The SEO industry is constantly changing and evolving. The needs of your SEO agency also change as your business grows. The tools you use will shape how you direct your growth.
It is therefore important to keep abreast of what’s new in the space to decide if using a new tool will benefit your business.
Yet it is always a matter of priority that is critical to your business requirements.
There are many factors at play here:
- Some SEO platforms solve problems that you may not have even known. To identify this, you need to keep abreast of new advances in the industry.
- Some solve a specific problem that you are already aware of – in these cases it’s just a matter of identifying the tool that best suits your agency’s needs.
- Some offer a seamless experience that helps you optimize your SEO workflows.
- Some offer competitive advantages in terms of features or pricing.
In our interviews with top SEO agencies from around the world, we gathered different insights into the factors that most influence the decision to test and even switch to a new core SEO tool.
Here are some important signs that it may be time to explore new SEO software in your toolbar.
Accuracy and functionality are the biggest pain points that SEO professionals have with their tools.
Does your current solution provide enough data? Does it provide the right data? If not, you may not be able to achieve your SEO goals.
Have you ever experienced any of these problems?
Unreliable or incomplete data
Some SEO platforms simply offer more data features than others, while others cost extra to see specific statistics, such as:
- Google’s “(not provided)” data.
- Organic traffic segmentation of brands / non-brands.
- Mobile versus desktop traffic.
Possession of this data is invaluable to SEO professionals. But having to pay it granularly can be a very limiting factor, especially for smaller agencies.
For example, to map the traffic data from Google Analytics and match the keyword data from Google Search Console to get what is “(not provided)” means you can show your customers the direct impact SEO has on other business objectives, such as how the increase in keyword rankings affects conversions.
SEO platforms that provide this type of data standard can give you an advantage if you want to gain and retain customers by highlighting the connection between SEO and business results.
Or it could be a matter of unreliable statistics – misleading or opaque calculations, issues related to technical changes and not your SEO performance, and so on.
Think of the Visibility measure. If it is calculated as an average position for a set of keywords, changes based on the addition or removal of keywords in the list will be misleading, and you may notice why the score varies.
Paul Wood, Director of Enjoy Media, points out that innovation in the way an SEO tool calculates an important benchmark is a deciding factor. Even more, if it was something the agency had done earlier with spreadsheets and spent many hours before inventing such an effective measure.
“The most interesting scenario is when you suddenly become aware of an instrument out there that is doing something your team has not even considered,” Wood said. ‘When you see it in a tool, it changes the way you think about things, how you structure your work. And then you start working differently. ”
This is how the right SEO tools are must work – to solve the agency’s pain points, even those you may not have thought would be possible to resolve.
Functional issues
Speed is a big factor in the SEO industry.
Search personnel currently need access to accurate, up-to-date data to implement campaigns and track performance.
Because if your software does not work, you need to get the issue resolved quickly.
This is why it is essential to look at the quality of support you provide when choosing an SEO tool.
Ideally, you should have access to a dedicated account manager who can approach you for quick resolution of issues on the necessary basis, as well as regular support calls to review your agency’s needs.
Then Paul Friend, CEO of SEO, and Ben Foster, Managing Director, of SEO work decided it was time to choose another core SEO tool, and they gained ongoing and ad-hoc support as one of the “hundreds of different relevant aspects in choosing the right tool.”
As part of their casting matrix, it was one point that had to meet key features like keyword features including universal rankings, overall market visibility points, content information, forecasting and reporting capabilities, link building capabilities, competition insights and many more.
After all, you need to see when upgrading or considering your existing technology stack to see how well a solution performs based on the specific needs of your agency.
You want to be seen as a leader in innovation
Digital is always on the move, and SEO professionals need to keep abreast of new developments to stay competitive. Agencies need to be at the forefront of innovation, so they need to be constantly on the lookout for new technologies that will differentiate them.
Paul Wood says they “at least a few times a year make an effort to get a proper overview of what’s there in terms of tools.” They mainly focus on accessibility and UX when evaluating new instruments on the market, such as:
- How easily it allows you to export data.
- How they facilitate collaboration between internal teams and customers.
- How many features can be integrated into a single platform.
The SEO Works team also emphasizes the importance of always being on the lookout while keeping members informed. They also have an extensive training program – so everyone is not only relying on the tools, but also the specific methodologies the agency uses for SEO strategies.
To go further, agencies like SEO Works are developing proprietary tools that demonstrate how their innovative approach can be a competitive advantage for clients in their portfolio.
You grow or expand your SEO agency
According to a recent McKinsey Global Survey of C-Level Business Leaders, digital adoption has accelerated worldwide by at least 3-4 years within a few months.
It is only expected that this pursuit of a digital first approach will continue, which means that the scale need for SEO agencies is likely to be high at present, as well as in the foreseeable future.
Meeting this growing demand for SEO services requires agencies to scale their operations efficiently and to remain competitive. If you are expanding your agency, this is a good time to test your tools and see if they have the right features to promote and support this growth.
Fast-growing agencies need more capabilities, such as:
- Access to more users: When adding new customers and employees, you want tools that allow you to have unlimited users (ideally, at no extra cost) and facilitate collaboration between teams.
- Unlimited API access: Your SEO tools need to work seamlessly with your other business tools as you expand your overall technological toolkit. For example, we’ve made it as simple as possible to execute large amounts of data via the SEOmonitor API, allowing you to customize the campaign and keyword-level data to your internal systems (like Klipfolio), and customize customer reports.
- More efficient workflows: Operational dashboards, integrated systems and organizational capabilities for your client portfolio all make a difference in your help get the status quo at a glance.
In the words of many SEO professionals we have talked to, the highest value an SEO platform can offer is to help you not waste time.
The right tools will help you do that, but inefficiently can cause your team to spend too much time on technical processes, which will seriously hamper your scalability.
SEO professionals must have stable processes and methodologies in all teams. The best software is built with that in mind.
Collaboration and customization are the most important things that agencies prioritize when choosing SEO tools. And many features facilitate this, such as:
- Access to multiple users: Unlimited access for team members and clients, with customizable client view permissions.
- Collaborative features: Real-time notes, comments and sharing ability for both teams and clients.
- Tracking Statistics: A centralized agency dashboard with which teams can monitor performance and tasks, as well as achieve goals.
- Personality TraitsFrom filtering campaigns by account managers to an editing mode that optimizes your time for keyword management, to storing custom reporting templates across the entire agency, there are many features to consider.
A robust SEO solution, which combines several features like this into a single platform, helps to optimize internal workflows and get a complete picture of agency operations.
Agencies of different sizes have different budgets.
Cost optimization is crucial, especially for economies of scale. You need to hire more people and use more resources in your tools to handle a larger amount of customers, and you do not want to scale your costs at the same rate.
Some questions to ask when evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a particular tool are:
Does it offer flexible pricing and use of resources?
Most SEO software solutions have a fixed subscription cost, which includes a fixed number of domains and keywords. But if your use of the tool’s resource varies from month to month, your prices remain the same.
Other platforms may upgrade or downgrade agencies each month, so only you pay for what you use. If you do not have a pre-determined plan, agencies can better assess their spending based on the campaign on a specific time frame.
Some tools have an attractive base price, but have hidden costs and extras that can add up quickly, especially if you are offering a lot of new customers and handling larger campaigns. These include:
- Cost per user: Will you be able to add unlimited users (including customers) at no extra cost to enable internal and external collaboration?
- Migration fees: Is there an hourly or fixed rate to switch from your existing system to a new tool?
- Integration costs: Are there multiple integrations with key trading tools (Data Studio, Google Sheets, API access, etc.) Included in the price?
So if your current software does not have the best sense for your business, it may be time to try a new one.
The answer is that your critical analysis should never stop.
Innovation is an ongoing process, especially in this rapidly changing industry. So, your core SEO tool of your choice should keep up the pace and constantly update its capabilities.
If you encounter these signs with your existing solutions, they may not serve you as well as they should, such as:
- If you do not have access to the correct data or features.
- If you want to be a leader in the field of innovation, that means you need innovative methodologies.
- If your agency is expanding or expanding, and you need more features.
- Or if you want to be more cost effective.
We understand that the core tools of an SEO agency are crucial to win more clients and manage them more efficiently.
That’s why our team at SEOmonitor is committed to designing specific solutions that help you acquire, manage and retain relevant customers.
Join us and our SEO agency community looking for more transparency and measurability in the SEO industry.
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