Software sold for doing your own SEO covers four separate jobs, and it is worth knowing which one you are buying because two of them are free. You need to see what your site is doing in search, find and judge candidate queries, keep the decisions you make about them, and check where pages sit over time. A suite bundles all four and prices for the expensive one.
Seeing what your site does, which is free
Search Console covers this completely for your own properties: queries, impressions, clicks, average position, indexing problems and mobile behaviour. There is no paid substitute for it, because no third party can see your data. Anybody doing their own SEO should set this up first, and a surprising number of paid dashboards are mostly re-presenting it.
Finding and judging candidates
Finding needs a source of queries, free with Keyword Planner or paid with a database. Judging needs arithmetic on your own numbers, which needs no data subscription at all. Separating the two is the single biggest saving available: people pay database prices for a year because they need the judging, then use the database twice.
Keeping the decisions
Which query goes on which page, what you rejected and why, what you published and when. This is the part that lives in a spreadsheet, gets rebuilt by whoever looks next, and is worth more than any of the data. It is what Longtailo Pro holds, at a price that reflects it holding no data of its own.
Checking positions
Free for your own pages through Search Console's average position, paid if you want scheduled checks at a chosen place and device or coverage of pages you do not own. For a small site doing its own work, logging a reading monthly is usually enough, and the log matters more than the source it came from.
Questions people ask about do it yourself seo software
What software do I need to do SEO myself?
Search Console for what your site is doing, something to source candidate queries, and somewhere to keep the decisions. Two of those three are free.
Is an all-in-one suite worth it for a small site?
Usually not at first. You pay for the database and the scheduled checks, which are the parts a small site uses least.
Can a spreadsheet do this?
It can, and many people run on one. It fails when somebody else has to pick it up, or when last year's readings matter and the tab has been rebuilt.
What does Longtailo cover?
The judging and the keeping: scoring candidates on your own figures, grouping them into pages, and holding the positions you log.