#107 – Can Neil Patel Really Make all SEO Keyword Data Free? W/ Tim Soulo from Ahrefs

What you will learn

  • Everything about Neil Patel’s plan to make all SEO data free
  • What a seasoned SEO SAAS think about the situation
  • What that means for authority site owners
  • How tool companies might react

The News

So about a week ago, Neil Patel, one of the most well-known SEO ‘s in our industry declared that he didn’t think to produce large amounts of content would benefit his site anymore and shared some interesting insights.

Late last year, he acquired a free keyword tool used by many SEO’s called Ubersuggest that yielded a lot of traffic to his website.

When he added a new set of features, the traffic grew even more, and that’s what gave him the idea of adding more functions for increased traffic.

He, therefore, started to work with his development team to work on a project that would offer a free alternative to tools like

and more.

You can see the blog post here.

Ubersuggest toolWhat we think

Tim

  • Neil underestimates the server costs and infrastructure needed to grow such a tool.
  • Even if they manage it, they won’t have historical data people rely on at the beginning.
  • Neil probably has a hidden plan to release a paid version of this tool.
  • The version released will probably be much less ambitious than the paid tools.

Gael

  • This splits the SEO Community in 2, those who think Neil is Robin Hood, and those who are not happy to see data being free and opened to everyone.
  • This could be an amazing bluff to buy a B player tool and lower their valuation (Probably KWFinder or SERPstat).
  • This could be a Buzzsumo type launch where the tool is free for a while then he adds paid options to monetise.
  • Kind of an evil plan to name companies he vows to destroy

Mark

  • Could just be a marketing stunt
  • If no login is required, someone will build scrapers and destroy Neil’s server costs.
  • He may be planning to use the data people are tracking somehow and crowdsource data collection.

What this means for the industry

  • Lower barrier to entry to create sites (good and bad)
  • This may compel companies to develop better features to maintain their premium.
  • If Neil takes all the bottom feeders this may improve premium SAAS companie’s margins
  • If everyone has the data, content quality and hustle will be the key differentiating factor.

What do you think this free tool means for the industry? Let us know in the comments!