Quote "There is no SEO software that can help optimize a site"

[yousayjump]

Hi all

I am a developer for a small agency in the UK.  I am using SEOmoz for a couple of our clients and I am also using it to learn from. So far I am finding it a great tool and this forum is also incredibly helpful.

Now I also visit another forum called HighRankings.com and this months newsletter is a list of points that are defined as "SEO Mistakes".  In it, point number 2 reads:

"Repeat after me: There is no specific number of times a keyword phrase should be used in my content. There is no magic number of words that my pages should have written on them. And there is no best number of words or phrases that belong in a Title tag. And most of all: There is no SEO software that can optimize my website (despite the claims of their creators).

Use your common sense to optimize your site! Learn how your target audience searches for products, services and information such as yours, and write about it accordingly on your website. Then write to make an emotional connection with your visitors so that they'll convert into happy customers."

Now as a user of SEOmoz I wondered what others thought of this comment?

Many thanks for reading.

Kris

[yousayjump]

Many Thanks Rand (and Geoff).

The thoughts and opinions of other SEO community members (and CEO's!) who have "walked the walk" is priceless advice in my opinion.

Kris

[randfish]

Hi Kris - I think I'd just generally disagree with the sentiment expressed in the newsletter (despite usually being a HighRankings fan - I subscribed to their newsletter for years).

Well... Maybe.

SEOmoz's software can't literally optimize your site for you, but managing campaigns, monitoring critical stats that aren't available elsewhere (rankings + link data + social data + traffic data + crawl stats) can be extremely helpful in ID'ing SEO issues and opportunities.

I suppose when they say "There is no SEO software that can optimize my website" it's correct on a literal sense, so perhaps we do agree after all. However, I think there's lots of good ways software can make marketers more efficient and effective than they'd otherwise be.

Hope that helps!

[zigojacko]

They aren't software, there is a difference. But I appreciate opinions differ.

I was going to send you to the Google search results for 'SEO Software', I then noticed that SEOmoz rank and they make use of the page title 'SEO Software Simplified' so I feel pretty foolish now.

In my opinion, there is a distinct difference between what I refer to as 'seo software' and a collection of tools that each carry out a specific process to give useful insight into just one area. The tools provide users with data to then go away and work with by whatever means necessary whereas software is generally a suite with features that attempt to automate much of the 'optimisation' process.

Having spoken to Jill at HR on a number of occassions previously and being quite active within the High Rankings forum and Sphinn community previously, I'm pretty certain they are of the same mindset of myself and not perceiving SEOmoz as 'seo software' as such.

Be interesting to hear other peoples thoughts on this of course...

[yousayjump]

Hi Geoff

So would you say SEOmoz (or its tools) are not SEO Software? Personally I would (even though it's not software in the terms of being natively installed software) however it is a tool to help analyize and optimize a website is it not?

My reason for posting was simply because I have used HighRankings for a long time as a base of information and reading that article made me disagree with what they are saying.  There is SEO software (or tools) that will help you optimize your website (or at least suggest optimizing methods) and I was surprised to see they think otherwise.

SEOmoz, MajesticSEO, gShiftLabs etc...

[zigojacko]

Hi Kris,

SEOmoz provide tools to assist you in analysing and identifying issues within your site and its pages. It doesn't provide "SEO software" as such. Most agencies/seo's will use a range of tools to aid their workflow, there is nothing wrong with that.

What HighRankings are referring to is automated garbage that claims to build you 10,000 backlinks while you sleep or at a click of a button it will tell you how more times you have to mention keywords a,b and c to rank for them - it's all mindless nonsense but people to still fall for it and purchase the software.

The bottom line is, there are no shortcuts or cheats with SEO, provide quality that people want, cater for your intended audience and engage with your end users. Everything else from thereon is almost a given (providing you have a decent designer and developer that knows what they are doing looking after your website).

Hope that clears that up...?