Mainstream SEO tools can be useful, but there are limits to what they can do.
If you practice search engine optimization (SEO), you probably use a variety of tools to assist and enable your efforts. In fact, it’s almost impossible to be effective in SEO without the use of tools. That’s because Google doesn’t do much to help you track your rankings, your keyword optimization process, your link building efforts, and your other tactics.
However, it can be problematic to over rely on mainstream SEO tools. That’s because there are three critical flaws associated with most of them:
- They tell you the “whats” but not the “whys.” For the most part, search optimization tools are fantastic at telling you what’s going on. They help you measure things like search engine rankings, levels of competition, and domain authority. But they can’t always tell you why these things exist. That level of analysis is almost always on you.
- They reduce your campaign to measurable variables. Optimizing for search engines is also about improving customer experience and improving your brand authority. These are somewhat subjective, malleable topics that can’t be concretely defined by measurable metrics. If you rely too heavily on tools that only track objective data, you might lose sight of these important variables.
- They interfere with the quality of your content. Some search optimization assistance tools make recommendations for how you can optimize your content for search engines. But optimizing for search engines doesn’t always lead to better quality content. You should always take these recommendations with a grain of salt – and if customer experience or brand reputation is in direct conflict with best practices for search engine optimization, you should always err on the side of customer experience or brand reputation.
These problems shouldn’t prevent you from using SEO tools. Instead, they should motivate you to use these tools in the proper context. If you need help planning a search optimization campaign, or if you require consulting to get the most out of your current suite of tools, contact us for a free consultation today!
