PC World just reviewed 3 SEO Software programs, all of them with some excellent features. You can read the review here:
The headline for the reviews tends to simplify the results of what’ll happen if you use these programs (‘Make Search Engines Love Your Site…’), but that’s understandable.
It’s a headline to get you to read so you really can’t get too upset about that. I’d probably write the same thing if I was the writer.
However, having and using SEO software isn’t going to make you an SEO powerhouse instantly anymore than having Photoshop will make you an astonishingly talented digital artist.
Crucially important ingredients are missing from the programs.
This has been written about before in this blog, but it can’t be said enough: Keyword placement just isn’t enough anymore. And that’s what these programs are geared toward, which is fine.
Meanwhile, though, Google has taken the SEO Game to a whole new level. If you’re not on that level, your site is going to get left behind.
Google now wants to know that your site not only has the right keywords, but that its content is worth your visitors’ time and attention.
If they’re going to spotlight your website – put it on Page 1 – they want to make sure the quality is there. It’s their reputation on the line for feeding you accurate, valuable search results, after all.
The Google ranking formula is factoring in Visitor Experience, in other words. In a competitive market, that’s something no software program is going to do for you. Just ask Black Hat SEO-ers.
A favorite trick of black hat SEO was to use software that grabbed content from other sites’ pages, reconfigured it into a different order along with insertions of keywords and put it on their site as ‘content’.
It read like the ravings of a madman, but it did help the site rankings. You can’t argue with results, right?
Yes, it worked very well for a while, but now Google’s ranking bots know better. Those sites got killed in the last couple of updates.
SEO software definitely has its uses and its value, but it doesn’t do the job of a real, knowledgeable SEO professional. It’s a tool. And that tool is like any other.
In the hands of Michelangelo, it can produce masterpieces like the statue of David.
Or, in the hands of so many shop class students, it can produce one more ashtray on a quickly growing pile of them.