John Lincoln

Raven Tools Review – Is It The Best SEO And Marketing Tool?

Looking for an all-in-one solution for your SEO needs? If so, then check out Raven.

According to the website, Raven offers “the best SEO tools and white label marketing reports.”

But does it live up to the hype?

I’ll answer that question by covering its features and going over its pros and cons.

Complete Raven Tools Review

Site Auditor

As is the case with many of the other comprehensive SEO tools, Raven includes a site auditor. What does it do? It evaluates your website based on 17 different metrics, including meta content, image optimization, semantics, page speed, and visibility issues. Then, it produces a report with actionable insights. Use that report to prioritize your SEO fixes and take the necessary steps to improve rank. The report also includes an overall site health score. It’s a number between 0 and 100 with 100 being the best. And here’s a user-friendly feature included in the site audit report: if you see an issue that you don’t want to fix, you can hide it. That can be useful if certain SEO challenges are tolerable for the moment. If you don’t know how to fix some of the highlighted problems, you can share the report with qualified professionals. Then, they can take action. Raven also gives you the ability to automate your audits. Run them weekly or monthly and check the results at your convenience. Additionally, the site auditor will monitor results and let you know if it finds a new problem. Raven allows you to run the site audit tool from any device: a desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, or phablet.
Raven Tools Review: site audit. Image courtesy of Raven Tools
Raven Tools Review: site audit. Image courtesy of Raven Tools

Raven Tools Review: Rank Tracker

No SEO solution would be complete without a rank tracker. Fortunately, Raven includes one in its tool suite. Use the rank tracker to check your search rank for keywords on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. Keep in mind: some tools won’t let you check on a daily basis. You’ll have to settle for whenever the tool updates its index. Raven’s tool allows you to track rank based on location, search engine, and device. Raven also prices its service based on the number of keywords you want to track. Extra keywords cost only $.003 each. That’s certainly affordable.

Backlink Analysis

Another common offering among SEO solutions is a backlink analysis tool. Raven has one of those as well. It’s worth noting, though, that Raven’s backlink analysis service isn’t home-grown. The tool relies on Majestic to deliver backlink info. That means if you already have Majestic, you really don’t need Raven for backlink analysis. The tool allows you to uncover backlinks for up to 50,000 URLs. You’ll see info about each link such as its type, anchor text, and Trust Flow. You can also use the backlink tool to identify spammy links that might hurt your rank. One of the more valuable benefits of the backlink analysis tool is its ability to show you where your competitors are getting their links. If you see that a competitor is ranking better than you for a certain keyword, you can run a backlink analysis check on the page that’s beating yours in the SERPs. You might uncover some backlink opportunities. You can run a backlink analysis on whole domains or single web pages.
Raven Tools Review: Backlink analysis. Image courtesy of Raven Tools
Raven Tools Review: Backlink analysis. Image courtesy of Raven Tools

Raven Tools Review: Keyword Research

Raven also includes a keyword research tool in its virtual toolbox. To give you complete info about keywords, it draws from a variety of sources, including Google, Bing, Majestic, Moz, and Open Calais. For each keyword, Raven shows you search volume and ad data. That gives you the info you need whether you’re trying to rank for that search term organically or you’d like to use it in an ad. The tool will also show you similar search phrases for a keyword you enter. Harvest that data for content marketing opportunities with keywords that your competitors aren’t using. You don’t have to evaluate keywords one at a time, though. Raven lets you upload a CSV-delimited document of keywords. Then, you can use the tool to organize those keywords based on filters or tags. Raven has no limit on the number of keywords you can upload.
Raven Tools Review: keyword research. Image courtesy of Raven Tools
Raven Tools Review: keyword research. Image courtesy of Raven Tools

Competitor Research

I’ve already mentioned that you can use the backlink analysis tool to spy on your competitors. But you can use Raven to get more than just backlink info about your competitors. The tool allows you to evaluate competing websites based on quality, keywords, social media metrics, overall design, citation flow, trust flow, page speed, and more. Raven will also show you a side-by-side analysis so you can see how your site stacks up against the competition. Use that info to find the competitors that might be the easiest to “take out” and identify the ones that might be more challenging.

Raven Tools Review: PPC Info

Raven can help you with PPC marketing by showing you info about online ads. The tool pulls its PPC data from three different sources: Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Bing Ads. What kind of info will you see? Important metrics such as:
  • CPM
  • CTR
  • View impressions
  • Conversions
  • Clicks
  • Conversion rate
  • Total conversion value
  • Cost per conversion
In addition to showing you metrics, Raven will also show you the ad as it appears to users. That way, you can see what potential customers are seeing. The tool also enables you to compare PPC data with charts and graphs.

Social Media Management

Although there are plenty of comprehensive SEO tools on the market, not many of them offer social media management. Raven is the exception to that rule. Use Raven to manage your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn accounts in one place. As is the case with other social media management tools, Raven enables you to schedule posts. That’s helpful so you don’t flood your followers’ feeds with one post after another. Raven also tracks important metrics for each of your social media channels.
Raven Tools Review: social media manager. Image courtesy of Raven Tools
Raven Tools Review: social media manager. Image courtesy of Raven Tools

Email Marketing

Yes, you can also manage your email marketing from Raven. That’s significant. For each campaign, the tool will show you your open rate, click rate, and number of unsubscribes. Once again, Raven lets you view everything in one place with a chart.

Raven Tools Review: Integrations

Raven integrates with the following tools:
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console
  • Majestic
  • Moz
Raven already pays for Moz and Majestic integrations, though. All you need to do is reap the benefits of gaining access to their data at a reduced price.

Pricing

Raven offers various levels of service at different price points. The cheapest is the Small Business plan. That costs $39 per month or $468 annually if prepaid. For that, you get three campaigns, one user, and 7,500 position checks. The most expensive plan is the Lead plan. It costs $399 per month or $4,788 annually if prepaid. For that, you get 320 campaigns, 40 users, and 30,000 position checks. There are three other levels of service between those two: Start ($79 per month), Grow ($139 per month), and Thrive ($249 per month). If you want Enterprise pricing, you’ll have to contact Raven for a quote.

Raven Tools Review: Pros & Cons

Raven has plenty of users and they’ve got a few things to say about the platform. First, let’s look at the positive things that people are saying about the tool:
  • Pulls in key data points with ease
  • Easy to set up
  • Enables scheduling of reports
  • Helpful integrations with popular tools
  • Reporting is easy to customize
  • Affordable
  • Support folks are professional and courteous
Next, here are some of the areas where people think Raven needs improvement:
  • Limited ability to customize reports
  • Training videos need an update
  • Interface is clunky at times
  • Sometimes difficult to work around bugs
  • Visuals not always “pretty”

Raven Tools Review: Final Verdict 

If you’re looking for an all-in-one SEO tool that won’t break the bank, you should absolutely add Raven to your short list. Remember, though, Raven also offers a few goodies such as social media management and email marketing analytics. You won’t often find those tools in competing services. As is the case with many similar solutions, though, Raven lets you try before you buy. You should definitely take advantage of that just to make sure it’s what you want.

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About the Author

John Lincoln is CEO of Ignite Visibility, one of the top digital marketing agencies in the nation. Ignite Visibility is a 6x  Inc. 5,000 company. Ignite Visibility offers a unique digital marketing program tied directly to ROI with a focus on using SEO, social media, paid media, CRO, email and PR to achieve results. Outside of Ignite Visibility, Lincoln is a frequent speaker and author of the books Advolution, Digital Influencer and The Forecaster Method. Lincoln is consistently named one of the top digital marketers in the industry and was the recipient of the coveted Search Engine Land “Search Marketer of The Year” award. Lincoln has taught digital marketing and Web Analytics at the University of California San Diego since 2010, has been named as one of San Diego’s most admired CEO’s and a top business leader under 40. Lincoln has also made “SEO: The Movie” and “Social Media Marketing: The Movie.” His business mission is to help others through digital marketing.

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