And finally, a genuine thank you to Nick, Vicky, Faith, and everyone I've worked with at SEOTesting.
It's been a place of huge growth for me, as a marketer and a person.
Onwards. But first, coffee. ☕
If you're hiring for a Head of SEO, Organic Growth Lead, Senior SEO Strategist, or a marketing role with a strong SEO focus, I'd love to chat.
I'm open to both agency and in-house roles.
Agencies appeal to me because I thrive in collaborative, multi-brand environments and senior strategy conversations.
But I'm equally excited by in-house roles where SEO is deeply embedded into product and growth.
Over the past few years, I've focused on:
- SEO testing & structured experimentation
- Turning organic search into measurable revenue
- Content strategies tied to business outcomes
- Speaking, workshops, and shaping how SEO is positioned
After an incredible nearly three years at SEOTesting, I’m now looking for a new opportunity in SEO leadership.
SEO is where I do my best work, particularly at the intersection of strategy, testing, and commercial impact.
6) WordPress SEO
Yoast
Rank Math
7) Local SEO
BrightLocal
Whitespark
Moz Local
3) Technical audits
Screaming Frog
Sitebulb
PageSpeed Insights
4) Content planning
Keyword Insights
AlsoAsked
5) Link intelligence
Majestic
1) Proving impact + reporting
SEOTesting
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Bing Webmaster Tools
2) All-in-one suites
Ahrefs
Semrush
Moz Pro
Instead of asking:
“What’s the best SEO tool?”
Ask:
What job does this tool need to do inside our agency workflow?
Here’s how I see the 2026 agency stack breaking down 👇
What SEO tools should an agency use?
That’s rarely a “which tool is best?” question.
It’s a systems + margin question.
When you’re juggling 10, 20, 50 client sites, the real pain isn’t lack of data.
It’s:
• Manual work
• Tool sprawl
• Weak reporting
• Proving impact so retainers renew
Most mature teams don’t “rip & replace.”
They unbundle.
Full breakdown is in the next post in the thread.
For keyword clustering & content briefs:
👉 Keyword Insights
For all-in-one coverage, but a lighter stack:
👉 SE Ranking
For technical SEO & crawling:
👉 Screaming Frog
👉 Sitebulb
For AI visibility (GEO / AEO / LLMO / whatever we’re calling it this week 😅):
👉 Waikay
Here are 9 serious Semrush alternatives, depending on the bottleneck 👇
For proving SEO impact & structured testing:
👉 SEOTesting
For backlink intelligence & competitor research:
👉 Ahrefs
👉 Majestic
For question research & topical expansion:
👉 AlsoAsked
Semrush is powerful. No doubt.
But “all-in-one” often means you’re paying for features you don’t fully use.
So instead of asking:
“What’s the best alternative?”
Ask:
“What problems are we actually trying to solve?”
“Should we replace Semrush?”
That’s rarely a pricing question.
It’s a strategic one.
Most SEO teams don’t wake up wanting a new tool.
They wake up needing to:
• Prove impact
• Improve workflow efficiency
• Go deeper on links or technical SEO
• Scale reporting without drowning in CSV exports
🧵👇
A two-step process, giving you a wealth of information about how you can make your content work better!
2️⃣ Content Evaluator
Once you've extracted your fanned queries from our Query Fan-Out Generator, export the JSON and upload that to our Content Evaluator.
We'll evaluate your content for you to tell you which queries have been covered fully, which have been partially covered, and where gaps exist!
Beyond that, we'll also provide information about the user personas who search for those keywords, so you can write content for them and get the best possible results!
1️⃣ Query Fan-Out Generator
Input your main target query, and our Query Fan-Out Generator will extract the "fanned" queries for that query, so you know exactly the talking points you need to cover within your article.
I am a firm believer in never stopping to improve your content.
That's why I'm a huge fan of some of the tools in SEOTesting's "Labs" section!
I've shared a full, practical breakdown of GSC vs GA4 vs SEOTesting, including when each tool is the right one to use.
Here it is: seotesting.com/blog/google-...
It sits on top of GSC (and GA4 when needed) to:
- Track the changes that are made to your site.
- Run time-based, SEO split, and LLM tests.
- Standardize reporting across pages and sites.
Less exporting.
Less guesswork.
More "here's what worked."
Both tools are absolutely essential. But neither of them answers the question that you might be asked the most:
"What changed, and did it move the needle?"
That's the gap SEOTesting was literally built to fill!
Google Search Console = SERP visibility and technical stuff.
- Queries, pages, CTR, average position. All that good stuff.
- Indexing, coverage, and technical issues.
Google Analytics = Outcomes and user behavior.
- Engagement
- Events
- Conversion paths
I'd be willing to bet that most of you following me use Google Search Console and Google Analytics every single day.
So you're (hopefully) not confused as to what they do.
But maybe you'd like to know more about how they can be used in perfect harmony!
Here's a simple way to frame it:
The "takeaway" I keep coming back to:
Enterprise SEO stacks are usually layered.
➡️ 1 suite for coverage.
➡️ 1 crawler for scale.
➡️ 1 rank tracker for accuracy.
➡️ 1 content tool for performance.
➡️ And something to prove impact!
7) Content optimization
- AirOps
- Surfer
- Clearscope
- MarketMuse
