Built inside a working SEO agency.
I'm James, founder of Grindstone Design, and I've been running SEO for local-business clients since 2020. I got tired of paying for a crawler, a spreadsheet to track internal links, a GBP scheduler, and enterprise-priced split-testing that never talked to each other.
RankNest is the toolkit my agency runs on, opened up to yours.
I Felt Your Pain
The problem: running an SEO agency meant paying for tools that didn't share data:
- Screaming Frog for site crawls ($259/year)
- A spreadsheet to track which pages linked to which
- A separate app just to schedule Google Business Profile posts
- Enterprise-priced split-testing tools built for teams ten times my size
- Manual GSC exports to prove a change actually worked
None of it lived in one place. Every client report meant pulling data from four different logins and stitching it together by hand.
Keep Ahrefs for backlinks and keyword research. RankNest doesn't do that.
The solution: RankNest
Six tools, in one workspace.
- Internal Link Mapping: Visual canvas with AI linking plans
- SEO A/B Testing: GSC before/after baselines on every experiment
- Technical Site Audit: Indexability, status codes, schema, and more
- Review Mining: Reddit, Trustpilot, and Google Maps reviews with AI theme analysis
- Section Scraper: Competitor heading structure pulled into clean outlines
- GBP Post Scheduling: Schedule and auto-publish Google Business Profile posts
- One Client Workspace: All six tools connected to each client's own GSC and GBP data
What Drives This
The principles behind every feature I ship
Agency-First Design
I built this for a business running SEO on 20+ local clients at once, not an in-house team with one site. Every default assumes you're managing a roster, not a single property.
Eliminate Busywork
Site crawls, GSC syncing, link tracking. If I was doing it by hand every month for a client, I built RankNest to do it instead.
Six Tools, Not Fifty
I'd rather run six tools that share client data than juggle a stack of point solutions that all need their own login and their own export.
Prove It, Don’t Promise It
Every test in RankNest is measured against real Google Search Console data, before and after. No gut feelings, no "trust me it’s working."
My Journey
The Agency Starts
I founded Grindstone Design and started running SEO for clients. Almost immediately, I ran into the same frustration every agency owner does: every tool I needed to do the job right cost more than the last one, and none of them talked to each other.
Building My Own Tools
After years of stitching together a desktop crawler, spreadsheets, and separate scheduling tools, I started building what I actually wanted: internal link mapping, SEO A/B testing against live GSC data, and a GBP post scheduler, all in one place and built around how an agency actually works.
First Alpha Users
I opened the platform to a small group of agency owners willing to break things with me. Their feedback shaped what RankNest looks like today, from the linking plan UX to how clients are scoped per workspace.
Public Launch
RankNest is now live for any SEO agency that wants the same toolkit I run my own agency on. The goal is simple: give agencies a way to prove their SEO is working, without a stack of disconnected subscriptions to do it.