cognitiveSEO Review- Is This Search Engine Optimization Toolkit Right For You?

Greenlane Marketing wanted to do something for themselves that they do for their clients—get their pages higher in search engine rankings. They were sitting around the fifth spot on Google when they identified an opportunity.

They had tons of great content, but it wasn’t living up to its potential. So, they decided to use cognitiveSEO’s Content Assistant Tool. After running their old posts through it and making the suggested changes, they published the new copy to their site.

In 24 hours, they went from #5 down to #2. That was three years ago. Search “Multiple H1 Tags” on Google today and here’s what you’ll see:

It’s hard to argue with effective and long-term results like that—especially in the ever-fluctuating world of digital marketing.

And here’s the thing, that wasn’t even the main cognitiveSEO feature. That’s one of several things the impressive software can do. While you might not get results quite as fast as Greenlane Marketing, there’s a lot this software can do for you.

In this review of cognitiveSEO, we’ll dive into what you need to know about cognitiveSEO. We’ll explore its main uses, pricing, pros and cons, and much more to help you figure out if it’s the right SEO solution for you.

What Is cognitiveSEO?

cognitiveSEO is a search engine optimization toolkit. The company has been around since 2012 and has thousands of agency, marketer, and brand partnerships around the world.

The SEO software is actually a suite of tools. The main focus is on improving backlink quality and link creation, but it also includes content and site audit analysis, keyword tracking, rank tracking, and team collaboration tools.

It’s definitely targeted towards SEO and marketing professionals. While newbies can pick it up eventually, there is definitely a learning curve. This, along with the steep $129.99/month starting monthly price (or $89/month paid annually), may make it not the best fit for them.

Overall, if you’re looking for one robust SEO solution that can do just about everything you need in the world of search engine marketing, cognitiveSEO is good, though not exactly affordable, option.

cognitiveSEO Features

• SEO
• Content Assistant
• Site audit
• Link analysis
• Rank tracker
• White label
• API
• Reports
• Competitor analysis
• Collaboration

Getting Started With cognitiveSEO

cognitiveSEO offers a free 7-day trial. To take advantage of it, you’ll have to provide your credit card details. They say this is to prevent fraud to ensure the quality of the product. Canceling is easy enough, however, if you decide that it’s not the right fit for you.

Once you sign up and create a password, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. There are not many onboarding tools, but you can check out the video tour in the menu if you need a little assistance. Then you’re ready to start your first campaign.

This is where you can customize goals, set tools, and cognitiveSEO to start working for you. The software will crawl your entire site, so it may take a little bit depending on how many pages you have. This is a good time to get familiar with some of the other cognitiveSEO tools like the keyword explorer, and then you come back to your results later.

Overall, it’s easy to get a project up and running, especially if you have had experience with other SEO tools in the past.

cognitiveSEO Pricing

This is where you’ll hear the biggest complaints about cognitiveSEO. It isn’t cheap. The Starter plan is $129/month or $89 paid annually. With it, you get:

• 3 Campaigns
• 2 Users
• On-page audit for up to 50,000 pages
• 200,000 inbound link analysis
• 1,500 keyword rank tracking
• Social visibility
• 5 alerts
• Reports
• Competitive Analysis

Aside from the Starter plan, cognitiveSEO also offers a custom enterprise plan with a range of additional features and assigned account manager. You’ll have to contact them directly for pricing.

What You’ll Do With cognitiveSEO: Main Features

cognitiveSEO revolves around four main features that you’ll definitely use often. Here’s what they are:

1. Site Audit

Above all, cognitiveSEO provides comprehensive site audits. It crawls your sites for errors and provides actionable insights for you to use to make improvements. The types of issues it identifies includes:

• Duplicate content
• Poor page loading time
• Broken links
• Organizational issue
• Alt. Text errors
• Malware threats
• Sitemap malfunctions
• Incorrect canonical tags

At the same time, cognitiveSEO also will correlate your site’s performance with Google’s most recent algorithm updates to see how these are affecting your page ranking.

And here’s the icing on the cake. Unlike many other SEO tools, cognitiveSEO’s site audit also features keyword analysis. It will let you know which keywords you need to use for your site to rank more highly. This is one of those features that justify cognitiveSEO’s high price tag.

2. Backlink Analysis with Site Explorer

We all know how important backlinks are to ranking. CognitiveSEO backlink analysis tool shows you where you’re earning backlinks. From here, you can double down to get even better-quality links. This is what you can do with the Site Explorer tool.

You can also use it to run an analysis on competitor sites to see where they are getting backlinks from to find opportunities for yourself.

In addition, it spots unnatural links that may put your ranking in jeopardy and has a one-click disavowal so you can tell Google your site wants nothing to do with link spam.

Finally, you can get all the important updates about your links sent to you in a weekly email, so you’ll always be on top of things.

3. Rank Tracking

Rank Tracker shows how well you’re performing on both desktop and mobile. It tracks all your keywords as well as in different locations to help local SEO campaigns. Not only that, it suggests keywords based on your site content to help you find opportunities you may not have capitalized on before.

4. Content Optimizer

Content is king, and yet so many SEO tools don’t include much to help you make more out of your onsite content. cognitiveSEO features a helpful WYSIWYG content editor that will provide all the SEO insights you need as your draft.

This is what Greenlane used to enhance its content and climb the rankings. Combined with the keyword research tool, it’s the perfect way to get your content to where it needs to be.

5. Signals

Signals isn’t something you’ll use every day, but it’s another one of those useful perks of cognitiveSEO. We all know how Google algorithms can rock the world of SEO. Signals monitors over 170,000 keywords for fluctuations to let you know if something significant is coming up that you need to be aware of so you can respond accordingly.

They’ll even notify you when something major is happening so you can prepare your site accordingly, making it super helpful for marketers with a bunch of clients.

Who Is cognitiveSEO Best For?

cognitiveSEO is a highly versatile and comprehensive tool that can save SEO strategists and webmasters huge amounts of time. The number of optimization options it offers is truly endless. That’s why despite the higher price tag, it has such a loyal following.

There’s a lot to love about it. More than anything, all the data is presented visually and is really easy to digest. And it gives you everything you need to do better web marketing all in one place, including an awesome content tool that suggests the best way to create content for your site to perform well.

Unfortunately, it is a little expensive for freelancers and small businesses. Likewise, if you do much or your digital marketing via social, you also won’t be able to justify the high price tag.

Is cognitiveSEO Worth It?

Maybe. $130/month is steep. Even if you can use it to drive more site conversions and traffic you’ll have to do a lot for this tool to be worth it—and that’s doubly true if you don’t have dedicated SEO specialists on staff to tell you what all the information cognitiveSEO presents to you actually means.

To put cognitiveSEO’s price in perspective, it’s $30/month more expensive than SEMrush, which is one of the top SEO solutions out there. And it’s over $100/month pricier than one of our most consistent recommendations, SE Ranking.

Yes, it may do a lot. But all the other SEO tools out there share all these features. And they’re just as easy if not easier to use.

If you have the budget for it and want to drive more conversion out of your web platform, it’s a good option. You can Invest in a month or two and see if you can get it to work for you. But many marketers will find equal use out of a more affordable option. Because don’t forget, you’ll still need an email marketing and social media solution too.

Pros

• Complete SEO tools
• Awesome content optimization tool
• Great UI
• Penalty Recovery
• Checks against spammy links
• Can detect negative SEO attacks
• Excellent competitive analysis
• Offers one-on-one training for enterprise plans

Cons

• Pricy
• Will be a learning curve for newer marketers
• Load times can be lengthy especially when first starting campaign

cognitiveSEO Alternatives

We’ve reviewed several other SEO tools in the past, such as SE Ranking, Surfer SEO, RavenTools, WooRank, and others.

If you’re looking for an option with very similar functionality to cognitiveSEO, including a content editor at a lower price tag than Raven Tools might be right for you.

What Is Raven Tools?

Raven Tools is a suite of tools that include:

• Site Auditor
• Competitor Research
• Backlinks Explorer
• Keyword Research
• Search Analytics
• Google Analytics
• Rank Tracker
• Semantic Analyze

It does everything cognitiveSEO does, except for Google algorithm updates, and has a fantastic content editor. It’s easy to use, and here’s the best part—pricing is from $39/month, which is really bargain in comparison.

If you don’t need a content editor, then check out SE Ranking.

What Is SE Ranking?

SE Ranking does just about everything. You can track keywords, perform site audits, backlink monitor, and much more. And it’s much easier for newbies to get started using.

If you want all the SEO tools you need and are looking for a great monthly price (starting at $18.60/month), then this is the solution for you.

Do note that all three of these apps offer free trials, so give them a try to find the best solution for your needs and budget.

cognitiveSEO: The Verdict

cognitiveSEO is an excellent SEO solution. It has everything you need to get your platform where it needs to be. But it’s not the complete digital marketing package that you’d expect to pay for that high of a monthly price. It offers a lot, but you’ll have to decide if the cost of admission is worth it or if you might better off with one cognitiveSEO’s rivals.