If you landed on this article, chances are you’re looking for the best SEO software for agencies that can actually make your team’s work easier, not harder.
When you’re running multiple client projects, tracking rankings, auditing websites, and reporting results, not every tool lives up to the promise.
I’ve been in your shoes. As an SEO specialist and content writer, I’ve worked with agencies of all kinds — from UX and product design studios to software development companies.
Over the years, I’ve tested a bunch of SEO platforms to help teams improve their organic performance and scale their results. I’ve also worked as a solo creator and site owner for over three years, running my SEO clients in parallel.
Trust me, a decent SEO automation tool can make a huge difference and facilitate your work!
In this article, I’m sharing the SEO software for agencies I’ve personally used during my SEO career since 2019. These are established SEO tools you’ve most likely heard of, and new agency SEO automation software.
Why trust me?
I’ve been helping SaaS and B2B companies with SEO for the past 6 years. I’ve also grown my own website to roughly 18k monthly visits with SEO.
How I define the best SEO tools for agencies
When it comes to defining the best SEO tools for agencies, I like to keep things simple.
A suitable tool should make your daily SEO agency tasks smoother and more efficient. Here’s what matters to me when picking the most suitable SEO tools:
- Pricing: It should offer flexible plans and affordable plans (depending on the toolkit) that are suitable for SEO agencies.
- Data accuracy: Reliable data is everything in SEO. You need to trust the numbers you see.
- Toolkits: A solid platform should cover keyword research, site audits, and reporting — all in one place.
That’s the same approach I used when choosing the SEO software I’ll talk about below. These are tools I’ve personally relied on for years. I’m still a loyal Semrush user, but it’s not the only great option out there. You might find another tool that fits your agency’s goals and budget even better.
My top SEO tools for agencies
1. Semrush
- Top features: Personal recommendations with AI Assistant, Keyword Magic Tool, On-Page SEO Checker, SEO Audit, Keyword Strategy Builder, AI SEO Toolkit, and more.
- Free trial: Semrush offers a 7-day free trial for its toolkits. But since I’m their partner, I can provide an exclusive 14-day trial for the SEO Toolkit.
- Pricing: Starts at $139.95 per month for SEO Toolkit. The pricing for an AI SEO toolkit is $100 per month.
Semrush was the second SEO tool I ever used, right after Ahrefs, when I started out as an SEO specialist. Since then, it’s become one of my go-to tools for managing both my own website and client projects.
A lot has changed since those early days. Semrush has evolved massively and is now a completely different (and much more powerful) platform.
Today, Semrush offers over 55 features for all kinds of marketing tasks, neatly organized into seven toolkits so you can easily find what you need.
Here’s a quick overview of what each toolkit does:
- SEO Toolkit: Handles everything from keyword research and site audits to backlink tracking and domain analysis, basically all the essentials for building and improving your SEO strategy.
- Content Toolkit (formerly ContentShake AI): Helps you optimize your content workflow, from generating briefs to creating and optimizing your articles.
- AI SEO Toolkit: A newer addition that lets you track how your brand shows up in AI Overviews and LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
- Social Media Kit: Lets you manage all your social accounts from one dashboard.
- Advertising Toolkit: Helps you research, plan, and optimize your ad campaigns.
- Local Business Kit: Designed to manage your local presence, including your Google Business Profile and online reviews.
- Traffic and Market Toolkit: Gives you insights into your competitors’ strategies and traffic sources, so you can see what’s working for them.
If you’d like to dive deeper, I’ve published a detailed Semrush review where I cover all these features in more detail.
Semrush’s old pricing tiers, Pro and Guru, now only include the SEO Toolkit.
To use it, you’ll need at least the Pro plan, which starts at $139.95 per month. It’s not exactly cheap, but it’s still a more affordable SEO software for agencies than Ahrefs, which costs $249 per month for their Standard plan with 2 years of historical data.
Before committing, I’d suggest trying the free trial first. That way, you can explore the features and see if it’s worth the investment.
With my partner link, you’ll get a 14-day free trial for the Semrush Pro plan instead of the standard 7 days. Two full weeks to test everything out and decide if it fits your needs!
If you’re interested in AI-driven SEO, Semrush also offers a new AI SEO Toolkit for $100 per month.
This toolkit automatically checks how your brand appears across AI search engines like ChatGPT, SearchGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
It can help you understand how AI tools “see” your brand compared to your competitors. Additionally, it can give you actionable tips to improve your content, so you can show up more often in AI-powered search results.
If you’re a content creator or website owner, this is definitely a must-have addition to your SEO tools.
Based on my experience and observations, there are a few drawbacks and advantages of Semrush that I want to highlight for you below.
Pros
- Even though none of the tools’ metrics are accurate, Semrush’s traffic numbers are way more accurate compared to other tools, like Ahrefs. You can learn more about my traffic data comparison in my Semrush vs. Ahrefs post.
- You can conduct local keyword research with Semrush’s SEO Toolkit. Semrush lets you assess keywords in different cities, regions, and counties — not just countries.
- Unlike other tools, Semrush gives you personalized keyword analysis for your website. So, you’ll know exactly if your website can realistically rank for your target keyword.
- Semrush updates ranking positions daily, and they are pretty accurate.
Cons
- Semrush has switched to a different pricing model. So, all the toolkits that used to be part of the Pro and Guru plans are now priced separately. Therefore, if you want to use an AI SEO Toolkit or Content Toolkit next to your SEO toolkit, you’ll have to pay extra for it.
2. Ahrefs
- Top features: AI Content Helper, Brand Radar, Rank Tracker, and Keyword Explorer.
- Free trial: Ahrefs doesn’t offer a free trial, but you can use the Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. It’s a lighter version of the tool available to verified site owners.
- Pricing: Starts at $129/month for the Lite plan, which includes 5 projects, 6 months of historical data, and 750 tracked keywords. The annual subscription gives you 2 months for free.
Ahrefs was actually the first SEO tool I ever used, way back in 2015. The interface still looks pretty similar today, but the number of features has grown a lot since then.
- Site Explorer for a quick domain overview
- Keyword Explorer for keyword research
- Site Audit to understand how “healthy” your website is
- Rank Tracker to rank your website’s keyword rankings
- Competitive Analysis to analyze your rivals
- Content Explorer to analyze the top-performing content on the web
- Broken Links to see whether a target website or URL has “broken” backlinks pointing to it
- And more!
They’ve also rolled out Brand Radar, an AI-powered tool to track your brand’s mentions and citations across AI search results.
Nowadays, their new mission is to: “Make your business discoverable in search, AI, and beyond.”
Over the years, Ahrefs has been my go-to tool for things like:
- Keyword research
- Tracking how my rankings change over time
- Monitoring the performance of new and recently updated pages
- Finding technical SEO issues
- Checking competitors’ top-performing pages
- Tracking new and lost backlinks
…and honestly, so much more
However, I paused my Ahrefs subscription in July 2025 after noticing that their performance data doesn’t always reflect reality, and this issue still seems to persist.
For instance, Ahrefs’ Site Explorer shows that my site gets over 47,000 organic visits per month as of October 2025. I wish! In reality, my site gets up to 18,000 monthly visits across all channels.
In my experience, Ahrefs tends to overestimate both organic traffic numbers and keyword metrics, so keep that in mind when analyzing your data.
As I’ve been Ahrefs’ user since 2015 and I’m still using their Webmasters Tool, let me share a few thoughts about their positive and negative sides. If you run an agency and are looking for a suitable SEO tool, this might be worth taking into account.
Pros
- For $129 per month, you can work on up to 5 projects simultaneously under one account.
- Unlike Semrush, Ahrefs doesn’t charge for additional toolkits. You get all you need under your chosen monthly plan. You can also purchase additional add-ons if needed.
- The overall growing or declining traffic trend is shown accurately, although the numbers are off.
- Ahrefs shows how frequently site owners update their content, which is a pretty useful metric to pay attention to.
- You can also quickly review the AI Content Metric for any website’s page, which is a great estimate of the extent to which a website relies on AI when creating content.
Cons
- Ahrefs significantly overestimates both organic traffic numbers and keyword metrics compared to data from Google Search Console.
If you are looking for other options, I’ve published my overview on Ahrefs alternatives with data comparison.
3. Search Atlas
- Top features: OTTO SEO, an automated SEO AI assistant, AI Content Writer, Site Auditor
- Free trial: Search Atlas offers a 7-day free trial, but you’ll need to connect your credit card to activate it.
- Pricing: Starts at $99 per month for the Starter plan, which includes 2 user seats and up to 5 site projects.
Search Atlas is a relatively new all-in-one AI SEO software for agencies that launched in 2024. From what I’ve seen, it’s gaining traction fast! They’ve been actively showcasing the tool at SEO conferences and events to attract attention.
As a great example, I met the Search Atlas team at the SEO IRL conference in Toronto in October 2025. Their founder, Manick Bhan, shared an insightful presentation and lots of exclusive SEO insights.
Below, you can see me with Fidan, their marketing specialist. I’ve agreed on giving my audience some extra perks when using Search Atlas — details coming soon.
Now, a few more words about Search Atlas as an SEO platform for agencies.
The company positions Search Atlas as a strong AI SEO platform and a modern alternative to tools like SE Ranking, Semrush, and Ahrefs.
I’ve tested Search Atlas myself to get a feel for its features, and here’s a quick summary of what it can do:
- Analyze any website’s traffic, keywords, and backlinks
- See which pages and keywords drive the most traffic to competitors
- Explore backlink profiles
- Conduct keyword research
- Optimize content and track its rankings
- Run technical SEO audits
- Find and automate link-building opportunities
- Save time with the WordPress plugin and SEO OTTO automation tool
- Speed up writing with the SEO Content Assistant
Pretty solid, right?
What I like most is that it brings everything together, so you don’t need to juggle multiple tools for different SEO tasks.
Another thing I noticed is that the interface feels familiar visually. It’s a lot like Ahrefs, and some of its features are quite similar to Semrush. That makes it easy to navigate if you’ve used either of those before.
If you’re curious how Search Atlas compares to Semrush, I’ve actually written a detailed side-by-side Semrush vs. Search Atlas review.
And now, let’s take a closer look at their Site Explorer report, which, in my opinion, seems clearly inspired by Ahrefs.
As you can see, no SEO tool is 100% accurate, and Search Atlas is no exception. Still, from my experience, its performance data for my website seems more precise than what I’ve seen elsewhere, which makes me think it likely gives more accurate insights for other sites too.
If you’re curious, I’d suggest giving their 7-day free trial a try before deciding. It’s the best way to see whether Search Atlas actually fits your business needs.
Now, let’s talk about one of its standout features — OTTO SEO.
OTTO acts like your personal AI assistant for your website. Once you install a small tracking pixel, it automatically starts identifying technical issues, reviewing your content, and suggesting ways to improve it.
That said, I don’t recommend letting AI handle the fixes directly. Remember, it’s just a tool! So, if something goes wrong, you’ll have to fix it yourself. Instead, use OTTO as an auditing assistant: review its recommendations, prioritize what matters most, and focus on the changes that can make the biggest difference.
I also checked out Search Atlas reviews on G2 and the feedback is pretty mixed.
Some users mentioned that customer support can be slow and that the tool sometimes glitches.
I haven’t personally reached out to their support team, but I did notice a few bugs myself and had to wait a bit for reports to load. Since these issues are mentioned by users across different platforms, I’m guessing the Search Atlas team is aware of them and likely working on improvements.
By the way, G2 now uses AI to generate summaries from user reviews. Here’s what that looks like for Search Atlas:
Let me share a few more thoughts after testing Search Atlas:
Pros
- Search Atlas is an all-in-one SEO tool, which also offers AI and automation features starting at $99 — that’s much cheaper than other SEO agency tools.
- User-friendly design inspired by both Semrush and Ahrefs, so you won’t need to learn how the tool works.
- In my experience, you can more or less rely on their traffic metrics when assessing competitors. It’s close to reality.
Cons
- Since the tool is in active development, I’ve experienced bugs and delays in report generation.
- I also don’t recommend relying on OTTO SEO when it comes to automatically implementing technical improvements, since some users reported issues on Reddit.
4. SE Ranking
- Top features: On-page SEO Checker, Content Marketing Tool with AI Writer.
- Free trial: A 14-day free trial.
- Pricing: Starts at $65 per month for 1 user seat, 5 projects and 500 tracked keywords.
SE Ranking has been around for years in the SEO and digital marketing space. Chances are, you’ve come across it while looking for tools for keyword research, site audits, rank tracking, and more.
Beyond the standard SEO features, SE Ranking has recently added a wide range of AI tools to help SEO professionals plan and execute more effective strategies.
Their AI toolkit, in particular, allows you to:
- Analyze LLM results for your target keywords
- Track your brand’s visibility and positions in AI-driven search results
- Monitor how competitors rank in AI-generated searches
- Analyze and keep tabs on AI Overviews
SE Ranking goes further with its Content Marketing toolkit, which includes two main features: Content Editor and Content Idea Finder.
Much like Semrush, it lets you compare your content against top-ranking pages in the SERPs and provides actionable suggestions to help you optimize your content based on what performs best.
Additionally, SE Ranking leverages AI to analyze search results for your target keywords, estimate potential organic traffic, and provide accurate insights and data.
I’ve known SE Ranking for years and currently use their 6-month plan. It’s a reliable SEO platform, backed by over 1,400 G2 reviews and an impressive 4.8/5 rating.
If you’re exploring other options, I’ve also written a detailed post on SE Ranking alternatives.
The following are my observations as a SE Ranking Pro 2000 user:
Pros
- The tool is more affordable than other SEO agency software
- The learning curve is relatively simple since the user interface is intuitive
Cons
- The organic traffic data is off. For example, SE Ranking shows 2k organic traffic for my website in October 2025, but GSC shows around 10k organic visits.
- Backlink and keyword databases are much smaller compared to other industry giants, like Semrush and Ahrefs.
5. Screaming Frog
- Top features: Custom data extraction, Google tools integration, visual crawl mapping, and Automated crawl scheduling.
- Free trial: You can download and crawl 500 URLs for free.
- Pricing: An SEO Spider licence is $279 per year to access advanced features.
Screaming Frog is a powerful website crawler and SEO audit tool, widely used by SEO professionals and web developers.
It scans your website and collects key data about its structure, content, and metadata — information you can use to spot and fix SEO issues.
It’s also one of the best SEO software for agencies that offers a solid free version with helpful insights for site owners.
If your site has fewer than 500 URLs, the free plan gives you a detailed overview of your website’s health, including broken links, redirects, errors, page titles, meta descriptions, duplicate content, and hreflang tags. You can even create an XML sitemap right inside the tool.
For larger sites or agencies, the paid version is a better choice. For $279 per year, you’ll get unlimited crawling and access to advanced features, which is suitable for running in-depth technical SEO audits.
Even though this is an essential SEO agency software for technical SEO needs, I can’t say that I’m an advanced user of Screaming Frog. Nevertheless, I’d highlight the following about this tool:
Pros
- Screaming Frog’s technical analysis mimics Googlebot with API integration.
- Compared to other SEO tools with their site audit features, this one enables you to find advanced technical issues on your website.
Cons
- The learning curve is steep, and the software isn’t easy to use.
These are my top SEO agency tools. Actually, I’ve tested many more others, like Writesonic, Indexly, Rankability, Frase.io, and others, but they didn’t make it to this list for various reasons.
The truth is, what an agency needs is quite different from what a solo SEO or freelancer looks for. I’ve worked on both sides, so I’m speaking from real, hands-on experience.
If you’re part of an SEO agency, I’d love to hear from you. What tools are you using right now? Drop your favorites in the comments below.
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