Special Edition Newsletter - Tuesday 12th August
Hi there,
This is a special edition because something big just happened and I wanted to tell you about it before Thursday.
I’ve just cancelled £509 a month in SEO tool subscriptions:
- Ahrefs: £199/month - CANCELLED
- SEMrush: £190/month - CANCELLED
- BrightLocal: £45/month - CANCELLED
- ContentStudio: £75/month - CANCELLED
£6,108
annual spend on tools that didn’t talk to each other
That’s £6,108 a year I was burning on tools that gave me data I couldn’t control, reports that confused clients, and metrics that had nothing to do with actual results.
I’ve replaced it all with my own unified platform. And it’s already changing how I work with every client.
This Week’s Big Announcement
Platform Transformation Complete: From Tool Chaos to Unified Intelligence
I’ve just finished a proper transformation - I migrated from Wix to Astro, and more importantly, I built my own SEO intelligence system that brings together:
- Google Search Console data (direct from the source, not filtered through someone else’s dashboard)
- Rankings tracking (my own system, not a third-party subscription)
- Technical audits (I built them around what actually matters, not what looks good in a demo)
- Competitor analysis (focused on real opportunities, not vanity metrics)
- Local SEO tracking (without BrightLocal’s frustrating limitations)
The best part? It’s all in one place, it loads in seconds, and it focuses on what drives results - not what looks impressive in a pitch deck.
Here’s exactly what I was paying and why I walked away from each one.
Ahrefs - £199/month (CANCELLED)
- Why I had it: Backlink analysis, competitor research, content gaps
- Why I ditched it: I was paying £199 a month for something that overlapped almost entirely with SEMrush
- The reality: It’s the same backlink database everyone else accesses. There’s no competitive advantage in that
- The kicker: No API access without an enterprise plan, so I couldn’t even integrate the data properly
SEMrush - £190/month (CANCELLED)
- Why I had it: Keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits
- Why I ditched it: I was using maybe 20 features out of 500+. That’s paying for a sports car to do the school run
- The reality: Same data every other agency has. No edge, no differentiation
- The kicker: Want content marketing tools? That’s an extra £46/month. White label reports? More fees. They nickel-and-dime you for everything
BrightLocal - £45/month (CANCELLED)
- Why I had it: Local SEO tracking, citation monitoring
- Why I ditched it: I was limited to 10 locations unless I paid more. For a business that works with local companies, that’s a ceiling I kept hitting
- The reality: Citations don’t drive revenue. Rankings do
- The kicker: Generic reports that looked exactly like everyone else’s. Nothing to set my service apart
ContentStudio - £75/month (CANCELLED)
- Why I had it: Social media scheduling, content planning
- Why I ditched it: Another dashboard, another login, another tab I had to keep open
- The reality: My clients want SEO results, not social vanity metrics
- The kicker: AI tools now do this better for free
The Real Problem
£509 a month for tools that don’t talk to each other, give you data you can’t own, produce reports clients don’t understand, and focus on metrics that don’t drive revenue.
That was the actual situation. And I’d been paying it for years.
What I Built Instead
Using Claude Code (yes, that £5.23/day developer from last week’s newsletter), I built my own unified platform in four weeks:
Week One: Data Pipeline Architecture
- I wired up a direct Google Search Console API integration
- I built a custom ranking tracker using DataForSEO (£38/month vs £190 for SEMrush)
- I set up automated data collection that runs every six hours
Week Two: Intelligence Layer
- I added AI-powered opportunity detection
- I built competitor gap analysis that actually tells me something useful
- I created technical audit automation focused on what moves the needle
- I wrote custom scoring algorithms that reflect how Google actually works
Week Three: Client Dashboard
- I built a lightning-fast Astro frontend (99/100 PageSpeed)
- I added real-time data updates so nothing feels stale
- I made it mobile-optimised because that’s how most people check things now
- I created one-click report generation that saves me hours every month
Week Four: Migration and Testing
- I moved all client data from the old scattered tools
- I set up automated monitoring across every client property
- I created custom alerts for opportunities worth acting on
- I built presentation-ready reports that clients actually read
£5,652
annual savings after switching to my own platform
Total Development Time: Around 40 hours with Claude Code
Total Cost: £157 for Claude + £38/month for the DataForSEO API
Previous Tool Costs: £509/month (£6,108/year)
New Running Costs: £38/month (£456/year)
The new unified platform brings together everything I actually need:
Ranking Intelligence:
- I can track unlimited keywords now (no more arbitrary limits)
- I see position changes in real-time, not 48 hours later
- I can identify “near-miss” keywords sitting at positions 11-20, just outside page one
- I spot competitor movements the day they happen, not the day after
Technical Auditing:
- I get automatic detection of duplicate titles and descriptions
- I can find pages Google can’t properly crawl before they become a problem
- I identify broken links and redirect chains without manual trawling
- I monitor Core Web Vitals continuously, not when I remember to check
Opportunity Detection:
- I use AI-powered quick win identification to find the low-hanging fruit
- I run competitor gap analysis that highlights what I should be targeting
- I generate content optimisation suggestions based on real search data
- I flag local SEO improvement areas that most tools miss entirely
What This Means for My Clients
By consolidating everything into one platform, I can now deliver something that was genuinely impossible before: truly unified insights that connect all the dots.
What clients got before:
- Reports from different tools that didn’t talk to each other
- Generic templates that every agency in the country uses
- Data scattered across multiple sources with no single view
- Metrics without context and no clear next steps
What clients get now:
- One unified view of their entire SEO performance
- Custom insights specific to their business, not their industry
- Real-time opportunity detection that catches things early
- Clear action items, not data dumps
- Direct access to what’s actually working and what isn’t
What This Means for You
If you’re one of my SEO clients, your reporting just got a proper upgrade:
- Faster insights: Real-time data instead of 48-hour delays
- Clearer opportunities: AI-powered detection of quick wins I can act on immediately
- Better tracking: Everything in one place, no more scattered reports from different platforms
- Actionable intelligence: Not just what happened, but what I’m going to do about it
Coming Thursday
Back to my regular Thursday newsletter: “The Death of Traditional Web Agencies”
I’m going to show you why traditional agencies that charge £5K for a website are starting to panic, and how smart operators are using AI to deliver better results in days, not months.
Until Thursday,
Tony Cooper
Founder, We Build Stores
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