The Truth About
SEO Software
Looking for SEO software that would propel your website to the top of Google? Are you sure this kind of thing even exists?
If you've read anything about SEO, you'll know it can be broken down into four main tasks:
<strong>Keyword research:</strong> Finding what your customers are searching for.
<strong>On-page SEO:</strong> Creating optimized content that searchers are looking for.
<strong>Link building:</strong> Getting other sites to vouch for your content in the form of backlinks.
<strong>Technical SEO:</strong> Making sure that search engines can find and index your pages.
So what exactly can and can't modern SEO software do?
SEO software can't
Automate these tasks. If you come across a tool that claims to do this—as is often the case with link building—run a mile. It'll do more harm than good.
SEO software can
Provide data to help with these tasks, like estimated keyword search volumes and insights into your competitors' link building strategies.
How SEO software helps with keyword research
It can't find winning keywords for you
Keyword research software can find millions of keyword ideas in seconds—but it can't tell you which ones to target. That's because it doesn't know your business. A keyword that's valuable for one business probably isn't for another.
It can help you find winning keywords
Keyword research software helps you to find the best keywords to target with data like estimated monthly search volumes and trends, keyword difficulty scores, and clicks data.
Get monthly search volumes and other SEO metrics with Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.
How SEO software helps with on-page SEO
It can't create perfectly optimized pages for you
For a page to rank in search engines, it needs to give searchers what they're looking for. Even with modern advancements in machine learning and AI, we're still a long way off SEO software being able to do this.
It can help you understand how to optimize pages
Even if you're knowledgeable about a topic, it can be hard to know precisely how to tackle it. SEO software helps with insights into what the current top-ranking pages for a keyword also talk about.
Find relevant things to talk about on your pages with Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.
How SEO software helps with link building
It can't build links for you
Okay, okay—this one isn't strictly true. Plenty of SEO software can build links on autopilot. The catch is that these links are low-quality and won't help you rank higher.
It can help you figure out how to get backlinks
Understanding how competitors got their backlinks is the key to creating an effective link building strategy. SEO software helps by showing you who's linking to competing pages and why.
See who's linking to your competitors and why in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.
How SEO software helps with technical SEO
It can't make your website technically sound
Every website is unique and needs to be set up slightly differently for success. It might make sense to block or redirect some pages on one website, but not another. SEO software can't make these decisions for you.
It can audit your site and give technical suggestions
Every website might be unique, but SEO software can find and flag hundreds of common SEO issues. You can then use this data to decide on the best course of action for your website.
Check your website for 100+ SEO issues with Ahrefs' Site Audit.
SEO software isn't a magic wand. It simply gives you the data you need to create a winning SEO strategy
Improve your
search traffic
with Ahrefs
False promises
Magical technology
Actionable SEO data
Just getting started in SEO?
Read
the beginner’s guide to SEO ↗
Watch
SEO for beginners series on YouTube ↗