Remember Roombas?

When those little robot vacuums came out, it seemed like a miracle.

The menial task of vacuuming was suddenly transformed into nothing more than pressing a button, kicking back and watching the little guy do your job for you.

So, if housework can be automated, what about SEO?

Today, there are plenty of different SEO tasks that can be automated. That’s why there are so many companies producing SEO automation tools that are designed to make your life easier.

But, what exactly is SEO automation?

What SEO tasks can you automate?

And what tools should you be using for this?

All excellent questions—let’s find out!

What Is SEO Automation?

In general, automation means something that’s done automatically, without user interaction. Forgive the vocabulary lesson, but that “no user interaction” part is important.

In this industry, automation often implies poor quality.

Right now, SEO feels like very hands-on work.

So, can your website’s SEO be fully automated, running on its own with no outside help?

Unfortunately, no. (Or at least, not yet.)

Setting up and running a successful SEO strategy for your website will always require the guidance and work of a human mind.

That being said, there are many tasks that are made much easier, or even fully accomplished by the use of SEO automation tools.

This means that tedious SEO tasks can be made faster and easier for your SEO team.

So, which tasks can be automated, and to what degree?

What Can You Automate?

Keyword Research: Instead of spending hours searching for, researching, and gathering metrics on viable keywords, many SEO automation tools will present you with hundreds (or thousands) of viable keywords by analyzing your website or working off one general keyword search.

The keyword research tools below take all the tedious, hard work out of it. They provide you with plenty of ideas, and all the metrics you’ll need to decide on the right keywords to rank your content.

Backlink Analysis: Keeping track of your backlink profile can now be automated. There are plenty of backlink analysis tools that will automatically search the web to find out who is linking back to you.

They’ll also show you relevant metrics about these backlinks and the websites they come from, and alert you to any spam links.

Rank Tracking: The best SEO automation tools of today will help you keep track of where your website ranks for certain keywords. This automates the process of checking yourself out in the SERPs.

Social Posting and Tracking: Keeping up appearances on social media can be a pain. However, many tools allow you to post simultaneously to different networks, track results and even monitor brand mentions online.

Competition Tracking: Tired of tracking down information about your competitors? Using tools like the ones we’ll discuss below, you can find out about your competition’s backlinks, keyword ranking, and domain metrics with a simple automation tool.

Email Marketing: Sending out the right emails to the right people at the right time can be exhausting. However, many tools make emailing much easier by allowing you to build emails off templates, create groups within your mailing list, and even send some types of emails automatically (such as cart abandonment emails or welcome emails).

Team Collaboration: Many SEO automation tools allow your whole team to keep up to date with current tasks and data without having to contact each individual separately.

Content Curation: When it comes to producing the right content, a lot of companies turn to content curation, especially on social media. There are plenty of tools that automate the task of finding and curating content that is relevant to your business and social channels.

How to Choose the Best SEO Automation Tools for Your Tasks

There’s no one-size-fits-all tool. Your business is unique, and the set of tasks you’ll want to automate are unique as well.

That’s why the right tool (or tools) for SEO automation should fit both your needs and your budget.

For smaller businesses, you may need to adapt in order to get just the essential SEO automation tools and fit into a tighter budget.

On the flip side, however, brands with bigger budgets shouldn’t get a more expensive tool just because they can afford it.

Before choosing your perfect SEO automation tools, define what exactly your business needs to automate. What does your team spend a ton of man-hours on? Which tasks feel most repetitive, where you’re completing the same three actions in a row, over and over again? Which tasks are very cut and dry, requiring minimal customization?

Once you’ve identified some great opportunities to shave steps off of your procedures, you can really find the right tools to automate those tasks.

So, what are some of the tools you business could use for SEO automation? Let’s find out.

The 9 Best SEO Automation Tools for Faster, Better, Stronger SEO Results

SEMRush

What Can You Automate?

• Keyword Research: Get over 2 million new keyword ideas with the Keyword Magic Tool.

• Social Posting: Schedule and manage posts for Facebook and Twitter.

• Rank Tracking: Keep track of your position for chosen keywords, as well as your competition’s position.

• Backlink Analysis: Set up weekly recrawls of your backlinks, and see an up-to-date view of what’s happening.

Pricing

SEMRush starts at $99.95 per month.

Moz Pro

What Can You Automate?

• SEO Site Audit: Moz regularly crawls your site, large or small, and automatically alerts you to any issues.

• Competition Research: Analyze your current backlinks, as well as your competition’s, and discover new backlink opportunities. Also, see where your keyword rankings overlap, and find better keywords to outrank the competition.

• Content Creation: Get a list of relevant content ideas based on keyword and competition analysis.

Pricing

Moz Pro starts at $79 per month, paid yearly.

Monitor Backlinks

Read our full review here.

What Can You Automate?

• Competition Backlink Analysis: Find out where your competitors are getting backlinks, and get alerts for every new backlink they get.

• Rank Monitoring: Keep track of how you’re ranking for different keywords over time.

• Backlink Monitoring: See updated information on all your backlinks, along with relevant metrics, and get regular reports and instant notifications sent your email.

Pricing

Monitor Backlinks starts at $24.90 per month.

Mangools

Read our full review here.

What Can You Automate?

• Keyword Research: Get hundreds of keyword ideas within seconds, along with relevant metrics and an easy view of the current SERP situation for each one. See our in-depth overview of the Mangools KWFinder tool here.

• Rank Tracking: Monitor your progress in SERPs with daily updates and 1 year data retention.

Pricing

The Mangools tool set includes 4 different SEO tools, and starts at $29.90 per month.

HootSuite

What Can You Automate?

• Social Analysis: Visually-appealing graphs show you your current situation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as your progress over time.

• Social Posting: Quickly create social posts, and auto-schedule to fill in the gaps of your social media posting schedule.

• Content Curation: Set up social listening streams to find fresh content when you need it.

• Team Management: Manage and discuss social tasks with your team through HootSuite.

Pricing

Hootsuite has a free version with limited features that can be useful for a small brand. Their paid plans start at $19 per month.

SEOptimer

What Can You Automate?

• SEO Audits: Get a full audit of any website, including factors within the realm of on-page SEO, usability, performance, security, and more. For each item in this extensive list, you’ll see your rating as well as actions to improve.

Pricing

The free version works fine for your own website. Agencies can upgrade and produce white label reports for clients. The starting price of the paid plans is $29 per month.

Zapier

What Can You Automate?

• Hundreds of Menial Tasks: Zapier integrates with over 1,000 tools that marketers use every single day. It then connects these tools together, allowing you to create workflows that run automatically. This could be anything from adding a task to your calendar when you receive an email, to saving responses in SurveyMonkey to a Google Sheet.

Pricing

The free version of Zapier is extremely useful. However, the paid plans give you the ability to create longer workflows and integrates with all 1,000 apps. Prices start at $20 per month.

MailChimp

What Can You Automate?

• Email Marketing: Create email campaigns and autoresponders that can then be sent out automatically to your users/customers on different occasions, such as welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, product recommendations, and more.

• Ad Campaigns: Create remarketing ad campaigns that display automatically on Google, Facebook, and Instagram.

Pricing

MailChimp has a free version with limited features. For larger brands, the paid version starts at $10 per month. The price will increase depending on how large your email list is.

Curata

What Can You Automate?

• Content Discovery: Find new content to curate through automatic discovery. The more you use this tool, the better it adapts to your preferences.

• Content Publishing: Curata integrates with WordPress, MailChimp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and more. So publishing curated content becomes even easier.

Pricing

Unfortunately, Curata does not list pricing information on their website. You’ll need to contact them for pricing information.

Conclusion: The Best SEO Automation Tools Are Right at Your Fingertips

We’re still waiting for the day when running SEO for your website is as easy as turning on your vacuum robot and watching him do his thing.

However, the tools we’ve discussed above will help you cut hours of work from your schedule, freeing up time for you and your team to focus on more important tasks.

Which of these SEO automation tools are the best for your brand? Well, that’s up to you to decide. However, a combination of the right tools can give your brand a serious advantage.

Are you ready to spend less time accomplishing more?