About transformSEO

transformSEO is an AI-native SEO platform that gives freelancers and small agencies access to 190+ professional SEO tools through their AI assistant of choice. It runs over the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to connect to popular LLMs or any MCP-compatible client and run any kind of SEO analysis by typing questions in plain English.

Objectives

➤ Build an affordable, AI-native SEO data layer that solo freelancers and small agencies can actually justify against a side-project budget.
➤ Compress the manual SEO workflow, including data pulling, report formatting, and strategy translation, from a full day into under an hour.
➤Cover the full SEO data spectrum through a single data provider, without stitching together multiple vendors.

Featured products

➤ SERP API: structured SERP data from all major search engines.
➤ Keywords Data API: actual keyword insights right from the source.
➤ DataForSEO Labs API: our proprietary solution for advanced SEO analysis.
➤ Backlinks API: comprehensive backlink intelligence.
➤ On-Page API: scalable on-page SEO data and performance insights.
➤ AI Optimization API: universal data source for Generative Engine Optimization.

About DataForSEO

DataForSEO is the leading provider of SEO data for the marketing technology industry. With an API-led approach to data delivery, DataForSEO is enabling hundreds of software businesses to enhance their products with reliable, accurate, and fresh data. In addition, DataForSEO offers no-code integration options with popular automation services, making it possible to build tailored SEO and marketing solutions without writing a line of code.

Background

Brad Erb is a skilled SEO expert and the founder of transformSEO – an AI-native SEO platform. The creation of transformSEO isn’t just a random startup story – it emerged from dealing with real-world constraints that many marketing professionals face.

Aside from his primary occupation, Brad runs a small AI and SEO consultancy, transform 12:2. Having a full-time job and a family meant postponing work on customers’ projects on evenings and weekends. That put enormous pressure on Brad, as he would spend 10 hours a week manually pulling data, creating reports, and translating numbers into insights for customers.

The bigger issue was the cost of the SEO tools he used. As Brad recalls: “The industry-standard SEO tools – Ahrefs, Semrush – aren’t priced for solo freelancers. You’d need thousands of dollars a month coming in just to justify the subscription. That’s not a side project budget. That’s not even a small agency budget.”

Brad found the solution in creating his own workflows to get the data he needed. He stitched together AI workflows on top of APIs to generate the reports, briefs, and gap analyses for clients. The result was worth the effort – the time spent on customers’ projects was reduced significantly. “I got that 10-hour process down to about 45 minutes.”, shares Brad.

But this solution was initially just for him. The change from a personal setup into a real SEO solution came through Brad’s cofounder, Blake Guffin, who recognized the product potential in what Brad had built:

“He (Blake Guffin) kept pushing on the idea that this could be something other people use, not just me. Who’s the user? What do they actually need? What does this look like for someone who isn’t deep in SEO and AI every day? He played the role of that person – the non-technical, non-SEO-expert trying to make sense of what I’d built – and that back and forth is what started shaping it into a real product.”

When Brad started showing other freelancers and agencies the solution he designed, they all wanted it. They couldn’t replicate his setup themselves. That was the moment Brad finally decided that transformSEO had to exist.

The concept and vision behind the transformSEO

Brad’s view is that most SEO tools were built for how marketers worked five years ago. You log in to a tool, navigate countless dashboards, and export CSV files for manual reporting. Moreover, with every update, the tool may charge you more for extra features that you may not use.

The transformSEO starts from a different assumption: that more marketers will work within their AI assistants, and that the SEO data layer should meet them where they already are. To do that, the tool needs to “live” inside the LLM and interact with a user in conversational format. That’s why transformSEO is built around the Model Context Protocol – a technology that bridges LLMs and external data solutions.

“We’re MCP-native. That means your AI – Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, whatever you use – can call 190+ professional SEO tools directly through natural conversation. No dashboard to learn. No exports. You ask a question and your AI does the work.”, notes Brad.

But the bigger difference is that transformSEO doesn’t just deliver data in the AI response. Behind the tool is a complex analysis system that interprets the data into actionable insights.

As Brad explains: “We built opinionated workflows on top of the data – not just raw API pass-throughs. When you ask transformSEO to analyze keywords for a pool builder in Maryland, it doesn’t just dump a JSON response on you. It calls the right tools, applies the right logic, and hands your AI a structured, interpreted result you can act on.”

The philosophy behind transformSEO also addresses one of the core pain points for SEO experts and agencies: spending a fortune on SEO tools and paying extra for every new feature.

“We don’t charge for new features. Legacy platforms add a feature, and they add a charge. We think that’s backwards. We want to build a great product and let the value speak.”, says Brad.

Moreover, Brad expects a major shift in SEO, where the SEO strategists stop managing people and start managing agents, freeing them from generating reports and focusing on actual strategy-making and client work. The transformSEO is the solution that makes this shift possible.

To better understand it, let’s explore the core features of the transformSEO platform in detail.

Unpacking transformSEO: key features

As mentioned, transformSEO is an evolution of Brad’s personal SEO setup: a collection of AI automation and workflows he used to simplify work on customers’ projects. With his co-founder’s guidance, he transformed these workflows into a product easy for anyone to understand.

Essentially, the transformSEO platform comprises two structural components: the workspace and the MCP integration.

The workspace is the first thing you see when you sign up for transformSEO. Here is an interface example.

 
In the workspace, you can add websites and keywords to track, analyze the results of SEO analysis, tap into historical data, and generate an API token to connect an LLM to the transformSEO MCP server.

The second component is the MCP integration itself, which enables SEO analysis directly within AI agents. The MCP setup takes less than two minutes. Brad explains it as follows:

“Users get a transformSEO API key from their dashboard, then add transformSEO as an MCP server in their AI client of choice – Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf, or any MCP-compatible tool. Our docs walk through each client with copy-paste config.”

In addition, users can integrate Google Analytics, Search Console, and Business Profile to pull historical data to the transformSEO workspace.

After integration, users get access to 190+ SEO tools right inside the AI agent. To run any kind of SEO analysis, you can write a simple prompt describing the task. Here is what it looks like inside an AI chat.

 
With simple prompts, you get detailed answers from transformSEO tools that contain the key insights you need. What’s more, the results are recorded back to your workspace, so you can always keep a running history of your SEO work in one place.

For example, below are the results of tracking competitors on Google Maps.

 
In summary, you get access to a smart SEO and GEO ecosystem, where you run tasks in AI through natural conversations and monitor every change in a workspace. No manual analysis. No CSV files and hours of report building.

But what if you don’t even know where to start? In this case, transformSEO offers a variety of ready-made opinionated workflows, such as Monthly SEO Reports, Competitor Gap Analysis, and New Client Onboarding. Brad refers to them as “Pre-built paths through the data that guide users toward the right insights without requiring deep SEO expertise.” To use an opinionated workflow, you just need to paste the right command, and transformSEO will run the workflow, using multiple tools.

As Brad further explains: “The ‘opinionated’ piece is important. We’ve embedded SEO expertise into how the tools make requests and how they handle the response. The AI gets structured, interpreted data – not a raw JSON blob – which is what makes it possible to return something genuinely actionable in plain English.”

However, creating and maintaining such an intelligent SEO solution would be impossible without a solid data foundation. That prompted Brad to search for the best SEO data provider, and DataForSEO turned out to be the answer.

How the DataForSEO API powers the transformSEO platform

Expanding a set of AI-powered workflows into a working AI-native SEO platform posed Brad substantial challenges:

1. The solution had to simplify even the hardest SEO workflows while being intuitive and data-driven at the same time.
2. The tool’s features and AI-driven data processing capabilities had to be based on a solid, yet affordable SEO data foundation.
3. The data had to cover the full SEO spectrum (keywords, SERPs, backlinks, AI visibility, local SEO, on-page SEO) through a single data provider, without stitching together multiple vendors.
4. The data integration process had to be convenient and fast.

In summary, Brad needed a data solution that could power the entire platform on its own: broad, reliable, affordable, and quick to integrate.

Fortunately, he discovered DataForSEO, but in quite an interesting way – by reverse-engineering someone else’s success. A tool was being marketed as an affordable alternative to a major SEO platform, and the pricing didn’t add up. He went looking for the source.

“The data was sourced from DataForSEO. That sent me down a rabbit hole. I started exploring everything they offered, and it was the most comprehensive SEO data catalog I’d seen — keyword data, backlinks, SERP analysis, AI visibility, local data — all through one API, with a pricing model that actually made sense for a builder.” – remembers Brad.

Without hesitation, Brad decided to integrate DataForSEO as a data foundation for his project. Thanks to structured documentation and on-demand support, the integration went faster than he expected:

“The API is genuinely well-documented – one of the better-documented APIs I’ve worked with. When I ran into something (usually my own fault), DataForSEO’s support was quick, kind, and actually helpful. Not ‘here’s the link to our docs’ helpful – actually solving the problem.”

As a result, DataForSEO became an exclusive data provider for transformSEO, powering all of its tools.

Given the vast amount of tools transformSEO provides, it is important to outline the core DataForSEO solutions used as an underlying data layer:

• SERP API powers rank tracking, SERP feature monitoring, and competitor analysis workflows across locations and devices.
• Keywords Data API supplies the keyword research surface: volume, CPC, and clickstream insights from Google and Bing.
• DataForSEO Labs API drives the deeper analytical workflows: search intent, keyword difficulty, competitor domain analysis, and historical SERP comparisons.
• Backlinks API is the foundation of transformSEO’s 16-tool backlink suite: referring domains, anchor profiles, spam scores, and competitor link gap analysis.
• On-Page API runs the site audits, Lighthouse audits, and Core Web Vitals checks behind transformSEO’s Site Audit workflows.
• AI Optimization API is what makes AI Visibility possible, with structured tracking of how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity reference a domain.

For transformSEO, Brad built its own MCP layer on top of these APIs instead of wrapping our official DataForSEO MCP server. However, he says that seeing DataForSEO MCP in action was the moment the rest of the project clicked into place:

“The official DataForSEO MCP server was actually the thing that made me realize what was possible — seeing their MCP in action was the ‘this is the future’ moment that accelerated the whole project. But to build something with our own opinionated patterns, and to integrate Google’s data sources alongside DataForSEO, we needed to build our own MCP layer on top of the REST API.”

The most important thing is the algorithm behind the transformSEO’s tools. They don’t just present raw DataForSEO responses to a user. The transformSEO MCP layer analyzes all the data and generates structured insights before sending the results back to an LLM. Here is how Brad describes the process:

“When a user asks their AI assistant a question – say, ‘what keywords should I target for my pool building site in Maryland?’ – transformSEO’s MCP layer intercepts that request, identifies the right DataForSEO endpoints to call, applies our opinionated parameters to get the most relevant result, and then processes and structures that response before the AI ever sees it.”

The same workflow applies to all free tools available on transformSEO’s website. Here’s a response from the
Page Audit tool, for example.

 
“The logic is simple: the best first impression is showing someone real data about their actual site. Not a demo. Not sample data. Their data. If the AI Visibility scanner shows them something surprising about how ChatGPT describes their business, that’s a conversation starter no marketing copy can match.”, explains Brad.

Since its recent release, transformSEO has already proven effective, significantly streamlining its users’ SEO workflows. Moreover, the platform addressed the issue of overpaying for legacy SEO tools, which resonated with the demands of numerous customers.

“What I can say is that the 10-hour-to-45-minute reduction in per-client work is real and has been replicated by early users. The cost consolidation story – replacing several hundred dollars a month in legacy tools with one platform – is something agencies have responded to directly.”, comments Brad.

In a nutshell, with the help of DataForSEO, Brad achieved the following:

• Built an AI-native SEO platform that simplifies even the hardest SEO workflows while staying intuitive and data-driven.
• Powered the platform’s features and AI-driven data processing on a solid and affordable SEO data foundation.
• Covered the full spectrum of SEO processes through a single data provider, without pulling the data from multiple vendors.
• Integrated the data quickly and conveniently, with well-documented endpoints and responsive support.

Asked if it would have been possible to build the underlying data infrastructure himself, Brad’s answer is short:

“It would have been impossible as a solo founder. Full stop. Building enterprise-grade keyword databases, backlink indexes, SERP scrapers, and AI visibility tracking from scratch requires a team, significant infrastructure investment, and years of data accumulation. That’s not a side project. That’s a VC-backed startup.”

A bright future for transformSEO with DataForSEO

The transformSEO platform received a warm reception from users, mostly freelancers and SEO agencies. Especially, early users recognized how transformSEO simplified their complex, time-consuming SEO workflows, freeing time for actual strategy-building:

“The feedback that’s stuck most: early users tell us they didn’t realize how much time they were spending managing tools instead of doing strategy. transformSEO shifts that. That’s exactly what we were hoping to hear.”

Regarding the core advantages of DataForSEO for his use case, Brad outlines the following:

• Scope of data available: “One API. Keywords, backlinks, SERP data, AI visibility, local SEO. Everything I need is in one place.”
• Pricing model: “Pay-per-call is the right model for a product business.”
• Data quality: “It’s the same data behind tools people pay hundreds of dollars a month for.”

As DataForSEO remains an exclusive data partner for transformSEO, Brad is constantly seeking new ideas to improve his product. Right now, he’s developing a feature that will allow transformSEO users to explore real PR and link-building opportunities:

“PR Opportunities is next. Backlinks are important, but finding real link-building and PR opportunities – and actually managing the outreach and tracking – is a workflow that doesn’t exist cleanly in any tool right now. We’re building it.”

Finally, for other developers and entrepreneurs building solutions on DataForSEO APIs, Brad shares an important piece of advice:

“Start with the data you need, not the data you think you need. The API catalog is massive, and it’s tempting to integrate everything at once. Pick the endpoints that solve your core problem first, get something working, and expand from there.” And: “Don’t just pass raw responses to the AI and call it a feature. The value is in the layer you build on top.”

Overall, Brad Erb’s transformSEO story is what a small team can do when the data foundation is already solid. With the help of our APIs, he turned a personal workflow into a product that reduces a day of SEO work to under an hour and changes how you interact with SEO data: through conversation, not dashboards.

Whether you’re building a new SEO product from scratch or upgrading an existing one, DataForSEO is here to be the reliable data partner on your path forward.