Unpopular opinion: those $500/month SEO tools are a complete ripoff

I burned $3,000 on Semrush over 6 months and got better results from free Google Search Console and a Python script. Anyone else ditch the fancy tools and go back to basics?

2 comments

2 Comments

jones.blake24d ago

Wait, $3,000 on Semrush in just 6 months? That's insane. I thought those plans capped way lower unless you bought every add-on they have. My buddy paid $200 a month for their basic tier and still felt ripped off after seeing how shallow the backlink data was. Free tools like Google Search Console and some basic crawling with Screaming Frog have told me way more about my site's issues than any paid dashboard ever did. Those big SEO suites just give you a pretty chart and call it a day. People get hooked on the interface but forget the actual work is just fixing broken stuff on their own site.

angela_carter24d ago

Cringed a little reading that number out loud. Three grand in six months is rough no matter how you slice it. I get the appeal of having all that data in one place but I've been burned by similar tools thinking they'd fix everything. Truth is Google Search Console and a free Screaming Frog crawl catch most of the same stuff if you know what you're looking at. The fancy charts are just a distraction from the boring but necessary work of actually fixing your site.