I’m Kayla. I run SEO for a few small brands and a couple of messy blogs. I work on a MacBook Air (M2, 16 GB RAM), macOS Sonoma. Most days I’m in a café with a loud grinder and a warm latte. My tools have to run well on Mac and not melt my battery. Some do. Some don’t. Here’s the real story.
If you’d like an even deeper, step-by-step walkthrough of the exact SEO programs that behave well on Apple Silicon, you can skim my expanded notes here: full breakdown of SEO software on macOS.
My setup (because it matters)
- MacBook Air M2, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD
- macOS Sonoma (kept up to date)
- Chrome for extensions, Safari for sanity
- I crawl sites on power, not on battery. Learned that the hard way.
You know what? The machine is quiet. But big crawls can still make it feel hot near the left palm rest.
Ahrefs on a Mac: My keyword and link workhorse
Ahrefs is a web app, so it runs fine in Chrome on Mac. It’s fast on Apple Silicon. I keep it open all day.
Real example: I help a local bakery in Austin. I found “custom cookie cake Austin” with low KD and solid volume. We made a simple page with clear photos and a short FAQ. It moved from page 5 to top 3 in three weeks. Calls went up. Nothing fancy.
What I like
- The Keyword Explorer feels quick on Mac. No weird lag.
- The Content Gap tool helped me spot missing guides on a camping blog. We wrote “bear bag vs canister.” It hit page 1 in a month.
What bugs me
- Exporting big CSVs sometimes freezes Chrome tabs. I now export smaller chunks.
- Live rank checks aren’t live. That’s normal, but it still makes me sigh.
SEMrush on Mac: Good for tracking, a bit heavy
Also a web app. Works fine in Chrome. I use it for position tracking when a client wants screenshots.
Real example: For a DTC tea brand, I tracked 120 keywords with daily updates. We fixed title tags and removed thin blog posts. Over 60 days, 34 terms moved into top 10. The Visibility chart kept the client calm.
What I like
- The site audit “Thematic Reports” are easy to show a boss.
- Position tracking emails are clean.
What bugs me
- Heavy pages spin fans faster than Ahrefs.
- The UI has a lot of stuff. I hide widgets to stay sane.
For projects where SEO needs to dovetail with fast lead hand-offs, I’ve experimented with purpose-built routing tools—my candid notes on what actually works (and what made me groan) live here: lead routing software field test.
Screaming Frog on macOS: The crawler that never lies
Yes, it runs on Mac. It’s Java-based, but it’s smooth on M2. I always plug in and set memory higher in settings before big crawls.
Real example: I crawled a Shopify store with 12,482 URLs. Found 1,036 images with missing alt text and 87 soft 404s caused by search pages getting indexed. We fixed templates. Traffic rose, and—more important—search got cleaner.
What I like
- The “Rendered HTML” view caught hidden text blocked by a modal.
- Custom Extraction let me pull product schema in one pass.
What bugs me
- Long crawls on battery will cook your lap. Don’t do it.
- The UI looks like 2012. It works, though.
Sitebulb on Mac: Pretty graphs, real clues
Sitebulb has a native Mac version. It’s friendlier than Frog and great for showing audits to people who don’t speak SEO.
Real example: A travel site had 672 orphan pages. Sitebulb’s visual crawl map screamed it at me. We added related posts and a better “destinations” hub. Crawl depth dropped. Rankings climbed bit by bit.
What I like
- Clear hints with plain language.
- Visual reports that a founder can read in five minutes.
What bugs me
- Uses more RAM than Frog during big crawls.
- Licensing is a little fussy if you swap machines.
SEO PowerSuite (Rank Tracker, WebSite Auditor) on Mac: Old-school, still useful
It’s Java, but it runs fine on macOS. I use two parts most.
Rank Tracker
- Real example: I track 300 keywords for a craft store. I love the “SERP Features” column. We chased “People Also Ask” with short Q&A sections. Three weeks later, we grabbed five PAA spots.
- Good: Flexible tagging, easy charts.
- Bad: Schedules can chew battery. I run them when plugged in.
WebSite Auditor
- Real example: It flagged 132 pages with missing H1s after a theme change. We fixed the template. Crawl budget waste dropped.
- Good: Clean on-page checks with simple color codes.
- Bad: A bit slow on very large sites.
Scrutiny (and Integrity) for Mac: Quick link checks
These are lightweight Mac apps. I use Scrutiny to scan for broken links and bad titles when I’m in a rush.
Real example: A nonprofit had 74 broken links after a big PDF cleanup. Scrutiny found them in 8 minutes. We swapped the links. No drama.
What I like
- Super fast. No extra fluff.
- Exports are small and tidy.
What bugs me
- Not a full SEO suite. But that’s fine; it does its one job.
Little helpers that make life easier
- iStat Menus: I watch RAM and CPU during crawls. If RAM hits 12 GB, I pause.
- Rectangle: Snaps windows so I can compare Ahrefs and Frog side by side.
- CleanShot X: I grab neat screenshots for client decks.
- Chrome extensions: Keyword Surfer for quick checks, Redirect Path for… well, redirects.
- If you’re chasing the smoothest capture workflow out there, this side-by-side review of the best clipping software breaks down what feels truly seamless.
Need something more tailored? For bespoke automations or lightweight Mac utilities that glue all these tools together, Cupid Systems builds custom solutions that won’t torch your battery.
My weekly stack (plain and simple)
- Monday: Ahrefs for keyword ideas and links
- Tuesday: Screaming Frog for deep crawl
- Wednesday: Sitebulb for client-friendly audit notes
- Thursday: Rank Tracker to report movement
- Friday: Scrutiny quick pass before we publish
Do I need all of them? No. But each fills a gap.
Real wins and real pain
Wins
- Bakery site: “custom cookie cake Austin” page brought 18% more calls in month one.
- Shopify store: Fixing soft 404s cut index bloat; product pages started to stick on page 1–2.
- Travel blog: Orphan pages got links; two guides hit top 5 for “winter Zion hikes” and “Arches sunrise spots.”
Another niche win worth mentioning: I recently advised a virtual companionship platform that promises zero in-person meet-ups. Optimizing for “online sugar dating” terms—while intentionally avoiding location modifiers—required careful intent mapping. If you want to see how such a model functions (and how the SEO funnel differs from typical dating sites), this deep dive on running a sugar baby website without meeting breaks down the business mechanics, keyword angles, and trust-building tactics you can adapt to your own projects.
Continuing with geo-focused adult niches, the archived listings for Moscow over at One Night Affair’s Backpage Moscow demonstrate how tightly structured categories, location modifiers, and user-generated reviews can stack long-tail keywords—you can mine the page for taxonomy ideas and internal linking tricks whenever you’re mapping out city-specific marketplaces.
Pain
- Big crawls on battery are rough. Fans spin, tabs hang.
- Java apps look dated. But they work.
- Exports over 50k rows can freeze Chrome; I batch them now.
What should you pick?
- Solo blogger or local shop: Ahrefs + Scrutiny is enough to start.
- In-house SEO: Add Screaming Frog; it finds the real mess.
- Agency or client-facing: Sitebulb for pretty reports, plus Rank Tracker for weekly charts.
If budget is tight, start free where you can. Crawl smaller. Fix basics first: titles, H1s, links, index rules. Then grow.
Final take
Mac users have great SEO tools. Most are web-based, and the big crawlers run well on Apple Silicon. I live in Ahrefs for ideas, Screaming Frog for truth, Sitebulb for stories, Rank Tracker for charts, and Scrutiny for quick cleanups. It’s not fancy. It’s steady.
And honestly, steady wins.