Two of the main topics that have been increasing in popularity in the Internet ecosystem in recent years: SaaS and SEO. I will talk about how you can quickly make a new SaaS enabled SEO Audit startup using the APIs offered in the APILayer marketplace.
Two of the main topics that have been increasing in popularity in the Internet ecosystem in recent years: SaaS and SEO. I will talk about how you can quickly make a new SaaS enabled SEO Audit startup using the APIs offered in the APILayer marketplace.
For a long time, softwares or applications left their local environment and started to spread over the internet. Thanks to this, the concepts of teamwork, productivity and remote working have become a new norm for everyone. In the last 10 years, we have witnessed the evolution from traditional desktop applications to the “as a service” model. As such, it was inevitable to hear of new SaaS startups every day. Only by looking at ProductHunt for just 10 minutes a day, you can follow how quickly developers bring their new ideas to life as startups.
We cannot pass without a few sentences about SEO, the second topic of our blog post. We mentioned above that a new startup enters our lives every day. Startups are often based on experimentally initiated ideas with small teams on limited budgets. If you don’t have an advertising budget, SEO is at the top of the list of alternatives for you. Especially if you have an idea in a niche area, you have a chance to grow organically only with SEO.
Today’s topic will be about how to start your own startup by bringing these two popular topics together. There are many APIs available in the APILayer marketplace that can be used for SEO Audit. Why not put them together to make a fast-monetizing SaaS startup? Let’s say you are a software developer who understands and implements SEO very well, and you provide consultancy to earn money on this area. Why not create yourself a SaaS startup and find customers with a global focus? The “Build once, sell twice” philosophy can change the way you think and earn money.
Now let’s move on to what kind of service you can provide with which API.
Table of Contents
Domain Name Related APIs
There are three domain-focused APIs on the marketplace. Whois API, DNS Lookup API and Domain Name Discovery API titles take place in our marketplace. As can be understood from their title, you can check the registration information of a domain name with Whois, while you can find new domain names for yourself with Domain Name Discovery. DNS Lookup is a useful tool that provides you with the DNS records of an active domain name. If we continue through our scenario, you can create a domain-based section in your SEO Audit tool.
In this section, you can show your customers the current Whois information for the domain they are querying. In addition, if there is a missing or problematic DNS record, it would be helpful to present this information as well. Domain Discovery will be the fun part of the job. You can prepare a list that offers similar domain names in addition to the domain name the customer inquiries. Moreover, you can even earn a commission by giving a reference link to a domain registrar to register these new domains you have listed.
Screenshot API
It is always helpful to show a screenshot of the web page the customer is viewing. This way you can check whether the website is loading properly. You will also enrich your application visually. The screenshot API service in the APILayer marketplace definitely includes features that will be very useful for you.
First of all, the fact that you can set the width and height values as parameters allows you to take a responsive screenshot of the website. As you know, many websites nowadays have different design versions for mobile phones, tablets and desktop devices. In fact, it is possible to see websites with different designs for monitors with widescreen technology. Showing how the website is loaded on different devices on the SEO report page will definitely put you in an advantageous position compared to other competing tools. In addition, it is a great feature to have a parameter that you can set the timeout value for sites loaded late due to its size.
Meta Tags API
Meta tags are one of the most important topics on SEO but often ignored by website developers. When search engine bots check the content of your website, they receive information by meta tags. For example, the canonical tag on a page has a critical importance as to whether that page is duplicate or not. In addition, title, keyword and description tags affect how your site appears in the search engine. Remember that if you want to grow your site organically, how your site appears in the search engine is very important. Visitors often visit a site based on well-crafted titles and description. In addition, you can also check open graph meta tags and other media related attributes in meta tags with this API.
In the SEO Audit application you offer, it is very critical to specify the pages that have problems with the meta tags to your customer.
Google Search Results API
As you know, the biggest of the search engine world is Google. That’s why you do most of the SEO improvements you make for Google. It is the leading company that constantly develops and improves search results. It will be a very good feature to present the rank of certain keywords in the Google rankings in the SEO report. The Google Search Results API available in the APILayer marketplace is an advanced service with many important parameters. For example, you can specify language and country parameters to return local search results.
Google offers different results and experiences for each country and language. A website might rank high on a particular keyword in one country, but lower in another. With this API, you can also use a specific location using the “uule” parameter that specifies the location directly. For example, you can simulate a search from New York Times Square by sending the correct “uule” parameter. Google Search Results API scans search results with residential IP addresses only.
In this way, you can get the clearest results as if you are doing a real user search. It will definitely be one of the most important APIs for your SEO startup.
Keyword Extraction API
One of the most important mistakes made while writing a content on the website is not to pay attention to keyword weight. For example, let’s say you have a blog site on automobiles. The next blog post you will write will be about car engines. When you do a keyword check, you want the most important technical terms such as “diesel” “turbo” “atmospheric” to come in high rankings. However, if you see the result of other engine details that are not important when you query, it means there is a problem with keyword weight.
Presenting such information in the SEO report will definitely be effective for your customer. Because if your content is not good, any work you do in the field of SEO cannot save you.
Advanced Scraper API
Scraper API is one of the best selling services on the marketplace. You will provide the most important function for your SEO startup with this API: Errors and Warnings. The subject we call technical seo is directly related to the use of html tags and related content in your site in the right place. If you do not write the HTML output on your site properly and without errors, you will have a disadvantage in technical SEO. To give a simple example, you need to give a description for the images on your site with the “alt” tag. When you do this, you are telling search engines what that image is about. Today, developing artificial intelligence technologies are very successful in recognizing and labeling the content in the images. We even have an api service that does this job in the marketplace. No one expects you to manually update the “alt” tag of each image on a news site with tens of thousands of pages. You can automate this job with a service such as Image to Text API.
With the Scraper API, it is possible to check many technical errors on the site and create a checklist. In this way, with the checklist you give to your customer, you will give tips for areas that your customer can improve. This checklist issue will perhaps be one of the most important issues in your entire SEO application. Because many people try to see the mistakes they make on the website using these tools. There are many well-known solutions and services in this field. The prices of most of them are also quite high. If you give a nice checklist tool at an affordable price, you will definitely gain customers.
Image Optimizer API
The majority of late-loading and high-sized sites experience problems due to non-optimized images. The images you upload to your site must be optimized for the web, that is, they must be compressed and reduced in size. When designing your website, you need to take action by considering not only desktop users but also mobile phones with low connection speeds. The fact that the images on your site are higher than 300kb – 500kb in size will create a huge problem for users who use old-style phones and have low internet speeds. At the same time, the distance between the user’s connection country and your web server is another factor.
Suppose your web server is in Germany and the user visiting your site is in Japan. Web pages larger than a certain size will cause problems regardless of your internet speed. Because after this point, the issue is not only about size or internet speed but also about routing. That’s why one of the biggest solutions of a fast opening website is to optimize images correctly. Detecting high-size images in the SEO tool you offer and submitting automatically compressed versions for them will definitely put you in an advantageous position compared to other competitors. You may even offer it as an additional service. You can sell this service, which is not included in your entry level package, with the Gold package. In this way, you can get a higher amount of income by doing upsell.
URL Shortener API
URL shortening services are a technology that has been in our lives for a very long time. Even giants like Google and Twitter have their own solutions. There is also an API on the APILayer marketplace where you can create your own URL shortening service: URL Shortener API. There are two areas you can use this service in your SEO report. The first is to provide the shortened url variation of the respective website. The second is to provide your client with a short URL where they can visit the SEO report you submitted. In this way, your customer who receives the SEO report can share this report with teammates or direct it to the web developer with this link.
Web page to PDF API
And finally, for users who want to save and print our report, we can print it out as PDF. You can send the related report to your customer with PDF file type using Webpage to PDF API. In this way, the web developer who attends the next meeting with a printout can make his boss happy. If you have a sensitive side that thinks about nature, you can send an email instead of printing.
In addition, you can version these PDF files and store them in your Google Drive area to see the steps you take in SEO day by day. Thus, you will have the chance to look at your monthly reports again in the future.
As a result, it is even possible to make a SaaS startup with a worldwide customer base using only APILayer services. All you have to do is register to the APILayer and determine which of the related services you will use to create your application. Thanks to a marketplace growing day by day, you can enrich your startup by using many new APIs. But remember, launching products in a niche area is often the key to success in Startup culture. That’s why it is always a more accepted strategy to create an MVP that does one thing best, rather than spend months on a do-it-all app.
You can see the example full SEO Audit Report here.
