Welcome to my review of Mangools SEO tools, this is a review I have been wanting to write for a long time as it is one of the most powerful SEO tools I personally use.

When I first started affiliate marketing, like many people, I had no idea what SEO was or how important it is to have access to a decent SEO tool. Since then, I have learnt about the importance of SEO, why its necessary for search engine marketing and the many SEO tools that can help you with this.

I have tried many tools since that time, some were good, others were unnecessary for my situation but what I found with most SEO tools was that they were really expensive, this is a problem for new bloggers and affiliate marketers who might be on a budget and do not have means to huge monthly fees for these tools.

Fortunately, there are affordable SEO tools that will not require you to sign up for a large monthly subscription fee, one of these tools is Mangools and in this review, you will see why it is one of the best SEO tools on the market.

When I first came across Mangools, they had a very good keyword research tool called KWfinder, this is the tool I use most, however, they have since developed three more SEO tools. 

• SerpWatcher – A keyword rank tracking tool that will allow you to see how fast you start to rank for any keywords you want to target.
• SerpChecker – A tool that analyses the search engine results of any keyword query and provides over 45 SEO metrics.
• LinkMiner – This is a backlink analysis tool that can be used to analyse the backlink profile of your competitors. This is the one tool I hardly use.

Mangools Review – KWFinder

The most popular Mangools SEO tool and the first one they developed is the keyword research tool KWFinder.

One of the first things you notice about Mangools SEO tools is that they are all web-based applications. This means there is nothing to download and you can access the apps from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.

It is also the only SEO tool that I find looks great on mobile, other SEO tools have yet to catch up in this regard as many SEO tools are not very mobile-friendly.

I had heard a lot of good things about this tool before I tried it myself and I have to say, out of all the keyword research tools I have tried, KWFinder has the best UI. Its interface is easy to navigate and the data to easy to understand. I have tried some SEO tools that just make everything look so complicated and bombard you with unnecessary data, data that isn’t relevant to what most newbie marketers need.

KWFinder Dashboard

Having said that, there are a lot of features that beginners and even seasoned SEO experts will find useful. However, being a relative newcomer into the SEO scene I will only review the features that benefit me and leave out the more advanced features for another time.

Keyword difficulty data is one of the most important metrics that SEO marketers look at when researching keywords for their projects. Not only does KWFinder calculate keyword difficulty in real time, it also presents the data in a way that is easy to understand. Each keyword is given a score out of 100, the higher the number, the more difficult it will be to rank for that keyword.

They also assign three shades of different colours to each score that makes it even easier to identify the KD difficulty.

Keyword Difficulty Score

As I have tested quite a few keyword tools, I have come to the conclusion that the keyword difficulty score sometimes can be deceiving. Sometimes the difficulty score may look easy, but a quick analysis of the search results page may show that it is full of authority sites or the opposite can be also true.

However, on the whole, the KD score of KWFinder is pretty reliable but it is a good practice just to analyse the SERP yourself and make sure that it isn’t dominated by big brands and authority sites.

Along with KD difficulty score, you also get the following data;

• Trend – Search volume for the last 12 months
• Search – Previous month search volume
• CPC – Average CPC on Google AdWords
• PPC – Competition level on Google AdWords

I hardly take note of the CPC or PPC data as I currently have no use for them, however, if you run AdSense on your site or run Google AdWords campaigns, the CPC data may be useful as it will give you an idea on how much each click on an ad will be worth.

The trends data is really useful as you can gauge the popularity of a keyword over past 12 months and identify if it is a seasonal keyword or one that brings in consistent search volume every month.

Keyword Filter

This is another useful feature in KWFinder, you can choose to either eliminate or include words you want or do not want in the search results. You can also filter keywords with specific search volume, set CPC rate for each keyword and set the results to only show a minimum or a maximum number of words for each keyword phrase.

For example, below I have filtered the results so that it only shows me keywords that match the criteria below.

• Search Volume – 500-15000
• CPC – $0.50 – $10
• No. of Keywords – Between 3 – 6

Filtering options for KWFinder

This is a fantastic feature as you can really narrow down on only keywords that you want to target and not have to waste time by scrolling through and manually eliminating keywords that do not fit your criteria.

Google Autocomplete and Questions

There are a couple of other ways that KWFinder lets you research keywords, one of the is by retrieving Google autocomplete results for your keyword.

This what Google suggests when you start typing your keyword into the search box as shown below.

The other search method is Questions, this feature is like what you would find on sites like Quora and Yahoo Q&A, except the data is pulled from Google’s database.

You just enter your seed keyword and KWFinder will show you all the questions that people are searching for around that keyword. It is a lot similar to sites like Answerthepublic and Soovle.

Both features can provide you with new ideas for your content marketing needs.

Search Engine Results Page Data

One the bottom left of the dashboard, you are provided with a snapshot of the search engine results page of the keyword you are researching along with some search metrics. I really love this feature as you can make a quick analysis of the sites you will be competing against should you decide to try and rank for that keyword.

The search metrics are based upon the data provided by Moz and honestly, some of the data is beyond what I need, however, there are a few that I find really useful and they are the following:

• Links – The number of external links pointing to that page,as links are one of the main ranking factors, its good to have data on your competitors link profile.
• FB Shares – Social signals are another ranking factor and since Facebook is the biggest Social Network, having data on FB shares will be useful.
• LPS – Link Profile Strength, this is calculated from a variety of Moz metrics and gives you an overall idea on how hard it would be to outrank that site. Each site is given a number between 1-100 and assigned a colour that represents its SEO competitiveness. The higher the number, the tougher it will be to outrank that site. The metrics are similar to how each keyword is evaluated KD difficulty.
• Est. Visits – An estimate of how many visits a site will get.

The other metrics are Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), MozRank (MR) and MozTrust (MT), explaining what each metric represents is beyond the scope of this article, if you want more information about these data points, read this article from Moz.

SERPChecker

This app is pretty much an expansion of the search engine results page data found on the KWFinder app dashboard.

If you really want to drill down on competitor analysis and find out how they are ranking for specific terms, this tool will come in handy.

The app provides over 45 SEO data points mostly from Moz and Majestic API, it is an interesting tool, although I have not made much use of it so far.

You can choose what SEO data is processed and analyse how much impact SEO features like featured snippet and knowledge graph have on click-through rate (CTR) and also choose between mobile and desktop results. The last feature will be very important going forward as Google is putting a lot of emphasis on websites that are mobile friendly.

Like KWFinder, the data is easy to read and they have colour coded it much like the data in KWFinder. There is a lot of information to absorb in this app and for newbies, I think the majority of it will not be of much use. However, if you are an experienced SEO marketer and like to dive deep into competitor analysis, this app will be very useful.

SERPWatcher

No SEO tool would be complete without a rank tracker and Mangools is no different. SERPWatcher is a recent addition to Mangools SEO tools suite and although it works, there are still some issues which I will get to later.

Tracking your keywords in the search engines for ranking fluctuations is important because as you get more competent in SEO, you will start to experiment and one way to track if your experiments are working is to analyse your keyword rankings.

Depending on your subscription plan, SERPWatcher will let you track between 200-1500 keywords for an unlimited number of domains. However, personally I have never tracked 200 keywords, at the most, I track around 10, but if you run an SEO agency, you will have to make full use of all available tracking features.

You can track both desktop and mobile search results, as I stated earlier, Google is giving more and more preference to sites optimised for mobile. So it will be good to know how your site ranks on mobile search and take any necessary action if you see lower rankings than the desktop version.

In the SERPWatcher dashboard, you are presented with a set of rank tracking data, these include the following

• Rank – The current rank of your keyword
• Change – Any change in ranking within a set time frame
• Average – The average ranking position within the same time frame
• Best – Best ranking position
• Search – Search volume for your tracked keyword.

For those who have a lot of keywords, there is a filter option that will let you narrow down your keyword list to only the ones you want data for.

One issue I had with SERPWatcher is that when you upload your keywords, it can take a while before the app finds the ranking. All the other rank trackers I have used provide this data instantly. It’s only a small issue but it would nice if the data was processed a bit faster.

You will also notice a piece of data called Dominance Index, this is unique to SERPWatcher and it basically provides you with an estimate of the overall share of organic traffic you will get from your tracked keywords. Dominance Index is calculated from things like search volume, CTR and search engine position.

I personally found no use for this data and it just seems a bit gimmicky but if you want to read more about it, they have a whole article on this feature.

LinkMiner

LinkMiner is their latest SEO tool and it is a backlink analysis tool. There are many reasons why you would want to analyse a competitors backlink profile, one of them is so that you can see what type of backlinks they have and if you can replicate them. Backlinks are still one of Googles top ranking signals and this why people always look to build a strong backlink profile for their site. It is also why there are so many SEO agencies that provide link building services.

Every backlink profile you analyse, you will get the following data:

• Citation Flow – A score between 1-100 is given for the overall strength of the link
• Trust Flow – A score between 1-100 for the trustworthiness of the linking site.
• Referring IP’s – The number of referring IP’s
• Referring Domains – Number of Referring Domains
• Total Backlinks – The total number of backlinks pointing to that URL

You can also find out any new links that have been indexed and any links that have been lost.

All in all, this is a pretty good SEO tool for those who looking for new backlink opportunities.

Mangools Pricing Plans

You can register for a free account and use Mangools SEO tools without a paid subscription. However, it is limited to 5 daily searches per 24 hours and you will only be shown a small portion of the results.

To make full use of this brilliant SEO tool, its best to subscribe to one of the 3 pricing plans.

Compared to many other SEO tools, Mangools seems like a bargain, if you are just starting out a new blogger/affiliate marketer, I recommend you choose the Basic annual plan. It works out $25.90 pm, saving you $40% on what you would pay for a monthly subscription plan.

For a full list of the features you get with each plan,click here.

Final Thoughts

Mangools have developed a set of SEO tools that are brilliant for both newbies and the more experienced SEO marketers. The apps are brilliantly programmed and provide data in a very accessible way. There are also some quality guides for all four SEO tools and a constantly updated blog plus their customer service is superb

Out of all the Mangools SEO tools, KWFinder is definitely the tool I use the most and the tool that comes with the most features. It is one of the best keyword tools I have used and in my opinion totally worth the annual subscription plan. If you are looking for a complete SEO tools package at a reasonable price,you should strongly consider Mangools SEO tools.

Have you tried Mangools? Do you agree with my review? Leave your comments below.