If you could choose just one benefit of living in the age of rapid technological progress, what would it be? All of humanity’s knowledge accessible anywhere, any time? Online networking on any scale? Or something else?
Here’s another benefit you should definitely appreciate: automation. You can automate just about anything, albeit with a varying degree of success. And yes, that includes some of your most tedious (and most boring) SEO efforts.
Automation allows you to offload some of those menial manual tasks to a piece of software. And when it comes to SEO services, there are plenty of tools for automating some of them. Keep reading to see which 6 of them deserve your attention. Spoiler alert: nothing can solve all of SEO for you.
Why You Should Automate SEO Tasks
If one had to put the answer in one sentence, it’d be this: time is the most valuable resource of them all.
Automating certain tasks frees up more of that precious time. This translates into:
- Increased productivity: you’ll be able to do more within the same timeframe;
- Focused strategic decisions: you will pay more attention to their implementation;
- Less manual tasks: the risk for you to become overworked and overstressed will be reduced.
Contrary to a popular belief, automated SEO software isn’t reserved for people with a coder mindset or SEO specialists. You can be a self-employed writer or the owner of a mom-and-pop restaurant and use these tools to make sure more people learn about your existence.
A quick sidenote. If you don’t have a lot of experience in SEO, you’ll have to dedicate enough time to wrap your head around it. Otherwise, no automation software will help you—any tool’s efficiency depends on how you use it.
Wait… Can You Automate All of Your SEO?
One could only wish it were possible to automate each and every SEO task. Just imagine: they can run in the background while you focus on what matters more.
Unfortunately, that remains a dream for now. You’ll still have to bring your human perspective into the fold, especially when it comes to creating and implementing the SEO strategy.
Of course, that’s not to say there’s only a handful of manual tasks you can offload to algorithms. They are quite many, including:
- Keeping track of your website’s rankings;
- Identifying issues that could prevent Google bots from crawling your website;
- Finding all mentions and links to your brand (i.e. social listening);
- Auditing the quality of your existing links;
- Generating detailed SEO reports.
6 SEO Automation Tools to Boost Your Productivity
Google these three keywords, SEO automation tools,—and you’ll see dozens of tools in the search results. But not all of them are created equal. That’s why only 6 of them made the cut to be featured below.
1. SEMrush
- Pricing: upward of $99.95 per month if paid annually and a limited free plan is available;
- Free trial: 7 days;
- Money-back guarantee: 7 days;
- Best for all things SEO, whether you’re a novice or an expert.
This is one of those all-tools-in-one-kit SEO solutions. In fact, SEMrush has 50+ tools on its platform—some of which are a life-saver when it comes to SEO automation. Here are 5 most helpful of them:
- Report generation;
- Backlink audit;
- Brand monitoring;
- Ranking tracking;
- Site audit.
2. Little Warden
- Pricing: upward of $349.99 per year;
- Free trial: 14 days;
- Money-back guarantee: 30 days;
- Best for monitoring changes on the website and checking up on its overall “health”.
This tool does an outstanding job of running 30+ checks within just 20 seconds. You won’t have to spend hours making sure no change goes unnoticed (and potentially wreaks havoc without your knowledge).
Here’s the list of checks Little Warden can run:
- SSL certificate and domain name expiration;
- Redirects;
- Changes in Google Analytics, title tags, IP addresses, and more;
- Indexability;
- Content;
- Sitemaps;
- Malware.
3. Ahrefs
- Pricing: upward of $82 per month if paid annually; a limited free version is available;
- Free trial: n/a, but there’s a paid 7-day trial ($7);
- Money-back guarantee: n/a; refund is possible within 48 hours;
- Best for SEO-savvy users who want to automate search ranking monitoring and crawling tasks.
In the world of SEO, Ahrefs has the rock-star level of recognition. But it’s not the only reason it’s on the list. Here’s what sets it apart from most SEO automation tools out there:
- Comprehensive site diagnostics that get completed fast;
- Email alerts for backlinks, new keywords, and brand mentions;
- Exceptional crawling capabilities.
4. Ubersuggest
- Pricing: free;
- Best for beginners who want some of their SEO research automated.
If you’ve done even the tiniest bit of research on SEO topics, Neil Patel needs no introduction. And this is one of his most famous creations.
Ubersuggest can save you a great deal of time and effort. All you need to do is enter a domain or keyword, and Ubersuggest will do its magic to show you:
- The domain overview;
- Top competitors’ pages;
- Keyword suggestions;
- Content ideas;
- Your backlinks overview.
5. Screaming Frog
- Pricing: £149 per user per year; a limited free plan is available;
- Free trial: n/a;
- Money-back guarantee: n/a;
- Best for SEO professionals and beginners alike to run checkups on their websites in a fast and hassle-free way.
Screaming Frog is a website crawler tool created by a search marketing agency of the same name. Its primary purpose is checking the website, no matter how small or large it is, for a variety of issues – from duplicate content and broken links to redirect loops and low-quality meta tags.
6. Python
- Pricing: free
- Best for Python-savvy folks who can write advanced scripts for automatic URL inspection, data collection from multiple sources, and more.
Yes, it’s not exactly your typical out-of-the-box tool, but it’s not useless either. Once you master Python, there are practically no limits on what processes you can automate. And the best part? Any script you write will be tailored to your needs and requirements.
How to Choose the Right Automated SEO Software
Most of the tools listed above are paid and freemium. That means that the cost of choosing the wrong one isn’t just lost time and energy: there’s likely to be a very tangible financial loss, too.
So, here are 3 time-tested tips to help you avoid that scenario:
- Understand which manual tasks eat up most of your time. Do you spend a lot of time manually auditing every aspect of your website? Or is it the social listening that’s the most time-consuming? Or something else?
- Pinpoint your selection criteria. Consider your budget, desired functionality, who’s going to use this tool and their preferences, your expectations towards the ease of use and UX, etc.
- Test different tools before making any commitment. Any trustworthy service out there has a trial period even if it’s paid. That’s your chance to try what it’s like in action before investing your hard-earned money.
In Conclusion
These 6 tools are the cream of the crop in the SEO automation field. So, if you feel your productivity is lagging because of manual SEO tasks, check them out.
But they’re not the only way you can optimize your workload. If you don’t have that much experience with SEO in the first place, it’ll take you tons of time and effort to wrap your head around it.
In this case, consider outsourcing all of those tasks to an agency that provides SEO services. If you do, you’ll have professionals working on your case from the get-go! And, of course, it’ll allow you to focus on your core business activities while those experts do their magic.