About / Allan de Wit
Allan de Wit
Co-founder

Allan de Wit

Allan de Wit is a co-founder of RankYak and has worked in SEO since 2015: inside agencies, alongside them, for clients directly, and in-house on the products being ranked. He came to it as a software engineer building for marketers, which is why the platform is built the way it is. He went on to start companies of his own, two of which were acquired. At RankYak he sets the product direction and owns the features, the quality bar, the design, and the UX.

A decade of watching what ranks

Allan has worked in SEO since 2015, in every form the work takes: inside agencies, alongside agencies, for clients directly, and in-house on the products being ranked. He arrived there from software engineering, building for marketers until their problems became his, and that background is why RankYak is a product rather than a service.

Over those years the same pattern kept showing up. The sites that ranked had a plan before they had articles, wrote only for keywords they could win, and kept their published pages maintained. The sites that did not rank skipped one of those steps. RankYak is that pattern turned into defaults.

What he does at RankYak

Allan sets the direction of the product and owns the features, the quality bar an article clears before it publishes, the design, and the UX. In practice that means deciding what RankYak does and what it refuses to do, reading articles the pipeline produces, and making the interface explain a plan the way a strategist would.

Before RankYak he built and ran SaaS companies, two of which were acquired. The habits carried over: a small team, a product that ships every week, and a contact page the founders answer themselves.

The articles below publish under Allan's name. The editorial policy describes how each one is researched, written, and kept current.

Articles by Allan

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant: What It Is & How It Works
Writing content that ranks well requires more than solid writing skills, it demands real-time optimization based on what's actually performing in search results. The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is a...
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Canonical Tags for SEO: Best Practices, Examples, Setup
If you've ever had two or more URLs serving up the same (or nearly the same) content, Google has to pick one to index. Without clear direction, it might choose the wrong one, or worse, split your rank...
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On-Page SEO Guide: Step-By-Step Checklist for Beginners
You can publish content every single day and still get zero organic traffic if your pages aren't optimized correctly. That's where on-page SEO comes in, it's the practice of fine-tuning individual pag...
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9 Technical SEO Audit Tool Options That Flag Hidden Errors
Broken links, crawl errors, duplicate meta tags, slow-loading pages, these are the kinds of issues that silently tank your rankings while you're focused on creating content. The frustrating part? Most...
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Ahrefs Keyword Analysis: How to Find and Evaluate Keywords
You've got a website that needs traffic, and someone told you Ahrefs is the tool for finding keywords that actually rank. That's true, but opening Keywords Explorer for the first time can feel like st...
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How to Master Backlinko On-Page SEO for Higher Traffic
You publish content that should rank but it sits on page three collecting dust. Generic SEO advice tells you to write quality content and use keywords, yet your pages still struggle to break into the...
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Macaw Alternatives: 5 Best Tools for SEO & Content in 2026
Looking for Macaw alternatives that actually deliver on SEO and content creation? You've probably hit a wall with your current setup. Maybe it costs too much, lacks the features you need, or can't kee...
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Byword Alternatives: 12 Best AI Writers for SEO in 2026
You've been using Byword for AI content generation, but something's not clicking. Maybe you need better SEO optimization, more flexible pricing, or features that actually match your workflow. Whatever...
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11 Best RankYak Alternatives for SEO Automation Tools (2026)
We built RankYak to automate the entire SEO content lifecycle, from keyword discovery to publishing and backlink building, so businesses can grow organic traffic without burning hours on manual work....
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13 Best Ahrefs Alternatives: Free & Paid Tools for 2026
Ahrefs delivers powerful SEO insights, but $99 to $999 per month puts it out of reach for many small businesses and solo marketers. You need quality backlink data, reliable keyword research, and compr...
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Surfer SEO Alternatives: 7 Best Tools for Content in 2026
Surfer SEO might be popular, but it costs $99 per month minimum, and you might not need all its features. Maybe you want something cheaper, or you need a tool that focuses on automation rather than ma...
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12 On-Page SEO Factors Checklist for Higher Rankings (2026)
You can have the best product, the sharpest design, and a killer domain name, but if your pages aren't optimized for search engines, none of it matters. On-page SEO factors are the elements you direct...
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