerd and I really like to have a fullest picture possible, esp. for new clients who’ve been burned before)
And you should definitely do a full blog post on this!
Alice,
You’re welcome and thanks for sharing your experiences with all these tools. I haven’t had too many issues with Spyglass, but it does crash on me sometimes. I guess I’m just putting up with it until I find something better and affordable. I think I speak for us all when I say, I miss you Yahoo Site Explorer :’(
One thing… does it work on mac? I currently use market samurai and am happy with it… just wondering if it compares… and if it works on a mac?
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Jacob,
Yes it works for Mac – it is all online so there is no downloading or local problems. I haven’t used Market Samurai so I can’t say exactly how it compares, but Sheer is free to try so you can check it out easily.
This looks to be a pretty good SEO software. I like the directory submission capability. Is there a way to avoid the captcha with capcha solvers like decaptcher? Also how would you rate it compared to SEO Elite?
Hi Pavel,
I don’t think there is any CAPTCHA solving capability, but you’ll only be doing a handful of submissions per month with Sheer. Also, maybe it’s just me, but I like spending the couple minutes doing it manually and ensuring 100% success rate.