As Google and the other search engines use AI to get smarter and the algorithms evolve, SEO presents a bigger challenge to marketers. Auditing and baselining the site, doing keyword research, getting the technical SEO and site speed and experience right, doing on-page and off-page optimization, and monitoring and reporting require a wide range of specific skills and resources.

Some of those capabilities have been coded into software to make some of the tasks easier and more efficient. That unique and proprietary software capability should give a competitive advantage to its licensees. But, all software solutions are coupled with the problems of the learning and utilization curves, meaning most companies underlearn and underutilize the software they buy. For example, as a consumer you may use Microsoft Excel, but you probably do not use 95% of its features, according to research by the Standish Group. And let’s face it, SEO in 2021 is a lot harder and more complex than Microsoft desktop applications. All but the largest SEO teams would benefit from some managed service support on top of the features of the software they license.

Though there are dozens of SEO tools, only a small fraction of those provide managed services. Here is a list of providers and what they help they offer.

Conductor

Their customer intelligence platform provides insight into search intent, empowering customers to take actions that make an impact across digital channels. Increase visibility, drive revenue, and share success with Conductor Searchlight. Conductor Searchlight helps uncover new customer insights, create marketing content, and track SEO performance.

On the service side they provide support, strategic guidance, and help with execution from a dedicated customer success team. Their experts can manage the process, provide deliverables, and empower in-house teams to achieve digital marketing success. They provide dedicated strategists specializing in keyword research, content analysis, and more. As markets quickly evolve, the team is available to provide strategic consulting, challenge and opportunity analysis, bespoke trainings, and more. Conductor has 225 employees worldwide. The CEO is Seth Besmertnik.

Milestone Inc.

Milestone helps companies create, organize, and amplify digital information to enhance customers’ digital presence and make their information more accurate, consistent, and visible. They do this with a SaaS digital experience platform and add to it as much or as little service as needed to grow results. Within their product suite they offer the only SEO-first CMS in the market, which includes error-free advanced schema markup software and monitoring, Core Vitals-readiness, AMP, FAQs, voice, and local.

Their service lineup includes analytics, reporting, technical SEO, local, content, design, and paid media. Through their Milestone Research department, they have researched, figured out, and proven what techniques work best and sustain through the ups and downs of algo changes.

With headquarters in Santa Clara, Milestone also has offices in Chicago, and Washington, DC. Milestone has more than 230 employees worldwide with over 150 in service, centers of excellence, and engineering. The CEO is Anil Aggarwal.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools is a cloud-based digital marketing platform with a complete set of SEO and automated reporting tools for marketing. Trusted by agencies, in-house marketers, and media companies worldwide, Raven Tools helps make customer SEO into a measurable marketing channel. Offering competitive analysis features, including rank tracking, competitor research, keyword research, backlink research, website audit tools, and easy reporting to acquire and track important metrics for search engine optimization.

They offer online software training and online content resources. The parent company Tap Clicks has 245 employees. The CEO is Jon Henshaw.

Reputation.com

Reputation.com provides Reputation Experience Management. And over the past decade, they’ve been building a platform to enhance the customer experience, improve a brand’s online presence and connect with the communities that matter. They collect sentiment data and give actionable insights to anticipate the needs of customers and communities.

Their software helps transform feedback from reviews, likes, listings, comments and clicks into a competitive advantage. They provide account support and product training. Reputation.com has 415 employees worldwide. The CEO is Joe Fuca.

Searchmetrics

In software they provide SEO performance tracking with the Searchmetrics Suite’s data. It can help reveal the search landscape with global, regional, and local competitive market analyses. Understand how search and content strategy impacts online presence – and shapes business. They say they help find gaps, uncover customer insights, and build winning strategies to attract the audience. With prioritized opportunities, customers can focus on what’s important and accelerate the optimization process with competitive analysis, targeted recommendations, and custom reporting with competitor analysis.

On the service side, their SEO consultants help focus on the balance between website technical performance, SEO tactics, and optimized content to drive results, using a hands-on approach with customer teams to drive growth. Searchmetrics has 267 employees worldwide. The CEO is Matthew Colebourne.

SEO Clarity

seoClarity offers SEO software to scale enterprise SEO to earn search visibility. It provides SEO data, metrics, and capabilities integrated with insights. They focus on driving direct value to clients in a way that’s most useful to them.

seoClarity Professional Services provides enterprises, agencies and digital teams with products and solutions based on the data from their SEO software and customer SEO efforts to grow KPIs. They can help create content including blog posts, product descriptions, or any web page content. They have 60 employees worldwide. The CEO is Artem Borodatyuk. The CEO is Mitul Gandhi.

Serpstat

Serpstat was founded in 2013 as a keyword research tool and has been growing and improving ever since. An in-house software turned into an independent product that is now on its way to becoming more known. In August of 2016 Serpstat turned into an all-in-one SEO platform, and now it offers 5 essential tools.

They offer training and consultation on working with Serpstat. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced user, they have some actionable tips. Serpstat has 101 employees worldwide. . The CEO is Artem Borodatyuk.

SiteImprove

Siteimprove is a European SaaS solution that helps organizations achieve their digital potential by empowering teams with actionable insights to deliver a superior website experience and drive growth.

The company has 17+ years of digital expertise and partners with leading organizations, such as the W3C, the UN, and Adobe. They also offer best-in-class technical support, academy courses, services, and technology integrations. Siteimprove has 490 employees across 13 offices. The CEO is Morten Ebbesen.

Titan Growth

Titan Growth focuses on SEO and PPC in addition to email and social media. They use their TitanBOT® which emulates the spiders that Google, Bing, and other search engines use to crawl a site. This allows their team to see a site exactly like the search engines do, identify opportunities for testing, and better predict search outcomes.

Their team will work to create a comprehensive SEO and paid media strategy that aligns with the overall goals of a company. With its TitanBOT® technology and team, they can help capture competitive market share and achieve the results. Titan Growth has 535 employees worldwide. The CEO is Danny Shepherd.

Yext

Yext’s mission is to help businesses and organizations around the world deliver official answers everywhere people search.

It is powered by the Yext Search Experience Cloud platform, which helps you control your facts online and provides accurate, up-to-date, official answers to consumer questions across the entire search ecosystem. Starting on your own website, then extending across search engines, voice assistants, maps, apps, and chatbots, Yext helps you safeguard against misinformation and become the ultimate source of truth online. They provide account support and online training and online help. Yext has 930 employees worldwide.

So, after scouring the marketplace, only these 10 companies are promoting that they provide unique software capabilities with managed SEO services. If you are looking to improve your SEO, review the firms above and select one that meets your product, service, and budget needs and seems to be a good fit with your company work culture. Leveraging proprietary software and skilled managed services that use proven techniques is the best way to outrank your competition. The CEO is Howard Lerman.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 10, 2021 12:17 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).