SEMRush just released two new great features, which make it even more valuable: A backlink tool (domain level backlinks) and even better..the Organic Top 200 report, which is a unique feature that no other tool currently offers.

Once more SEMRUSH is leading the pack with innovation and speed:

So we just got the news that SEMRUSH is also getting into the Backlink data game. This comes quite to a surprise since SEMRUSH used to do only a little part of the SEO game, but they do it very very well and their user base of 230.000 users clearly shows that.

Anyways…we look forward to seeing several vendors such as Searchmetrics, Sistrix and others go in the back link data game. It’s going to get crowded, which will be great for all the users, who had to suffer quite a bit after Yahoo pulled the plug:

“We have a brand-new Backlinks feature that’s currently in beta. Quite a lot of people have been looking for a backlinks feature in recent weeks, so we’re quite proud to be rolling one out! Although it’s still in beta testing stages at the moment, once we roll it out – it will be rock solid and dead accurate!”

Overview
The Screamingfrog SEO Spider Tool is an interesting new SEO tool that enables you to check out your website as it would be seen through the eyes of a search engine spider. While this can help you build up your site, is it really worth downloading and using, or is it another useless SEO tool in the sea of so many other similar programs? Read on and find out.

The Good
The Screamingfrog SEO Spider Tool is a free program unless you want to pay for the developer’s license or the extended version. While the free version does have some limitations, it should be strong enough for small to medium websites, and it lets you try out the program for as long as you like before buying it.

Overwhelmingly, most SEO tools only work on Windows, leaving very few tools for Mac users. Screamingfrog breaks this mold by making their SEO Spider Tool available for both Windows and Mac.

When tested, this software is able to find backlinks and sections of a website that are typically very hard to find for other comparable tools, and it does not take too long to load all the elements of a website. Not only that, but the information loaded seemed rather accurate.

After loading all of the elements of a website, you are able to mix and match elements and then export them into an Excel document for further viewing or analyzing. Not only that, but the information this tool can dig up is very exhaustive, so even experienced SEO auditors should be able to make use of this program.

The Bad
While loading speeds are pretty good, large pages do take a long time to load. If you need a fast program, this may not satisfy your needs as you may have to wait an hour for very large websites to properly finish.

The information presented is not very newbie-friendly. Thankfully it comes with a user guide to help teach you how to use the information, but even still people new to SEO may find this program confusing.

Most SEO tools report on backlink numbers, PaegRank and other similar factors. This program shows the amount of backlinks goes to a website, but it does not show you the total number; they are just laid out in a large list. PageRank and other similar factors do not show up, so this tool may not be useful for people outside of auditing a website for search engine crawling issues. Otherwise there is not really anything bad about this free SEO Software.

Review and Rating
This program gets a 4/5, even though most new SEO people will not get much use out of it. Unlike so many other free programs, this one offers very powerful features, and it has both Mac and Windows support, a rarity among SEO programs.

What really pushes the rating up so high is the breadth of information this program can dig up. Very few similar programs can dig up so much accurate information, making this program well suited for SEO auditors and anyone seeking out crawling issues.

While there are a few problems with how the program works, it is still a very good program. Give it a try, just be sure you read the user manual first so you don’t get confused by the presented information.

Skyrocket.com did an interesting  survey about the use of SEO software. Results are not too surpsing and certainly not extremly representative (only 420 people have been surveyed), but the picture would have probably been different if they would have added more SEO Tools to the survey.

Seeing SEOMOZ or Majestic up there is something that makes sense, but how the hell did Screamingfrog get in there :

There are a number of good reasons to use open source software in your personal and professional life, but what about SEO software? Open source software is typically free, safer and more reliable than closed source programs, and more flexible and capable to boot. SEO is one area where people seem to feel that they have to spend a lot of money to get tools that produce results. In reality, just the opposite is true. There are plenty of open source projects geared towards Search Engine Optimization that can be found online that really work. Below you’ll find a brief summary of the best open source SEO programs available at the moment.

SEO Tools by SEO Book
As one of the most well-known and well-respected SEO suites online, the SEO Book Tools is a fantastic resource for marketers and webmasters of all stripes. It includes practically all of the functionality you’d find in every other SEO program, all in one compact package. With a full-featured SEO Toolbar for your Firefox browser, a Keyword Tool, a Rank Checker, and an SEO Site Planner, SEO Tools has it all. Backed by a large online library of resources and educational material, SEO Tools is the best way for beginners to get started with SEO. It’s used by the professionals as well to fine-tune campaigns and maximize returns.

UrlTrends
One of the best intelligence tool sets around, UrlTrends offers a number of features that should be of interest to anyone trying to boost their rankings in the SERPs. My UrlTrends is one of the unique aspects of UrlTrends that sets it apart from other programs. It allows a user to monitor their efforts from a web-based control panel, an RSS reader, or via E-mail. UrlTrends will compile SEO Reports on the fly, giving you vital information and statistics on your SEO campaigns. It also features a Keyword Report, a Competition Report, an HTTP Header Lookup Tool, a Reverse Keyword Lookup Tool, and a Trend Comparison Tool.

Search Engine Optimizers
Despite its bare bones appearance, Search Engine Optimizers is one of the most powerful SEO packages you can get your hands on. The main feature is the Spider Search Engine Optimizer. It’s a capable and powerful tool that features both Windows and Linux command line tools and GUIs for managing every aspect of your SEO campaigns. It generates and optimizes meta tags and links for the best results possible, saving you a lot of time and effort in the long run. It also comes equipped with a Sitemap generator, an RSS editor, and a Spy Link tool for evaluating links for their social connectivity.

SEO Panel
Another superb example of top-notch SEO software that’s also open source is SEO Panel. Released in January of 2010, it can be found on its main website and also hosted on Google Code. SEO Panel is a comprehensive SEO management dashboard that gives webmasters, entrepreneurs, and marketers a simple way to track their sites’ performance and manage content submissions. It comes equipped with an Automated Directory Submission Tool to simplify content management, a Keyword Position Checker to look at rank results, a Search Engine Saturation Checker, a Meta Tag Generator, a Sitemap Generator, and much more. For all your SEO needs, SEO Panel is one of your best bets.

Summary:

As you can plainly see, there’s no shortage of options available on the web for managing your Search Engine Optimization needs with open source software. The beauty of free software is that it gives users a wider variety of choice than proprietary programs do, for a price that anyone can afford. Ultimately, software will only get you so far. They’re just tools, and you need to choose the ones that will work best for your own unique circumstances. Regardless, the above SEO programs are free, they are not an option for scaling your SEO efforts.   Even that we like free sep software a lot, companies such as DIYSEO, IBP or Raven are just a better alternative and on top very affordable.

When it comes to link management….every SEO is going nuts. Some want to manage every single link and automatically fire emails as soon as their spider doesn’t find the link anymore, the other SEO has his own Excel file …and the next SEO just builds more links and doesn’t care at all about links being lost.

CognitiveSEO.com, which launched today is all but that. The tool is a sophisticated link management solution combined with an advanced To-do manager.

Without going in the usual features of link management tools, here are the highlights:

1. Inbound Link timeline

A sophisticated inline history that shows you when and how you gained links. We believe this is one of the most important tools that any SEO needs and currently only Majestic SEO covers that.

2. Footer vs. Content vs. Header Differentiator

Automated differentiator if a link is place in the footer content or header. Something every SEO was dreaming about for a long time

3. Link dashbord overview

Sophisticated separation of diffent link types:

4. Competitive link analyzer

Compare link profile up to 5 domains for any of your domains

Overall result from first review:

CognitiveSEO makes a first great impression. There are many great features in the tool and it’ll be exciting to see what this will turn into. We also liked the fact that it is focused solely on links, which as of today are 80%+ of the ranking game.

What we don’t know about CognitiveSEO is the depths of the link data. Some of the integration looks like it’s done wit Seomoz data, but we are not sure if this is the only provider of back link data.

That all being said…we definitely give CognitiveSEO an A for trying a different approach and not copying the other tools out there. It’s exciting to see a company putting fresh eyes on an old problem.

Still in beta, but already made quite some noise in the industry: Cognitiveseo.com . We’ve been trying to get our hands at a demo account, but everything is still in stealth mode. However, we managed to get some exclusive screenshots: