Can a free SEO proposal tool bring the right customers to my SaaS? I built one to find out

Can a free tool attract users to my paid tool?

For context, I’m building RevPages, a tool that helps SaaS companies find revenue-generating SEO opportunities.

But the biggest challenge with building a new product is getting the right people to discover it.

Yes I could publish articles about SEO (And I have) but there’s already a huge amount of SEO content online, and getting traffic from another advice post is becoming harder in the world of AI search.

So I’ve been looking for useful tools I can build around problems my potential customers already have - and trying to rank them.

Free tools and templates can attract users (and backlinks) on autopilot for years - I created lots of them for StandOut CV before selling earlier this year.

Some initial brainstorming led me to “SEO proposal template”.

The keyword gets around 1,300 searches a month globally. More interestingly, the people searching for it are likely to include SEO freelancers and agencies putting together pitches for clients. Those are exactly the sort of people who might also use RevPages to find and forecast opportunities for those clients.

So, I decided to build a free SEO proposal builder. You can open it, edit the proposal immediately and download a PDF without creating an account.

I built it in Lovable in less than a week, although there was a lot more thinking, testing and fixing involved than the phrase “vibe coding” suggests.

The vibes alone were not enough to get this over the line.

Evaluating the search results for competition

Before building anything, I looked at the search results for “SEO proposal template” and “free SEO proposal template”.

I was hoping to see weak results and tools that I could realistically improve on using Lovable.

There were some very strong domains ranking. At first glance, that made the keyword look difficult. But many of the results didn’t seem to deliver what I would want as a user.

Some were from the big proposal software companies - their templates looked good, but you had to sign up before you could even use the editor - and their content is generic proposal material as opposed to SEO-specific. Others were articles explaining what an SEO proposal should contain, without giving you an actual proposal you could edit.

This was good news for me. A page with a genuinely useful, immediately accessible builder would serve the search better than any of those options.

I don’t know whether Google will agree yet, but I’m fairly confident. The established sites have a big advantage, and a useful tool doesn’t automatically earn a ranking. But I felt there was enough of a gap to make it worth trying.

Ultimately it’s a high-volume keyword that attracts the kind of people I want to reach, and I think I can make something more useful than what’s currently ranking.

That makes it a worthwhile opportunity in my eyes.

I started by researching what users need, not writing a prompt

It would have been tempting to open Lovable and ask it to “build an SEO proposal generator”. and have this done in an hour.

But that would not have given me the quality I want for this tool.

I did use Lovable to build the product, but first I reviewed other proposal tools and real example proposals. I wanted to understand what was useful, what felt frustrating and what an SEO-specific proposal needed that a general sales proposal didn’t.

Then I listed the pages the builder should include. The finished template has 15:

• Cover page - Add your branding, the client’s name and the proposal title.
• Proposal overview - Summarise what you’re recommending and why.
• Current SEO performance - Show how the client’s website is performing today.
• Business SEO objectives - Set out the commercial goals the SEO work should support.
• Biggest opportunities - Highlight the pages and keywords with the most potential.
• Recommended strategy - Explain what you’d prioritise and how you’d approach the work.
• Expected results - Show what the work could achieve, with forecasts clearly labelled as estimates.
• Scope and deliverables - Spell out exactly what’s included.
• Timeline - Show when each stage of the work will happen.
• Reporting and measurement - Explain what you’ll track and how you’ll report progress.
• About us - Introduce yourself or your agency.
• Case studies - Share relevant examples of previous work and results.
• Testimonials and reviews - Add feedback from past clients.
• Pricing - Break down your fees, with totals calculated automatically.
• Next Steps - Tell the client how to get started.

That’s more than a blank document with a few suggested headings.

Each page needed a purpose, editable content and sensible example copy that someone could replace without having to rebuild the layout.

I also made detailed tables describing how individual features should work.

What happens when somebody changes a performance rating?

Which parts of a pricing table are editable, and which figures should calculate themselves?

What pre-written options would save someone time without forcing them into my way of pitching SEO?

Working those details out before asking Lovable to implement them made the build much harder - but the end result was a much better product

Here are some of the tool’s best features

I was impressed by how easily Lovable handled features I’d expected to be much harder to build. Once I’d worked out exactly how I wanted them to behave, I could describe them, test the result and make changes quickly.

• Interactive performance ratings: Rate different areas of a client’s SEO performance, and the numbers and colours update on the page from red to green.
• Automatic pricing totals: Add or change services and fees, and the pricing tables calculate the total for you.
• Editable design: Change the proposal’s colours and layout to suit your own brand.
• Image uploads: Add your logo and supporting images to make the proposal feel like yours.
• SEO-specific pages: Show a client their current performance, biggest opportunities, recommended strategy and expected results, rather than trying to adapt a generic sales proposal.
• Instant PDF download: Start editing straight away and download the finished proposal without signing up or paying.
• Optional account: Log in if you want to save your work and create multiple proposals.

“Built in under a week” doesn’t mean “one prompt and done”

Lovable made it possible for me to build this much faster than I could have otherwise. I could describe a feature, see it working, spot what didn’t work and change it.

But a good part of the week went into reviewing what it produced.

I created several test proposals from start to finish, fixing bugs and tweaking features along the way.

I wanted the tool to feel straightforward to someone who has a client pitch to create quickly, not like a product they need to learn.

That’s been my main lesson from building with AI tools: the implementation can be quick, but you still have to make the product decisions and do testing. Researching users’ alternatives, specifying the details and testing the result took more thought than the initial build prompt.

The tool needs a page that can compete in search

I couldn’t publish the builder on an empty landing page and hope that the tool alone would rank.

I’ve been doing SEO long enough that it doesn’t work like that.

I’ve built an in-depth page around it that explains what’s included, how to use it, what makes a good SEO proposal and answers the questions someone might have before starting. It also offers a downloadable example, so visitors can see the quality of the finished PDF.

The aim is to make the page useful whether someone wants to build a proposal right now or is still figuring out what their proposal should contain.

Next comes promotion. I’ll write posts like this one, share the build and reach out to relevant sites that might find the template useful for their readers, to build links and attract some early users.

I don’t expect it to rank for such a valuable keyword overnight, but I’m confident that it will be driving organic clicks within a few weeks

Why I’m building more tools

This project has made me more interested in free tools as a way to market software.

Articles are still useful, but AI can answer a lot of the questions that used to bring people to a website. And when readers do land on an article, they may be less inclined to trust another piece of advice that looks like it could have been generated in seconds.

A tool gives people a different reason to visit. They need to do something. In this case, they can arrive needing an SEO proposal, spend time putting one together and leave with a PDF they can send to a client.

If they come back to create proposals for other clients, they’ll spend more time with RevPages and get to know the brand through something that has helped them. That feels more valuable than a single visit to an article.

I’m still writing content, including the detailed page around the builder and posts like this one. The tool gives that content something useful to lead people towards.

Whether it brings in customers remains to be seen. But I’ve built something for the audience I want to reach, and I can now see whether they use it, return to it and eventually try RevPages.

Follow me on Indie Hackers, X or Linkedin to find out where this marketing experiment leads.