SSARS: My Custom SEO Dashboard
Steady Scaling Analytics & Ranking System - the rank tracking and SEO reporting tool I built because enterprise software costs too much and does too little.
The $500/Month Problem
Here's the math that annoyed me into building my own SEO dashboard:
- •Semrush: $250/month (and they limit how many searches you can run)
- •Ahrefs: $200/month (good data, annoying export limits)
- •BrightLocal: $100/month (charges per location for rank tracking)
That's $550/month in software costs before I even start working. And guess what? Those costs get passed on to clients. That's why most agencies charge $1,000+/month for basic SEO - they have to cover their overhead.
I looked at the APIs these tools use. Turns out, the actual data costs a fraction of what they charge. So I built SSARS - my own rank tracking, competitor keyword analysis, and SEO reporting system.
What SSARS Actually Does
It's not a product I sell. It's the actual system I use to do SEO work. Here's what's under the hood.
Local Grid Rankings
When someone in Minneapolis searches "plumber near me," they get different results than someone in Edina. Google's local pack rankings change block by block.
Most rank tracking tools give you one position. "You're #3 for plumber near me." Cool. But #3 where? From which zip code?
SSARS checks your ranking from 25-49 points across your entire service area. I can see you're #1 in the neighborhoods near your shop, #8 on the other side of town, and completely missing from the map in the suburbs.
That's SERP tracking that actually tells you something useful. Not a single number that hides the reality.
Competitor Keyword Analysis
I find your top 3 competitors for your main keywords and pull every single keyword they rank for. Then I compare it to your rankings.
The result is a gap analysis: keywords your competitors have that you're missing. I sort by keyword difficulty (KD) because low-difficulty gaps are the quickest wins.
Green difficulty scores mean a single optimized page could rank within weeks. That's how I prioritize - go after the easy traffic first.
Want to check your own site's on-page SEO? Try the free SEO audit tool to see how your pages stack up.
Site Audits That Don't Waste Your Time
SSARS crawls your site and checks for the stuff that actually matters: broken links, missing meta tags, slow pages, crawl errors, duplicate content, schema markup issues.
Core Web Vitals come straight from Google's API. LCP, INP, CLS - the metrics Google uses for their page experience ranking factor.
Most SEO audit tools spit out 200+ "issues" to make you panic. Half of them don't matter. I focus on the 5-10 things that will actually move rankings.
If you want to test your own site's crawlability, the robots.txt checker is a good starting point.
Monthly SEO Reporting You Can Actually Read
Every month, I pull data from Google Search Console - clicks, impressions, average position, CTR. The same metrics Google gives you, organized in a way that makes sense.
More important than the raw numbers: are we going up or down? What keywords are improving? What pages are getting more traffic?
No vanity metrics. No confusing dashboards. The SEO report shows what's working and what we're doing about what isn't.
Curious about your site's current structured data? The schema markup tester shows you what Google sees.
How It's Built
For the nerds who want to know: SSARS is built with Python and Streamlit for the dashboard, pulling data from the DataForSEO API. That API gives access to the same data Semrush and Ahrefs use, but you pay per lookup instead of per month.
Data Sources
- ✓ DataForSEO (rankings, keywords, backlinks)
- ✓ Google Search Console API
- ✓ Google Analytics 4 API
- ✓ PageSpeed Insights API
Cost Comparison
- Enterprise tools:$400-600/mo
- SSARS (API costs):~$20-50/mo
- Your savings:90%+
I'm not selling SSARS as a product. It's my internal tool. But the point is: I can offer better SEO services at lower prices because I'm not paying enterprise software taxes.
Try the Free Tools
Some of SSARS' functionality is available as free tools on this site. No signup, no limits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy SSARS or get access to it?
How is this different from the free SEO tools on your site?
How often do you update ranking data?
What's the catch with saving 90% on tools?
Want SSARS Working For You?
When you work with me, you get the full power of SSARS behind your SEO. Rank tracking, competitor keyword analysis, monthly SEO reports - all included.