Most SEO Tools are a dime a dozen. Most SEO Tools are worthless. Most SEO Tools are a waste of time. Those sentiments are among a few that I’ve uncovered during my time as an SEO. However, there were a few turning points in my career that made me open my eyes to what was real. The first turning point, thankfully, was very early. I had conducted keyword research for my very first project and decided to focus on one specific keyword phrase (one of many misguided mistakes). I had used “Overture’s Keyword Research Tool” and thought that everything was straight forward. After four months of nonstop work (my ex-girlfriend can verify that), I had taken a brand new domain and had it ranking in the top five for my targeted keyword phrase. It was the keyword phrase that Overture had said there were 10’s of thousands of searches for that phrase per month.
So there I was, I had achieved my goal and then came the long awkward pause of “where the hell is all the traffic?”. Long story short, Overture used an extremely screwed up method at calculating search traffic. I won’t bore you with the details, but that is what I learned. Don’t trust any keyword data until you can verify where it comes from and how it’s compiled.
In a previous life, during my stint working for an online marketing company, I had the opportunity to work for a pretty cool guy who drilled that same concept into my head. Dave would take that concept and make me apply it to all tools within the SEO realm. I would come to him and say, “hey! look at this really cool tool I just found.” He would then make me either prove or disprove why it was good or not. Probably 90% of the tools I come across take about 5 minutes to figure out why they’re “smoke and mirrors”. Even though it was very frustrating at times, I’m glad Dave made me go through this.
So what’s the point of this entire story? For any SEO Tool you come across, be sure you have verified and trust how data is gathered. Down the road, I’ll discuss the “hows”, “what’s”, and “whys” of breaking down some commonly used tools and which ones apply to the world of Automotive SEO.
