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George3307
George3307

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I Built an Open-Source Alternative to Ahrefs & Surfer SEO (Costs $0.01/Article)

#seo #ai #webdev #opensource

SEO tools are absurdly expensive.

  • Ahrefs: $99-999/month
  • Surfer SEO: $89-299/month
  • Jasper AI: $49-125/month
  • Semrush: $139-499/month

For indie developers and small teams, that's a lot of money for tools you might use a few times a week.

So I built SEOBot — an open-source AI SEO toolkit that does 80% of what these tools do, for essentially free.

What It Does

1. Keyword Research (Free, No API Key)

Enter a seed keyword, and SEOBot recursively expands it via Google's Suggest API (2 levels deep), then clusters results by semantic similarity.

No external API needed. Works instantly. Export to CSV for further analysis.

2. AI Content Generation (~$0.01/Article)

A 3-step workflow:

  1. Enter target keyword
  2. Review AI-generated outline (3 title options)
  3. Generate full SEO-optimized article

Built-in SEO scoring checks keyword density, heading structure, content length, and readability.

Supports English and Chinese.

Uses OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini — about $0.01 per 2000-word article.

3. Technical SEO Audit (18-Point Check)

Enter any URL and get an instant analysis across 5 categories:

  • Meta Tags: Title, description, OG tags, Twitter card, canonical, robots, structured data
  • Content: H1, word count, heading hierarchy, image alt text, links
  • Security: HTTPS, mixed content
  • Mobile: Viewport, language attribute
  • Performance: Load time, page size

Visual score (0-100) with per-category breakdowns.

4. One-Click Publishing

Publish your generated content directly to:

  • Dev.to (draft or published)
  • WordPress (any self-hosted site)
  • Twitter/X (share summaries)
  • Markdown export (for Hugo, Astro, Jekyll, etc.)

The Cost Breakdown

What Cost
Keyword research Free (Google Suggest)
SEO audit Free (server-side fetch)
Content generation ~$0.01/article (OpenAI API)
Hosting (Vercel free tier) Free

Compare that to $99/month minimum for Ahrefs.

Tech Stack

  • Next.js 14 (App Router)
  • TypeScript + Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui
  • OpenAI GPT-4o-mini (for content generation only)

Try It 

git clone https://github.com/George3307/seobot.git
cd seobot
npm install
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key
npm run dev
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Keyword research and SEO audit work without any API key.

GitHub: github.com/George3307/seobot

If you find this useful, star the repo ⭐

Questions? Open an issue or drop a comment below.

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