Trying to manage all aspects of SEO manually is like painting a house with a tiny watercolor brush — it might get the job done, but it’s tedious and unlikely to produce your best work.
But what if you could use power tools instead? Not only would you get the job done faster, it would be more efficient.
This guide will explore how SEO automation can be your secret weapon for more productive workflows. Like upgrading from a tiny brush to a powerful spray gun, the right automation strategies and AI models can help you work faster and smarter.
I’ll cover what SEO automation is, why it might be a good choice, and the tasks you can automate. Then I’ll give you ideas for SEO automation tools to help you breeze through repetitive tasks like rank tracking, content optimization, and link building.
What Is SEO Automation?
SEO automation means using technology to systematize and streamline repetitive SEO tasks.
The goal is to reduce the manual effort involved in executing critical workflows like conducting keyword research, optimizing content, and managing backlinks.
Here are some typical automations you might be hearing about on your favorite SEO podcasts:
- AI-powered tools that can optimize on-page content at scale based on key SEO principles. This includes improving page titles and meta-descriptions.
- Automated keyword research and tracking to identify new opportunities and monitor existing rankings. AI can analyze pages to recommend high-potential, low-competition keywords.
- Workflow automation for repetitive linking tasks like finding broken backlinks and building new ones. This saves significant manual labor.
- Integrations with SEO platforms and content tools to streamline optimization throughout the content lifecycle.
- Automated gap analysis of sites to catch issues like duplicate content, thin pages, and accessibility problems before they impact rankings.
- Continuous reporting to have key SEO stats like rankings, traffic, and conversions delivered on a schedule.
The overall benefit of SEO automation is achieving results faster with less repetitive manual work. Imagine this: With automation, you can focus your energy on strategy and optimization versus mundane upkeep.
Can SEO Be Really Automated?
Yes!
Many, but not all, SEO-related tasks can be fully or partially automated using SEO tools. For example, you can automate keyword research, technical SEO audits, rank tracking, reporting, and more.
However, things like strategy, interpreting data, and content creation still require skilled humans.
Which SEO Tasks Can You Automate?
Many SEO tasks can be fully or partially automated with the right tools.
Here are some specific examples.
Website Audit
If you set up an automated schedule for website audits (daily, weekly, or monthly), you can crawl and analyze your website on autopilot. This means you can catch any issues early, like slow page load times or mobile-friendliness issues, without having to lift a finger.
One way to automate your website audit is by using Screaming Frog. Go to “File,” select “Scheduling,” and then click “+Add” to set up a task. You can set the crawl date and decide how often it should run, whether daily, weekly, or monthly.
Keep in mind that this feature is available only to users with the SEO Spider License.
Another option is Semrush’s Site Audit tool.
You can set it up to automatically check your website’s health daily or weekly. This way, you can promptly review every new error or warning and decide on your next steps.
Organic Traffic Reporting
“Are we getting more organic traffic?”
This is one of the most common questions you’ll hear from your clients or a team lead if you work in SEO.
Instead of manually checking data, you can set up automatic reports to track your progress.
Here’s how you can use Looker Studio to automate organic traffic tracking:
- Link your Looker Studio account to Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- Create a dashboard that includes charts for organic traffic over time
- Schedule regular reports to be sent to your email or shared with team members
Keyword Ranking Tracking
Position tracking is another SEO task you probably perform regularly. Instead of manually checking Google Search Console for ranking changes, you can easily automate this task with the right tools.
For example, AccuRanker lets you track your keyword rankings within the top 100 on Google and Bing. After setting it up, the tool will automatically track and update your SERP positions for both desktop and mobile every 24 hours.
Content Optimization Ideas
You don’t have to manually figure out how to improve your website rankings because many tools can automatically do this job for you.
Take SurferSEO, for instance.
It automatically analyzes your content, tells you how well it’s optimized (or under-optimized), and provides recommendations to help you improve your site rankings.
If you want to implement SurferSEO’s recommendations, you can do it with a single click on “Auto-Optimize.”
Link Building Campaigns
Building backlinks for your website can be a difficult task. Manually finding relevant domains, analyzing them, and negotiating link placements with webmasters takes a lot of time and effort.
However, SEO automation tools can simplify this process. Semrush’s Link Building Tool is great for this.
It automatically discovers backlink prospects for your website. You don’t have to spend hours researching and analyzing link-building opportunities. With Semrush, you can gather prospects’ contact information, reach out to them, and track your link-building progress.
SEO Competitor Analysis
Researching competitors’ SEO strategies manually takes a lot of time. That’s why I prefer automating this mundane task with Semrush’s competitive research tools.
In particular, you can see the overall competitors’ performance in organic search results since 2012! You can also look at their top-performing pages and keywords you don’t target on your website yet.
10 SEO Automation Tools to Boost Efficiency
With many tools on the market, it can be challenging to identify the SEO automation solutions that will drive results for your business.
So, I’ve compiled a list of the top tools that can make SEO workflows more efficient.
From AI-powered SEO copywriting optimization to automated link building and beyond, these platforms provide the automation capabilities to supercharge your efforts in 2024.
1. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is an AI-powered content creation and optimization platform built to help you write high-performing content that ranks.
Surfer SEO’s key features include:
- An outline builder to create content frameworks complete with headings and questions.
- A real-time content editor with keyword and optimization feedback as you write.
- A plagiarism checker to ensure content originality before publishing.
- Multilingual support to write and optimize in different languages.
- AI content generation for initial drafts to review and refine.
The platform provides real-time guidance on structure, length, keywords, images, and overall optimization as you write. This allows you to efficiently produce SEO-friendly content in your own voice, or your clients’ voices.
This tool is ideal for content teams, marketing agencies, and freelance writers looking to streamline creation and optimize articles for SEO.
Pricing starts at $89 per month for up to 30 articles. Custom enterprise options are also available.
2. Semrush
Semrush offers a suite of automated tools for SEO to help you improve your ranking in the SERPs.
Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool is great for finding long-tail phrases related to your main topic. No more clunky Excel spreadsheets for tracking and grouping keywords — you can organize your phrases into clusters with just a few clicks.
You can also use Semrush’s robust content creation and optimization tools to boost SEO.
Key features include:
- An AI-powered writing assistant that suggests content ideas and outlines.
- Readability scoring to refine copy for better engagement and comprehension.
- On-page optimization recommendations for titles, headers, keywords, etc.
- Automated keyword research for targeting high-potential, low-competition terms.
- Integration with Semrush’s broader SEO toolkit for end-to-end optimization.
This tool is ideal for professionals who need a full suite of SEO automation tools.
Pricing starts at $139.95 a month for up to 5 projects and 500 keywords. (Here’s a free 14-day trial of Semrush Pro).
3. Jasper.ai
Jasper is an AI copywriter that can generate marketing content tailored to a brand’s unique tone of voice, style, and messaging preferences.
Jasper leverages artificial intelligence to provide suggestions, create drafts, and write full-length articles. The tool includes a variety of templates for different content types, making it a versatile choice.
The platform suggests keywords, crafts SEO-optimized titles, and structures content to cater to search engine algorithms. This saves you time and ensures what you produce is optimized for better ranking.
Jasper could be a good fit for marketers, bloggers, and SEO teams that need to produce large amounts of content.
Pricing starts at $39 for one user seat and one brand voice.
4. AgencyAnalytics
AgencyAnalytics is a robust marketing analytics platform with a unified dashboard for tracking SEO, PPC, social media, and other marketing efforts.
It integrates with over 50 data sources, so agencies and marketers can monitor and report on all their channels in one place.
Features include rank tracking, backlink monitoring, and comprehensive SEO audit tools. With scheduled automated reporting options, it’s easy to keep clients or team members updated with the latest data.
AgencyAnalytics is primarily geared towards SEO agencies and in-house marketing teams that need an all-in-one tool for tracking analytics and managing campaigns.
Pricing starts at $12 a month per client campaign, with a minimum of 5 campaigns.
5. AccuRanker
AccuRanker is a specialized tool focused on tracking and analyzing keyword rankings. It provides real-time data on keyword positions across multiple search engines and offers personalized advice on improving your SEO strategies.
The platform provides competitor analysis, SERP history, and on-demand updates. Automated reporting and data segmentation can help you streamline the SEO monitoring process.
This tool is ideal for enterprises and SEO agencies that need precise, real-time tracking of keyword performance to inform their optimization strategies.
AccuRanker starts at $129 a month for 1,000 keywords.
6. Looker Studio
Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, is a data visualization platform that integrates data from various sources to create informative, easy-to-understand SEO reports and dashboards.
With Looker Studio, you can automate the process of data reporting and visualization. Users can create custom dashboards that track SEO metrics from different sources and get a holistic view of performance. You can blend data and present it in a visually appealing format to identify trends, keep clients informed, and make strategic decisions quickly.
This tool is a good fit for SEO analysts, agencies, and business owners who rely on data-driven strategies to optimize their online presence.
7. Respona
Respona is an all-in-one platform designed to automate and streamline the outreach process for link-building and content marketing.
The tool combines a powerful search engine with an email outreach system, so you can find opportunities, personalize communications, and track the success of your outreach campaigns.
Respona is ideal for SEO professionals, marketers, and PR teams looking for an efficient way to manage outreach and link-building campaigns.
Pricing for Respona starts at $79 a month for 60,000 email credits a year.
8. Netpeak Spider
Netpeak Spider is a powerful SEO crawler that performs in-depth technical audits of websites.
Key features include:
- Complete crawls of sites up to 10,000 pages to analyze and identify critical SEO, speed, and security issues.
- Detailed audit reports with prioritized lists of problems and step-by-step recommendations for fixing them.
- Customizable configuration for focused crawls, issue scanning, and scheduling recurring audits.
- Integration with Google Analytics and Search Console data for deeper insights.
- Custom reporting and PDF exports for sharing results.
Netpeak Spider suits SEO agencies and in-house technical teams responsible for completing audits and ensuring technical SEO best practices.
Netpeak’s software tools start at $7 a month.m
9. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps identify SEO problems like broken links, audit redirects, and duplicate content that could affect a site’s performance in the SERPs.
You can automate the site crawling process to ensure you’re continuously monitoring SEO health and addressing issues promptly.
This platform is a good fit for SEO professionals and website managers who need a reliable automated tool for regular SEO audits and site monitoring.
The free version of Screaming Frog enables you to crawl up to 500 URLs. You get unlimited URLs with the paid version ($259).
10. SERPWoo
With SERPWoo, you can monitor who’s ranking for target keywords and examine valuable information about the sites in the top 100 positions.
With SERPWoo, you can check the following data:
- Domain link popularity
- Page link authority
- Social shares
This information helps you analyze why rankings change over time, and provides insights you can use to create a more effective SEO strategy.
This tool is beneficial for SEO professionals and agencies who need a proactive approach to SERP monitoring and competitive analysis.
Pricing starts at $49.95 a month for 750 tracked keywords.
Take Your SEO Automation to the Next Level
SEO automation can help you optimize content at scale, identify new opportunities, and take the grind out of repetitive tasks.
You don’t have to struggle to figure out how to do this alone.
Join my 7 Figure Agency online course, where I teach how to run a profitable SEO agency.
Specifically, I share my exclusive strategies, learnings, and tips on how you can go from one-on-one consulting to a $1 million+ revenue agency.
Ready to achieve even greater success?Don’t leave the power of automation untapped — sign up for a 7 Figure Agency course today!