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There are thousands of SEO tools out there, aiming to automate each and every aspect of marketing workflow: from creating well-thought-out keyword lists to tracking positions and optimizing websites. While all these solutions differ in terms of core features and overall functionality, it turns out that much of them are built on top of the very same data source you can use to design your own SEO tool – DataForSEO APIs.
Built for supplying marketing tech solutions with unlimited volumes of relevant SEO intel, DataForSEO can provide SERP, keyword and e-commerce data on a vast scale using its extensive infrastructure and a set of sophisticated REST APIs.
Having started as an enterprise-grade solution four years ago, DataForSEO now faces its biggest challenge yet: bringing its service to marketing agencies and in-house teams. We caught up with Nick Chernets, the company’s Founder and CEO, for an interview to discuss how SEO agencies can leverage APIs and benefit from building marketing software in-house.
Q: Tell us a bit about your background. How did DataForSEO start and how do you foresee its future?
A: DataForSEO launched back in 2015 as a DaaS (Data as a Service) company. Like many other businesses working in the search engine optimization industry, we focused on rank tracking capabilities and hence, started off from providing SERP data that would allow building relatively simple rank tracking tools. Back then, the market for SEO data was tiny, and we didn’t expect to reach even a small fraction of success that we’ve gained throughout the years.
Fast forward in 2019, DataForSEO is an established leader in enterprise-grade SEO data services. Today, we can provide a full spectrum of accurate data for any SEO-related tool through seven powerful APIs: Rank Tracking, SERP, Keyword Data, Keyword Finder, On-Page, Competitor Data, and Merchant API.
As for future developments, our team is actively working on a new version of DataForSEO as we speak. DataForSEO Version 3.0 is set to provide an unmatchable speed of data delivery. Our customer base is also snowballing, with more and more mid-size agencies choosing our APIs to develop in-house SEO software solutions.
Q: Speaking of your customers, who are they? And how does DataForSEO help them solve their challenges?
A: The majority of our current customers are SEO software developers. While the challenges of the former segment are pretty obvious – they need a reliable source of data which would cut off the development costs. Scraping results pages at scale has become extremely tough and costly – search engines had their reasons to make it this way. On the other hand, strict limitations in “official” resources make it impossible to use them for building even a remotely operational tool.
Nick Chernets, Founder, DataForSEO
Here, at DataForSEO, we help developers get all the data they need to build efficient software. By integrating SERP API, they can implement rank tracking capabilities while Keyword Finder APIs will help with keyword research functionality by providing thousands of keyword ideas from our extensive keyword database of over a billion queries. In addition to that, the Keyword Data API will enrich these keywords with crucial metrics, such as search volume, cost-per-click and competition values. And the best part is that we can supply all this data on a massive scale, which allows us to cooperate with some of the leading SEO software companies.
At the same time, while software businesses are our main customers, they represent only a part – although a big one – of our customer base. DataForSEO has a long history of providing data to digital marketing agencies, research institutions, and even e-commerce businesses. A few of them need raw data, while others want to develop their own in-house tools for SEO analytics and reporting.
But at the end of the day, everything boils down to value and cost-efficiency. By using DataForSEO APIs, some of our clients managed to cut off as much as 60% of overall development costs without having to sacrifice the quality and functionality of the end product.
Q: What are the benefits of building SEO tools in-house? Isn’t it more convenient to use a ready-made solution?
A: Most SEO agencies start with off-the-shelf tools because they can be put to work immediately and appear to cost cheaper, at least in the short term. However, while the first statement is true, such tools have a higher price in the long run.
The main problem is that one-fits-all SEO software doesn’t exist. Although they are heavily marketed and have beautiful UI, with off-the-shelf products you won’t get any flexibility, customization. In the end, they fail to solve unique business challenges marketing agencies are facing. What’s worse, by leveraging subscription-based models ready-made solutions will trick you into paying extra for features you don’t need and will probably never use.
In-house solutions, on the contrary, are designed to serve the particular needs of your business by default. You get a custom-tailored tool that works as you want it and can be adjusted and enriched with new features as you need them. While it’s true that running software projects in-house require some technical expertise and investment, they have proven to recuperate relatively fast and will undoubtedly pay off in the longer term. Leveraging DataForSEO APIs will help to cut off much of the costs and greatly reduce the development time. We are operating on a pay-as-you-go system, so you will only pay for data that you get – no hidden fees or whatsoever.
Q: Tell us about the tools that can be built with DataForSEO APIs.
A: As I’ve already mentioned, most of our customers are SEO software companies that range from enterprise-grade all-in-one platforms to small keyword research, on-page, and rank tracking tools. DataForSEO offers seven different APIs, each of which provides a different kind of data and thus designed for building a particular feature or even a stand-alone product.
For instance, with our SERP API, one can create a powerful rank tracking tool that will help monitor website positions in any location and language. Moreover, we provide data on featured snippets in Google SERPs in addition to organic and paid results – with virtually no limits! Incorporating this functionality will put you in the same league as enterprise solutions that charge thousands of dollars a month.
Yet another use case is keyword research tools. DataForSEO’s Keyword Finder API provides unlimited opportunities here: from generating LSI, long-tail and Google Autocomplete keyword ideas to building competitor analysis functionality by searching for keyword intersections between two domains and showing where they rank for these keywords. In addition to that, the Keyword Data API will help enrich these keywords with crucial SEO and PPC metrics, such as Estimated Traffic Volume, Search Volume, Cost-per-Click values, etc.
As you see, we so far discussed only three APIs: SERP, Keyword Data and Keyword Finder. Imagine how many opportunities all seven available DataForSEO APIs can potentially provide. There are dozens of innovative SEO software products powered by our data.
Q: How do DataForSEO APIs work? Let’s say I wanted to see what data you provide, how could I do that?
A: DataForSEO is based on the REST technology, meaning that all requests are made via HTTPS protocol while structured data returns in the JSON format. There are two kinds of requests – POST for submitting a query and GET for collecting results. We also have quite a few endpoints that support real-time data retrieval, which makes it possible to bypass the GET request and obtain results immediately.
As the name suggests, DataForSEO is the provider of data, so we don’t have a user interface in the classic sense of this term. You can test our service by using API clients or Google Sheets. It’s also possible to set tasks and retrieve results right from your browser – although it may be a more complex task.
Regardless of the option you choose, we strongly recommend studying our documentation – it will help you a lot. And of course, don’t hesitate to drop a line to our technical customer support team – they will sort everything out for you.
Q: Looking into the future, what are some trends you see in the SEO industry and how is DataForSEO adjusting to these?
A: SEO is the ever-changing space in and out of itself. Backlinks, for example, were a real thing just a few years ago, but have been rapidly declining in value ever since Google released the Penguin update. Same applies to the importance of keywords, which have been a cornerstone of SEO for a long time.
Search engines are getting smarter day-by-day, and SEO businesses should keep up with them. Here, at DataForSEO, we believe that staying relevant requires up-to-date data and more sophisticated means to analyze it. Our team is paying particular attention to changes in the industry, and we are always among the first to find out about changes in the SERP structure or ranking algorithms. We usually release a new update every other week, more than any other SEO data provider that I know of.
What every SEO professional needs to know
Even though there’re dozens of decent off-the-shelf tools, no one has invented a one-fits-all solution yet. Want anything done right, you got to do it yourself. No matter how complex your task is – the team of DataForSEO will be right here by your side.
You can try DataForSEO for free – we give 1000 free credits to all new customers. Don’t hesitate to drop a line to our 24/7 customer support team if you have any questions. They will be happy to help you out.