Sphinn - SEO Software: Is there any such thing?

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: December 21, 2007 - 1:56 am
Posted By: Jill 561 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.highrankings.com)
Category: SEO

A High Rankings Advisor subscriber wonders if there's some SEO software he can get that will SEO his site for him. I tried to let him down easy... ;)

13 Comments

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Comments

from jeffquipp 561 days ago #

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It would be the holy grail wouldn't it? Unfortunately, until we perfect the manufacture of neural networks, we're left with just us SEOs :), and tools to perform certain basic functions.

from g1smd 561 days ago #

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There is no such thing as "SEO software", but there are tools out there to help optimise and validate HTML and CSS code, check site structure and look for broken links, search for keywords, and of course to analyse visitor stats.

Beyond that, what do people really need? Most of the other things people are selling are unecessary, as you said.

from tonyp 561 days ago #

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Everyone wants the easy answer. With human SEO there's too much work. Another excellent article by SEO master Jill. I read this post in Jill's newsletter and though about Sphinning it. Might next time.

from neyne 560 days ago #

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It is amazing that there are still people that will ask for SEO software to actually do the SEO for them It is a bit like asking from Photoshop to paint you a painting you can hang on your wall. It is important though to point out (like Jill did in the last paragraph) that there are tools that will make the technical sides of SEO easier and faster...

Good article, Jill

from emanuelh 560 days ago #

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I believe that I have demonstrated (in http://sphinn.com/story/18731) that SEO is not a technical profession from which follows that a technical device, like an SEO software, cannot replace SEO practice. Jill and Neyne's arguments are valid but, to my taste, not strong enough - do you believe that Google for instance allows us to know only something like 5% of what we need to know or is about 51%? After all, only what we know can become technical in the form of a chapter in a textbook or a piece of software.

What we actually know sums up to something like only five percent. We do not know most of the values of the ranking algorithm, only some general principles. We do not know the actual relevance scores of each page in the SERPS and cannot estimate therefore whether for climbing
from # 11 to # 10 we have to close a small or a very large relevance score gap. Consequently, we cannot even estimate the remaining costs of this task even though we may have spent only 50% of the budget getting from # 200 to # 11.

from neyne 560 days ago #

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emanuelh, one shouldn't forget that this is a marketing discipline. Your goal is not to understand all the aspects of Google's algorithm but to bring your client relevant targeted traffic. So the dillema you are describing is relevant for someone going for one very competitive keyword - which is not something a good SEO should mark as his goal. SEO's goal would be to increase exposure, increase traffic and increase conversions through helping search engines rank client's site for releant keywords. In most of the cases, those highly-competitive keywords are not even the best way of achieving that - long tail would be a much better way to go.

from emanuelh 560 days ago #

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Well, in this discussion the client is redundant - I have the same problem if the website is mine. And, unlike earlier times, we may have to think often in terms of a business enterprise that is
100% dependent on the online market.

So suppose I manufacture a product at $9 per item and it won't sell at more than $10, but at the price of 10 cents per click and a conversion rate of 10% I can't afford PPC. Who can? My more efficient competitors who manufacture the same product at a lower cost. Or, dynamically speaking, my competitors who by increasing efficiency over time will be willing to pay gradually increasing prices per click and kick the likes of me out of the market for all popular keywords. And the other, cheaper, long-tail keywords may not bring enough sales to cover the minimal costs of production.

So SEO for the organic results is necessary, if only as a means of securing a sufficient slice of the market to cover the minimal production costs. And here again the case of the other, cheaper, long-tail keywords that do not bring enough sales to cover the minimal costs of production might repeat itself. Because the long tail versus the short tail issue has very much to do with the particular keyword - some extremely popular keywords have a very short tail. Web hosting for instance.

Which leaves us very often, especially in growingly competitive arenas, with the problem of estimating (our own) costs of pushing a page from say # 11 to # 10 and the inability to produce a reliable estimate. Quite often 10 workhours is as probable as 200 or 1,000.

Jill believes that ...It’s exactly that experience with hundreds of different sites that enables them to fit the perfect SEO strategy to the site in question. I cannot but disagree. The amount of work formerly required to close the relevance score gap between pages ranked # 11 and # 10 for one search query tells absolutely nothing about the amount of work required for exactly the same task but for another search query. The gap may be very small or very large and, since Google does not allow us to know the actual relevance scores, we cannot know how small or large it is. Consequently, there's no way to build a software that will perform an intelligent decision in this situation.

from HamletBatista 560 days ago #

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It is really interesting the fact that this topic keeps coming up again and again. I produce an SEO suite and I have to say that Photoshop analogy is right on the mark.

SEO software is not about replacing the human element. Photoshop doesn't replace the artists skills. Wordpress doesn't replace the writer. I can mention every piece of software in a multitude of industries and none of them are trying to replace the human element. Why do we have to expect SEO tools to do the impossible?

from JamesDunn 560 days ago #

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Xrumer, blog generation software, content generators... There is software out there that will boost rankings at the touch of a button, it just may be temporary.

from G.Suvorov 560 days ago #

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I recommend you use seodigger.com for keyword tracking, just trace your best competitors
keywords and positions in SERP, they've done all the work allready :-).
And try SeoQuake, seo toolbar. It can analyze anything you may need including keyword density on a page. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3036/ - for Firefox. seoquake.com - for IE.

from neyne 560 days ago #

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emanuelh, from what you write, I am not sure you understand the long tail theory. Of course each of the cheaper keywords will not bring you enough relevant visitors by itself . When combined, they always do. As the main keywords get more competitive and lucrative, the long tail gets longer. Rare exceptions to the rule are really its reinforcement.

I am not sure why do you claim that [web hosting] has a very short tail. I could think of hundreds of different phrases that can be derived from [web hosting]. It would be interesting to see some statistics that you are using to support that claim.

from emanuelh 559 days ago #

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HamletBatista writes: I can mention every piece of software in a multitude of industries and none of them are trying to replace the human element. Why do we have to expect SEO tools to do the impossible?
Unfortunately not everyone shares your realistic attitude. Many are looking willingly or even desperately for a piece of SEO software or at least its substitute - a set of rules that as soon as they are implemented will push their site to # 1.

G.Suvorov writes: just trace your best competitors keywords and positions in SERP, they've done all the work allready...
This attitude follows the premise that my competitors are smarter and more hard-working than me. In some rare cases this is not the case.
and: ...seo toolbar. It can analyze anything you may need including keyword density on a page
Very nice. But what is Google's optimal keyword density?

neyne writes: ...each of the cheaper keywords will not bring you enough relevant visitors by itself . When combined, they always do. As the main keywords get more competitive and lucrative, the long tail gets longer
For SEO purposes the length of the tail of each basic search query is not determined by its potential long-tail variations (you can think of) but by the actual linguistic behavior of search engine users. Whether the combined number of targeted visitors who have searched long-tail queries is always higher than the number of targeted visitors who have searched the particular basic query can only be found in the data collected by search engines, and I have not heard yet of such a study. What really matters is not whether it is always higher or not but whether it is significant enough to be worth the trouble to stuff them decently into the website. And don't forget that very soon your competitors will chase the same low-ROI long-tail phrases. Long-tail is no salvation. Especially if, as I suggested, the sum total of long-tail revenue does not cover the minimal production or operation costs.

from neyne 559 days ago #

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For SEO purposes the length of the tail of each basic search query is not determined by its potential long-tail variations (you can think of) but by the actual linguistic behavior of search engine users.

again, look up the definition of long-tail in context of SE traffic - all the keywords that are not the ones most searched for but are having a low number of actual searches. Not keywords invented or imagined by SEOs or their clients. Actual keywords used to access the site from search engines. Keywods used by real visitors. Actual linguistic behavior of SE users.

Whether the combined number of targeted visitors who have searched long-tail queries is always higher than the number of targeted visitors who have searched the particular basic query can only be found in the data collected by search engines, and I have not heard yet of such a study.

Oh I can show you plenty of such studies. They are called "log file analysis" and should be done for each customer. When you look at those, you see that the long tail beats the most popular keywords in traffic volume every time even when your site is at #1 position for all the most popular relevant keywords. Long tail wins. Every time.

And don't forget that very soon your competitors will chase the same low-ROI long-tail phrases.

Again, basic misunderstanding of the long tail concept. Can you show me a website that is targeting the long-tail more (or less) than any of its competitors? Can you think of a way of doing that ? You reach long tail by targeting the main keywords. You could pinpoint several keywords that are not as popular as the main ones but, again, optimizing for them will help you not get more traffic for those keywords, but rather elongate the long tail, which will bring more traffic.