I built an independent SEO tool review site while working full-time. Here's the honest data after 2.5 months.

I built an independent SEO tool review site while working full-time. Here's the honest data after 2 months.

Four months ago I got frustrated enough to do something about it.

I've been doing SEO professionally for 15 years - currently Head of Marketing at a Dutch company. Every time I searched for honest comparisons of tools like SE Ranking, SEMrush, or Ahrefs, I kept landing on the same type of article: everything scored 8.5/10, every tool was "highly recommended," and the winner was always whichever tool paid the highest commission rate. The other possibility was to land on another review platform like Backlinko, which is owned by Semrush...

So I built ClaroRank - an independent SEO tool review site where I actually say which tool loses.

What "independent" actually means in practice

I recommend SE Ranking over SEMrush for most agencies. Both have affiliate programs. SE Ranking still wins for most use cases.

I tell people that Ahrefs Lite only updates keyword rankings monthly - not daily. Most comparison articles skip this entirely. For an agency presenting weekly client reports, this is a decisive limitation.

I flagged that SEMrush switched from 30% recurring commissions to a flat CPA model - something that matters if you're comparing affiliate programs but that no review site I found was honest about.

I got rejected from the SEMrush affiliate program. I still reviewed it anyway and ranked it #1 for all-round agency use because it deserves that ranking.

The actual numbers (no spin)

Site age: ~2 months
Articles published: 29 live pages
Monthly sessions: growing from near-zero, still early
Affiliate commissions: first ones coming in — Rank Math
Domain rating: still very low - this is the real bottleneck: How to break out from the Google Sandbox

I'm not going to pretend this is already a passive income machine. It isn't. Google doesn't trust new domains, and building authority takes time. What I have is a solid foundation with a clear differentiated position.

The mistakes I made early

I targeted keywords that were way too competitive for a new domain. "SEMrush review" is dominated by sites with DR 70+. I should have started with comparison terms like "SE Ranking vs Mangools for freelancers" — lower volume, but actually winnable in months 2–4.

I also underestimated how much backlinks matter compared to content quality. You can write the best review on the internet and still not rank if nobody links to you. I'm fixing this now through community participation (hence this post) and digital PR.

The differentiation that I think will compound

The review site space is dominated by two types of content:

1. Sites owned by the tools themselves (Backlinko is owned by SEMrush)
2. Generic affiliate sites that never say anything negative

ClaroRank's position is: real client work, honest verdicts, no sponsored content ever. I've paid for or expensed most of these tools across 15 years of agency, in-house, and freelance work. That experience shows in the reviews.

Early SEO results suggest Google is starting to reward this. The question is whether I can build enough authority before running out of patience.

What I'm doing next

Focusing on winnable keywords (KD under 20), building topical clusters around specific tools rather than broad terms, and earning links through genuine contributions to the SEO community.

If you're evaluating SEO tools and want the version without affiliate spin: Clarorank.com

Happy to answer questions about the process — what works, what doesn't, and the tools I actually use to run the site.

If you happened to like the post, I could update my progress further down the road - Do let me know in the comments!