I admit it. I’ve got a pro membership to SEOMoz that I use to check backlinks, monitor client’s rankings and what not. There are a lot of cool tools available for generating client reports, which is why I continue to give them $129 every month.

But sometimes, I wonder if I really need it. Especially when so many similar SEO tools are available for free at MetaFever.com.

So this week I decided to conduct a little test. Could I really create a professional client report using only free tools? I was about to find out.

Anatomy of an SEO Report

My goal was to create a simple client analysis report. This is the first report sent to a potential client by most SEO companies to peak a prospect’s interested in optimization.

Since this report is created for prospects. I want it to be quick and easy to put together. No use wasting time on people who might never pay for your services.

Here’s what my (quick) client analysis report needs:

1.) On-Page SEO Analysis

2.) Off-Page SEO Analysis (AKA: Backlinks)

3.)Competitive Landscape Analysis

4.)Rank Checker

1.) Conducting the on-page SEO analysis is ridiculously easy on MetaFever.com. The Free SEO Report feature is the most comprehensive, all-purpose tool I’ve seen for a website analysis anywhere.

The Free SEO Report evaluates a lot more than just H1 and title tags. It dissects robots.txt files, page links, total page size, and XML sitemaps with the click of a button.

You could run this report and hand it straight over to SEO prospects if there were an easy way to download the information. Until then, you’ll need to rely on copy and pasting the information or taking screen shots. Still even with this inconvenience, this tool finds plenty of ways to save you time.

2.) Off-page SEO analysis: The off-page SEO analysis tool, called the Backlink Checker at MetaFever.com, uses Yahoo’s link data and displays the total number of links pointing to a domain. You can easily copy and paste this data into any type of report you like.

Pro Tip: Use the Backlink Checker to analyze some of your client’s competitors backlinks. Identifying competitors with better rankings and more links can help you explain where the prospect is weak online.

3.) Competitive Landscape Analysis: Anytime you’re creating a client report, pit your prospects against their competition. If a potential client feels like they’re losing customers to a rival, they’re a lot more likely to use your service. MetaFever.com’s Multiple Compete Rank Checker lets you do just that. This tool uses data from Compete.com’s rank.

4.) Rank Checker: No SEO report would be complete without a good old fashioned ranking report—or Search Engine Position Checker as it is referred to here. Just enter the domain, the keywords you want to check, and viola, updated rankings for Google and Yahoo are presented. I’ve found that SERP rankings can be easily copied and pasted into an Excel spreadsheet or Word document. Nice!

At the end of the day, I’m impressed with MetaFever.com’s enormous selection of free tools: backlink checkers, ranking report, and crawl tests all in one place and for a price you can’t beat.

I’ll admit, transferring data from the Free SEO Report tool to a Word doc was difficult. But it is possible to provide clients with professional reports from a single source.

Is it a replacement for SEOMoz? Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be canceling my $129 a month subscription any time soon. But for a quick and easy analysis of a client’s website, MetaFever.com goes above and beyond what you’d expect from a free site.