Post by Russell Khan on May 6, 2009 16:24:45 GMT -5
If you've ever visited SEO forums and discussions groups you must have seen those heated debates on doing SEO manually vs using SEO tools. You might have participated in them and, who knows, maybe we've even argued with you about it. I bet a lot of people (including myself) are stroking their keyboards right now to chip in their two cents on this epical SEO topic.
So let's see the points from both sides of this debate and finally decide once and for all: Do we really need SEO tools to bring our websites to the top of search results?
The use-your-brain guys argue you shouldn't rely on SEO software of any kind to optimize your website mainly because SEO tools can't properly analyze your website. A tool can't tell what's relevant to you and what will help your rankings; moreover it can harm your website.
Well of course, the AI of any tool is inferior to the man's mind (although there're exceptions
in terms of its analytical abilities. But automatic solutions are much, much more powerful at basic calculations and routine tasks like checking your rankings in the search engines, gathering data on your backlinks or keywords, etc. And that's where I think the proponents of a purely manual approach to SEO miss the point.
See, you shouldn't perceive any tools, including SEO tools as a solution to all problems that will do ALL the work for you and bring your website to the top of Google without you stirring a finger. There's no such tool and there'll hardly ever be any. Tools that claim to do so are mostly scams involving spammy techniques that indeed can get your website banned by Google and other search engines. But ethical SEO tools can be a great help to your SEO and a huge time-saver when you use them the right way.
Let's take rank tracking for example. It certainly not the kind of task that requires a University Degree and even a one-handed monkey can do it. But it takes up quite a lot of time to go to every search engine and find where your website is ranked. Try doing this with the help of quality SEO tools and you'll be amazed at how much time you've been wasting on tasks that can be easily done with the right tools at hand.
The same can be said about onpage optimization, link building or almost any other SEO task out there. Of course a tool, can't write articles for your website (at least not the kind anyone would bother reading) but it can help you determine the best content structure, help you properly use your keywords in the page elements, etc.
So let's see the points from both sides of this debate and finally decide once and for all: Do we really need SEO tools to bring our websites to the top of search results?
The use-your-brain guys argue you shouldn't rely on SEO software of any kind to optimize your website mainly because SEO tools can't properly analyze your website. A tool can't tell what's relevant to you and what will help your rankings; moreover it can harm your website.
Well of course, the AI of any tool is inferior to the man's mind (although there're exceptions
in terms of its analytical abilities. But automatic solutions are much, much more powerful at basic calculations and routine tasks like checking your rankings in the search engines, gathering data on your backlinks or keywords, etc. And that's where I think the proponents of a purely manual approach to SEO miss the point.See, you shouldn't perceive any tools, including SEO tools as a solution to all problems that will do ALL the work for you and bring your website to the top of Google without you stirring a finger. There's no such tool and there'll hardly ever be any. Tools that claim to do so are mostly scams involving spammy techniques that indeed can get your website banned by Google and other search engines. But ethical SEO tools can be a great help to your SEO and a huge time-saver when you use them the right way.
Let's take rank tracking for example. It certainly not the kind of task that requires a University Degree and even a one-handed monkey can do it. But it takes up quite a lot of time to go to every search engine and find where your website is ranked. Try doing this with the help of quality SEO tools and you'll be amazed at how much time you've been wasting on tasks that can be easily done with the right tools at hand.
The same can be said about onpage optimization, link building or almost any other SEO task out there. Of course a tool, can't write articles for your website (at least not the kind anyone would bother reading) but it can help you determine the best content structure, help you properly use your keywords in the page elements, etc.