Apr

SEO Automation Tools: Are They Worth The Price of Admission?

By Sid

Over the past several years, I’ve used a variety of SEO (Search Engine Automation) tools, from directory submission to super link-building tools.

I’ve proposed the use of some of these tools to my clients. What I’ve found is that the solo entrepreneur who wants to be a big-time internet marketer will use anything and everything that promises “instant” search engine success. The B2B or B2C company with the in-house web development team on the other hand won’t touch them with a ten foot pole.

In this article, I decompose a few myths about automated SEO tools and programs, identify the key areas where tools are useful, and provide links to my favorite tools.

Do these tools work? You betcha. Are they applicable to the B2B business who doesn’t give a hoot about internet marketing and thinks internet marketers are a bunch of sleazy con artists? Absolutely.

But pay attention… some of these tools aren’t for the faint of heart. At the end of the article, I tell you my absolute favorite tool for the B2B or B2C business…

Decomposing Three Myths of Using Automated SEO Tools

Myth: using these automated tools will get you blacklisted.

Fact: some might, but the good ones won’t.

Myth: Automated tools guarantee success.

Fact: In spite of the claims of some tool makers, there’s never a guarantee of success. It depends on your market, what the competition is doing, and the amount of time and energy you spend building what Peter Drew calls your “SEO backbone.”

Myth: Getting to #1 in Google is the ultimate goal

Fact: If your landing page or web site sucks, being number one in Google may work against you. The ultimate goal is to create satisfied customers or clients who gladly buy whatever you offer for many years.

What Tools Do You Need?

SEO is a funny game. I’ve seen a single article posted to Ezine Articles out-rank well-established web sites with hundreds or thousands of back links. And the writing web site I created to test some of these tools easily out-ranked popular web sites with ten times the traffic for my focused keyword phrases.

One person will tell you that “relevant back links” are the key. Another will calmly explain that on-page optimization is more important than back links. A third guru will chime in that social media trumps all of that.

The truth is that nobody really knows for sure… and that all of the above is important.

My assumption here is that you want your primary web site to get ranked high in the search engines. While a single article posted to an article directory or a single press release might get ranked high for a short period of time, over the long haul, you want your main “money” web site to get all the kudos.

The “Un-Tools”

Your first tool isn’t really a tool at all. It’s your web site or blog. The more hyper-focused you are to a specific niche market, the higher your web site will be ranked for the primary keywords relevant to that market.

What this means is that you’re going to create a quality site with a large number of pages (informational pages or articles) that are directly related to your primary niche market. While there are tools that can provide content to your site, I don’t recommend using these until you’re well-established… and even then, the outside content has to be closely monitored.

Your second tool also isn’t a tool. Having a lot of content on your site is extremely important (read my strong bias below). While I mention tools you can use to automate content creation, the best way for a B2B/B2C company to add relevant outside-created content is to subscribe to other blogs in related markets.

Most blog owners love it when you reference their blog posts in your blog. Find sites who specifically state that you can re-post the articles on your blog (with appropriate references).

The second way you can find relevant articles to post on your blog is to periodically do a search in Ezine Articles. If you find an article you like, post it. That’s what they’re there for.

I recommend a ratio of 5 of your posts to 1 external post. That ratio has worked well for me in the past. You can hire freelance writers for not a lot of money on a contractual basis to write your articles. Hire them as you would an employee, and avoid companies who provide article writing. [Elance is a good source]

Here’s my strong bias: Create a blog. Even if you want to keep your 1990’s web site (because your marketing/web team will throw a fit), create and nurture a blog. Nearly all the tools I’ll mention are for blogs.

And my caveat: The majority of these tools were created for the internet marketer who might have HUNDREDS of blogs for hundreds of niche markets. I’ve listed the tools which I feel would be most appropriate and useful for the B2B or B2C company.

Content Generation Tools

Syndicate Kahuna: These guys have a whole range of products that help the blog owner. The free tool is Syndicate Kahuna, where you can add your blog to a long list of other blogs. Members of the “Pro” version (currently $67/month) can post their articles to the network.

Special software inside Syndicate Kahuna ensure that every article that gets posted is unique, so that the article that is posted on your blog won’t be seen anywhere else on the net. Personally, I think the articles you’ll get will devalue your blog in the eyes of your visitor. You have to be very careful about what you use or don’t use.

I do recommend the Pro version when you are first building your blog because you can generate a large number of links back to your blog very quickly. The Pro version allows you to post your content to hundreds of blog sites WITH up to three unique links back to your blog in every post.

MyArticleNetwork – - This is a brand new tool that, as far as I can tell, does essentially the same thing as Syndicate Kahuna. You can post your article to the network, and their system posts variations of your article to the other blogs in the network.

You can also accept articles for your blog from the network. This is fine for the internet marketer who just wants traffic of any kind so that they can sell advertising or other people’s products, but it’s probably not a great idea for a viable B2B or B2C company.

[Sidenote: The folks at Syndicate Kahuna also have a great FREE keyword-finding tool. It is mainly used for finding the best keywords to use for Google Adwords PPC advertising, but can be used for other purpose as well. It’s called Adwords Digger.

Tools for SEO AND Web Traffic Generation

Like it or not, the search engines seem to like a site that is linked to by other sites. My uneducated guess is that this will change in the coming months, as social networking gains ground and the search engines tire of link-generation tools.

Back links serve two purposes:

Back links help your search engine ranking (it tells the search engines that your side is considered to be relevant by other web sites or blogs)
Back links drive traffic to your web site. People read the article and click on the link(s) to get back to your site.

Syndicate Kahuna (Pro) and MyArticleNetwork both provide lots of links back to your site via the articles you have posted.

Basically, there are six ways to generate back links to your site:

Submit your articles to article directories.
Put your articles on other blogs (Syndicate Kahuna)
Post articles to “free” sites where you can create blogs and pages
Your blog has an RSS feed. The Free sites (#4) also have RSS feeds. You can syndicate (list in RSS feed directories) these RSS feeds, which increases the links back to your site. I’ve seen some of these feed sites get higher ranking than the primary web site!
Syndicate your blog content to social media sites.
Syndicate your videos by posting your video to all major video sites with a link back to your site and relevant keyword phrases.

Here are four tools available to do automate these tasks:

Article Announcer: Clean, slick, easy-to-use. I’ve used this program for years, and it works great. It automates the process of submitting your article to the dozens of article directories. I do highly recommend ALWAYS submitting your article to Ezine Articles.

Brute Force SEO: This one is challenging to use, but it is powerful. The documentation and training assume that you are a certified web geek. I’m pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, and I couldn’t figure out 1/3 of what they talked about. But once you get the hang of the software, it completely automates the tasks of creating lots of “free” web sites, and then syndicates all your RSS feeds for you. It does a ton of other stuff, but in reality few B2B companies will bother with this software. I think that the are not currently accepting new members, but this always changes.

Social Media Syndication (Syndd): OMG. This is one powerful system, and it is only going to get better. The entry and monthly price is MORE than reasonable. What they provide is a system to quickly “syndicate” your blog posts to a variety of social media sites like Digg, Delicious, Social Median, and others. The list of sites grows monthly, as do the members. They are getting great results, and if you go to the link above, you can get a free report that explains how social media syndication works.

Video Syndication: There are a number of tools available for this task. The most popular of these tools is Traffic Geyser, which does a pretty good job (I’ve heard raves and pans), and costs $97/month. If you use it a lot, it might be worth it. An new tool that is even better (and cheaper at $12/month) is Video Submit Wizard. It submits your video to more sites, and as far as I’m concerned, has more options geared toward driving traffic to your web site with video.