Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important consideration to succeed online. That is why DreamHost offers an SEO toolkit for your website as a paid addon with its hosting plans which you will find on the DreamHost checkout page when signing up with the host.
If you are wondering what DreamHost SEO Toolkit is, then you are at the right place. Here is a detailed review along with the pricing and the free alternatives to the DreamHost SEO addon that will help you determine the need for this add-on for your website.
What is DreamHost SEO Toolkit?
DreamHost SEO Toolkit is an easy-to-use tool to optimize your website for Google and other search engines.
It is a do-it-yourself SEO tool that assigns an SEO score to your website by scanning it and providing step-by-step instructions to improve this score.
DreamHost SEO tool review features
Now that you have an idea about this tool, let us look at the features offered by the DreamHost SEO Toolkit in detail here:
1. Automatic submission
The DreamHost SEO Toolkit automatically submits your website to the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This feature is extremely helpful to new website owners who have no SEO knowledge and yet want their websites to appear in the search results.
2. Comprehensive Website Audit
The DreamHost SEO Toolkit has an in-built website audit mechanism that checks your website for its SEO capabilities. It performs over 100 checks and verifications automatically at every stage of your website growth to give you an idea about your SEO efforts.
3. Regular updating of website score
The audit performed by the tool enables it to provide a score for your website. This score is automatically updated daily and also when you make changes to your website. This way, you can see how your website SEO is impacted by every change you make.
This is how the host describes the usefulness of these scores:
4. Personalized SEO Plan
The tool offers a personalized SEO plan tailored specifically for your website. It will present you with simple tasks based on the comprehensive audit performed for your website. These tasks will help you improve your website SEO on an ongoing basis.
5. On-Page Optimization Tools
The DreamHost SEO Toolkit comes with on-page optimization that analyzes different pages of your website for content improvement. It helps you optimize every page of your website efficiently.
6. Tracks keywords
The DreamHost SEO Toolkit tracks keywords and provides recommendations for the better placement of keywords on your website pages to make them search engine friendly. It also empowers you to find new keywords that can help you bring in more visitors to your website.
Once you fill in your main keyword, you will be given a list of keywords related to it along with their important attributes. The SEO tool mentions the ease of bringing in traffic with each keyword and the number of times it has been searched for in the last month.
These attributes will help you make a better decision in choosing the appropriate keywords for ranking your website higher in the search results.
You will find a list of keywords that you tracked on the “Tracked keywords” page. This tool allows you to track up to 20 keywords.
7. Beginner-friendly guidance
The host has made every effort to make this tool beginner-friendly. The SEO Toolkit provides an easy-to-digest checklist that can be followed even by a newbie website owner who does not have any SEO knowledge.
8. Keeping track of competitors
The other websites that share a similar audience that you are targeting for your website are considered your competitors. Understanding the SEO work performed by your competitors will help you compare your website performance against theirs. Adjusting your SEO strategy based on this knowledge enables you to rank higher or at least at par with your competition.
The DreamHost SEO Toolkit tracks the popularity of your competitors’ websites and determines how they rank for certain keywords. You can, therefore, adjust your website SEO efforts accordingly to stay on top of your competition.
You just need to add the URL of your competitor’s website in the tool for easy tracking:
The “Competitors” page will display the list of competitors added by you. This tool allows you to track up to 4 competitors.
9. WordPress compatible
DreamHost SEO Toolkit is fully compatible with WordPress. It seamlessly integrates with your WordPress website so that you can conveniently access the SEO tool from your WordPress dashboard.
10. Weekly and Monthly Progress Reports
The SEO tool offers weekly and monthly progress reports for your website to help you track your growth. You can see the result of your SEO efforts through these reports.
The host recommends monitoring your SEO results weekly for better results:
11. Availability for non-WordPress websites
The SEO tool is also available for non-WordPress websites. So if you are planning to use some other Content Management System (CMS) for your website, you can access the tool directly from your DreamHost panel.
This is how it appears in your panel:
Exceptions:
Though the SEO Toolkit is fully compatible with WordPress and non-WordPress websites alike, here are some exceptions where DreamHost SEO Toolkit cannot be added:
- Remixer websites
- Temporary DreamHost domains like .dream.press and .dreamhosters.com.
- Websites that are hosted in subfolders like example.com/blog
- Websites that are hosted on DreamCompute
12. Constant SEO monitoring
DreamHost monitors the search engine friendliness of your website every 24 hours.
It warns you in case of any technical issues that might negatively impact your website’s traffic or search engine rankings.
DreamHost SEO Toolkit Pricing
DreamHost SEO Toolkit is available at an introductory price of $4.99 per month per site. When you first sign up with the host, whether for a short-term or a long-term hosting plan, you will be offered this add-on at this discounted introductory price.
This is how the add-on list will appear in such a case:
If, however, you pick a domain for your website, you will be given the option to purchase this tool no matter what term length you choose for your hosting plan. The introductory price of the tool also remains the same whether you choose to buy a monthly, yearly, or even larger hosting plan.
Let us discuss some important factors that can impact the pricing of DreamHost SEO Toolkit:
- Factor 1: The discounted price of the SEO tool is available for the first 12 months only and once per website.
So if you cancel your SEO Toolkit plan before the expiry of the initial 12 months and add it to the same website again, you won’t be offered the tool at the discounted introductory price.
In such a case, you will have to pay the standard price of the tool which is $9.99 per month when buying it again. - Factor 2: The introductory rate of your DreamHost SEO Toolkit is also affected if you change your billing option during the initial term. In such a case, the host credits an amount proportionate to the time remaining on your initial plan at the introductory rate.
At the same time, it adds a new monthly or yearly charge at the standard rate on the day of change. You must, therefore, carefully select the term length of your plan when signing up with the host since the introductory pricing of the DreamHost SEO Toolkit will not be carried over to the new billing option that you will select. You will have to pay the standard price instead of the discounted price on changing your billing term. - Factor 3: Changing the domain name of your website (WordPress or DreamPress) with the DreamHost panel tool during the initial term won’t change the introductory price of your tool.
- Factor 4: The host does not offer any refund on the amount paid towards the DreamHost SEO Toolkit if you cancel the plan.
An amount proportionate to the remaining time of your plan is, however, credited to your DreamHost account. You can use this amount to purchase other services offered by the host.
Renewal pricing
As the initial term of 12 months ends, the DreamHost SEO Toolkit renews at its standard price of $9.99 per month.
Difference between SEO Toolkit and SEO Marketing?
DreamHost offers another SEO service called SEO Marketing which is extremely different from the SEO Toolkit.
Let us bring out the differences between DreamHost SEO Toolkit and SEO Marketing here:
- The SEO Toolkit offered by DreamHost is a do-it-yourself tool while SEO Marketing is a fully-managed SEO service offered by the host.
- The Toolkit provides you with a plan of action to follow while the SEO Marketing service provides you with a team of experts that determines and executes the best SEO strategy for your website.
- The SEO Toolkit only provides you with weekly and monthly progress reports. The SEO Marketing service, on the other hand, optimizes your website and creates content each month to support your keyword strategy in addition to the progress report.
- Being a fully managed service, SEO Marketing has a much higher price tag than the SEO Toolkit.
3 Free alternatives to DreamHost SEO Toolkit
Since DreamHost SEO Toolkit is a paid add-on, I’ve assembled a list of free alternatives to the tool that will deliver similar results for your website:
1. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) helps to make your website SEO-friendly. It constantly monitors your website for SEO issues and provides suggestions to fix them.
The free SEO tool examines the internal linking on your website and helps improve it as well.
2. Google Search Console + Google Analytics
Google Search Console constantly analyzes your website and sends you alerts or error reports for any SEO issues. It helps you determine and fix your website’s technical issues, submit sitemaps, and improve your average ranking position.
Google Analytics, on the other hand, provides you with complete website statistics and search insights. It allows you to track your website traffic by providing you with data related to your website visitors.
3. Yoast Plugin
Yoast SEO plugin helps improve your website posts by adding an SEO meta box to your editing screen. It asks for the meta title, description, and focus keyword for each of your posts. It also analyzes your content for the main keyword and guides better content optimization.
Yoast is one of the best free SEO tools for your WordPress website with plenty of features to offer. It is beginner-friendly with in-built instructions that are extremely easy to follow.
Conclusion: Is DreamHost SEO Tool Worth it?
It’s NOT worth it. You will find many free alternatives that perform a much better job. This add-on offers only the very basic features for newbie website owners and won’t have any major impact on your online business.
Here are some key areas where DreamHost SEO Toolkit fails to provide value:
- The tool will track a maximum of 20 keywords only.
- It tracks only up to 4 competitors while you might have many.
- DreamHost SEO Toolkit does not offer external linking to your website.
- It does not work on your website images where there is greater scope for improving your website’s SEO score.
- After the initial 12-month term, the tool renews at about double the initial cost.
DreamHost SEO Toolkit lacks many features even when it is a paid add-on. You will find many free SEO tools like Ahrefs and WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO that will do a much better job and offer a lot more features for free.
Considering the features offered by DreamHost SEO Toolkit discussed above, do you plan to purchase it for your website SEO needs?
Have you ever tried any other feature-rich SEO tool for your website whether free or paid?
