That is not a lead generation statistic. It is a statement about how a business is built. Every client who has ever paid Slaterock Automation has, at some point, seen their own website through the lens of a SEOptimer audit. The report is not a door opener but the foundation of the entire client relationship — from the first automated outreach, through onboarding, to every conversation that follows.

About the Company

Slaterock Automation is a digital marketing and automation agency founded by William Mingione. William began his career working at an agency while still in college, focusing on Wix websites, SEO, content creation, and site structure for local small businesses. When he graduated, he broke off on his own and officially launched Slaterock Automation in 2022 — building from the ground up on the Wix Partner Program, which gave him direct access to small business owners who needed help with their websites.

The agency's name signals its philosophy. Automation is not a feature of how Slaterock works — it is the foundation. From lead generation to client onboarding to follow-up sequences, the business is built to run with as little manual intervention as possible. SEOptimer sits at the centre of that system.

The Challenge

When William launched Slaterock, he needed a way to start conversations with small business owners that did not feel like a cold sales pitch. Business owners, particularly local ones, are approached constantly by agencies promising to fix their websites or improve their rankings. The noise is significant and the skepticism is high.

What William needed was a reason to reach out that led with value rather than with an ask. Something that gave the prospect something useful before any commercial conversation began. He tried several different site audit tools before landing on SEOptimer — and once he found it, the question shifted from what tool to use to how to make it work as efficiently as possible at scale.

He also needed to solve a volume problem. As Slaterock grew and lead flow increased through the Wix marketplace, manually generating and sending audit reports for every new lead was not viable. The process needed to be automated end to end, or it would become a bottleneck.

The System That Works

What makes Slaterock Automation's use of SEOptimer genuinely unusual is the degree to which it has been engineered into the agency's infrastructure. William and his team barely have to log into SEOptimer at all. The platform runs in the background, invisible, generating thousands of white-labelled reports a month through an automated process that requires almost no human involvement.

The setup works like this. When a new lead comes in — typically through the Wix marketplace or another inbound channel — a button is clicked in the CRM. That single action triggers an automation that generates a white-labelled SEOptimer report for the prospect's website and sends it to them automatically. The whole process happens in seconds.

"Without that report, none of it would be possible. It all stems from the SEOptimer report."

The Scale

Slaterock Automation is now generating thousands of SEOptimer reports every month. All of it is automated. The team logs into the platform only when they need to adjust the white-label settings or troubleshoot something specific — which is rare.

When William signed up for SEOptimer, the agency was new and the subscription felt like a stretch. Today, it is one of the most embedded tools in the business — not just in terms of how often it is used, but in terms of how central it is to the entire client acquisition system.

"Nearly 100% of our paying customers have looked at an SEOptimer report at some point. It's the start of every conversation for the most part."

That is not a lead generation statistic but a client journey statistic. The report is not just how Slaterock Automation opens doors. It is how they onboard, how they benchmark, and how they frame the work they are going to do. Every client who has ever paid Slaterock Automation has, at some point, seen their own website through the lens of a SEOptimer audit.

Why Automation Changes Everything

William has a clear view on where the industry is heading and what separates agencies that will scale from those that will not. Manual processes — the personalised video walkthroughs, the hand-crafted audit decks, the one-by-one outreach — are becoming obsolete not because they lack quality, but because nobody has the time or patience to engage with them.

"You see some of these people that do these manual videos and site walkthroughs — nobody's even watching that anymore. Now you just click a link and you can see everything you need up front."

The ability to provide instant, professional, personalised insight — at scale, without anyone on the team having to do anything — is what separates an automated system from a manual one. The report goes out in seconds. The follow-up is triggered automatically. The prospect receives something of genuine value before they have ever spoken to anyone at Slaterock.

"It's sales 101. The best way to get conversations going is to provide valuable information. It automatically puts you ahead of everyone else. And being able to automate that entire process is what makes it work."

The AI SEO Angle

"To be shown in AI, you have to be doing the same things we've been doing all along — creating good, valuable content, focusing on backlinks, making sure your site is well structured and well optimised."

What has changed, he argues, is the playing field. AI is picking up on very specific phrases and paragraphs — not just domain authority and years of accumulated backlinks. He has seen brand new startups and businesses he is working with being mentioned in AI overviews on the strength of their content alone, without years of SEO history behind them.

"It's providing a very unique opportunity for startups and small businesses. We're seeing AI pick up on very specific phrases we're using in content and pulling it as a reference in AI overviews — even for brand new brands. That's really cool to see."

For Slaterock Automation clients — small business owners who are often handling their marketing themselves or with a single internal person — this is an important message. The barriers to AI visibility are lower than many assume. Good content, well-structured sites, and the right technical foundations — the same things SEOptimer measures — are still the starting point for everything.

Why SEOptimer

William tried multiple audit tools before settling on SEOptimer. What kept him was the combination of simplicity, flexibility, and automation capability. The white-label settings allowed him to make every report look like it was coming from Slaterock. And the depth of the report itself — the on-page scores, the technical breakdown, the clear visual layout — gave prospects something they could actually engage with, even without SEO expertise.

For a business built around automation, SEOptimer works because it gets out of the way. It does not require William or his team to be on the platform constantly. It generates accurate, professional, white-labelled output on demand and slots into whatever system has been built around it. That reliability, at scale, is the thing that matters most.

"We've never looked back. There's no going back at this point."