Squirrly SEO review – AI SEO WordPress plugin

SEO combined with AI should give you the best possible setup to succeed with your SEO strategy. This right here is Squirrly SEO, an SEO WordPress plugin which combines AI with SEO experts knowledge to help you succeed with your SEO marketing. So let’s check it out.

So here we are in the Squirrly SEO plugin and as some of you may notice I’m in a WordPress setup here. Squirrly SEO does also have a cloud app, but it is the same things that you can do here it’s just more integrated. So we will use this as an example, and they’ve just revamped the entire design. So the first thing we see here is an overview and on the overview, we have what we need to focus on next. We have the main features and then down here you can see we have some material that we can read, watch, use in order to improve our SEO.

1. Features of Squirrly SEO
2. Squirrly SEO Pricing
3. Alternatives to Squirrly SEO
4. Future of Squirrly SEO
5. Pros & Cons using Squirrly SEO
6. Last thoughts about Squirrly SEO

Features of Squirrly SEO

What I would recommend you do is start by taking a one – page set up. So here you choose whether you need no SEO configuration, if you need the recommended mode or an expert mode. So I will choose expert mode for now. You can see there are some different steps we need to go through. We have some automation, we need to add a page and so forth.

So scrolling down here you’re basically building your XML sitemap and this sitemap is used for Google Search Console. So Google knows what pages you want to be crawled and what pages do you not want to be crawled. So here you can see that I want my home page to be crawled, I want my posts and my pages, and then I also want my images, videos and here there is actually a nice feature. So, every time I make a new post, then automatically this plugin will then Ping the different types of search engines to tell them that now they need to crawl this post and this will allow this post to be able to rank faster. We also have robots.txt you can enable, and then we have some meta tags that you can enable as well for the title, the description, the keyword which doesn’t really make a lot of sense, the canonical and so forth.

We also have social media, rich snippets, SEO automation and extra options down here. So they do support local SEO for an optimization standpoint, but it’s not something I will dive into now. So let’s save and continue. So the next step is where you can set Focus pages and the Focus page is something you really want to spend time and energy on getting to rank on Google.

So, normally, you will set two to three different types of pages or posts as your focus page or post, and then you will do everything you can to optimise that. So you can see I have here workload management for better teamwork. I’ve set that as a focus page. Let’s also set this one up here as a focus page, and then we’ll now move on to the next step. The next step here is where you set up your social media accounts, your Twitter, Facebook and so forth.

And then down here you can choose an organisation name, description, some address. And here I just set the logo. This is just some information that they will use and this is made for E-A-T. So this will help you basically create authority within your industry if it shows that you know what you’re talking about. But it is a minor thing. Of course, it is always your content to talk with your authority.

So let’s save and continue. So here we need to mention what the topic is overall for our site. So I’ll just write it to do here, then save and continue. So now it is ready. Down here you can see that if you’re an SEO beginner you click this button.

But if you’re an SEO expert you click this button. So as I chose the SEO expert before I will click that button. Here you can see that you need to set your blogging frequency, you need to set some different settings down here that we already set above in our XML. Over here, we have our robot file that we can fill out, change and edit, and then we have some advanced settings if you want to load Squirrly, front-end CSS if you want to use the late buffer and so forth. This is just an advance to basically optimise your Squirrly set up for every module you’re within. You have a to-do out here, and I have already filled out all of these different to-dos. But what it says here is that you can also connect your Google Analytics and your Google Search Console and what this helps you with is basically to be able to track better and easily and just make the data flow much better.

Out here, we always have a menu where we can go through the different types of tools that we have in this module. So, before we were on Tweaks and sitemaps, you can see we also have SEO metres, we have social media and so forth. But we have already set all of these settings. So now let’s go back and choose another module. And here, one thing I do not like that much about Squirrly SEO is now when I want to go back to a different module I have to click on the logo.

I can’t get it to show in the menu itself. So you can see we have made some changes. So right now it’s checking the website just to see if we need to change anything. But if you want to do that manually, you can always click here to run an SEO test. Now when we’ve been through the one-page set-up let’s go to the keyword research.

This is just a keyword research tool where you can apply any keyword, and then you will get some assumptions, you will get some suggestions for what keywords you can track as well. So here let’s set a to-do app as a keyword. I will not choose a country, I will just go to the next one. So here Squirrly SEO, based on the data that they already have, the data from Google and so forth, is suggesting me to maybe take a look at these keywords. So I like this keyword down here, and I also like the to-do app free keywords.

Then let’s just keep it at that, and then we’ll do our research. Now, within the keywords we have chosen, we can then choose to do research for up to 20 results or for 50 results. For now, I’ll just do for 20 results. So now it is ready, and it is giving me brilliant information. It is not a lot, but it’s exactly what I need.

So, basically it is sorted by the keyword on top is which has the highest chance of ranking. So here it is said there is a low ranking chance on this keyword. That means it’s very populated and there are a lot of different companies which are focused on this keyword. So you can see here that it is discussed very few times. The search for this keyword is ten to 100 per month.

I think it’s a lot higher. So, these different types of intervals you need to take with a grain of salt because that is just an approximate result. You can see we added a to-do app, ourselves that is searched approximately 2000 times a month, but there is a very low ranking chance for this one. But what I want to do now is to add this keyword to my briefcase. It has already been added.

So I’ll just take this one and add. What you can also choose, let’s say that we want to rank for this keyword to-do list app. Then you can choose to optimise for this. So if I click on optimise for this, then we will be shown a new post where it has filled out already here, and then we can basically just start writing. I will come back to this view just in a moment.

But now when we have added the keyword to our briefcase, we can go into our briefcase, and then we can see the keywords here. So here you can see whether we are ranking or not on these different keywords. We can see some more information which is basically the same as we saw just before. We can see how much it’s searched and so forth. So this is basically just to see how you’re ranking on the different keywords.

You can also create labels for your keywords if you want to make it easier to organise your keywords, and then you can see the suggested keywords as well. That is the keyword research tool, and it is very extensive, and I’ve had a lot of luck finding different keywords or search phrases that I can focus on for my WordPress set up here. But let’s try and go back now. So we’ve been through the keyword research and the briefcase. The next is our live assistant.

So the live assistant is basically within us when we sit and basically write our content. So here you can see that we can add a new post or page and then start typing and optimising for that. But what I want to show you is a post I’ve already made. So here we have a post about how you should plan your week online, a digital way of being productive. It’s not so long but it is optimised.

So you can see my Squirrly score over here at 78%, which is rather good, but it is based on this keyword here. We can then enhance it here where we can use images. We can see how it’s talked about on Twitter, on the Wikipedia and with Squirrly’s own blogging assistant, you can see that they are finding relevant content that I can use, or I can read in order to improve my blog post even more. And the last one here is just even more content. It’s basically my own articles that I can use in order to see whether I can make maybe a linking between them or I can just use some of the content I’ve already written.

Step three is the analysis. So here is basically a checkmark. So here you can see that we need to use the keyword with two or more words. We need to make sure that the keyword is presented in the URL. We need to make sure that the title is Google friendly.

It says it’s over optimised in this case. And there are some more elements here. So here you can see that it is telling me to write one or more words after my first keyword, and then it is highlighting where I’m using this keyword. For now, it looks good.

You can see there are a lot of different checkpoints that we can go through. I will just continue to the last step, which is the deep focus step. So, as I showed you before, you can add this as a focus page and when you have it as a focus page, then you get even more data. So let’s see one of the focus pages here we have up here. Let’s see the tasks that Squirrly SEO is telling me to focus on in order to make this rank higher.

So, as you can see, we have a lot of different things that we need to focus on here. We do not have enough backlinks, we don’t have any inner links. The traffic is not very good. We need to focus on the strategy and so forth. So, for backlinks and for inner links, that makes sense.

And the same for an SEO image. That also makes sense. But what I’m missing is when I click on strategy here it needs to tell me what to do, and it is telling me I need to add this keyword to my briefcase, and then I need to make a label that exists for it. It is not necessarily doing something for the SEO chances of this article’s ranking, but it is helping you to have a bigger focus on it. For backlinks here, you see that we need to have at least 100 backlinks, we need to have 30 referring domains and 100 majestic SEO links.

The same for the inner links here. We need to get five inner links over here on the platform Health. You can see we need to get an audit score above 70%. Right now it’s just 70%, and then we need to work on the SEO score. Right now it is loaded 2.99 seconds, we need to get that down.

So, all of these different points you can always click on to see what it is you need to improve. And when you improve these different elements, then you will see your post rank higher and that is what I really like about these focus pages. Furthermore, then you have material down here that you can use, and you have some tips and tricks as well. But the focus pages you should only use for the posts or pages that you’re focused on getting ranked really high, and maybe they’re a little difficult to rank but especially for those pages that brings in the revenue or brings in the traffic to your website. Within Squirrly SEO there are a lot of tools.

For instance, here we have bulk SEO and within bulk SEO, you can see that we get an overview of all of our posts and pages. You can change up here to do page and step, and then we can see what we are missing. So on the pricing page for instance I’m missing some meta tags, I’m missing open graph, and I’m missing a Twitter card and that is counting for all of my different pages. Going back to the post, it looks a lot better, but you can see on this post here I need to add some meta tags and on this post here I need to add some open graph as well. So this is just a great way for you to quickly see whether there is any technical SEO that you need to get in order.

And they have a lot of tools like this within Squirrly SEO. The last tool I just want to show you is the SEO audit, because you can run an SEO audit for a specific page. So in here let’s say that we want to add this page here for an audit. What it will now do is analyse this page and basically give me some points that I need to improve. So here this is a different one.

Let’s use this one as an example. Here my audit score is 62 and, of course, we want to get it above 80, but as close to 100 as possible. Scrolling down here is where we can see what we need to improve. These are especially the traffic points we need to improve here. It’s telling me that within the SEO I’m doing 22 out of 22 which is fantastic.

Scrolling further down, there should be some points that we need to improve. So, within social we need to add share buttons in articles, and we need to get them shared on social media as well. Scrolling further down, we need backlinks, especially MOZ backlinks, and we need backlinks with no following as well. We need some page authority. Right now it is 3.0 in average authority.

We need to get that up. We need to get our Alexa rank down and so forth. So you can see, by running this site’s audit, we get a technical review of our page or post to see what we need to improve. Of course, it is not analysing the content itself, it is taking it from a technical point of view.

Squirrly SEO Pricing

Now let’s discuss pricing. They don’t have a free plan or a trial where you can try out Squirrly. They only have three paid plans that you can try out and these three paid plans can be confusing when you look at them. But just be aware that they differ on both features and the limits that you get, especially for the keyword research tool. I will say that I will recommend the pro plan to most of you guys.

Alternatives to Squirrly SEO

But let’s move on to the alternatives. The first alternative is Yoast SEO and I will say that Yoast SEO in recent years has really been popular. It has been the number one choice of SEO plugins. You can almost not find a WordPress website where Yoast SEO was not installed. But in recent years we’ve seen Rank Math SEO popping up, and then we have seen Squirrly SEO pop up as well and Yoast SEO is really starting to fall behind, especially on their features. They’re not following up on the AI possibilities and so much more.

But the other alternative is Rank Math SEO. Personally on my multiple websites I’m using a mix between Rank Math SEO Squirrly SEO and Rank Math SEO at the moment my absolute favourite SEO WordPress plugin and that is especially because they are so much on the beat with their different features. They have just recently released an AI feature where we can generate content that we can use on our WordPress website, and we can do this within our WordPress website. So we don’t need a third party programme to do this.

And the schema structure within Rank Math SEO is what really sets Rank Math SEO apart. Because it is just outstanding and that is something I have seen over and over again. So in the bunch of these three SEO plugins, I will say that Rank Math SEO and Squirrly SEO are up there. I’m just really hoping that Squirrly SEO will take a look at their UX to modernise it but also make it easier to use and maybe start to play more with AI than they are doing already because Rank Math SEO is still a tad in front of Squirrly SEO in terms of features and usability.

Future of Squirrly SEO

Now let’s take a look at the roadmap. This roadmap is really packed with features, design optimisations and overall just fixes it is really exciting. But there are some elements that I have pointed out and the first one is they just revamped the entire design of the plugin, which means that the Cloud app now needs to get this new design. Furthermore, then they’re working on a lot of different customer experience optimizations, so it gets easier to use because even though we have a new design it is still not totally optimised to be easy to use all the different features. Then they are working on a new backlink and social media reporting, so we get more data and maybe just in a prettier format when we pull out all of these reports.

And last but not least then they’re working on a huge local ranking module. This means that not only can we track our rankings in our local environment and our local cities, but we can also optimise our content to rank higher in the locals. So it will be fascinating to see how they will develop that and how easy it will be to use.

Pros & Cons using Squirrly SEO

After using Squirrly SEO for some time. What I really like is that, finally, we have a plugin which is good at explaining what they are doing in the different SEO processes and then just the keyword research tool is so outstanding. Though I will say that the UX needs even more improvements.

I know they have just revamped it, but I don’t feel it’s there. It’s still difficult to use and then the local rankings I’m hoping to see just an MVP in the near future.

Last thoughts about Squirrly SEO

Squirrly SEO has tried to take a different approach to the market of SEO plugins and their keyword research tool is extensive. Plus, their live assistant takes it an even step further. I want to give Squirrly SEO four and a half stars. It is an outstanding plugin, but the design is still a setback for me. They are getting closer though.

That’s my review.