Budget for SEO-tools. How much is too much?

Sooner or later every SEO professional faces the need to purchase software designed to automate some of the repeating tasks or process and analyse necessary information.Although there are many free tools, most useful software still cost money and requires a monthly budget to maintain access to the best tools. How much is too much? It depends on the tasks at hand, volume of inspections, promotion targets. The following diagram illustrates the most important tools required for every SEO professional and its cost

Basic SEO-tools:



Ahrefs is one of the best tools for backlinks and SEO-analysis of the selected website. Minimum package costs $100 a month or $1000 a year. If you want to receive additional information on feedback from social networks - cost goes up to $1800 per year.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the best spider for website's technical analysis, identifies all sorts of mistakes, and allows to review various data slices individually. License costs $145 a year, developers constantly introduce new and useful functionality.

SerpStat provides analysis of your competition and also has a kit of semantic tools. It allows to check the statistics database for keywords in different countries. Recently they added a database for Belarus. The minimum plan cost $49 a month or $400 a year.

KeyCollector is indispensable tool for working with semantics. You can only install it once on a single computer but it never expires. Price is $26.

Overall access to this basic set of tools will cost you between $1500 to $ 2800. It is easier to carry this burden for teams working together since one tool can be shared between everybody. On the other side, person working alone has to cover all that cost singlehandedly.

Tools for advanced SEO-professionals



Moz Pro is a set of tools for professionals promoting website in North America and Europe. It includes position checker, keyword analysis, references profile, technical analysis of the website and so on. In general these tools are used by teams, however it might be affordable for a single professional working on large projects.

SimilarWeb - premium package provides additional data for the analysis of competition which is not available in the free package: more detailed statistics on the geography of users, traffic sources, keywords, social networks, mobile data traffic statistics, mobile applications, etc. Premium package is cost-efficient tool for professionals running large projects owners allowing them to better understand current market situation.

BuzzSumo is a service for the analysis of competitors' content: highlighting their successful projects on different social networks and measuring strengths of these projects affect. You can filter this data based on time, language, geography, and content type. This tool is used for content analysis of different projects and drafting new viral ideas

SemRush is similar to SerpStap but more advanced and expensive. It allows you to analyze the semantics and traffic of your competition.

Advanced tools cost starts from $2500 per year for very basic package and grows to $6800+ for intermediate level. These tools are cost-effective only for professionals servicing either a few large websites or numerous smaller ones, for for a start-up with big ideas.

Single-use tools

In addition the above tools, SEO-professionals have to use ad hoc verification services such as checkers positions (SeoLib), link analysis quality (CheckTrust), semantic analysis (Just Magic, Rush Analytics) and some other. Cost depends on the volume of necessary checks and range from $ 20-30 per month to $100 or more.




Conclusion

It is important for every SEO-professional to manage his own budget. Great SEO-tools are expensive and cost does push up steeply depending on how "advanced" your needs are.