SEO – Software vs. Manual Labor

One of the biggest debates in the entire search engine optimization industry is whether or not software is better than good old fashioned hard work. The answer to this question cannot be answered the same for all situation, as there are many facets to a successful search engine optimization campaign, and there are also many different types of software available that claim to help your site rank higher in the SERPs. The truth is, some of them work and some of them don’t, however all of them need to be used correctly to produce substantial results. In fact, most people that are looking for a push button solution to search engine optimization usually wind up misusing these tools and receiving penalties from the search engines, thus hurting their search engine ranking. However, this may or may not be attributed to the tool itself, but how the tool was used. The following information should shed more light on the relationship between software and successful SEO.

Could This Realistically Be Done?

That is the first question you need to ask yourself before using any tool to automate your search engine optimization campaign. If what you are about to do could not realistically be done in the amount of time you plan doing it, then chances are it will be regarded as spam by the search engines. Search engines know that people use tools to automate tedious processes, and to prevent abuse they look for unrealistic patterns when indexing pages. For example if you build 10,000 backlinks in one night, then this will obviously look suspicious. Not only is this kind of link building suspicious, but all of these links can’t possibly be indexed in one night, and in many cases the site may be thrown into the sandbox in order for Google to catch up with all of the links posted on the web.

Is this Really Beneficial?

That is the second question you need to ask yourself before using any tool to automate a process. Many of the tools used to build links quickly do so by posting links on sites with low PR. Every site that links back to yours affects the PR of your site, depending upon the PR. So if you build 1000 backlinks from a bunch of PR 0 and PR 1 pages in a week, then you may actually be hurting your page rank! On the other hand, just 20 backlinks from PR 5,6, and 7 sites could bring you pages ahead of your competitors in a very short period of time. The point is, it is not always a number game and this is an important factor to consider when using any tool.

Will it Help Me Learn?

Perhaps the best way to use tools for search engine optimization is to use market research tools which give you insight on your industry and competition. Keyword research/market analysis tools are the best tools to use in search engine optimization, as they will ultimately help you perfect your craft and advance your site to the front page of the search engines.