If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say how easy SEO was, I’d be a millionaire by now. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth. The simple reason being that SEO rules are not set in stone, but change over time, rather frequently. Nobody knows the exact science behind Google’s ever-changing algorithm, nor will you ever hear two distinct experts agreeing on exactly how it all functions.
Yet, the general ideas are mostly the same. The truth is, however, that SEO isn’t easy, but it’s there to make your life a whole lot easier. By simply automating your SEO efforts, you don’t waste as much time as when you’d do the whole thing manually. Naturally, this saves you a lot of time and money, so let’s not waste any more of the same and get straight down to business.
Automating your link building strategies
Link building has been an integral part of SEO campaigns for quite some time now. Creating those quality backlinks is tougher than it seems though. It’s not always easy getting the most authoritative sites to pass on that credibility to you. What’s more, there could, in fact, be backlinks coming from low-quality sources, potentially harming you in the process.
For this very reason, people have created tools such as ScreamingFrog, Ahrefs, SEO Spyglass and so on, to keep a close eye on these unwanted backlinks and have them removed as soon as possible. ScreamingFrog, in particular, helps you deal with broken links (404 not found errors) and fix them. Moreover, they’ll alert you if any new backlinks are created towards your site.
Keeping track of so much data can be simply overwhelming for a single human being, but for technology, it’s really a piece of cake. Despite this, there’s always a need for that gentle human touch, as most of these tools can find and present data rather quickly, but humans still have to decide how to use that data effectively.
Semi-automated content management
Content creation is yet another important factor in SEO, so why not try and automate it as well, right? After all, finding duplicate content, conducting competitor analysis and searching for top keywords and phrases manually is one heck of a job. This is why tools such as BuzzSumo, Google Keyword Planner, SpyFu, QuickSprout exist. You see, Google hates finding duplicated content and penalizes sites that do just that.
Thus, you need to write compelling content that will engage your audience and provide lots of organic traffic due to shares and likes on social media. But how exactly do you achieve this? Simply, by using these tools to analyze which keywords are most prominent for your content, to find topics which are currently trending and evaluate your competitors more closely. Consulting experts from the industry, such as Leafcutter, can also help you with a strategy and improve your digital presence.
With this info in mind, you can then plan your content accordingly and proceed with writing it. Therefore, the process isn’t fully automated but it’s close enough. The data you’ve collected will be invaluable in assisting you to write top quality posts that will bring the most credible backlinks into the fold and raise your site’s authority as a result.
Creating sophisticated reports
Nobody likes doing their paperwork, but it’s a necessary part of any solid SEO campaign. Especially so if it’s done for an important client. Luckily for us, excel spreadsheets are a thing of the past as they’ve become today’s equivalents of stone tablets. Technology has become not only smarter but more sophisticated as well, allowing us to create more visually appealing reports with ease.
This semi-automated process not only saves a lot of our valuable time, it presents data more meaningfully, which in turn keeps our clients happy and content. After all, reports are there for a reason, you need to provide evidence that you’re doing a proper job to justify the money your clients have invested, and hopefully will keep investing, in you.
For this reason, automated SEO reports are an excellent way of cementing the relations you have with your clients and keeping it nice and professional. Likewise, sending amateurish reports will only make your work look sloppy and incompetent. Hence, you should avoid wasting time on writing manual reports altogether and have your computer make more refined reports for you instead.
All in all, technology has come a long way in these past few years. With Google’s algorithm getting smarter with each passing year, new tools need to be acquired for running an effective SEO strategy. These tools not only save precious time by semi-automating the whole process but also do an outstanding job while they’re at it.
