I think SEJ should run a weekly contest in where someone could pose a process or data gathering situation that needs some sort of automation, and Ann Smarty would direct said person to a tool that already exists. “Stump The Smarty” they could call it. Hell, they could give away a new car because I’m quite sure she would never be stumped.
My point is that there is a tool for almost any information you could need to mine in the world of SEO/SEM. Need to know the internal linking structure of a site? There’s a tool for that. Want to know who’s talking about your brand in the social realm? There’s a tool for that. But what happens once you know the information desired? What will you do with it? At the end of the day, you’re gonna have to use the best tool out there; you’re noggin.
In my piece of the planet, I’m surrounded by a ton of SEO “newbies.” It isn’t long before someone brings to me a new tool they found with excitement and awe in their eyes.
“Dude, check this out,” they say to me. “This thing tells you everything about the incoming links to your site, and compares it with the links to your competitors. Sweet!” My reply is often the same. “Hey, that is…ummm…sweet. So what are we going to do with that information?” And almost every time the look of awe turns to pure confusion.
Tools are great, but you have to know what to do with that information. At the SMX East last year, I was lucky enough to catch Eric Ward on a panel about link-building. He went into an old-man rant about the fact that “in my day we had to walk next door and ask for a link.” Everyone had a good laugh, but his funny words held a great air of truth. You have to do something with that information. You have to work.
All the SEO tools in the world won’t create compelling content with which you will entice your visitors. Tools won’t contact the webmaster of your local college to inform them that you are indeed working on a website that would be of a great use to an upcoming event they are promoting. Nope, tools won’t help you there.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the new SEO tools that pop up all the time. I still get really excited when Ann covers a new application that makes my life just a bit easier. But the only thing that tells me what to do with that information is my experience. You still have to get out there and test.
Don’t try rely on tools to do your job for you. Besides, do you really want your job to be outsourced to a computer?
The guest post by Josh Garner blogging at SEO Factor.
Great post. People are often asking me about results they got from some automated website grading tool and it’s obvious that without the proper knowledge of how to apply the information from a tool, you not only do not get an optimized website, you can easily mess things up even worse than they were to start with. I think the recent fuss over the comments of a certain misguided journalist about the utility of SEO shows how information in the wrong hands can do more harm than good.
@Marjory
Thank you very much.
Yeah graders are the worst. I love ‘em, but I don’t like explaining that what may be viewed as important to one tool will differ from others, and again in the eyes of individual SEOs.
All the more reason to educate our clients.
And yeah, I got tiffed at the Dvorak article as well lol.
You make some great points, Josh. Tools can be a dangerous thing in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use them properly and/or doesn’t know what to do with the information the tools provide.
Knowing what may or may not be wrong is one thing – fixing it is something entirely different, as Dvorak’s recent article illustrated. You already know how I feel about that one. :)
Point well made and I agree. I love reading all of Ann Smarty cool posts about tools and whatnot but nothing is a substitute for a good brain. ;-)
Great post! No matter how many tools exist in the world of SEO, content will always be King. Lol
Never do yourself something than could be achieved by a robot.