Free domain rating checker: a Friday afternoon stack audit
You can audit your tool spend in four hours using only the free actions. This runbook lists the order, the commands and the point where you stop.
ASEOTools editorial team ·
Why audit on a Friday
Spend is quiet until someone asks about it. The audit makes the question easy.
Pick a Friday. Nobody schedules client calls then, and a team that ends the week knowing what each tool costs starts Monday with fewer arguments. Bring the person who pays the cards, plus the analyst who runs the exports, because each holds half of the answer and neither sees the other half unless they sit together.
The rest of this page is the order of work. The budget plans show where the savings go afterwards.
The runbook, hour by hour
01
Hour one: collect the bills
Open every invoice and card statement that mentions an SEO tool. Write the tool, the monthly cost, the seat count and the last date anyone logged in. Missing log-in dates are themselves a finding.
02
Hour two: list the jobs
For each tool, write down what it does that nothing else does. If the answer is a monthly backlink export, mark it as a candidate for the meter.
03
Hour three: run the free checks
Paste your domain and three rivals into the checker on the home page. It calls the free domain action. Record DR and referring-domain counts in a sheet, with today's date.
04
Hour four: decide
For each candidate job, price the call in credits. Anything under a dollar a month is a keep-on-the-meter. Anything that needs keywords stays put.
The commands that matter
Free actions need no key. Bulk and referring-domain calls need a key from the account page.
bash
# free, no key
curl "https://aseotools.com/api.php?action=domain&q=yourdomain.com"
# 1 credit for up to 2,000 domains
curl "https://aseotools.com/api.php?action=bulk_dr&domains=rival1.com,rival2.com&key=sk_live_..."
# 2 credits, rows up to 1,000
curl "https://aseotools.com/api.php?action=refdomains&q=yourdomain.com&per=1000&key=sk_live_..."
What the numbers can and cannot tell you
DR here is a log-scale score from 0 to 100. It tracks how many referring domains point at a site, nothing more.
That makes it a good ranking of strength between rivals and a poor judge of whether a single link is worth getting. A site with DR 70 can still carry an irrelevant page, and a small niche blog can send you the one link that matters to your buyers.
Our index refreshes roughly once a month. If you ran the audit on the 30th and again on the 2nd, expect the second pass to show newer links, and do not read the jump as a change in your fortunes.
When the numbers surprise you, check the sheet before blaming the tool. A typo in a domain gives you a very low score for a very real site.
Write the verdict column in pencil. Audits made in a rush get reversed in a month, so book a short review for the following Friday, and move nothing off a suite until the replacement has run once with real data. The point is a clear list, not a dramatic cancellation.
Audit sheet, filled in with an example
Hypothetical team and figures, to show the layout.
Tool
Monthly cost
Last log-in
Job only it does
Verdict
Suite A (3 seats)
Example: $400
Two seats unused for 60 days
Rank tracking
Cut to 1 seat
Link explorer B
Example: $99
Never
Backlink export
Move to meter
Search Console
$0
Daily
Own query data
Keep
Questions to answer before the afternoon ends
Which tools had no log-in during the last 60 days
Which monthly exports are run by a script and not by a person
Which jobs need data fresher than a month, and which do not
What the same jobs would cost in credits at 1 to 3 per call