Escaping Crawl Credit Anxiety: How tmwi Found Freedom with Sitebulb Cloud

Client

tmwi is an independent media agency, based in Stratford-upon-Avon. Offering a range of services to clients, from paid social and search marketing, to programmatic and AV marketing, the SEO team is led by Jess Bott. We caught up with Jess to find out how the team had been enjoying Sitebulb.

Challenge

When Jess Bott, Senior SEO Manager at tmwi, first heard about Sitebulb Cloud, she was intrigued. Previously, the team had been relying on a combination of Screaming Frog and a "big enterprise crawler" (as Jess diplomatically puts it) to handle their clients' websites. But as Jess explains, "trying to use Screaming Frog for large crawls on our laptops would be like setting our laptops on fire and leaving it to run for the day."

The enterprise crawler wasn’t ideal either, as its crawl credit system was proving frustrating.

The Switch

The catalyst for change was tmwi's largest e-commerce client, which had to be crawled using the enterprise cloud crawler. The problem was that the crawler’s crawl credit system, where you pay for every credit consumed, meant the team had to restrict the number of URLs they could crawl. "We had it set to crawl 100,000 URLs, which we knew at the time wasn't even scratching the surface," Jess recalls. This restrictive crawl credit system was a constant source of stress and frustration.

That's when Jess and the team at tmwi decided to make the switch to Sitebulb Cloud. "The lower cost was one thing," Jess notes, "but also it's a more tailored account." With Sitebulb, tmwi could set up a custom package that perfectly suited their needs.

Plan flexibility

Jess explains that Sitebulb helped tmwi to create the perfect Cloud plan for them: "When I was speaking to Patrick [Hathaway, CEO of Sitebulb], I told him how many people would need access, which was one more than a standard plan, and he was like “okay we can set you up with that many users,” which was great for us because we’re not a big team but it meant that everyone could use it."

Adding one extra user was easy for Sitebulb to do and made all the difference to her team.

Freedom from crawl credits

This newfound flexibility has had a ripple effect throughout the tmwi team. "It's the ability to run crawls without worrying about those crawl credits and just seeing what happens and the ability to repeat crawls, like if it’s a junior who's tested something out, they don't have to worry about messing it up and running out of crawl credit," Jess explains. "They can just run it and then go back through it. And actually, that's made it so much easier because I have that trust with my team to be like, look, you try this set up. If it doesn't work, come back to me and we'll see what's going on."

“It's the ability to run crawls without worrying about crawl credits and just seeing what happens, and the ability to repeat crawls, like if it’s a junior who's tested something out, they don't have to worry about messing it up and running out of credit.”

Jess Bott Senior SEO Manager

Single page analysis & structured data checker

Jess also raves about specific Sitebulb features that have become indispensable, like the Single Page Analysis and the Structured Data Checker tool.

"The single page analysis is one we do a lot for our clients. Ditto, the structured data report. We have a lot of ecom clients, so making sure product structured data, and local business data is correct is essential. They need a lot of different schema. And having that check when we run a crawl has been so much easier for us."

single page analysis

Results

The benefits of Sitebulb Cloud don't stop there either. Switching to Sitebulb has enabled all the tmwi SEO team members to grow professionally. "It's definitely freed up my time, so I can focus more on the strategy—because Sitebulb, with all its Hints, guides and documentation, is effectively training up my Exec to do all the tech stuff," Jess shares. "So I don't have to do the tech auditing anymore."

“Plus, you guys always seem to be putting out useful webinars just at the right time!”

For any agencies out there considering the switch to Sitebulb Cloud, Jess has a clear message: "I think definitely do the switch. It's a more cost effective option without losing any of the functionality of a large enterprise crawler. And I can now spend the money I’ve saved on building a bigger, more complete tool stack. Plus, the customer support has been a lot better than I've had at other tools."

“Definitely switch to Sitebulb Cloud. It's a more cost effective option without losing any of the functionality of a large enterprise crawler. …Plus, the customer support has been a lot better than I've had at other tools.”