Clients will not stay with you for long if you’re not producing results and not able to show reports on your SEO efforts. Even many clients will not give you projects when they find that you’re using free and low-quality SEO tools.
SEO tools are an important part of the SEO process. Keyword research, ranking checks, and monitoring, market research, traffic analytics, website auditing, and reporting, competitive analysis, and SEO strategies are important to generate ROI for clients.
The SEO process and tools you use make a big productive difference in the SEO efforts and strategy. While for personal projects you can use various types of random SEO apps and tools.
But when working as an SEO professional or running an SEO agency it’s very important to use the right SEO tools to increase ranking, traffic and results. It’s because the growth of an SEO agency depends on the growth of clients. And when you use the right SEO tool and techniques you produce results.
Free SEO tools and a demo version of premium SEO software are not that bad when you’re working on your own website. It’s because you know what you’re doing and you don’t have to report others. Whatever the results you are happy with that.
But when you’re running an agency you need step by step process, and system to improve the ranking and traffic for clients. And don’t forget, you also need to delegate many SEO tasks to your team members.
In that case, you can’t depend on 10 or 20+ SEO tools, tricks and methods. You need an SEO system and process so you can automate your SEO agency business and services. That’s why using premium quality SEO software is important.
So, the use of quality SEO software in an agency is not only effective as a business strategy but also helps your team members to manage various SEO projects without you. And when your SEO team starts producing results you become more confident in your marketing approach and invest your time in getting more big SEO deals.
Previous article in this series: How to Start an SEO agency Business: Complete Guide
So, look for these things in SEO software, before you buy it?
1. Can we test the SEO software on multiple niche websites and on a variety of SEO tasks?
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- 10 to 15 days or a 1-month trial or demo version is enough to test its value for money.
2. Is this SEO software company only creating software-related tutorials? Is the content on their website and social channels only to promote its products?
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- You can find the intention of any digital marketing tools-based website and service in the way they create and market the content. If you only found 5 to 10 video tutorials or posts related to SEO then you have to consider them again.
- The best SEO software company not only creates content to educate their prospective and existed customers related to their product but also about the SEO industry in itself. It’s important to consider, how they are producing and trying to contribute to the development of the online marketing and the SEO ecosystem.
3. Will you get all the SEO features and tools that you need to use in your SEO agency?
Those who have time can use 10 SEO tools or even 20 tools to grow their website ranking. But when working for clients you don’t have much time to test and try 10+ or even more than 3 to 4 tools.
While many choose software based on their SEO needs such as for need backlinks tracking then tool A, keyword research tool B, and so on. This will not only consume lots of time but also mixed the strategy that is not repeatable with new clients. And you can’t automate your SEO business with this strategy.
So, when finding software make sure that you will get most of the things and feature in one or two SEO software that you need to grow your SEO agency.
4. Can this software help you avoid conflicts with SEO clients?
This is not that straightforward. Actually, most of the work in SEO is strategic and creative and it becomes very difficult to convince clients about what we will do or what not? Especially things change dramatically in the SEO process and strategies when you audit the client’s websites.
And if in case the client is not that supportive or SEO literate then it creates the problems and even impacts communication and stops releasing the payments.
What works best, in this case, is by creating and sharing a complete client’s website SEO audit report, things that need to be fixed, the next 6 months’ plans, and execution, and expected results.
While PowerPoint is the best tool to create SEO reports in presentable format manually. But the clients and companies these days take decisions based on the data and facts.
So if you use the right SEO tool for reporting then it makes a big difference in building a transparent relationship with clients for the long term. You need to get data to showcase before starting the work and after completing the project. This also helps when a new marketing company plans the future based on the current SEO reports.
Your local SEO clients can believe you for anything because they don’t have too many options for SEOs.
Trust without data and facts works when it’s a one-to-one communication channel such as one SEO freelancer with the business owner. Only they two have to work and understand each other. But in bigger companies, you have to deal with managers, developers, graphic designers, content writers etc.
And they also have to deal with your team. So, it’s more than one connection. It needs monitoring, tracking, productivity, and collaboration. So, use or buy the SEO tools that will help you to gain and create as many reports on various essential parts of SEO with data such as backlink, keywords tracking, post tracking, and productivity.
5. Other marketing features in SEO software:
Digital marketing consists of various online marketing strategies such as social media marketing, PPC, content marketing, and SEO. Each type of online marketing strategy is connected with another such as SEO is also connected with content marketing. And content marketing is also connected with email marketing.
So, the point is that when buying software for your agency’s marketing needs and delivering results for clients you also have to consider other features that come as optional but important.
For example, as an SEO agency or SEM agency, you will not serve keyword research or SEO works to clients all the time, sometime you will do content marketing, and PPC clients as well. At that time, you need to use another tool or you can’t say no to the client. So, it’s good to pay 10% more if you get all the essential marketing tools and features in one SEO software.
And if you ask me which one software, I do recommend based on the above top 5 considerations then it’s SEMrush which is all-one SEO software. In SEMrush saas based SEO tool, you will get 50+ tools and features for all of your SEO and Marketing needs as an agency.
SEMrush is like a Microsoft Office 365 in SEO and online marketing. Where in Microsoft 365 you will all the tools such as word, excel, meeting, PowerPoint, database, etc. for business productivity.
In SEMrush you will get tools for SEO, keyword research, backlink building, content marketing, competitors research, PPC, and many more. This is also easy if you want to train and build your SEO team around one software.
As a new marketer and SEO freelancer, you can start with a pro plan, those have 5 to 10 SEO clients can buy the guru package and if you want to take your agency to next level and have to manage more than 15 clients on daily basis then the Business plan is the best to go with.
If you pay annually you will save up to 17% of the plan price. Please check out the pricing plan and consider the features that will also help you in getting new clients and SEO projects and grow your marketing agency to the next level.
Still, you can test various other software as well as per your SEO needs and budget. And compare all of them with Semrush Features and tools and also consider your business problems and how Semrush can strengthen your business.
With all of these things, I hope you will be able to get whatever software you liked. The goal here is to sustain, grow and automate your SEO agency.