Should You Use SEO Tools to Do Your Own SEO?

One of the most powerful methods of optimizing your company's web site and improving its search engine rank is to use SEO tools, or search engine optimization tools. Using SEO tools correctly can make a vital difference in your site's success. The key word is "correctly." Using SEO tools incorrectly can also make a difference to your site's success... by flushing it down the toilet. Before you use any SEO tools, make sure you know exactly what you are doing.

For instance, keyword tools are perhaps the most important SEO tools available. A well chosen and well programmed set of keyword tools can make it possible for you to list the keywords your web pages target, track their ranking in search engines by keyword, measure your pages' keyword density, and compare your site with your competitors' sites, allowing you to improve your targeting and fix false targeting. It is also possible to supplement your new page creation process by generating lists of associated keywords that you did not previously target, home in on high traffic keywords, and create lists of common misspellings to fine tune your targeting.

However, you can also aim for the wrong keyword density, create combinations of keywords that sound spammy to search engines, or do any of a multitude of stupid SEO tricks that will cause your site to be blacklisted as spam. Because real spam merchants are excellent at showing search engines what they want to see, search engines constantly revise their algorithms, changing their "opinion" of overused SEO tricks. Google is particularly frustrating to target; site features that Google loved three years ago might now be verboten. If you use outdated information or an outdated SEO tool, whoomp, there goes everything you have worked for.

Therefore, although online SEO tools may make it appear easy to do your own optimization yourself, you may discover that this is a false economy. A better alternative to doing your optimization yourself, then running an ad campaign to fix the damage you might do, is to invest in a professional SEO services firm. Because they are specialists, their understanding of SEO will be up to date, and they will have the best, most detailed SEO tools. The end result will be a finely targeted, highly competitive web page that will adapt to changing algorithms and serve your business well.