The global agencies SEO services market is expected to grow from $37.84 billion in 2020 to $40.92 billion in 2021 at a CAGR of 8.1 percent, according to Business Wire.
The agencies SEO services market consists of the sales of SEO services and related goods by agencies or companies that provide search engine optimisation services for businesses.
One such company is Web IQ Inc founded in 2013 by brothers Vaibhav and Sahil Kakkar. The Gurugram-based startup helps businesses and communities understand digital marketing and assists them in running campaigns and tracking their progress.
Its flagship product RankWatch claims to have helped several brands — including Naukri.com, BookMyShow, Makaan, Reliance, MakeMyTrip, etc. — get actionable data on their rankings, backlinks, and SERP competitors to grow their organic traffic.
“We built RankWatch as we saw the need for marketing technology products in the SEO industry, providing services to some of the top global companies. We could see a lot was lacking in the technology available to help organic marketers, and we decided to build what we could not get,” the co-founders tell YourStory.
With its unique set of tools, RankWatch streamlines workflows to minimise operational chaos and maximise time for building strategies.
Recently, the duo has built ‘Web Signals’, which monitors brand mentions, competitors on the web, news sites, blogs, forums, podcasts, and social media.
Web Signals — a subscription-based tool that allows new users to track up to 10,000 mentions at zero cost — can provide data from more than 120 million sources, Sahil Kakkar, Founder and CEO, Web IQ Inc, says.
“Web Signals was built to solve our own challenge of monitoring what people were saying about us and our competitors on different media channels,” adds co-founder Vaibhav Kakkar.
The startup did a Beta test for Web Signals and got over 500 paying customers. From this, it raised $150,000 without diluting any equity. Web Signals’ services are spread across basic and premium plans that cost $29 and $99 per month, respectively.
The team
SEO enthusiast and serial entrepreneur Vaibhav has over 14 years of experience in digital marketing. Before Web IQ, Vaibhav had launched two more companies — Digital Web Solutions and DigitalNext.
Sahil, on the other hand, had previously worked with Vaibhav at DigitalNext as the Head – Research and Development and COO.
At present, Web IQ Inc is operating with a lean team of 27 people.
The way ahead
RankWatch claims to have helped over 7,000 marketing teams stay organised in more than 100 countries globally. At present, Web IQ Inc is present in India and the US. It has also expanded to reach customers in the UK and Australia.
Bootstrapped with an investment of Rs 75 lakh, Web IQ Inc had generated a revenue of around $2 million in the FY 2020-2021, the co-founders claim. At present, the startup is not planning to raise any funds.
“Our growth expectation is 100 percent in the current year,” says Vaibhav.
The startup says it competes with the likes of SEMrush, based out of Russia and the US, and Singapore-based Ahrefs.
It has also relaunched its new UX and plans to launch AI-based inferences (currently in beta) in the coming days.
According to Sahil, “We have also built some groundbreaking technology, and we are in the process of getting a patent before we launch it to the world.”
“Another big upgrade will be the launch of our universal research, where you can enter any URL and you will get all the keywords that are ranking. Hence, knowing what your competitors are doing will be a breeze,” he says.
