I love SEO tools. They are tasty, crunchy little morsels that make for delightful morning snacks. I had a case of the munchies this morning and so I’ll share my masticating thoughts on a recently announced SEO tool. Actually, I’m just going to make fun of it.
You see, a while back I was dancing and singing down the Yellow Brick Road — well, actually, I was browsing SEO Blog, which is a pretty cool SEO blog aggregator site (disclaimer: SEO Theory is one of the blogs included in their feeds).
I couldn’t help but notice an article from Neil Patel’s blog, Quicksprout, titled Are You Doing Your SEO Wrong? Ever the skeptic, I just had to see how Mr. Patel’s latest SEO wisdom matches up with my own (okay, maybe I should say, “Ever egotistical, I just had to see …”).
So I clicked on the link and found that instead of leading me to an article I was taken to a tool on the home page. It’s very simple, just a form with a big headline that asks, “Are you doing your SEO wrong?” You just type in a URL and get a free report (literally, right there on the screen, no email to wait for — rather refreshing).
So I entered in the URL of a Website that does all sorts of SEO pretty well: https://www.seo-theory.com/
Oh, what a clever guy I must be, to test an SEO tool on an SEO blog. So I was not very disappointed to see the “Warnings” my report began with:
THE FOLLOWING HEADING TAGS ARE TOO LONG OR TOO SHORT
Heading tags should be between 15 and 65 characters.
H2: “Dear Content Spammers: Old Articles Rank Just Fine in Google’s SERPs” 68 characters.
H1: “SEO Theory ” 11 characters.
H2: “Recent Posts” 12 characters.
H2: “Video” 5 characters.
H5: “Latest Story” 12 characters.
Hm. I’m going to give this section a “D-“. The first headline is ranking just fine for “dear content spammers” and “old articles rank just fine”. I also see “SEO theory” appended to the end of the title in the Google SERPs. Do I really need to see “in Google’s SERPs” in the text snippet in the search results?
No.
But I’ll score the warning just above a failing grade of “F” because there is a widespread belief in the SEO industry that the length of your article titles is somehow important. The tool is just catering to that belief.
As for the other headlines it warns me about, these are all taken from the home page of SEO Theory and they are just section labels. Standard stuff — except for the H1, which is obviously the name of the Website. And, yes, SEO-Theory.com ranks pretty well for “SEO Theory” and variations on that query.
The next “problem” the tool found was: “PAGE IS BLOCKED BY ROBOTS.TXT The page is blocked by robots.txt.” Yeah, I block a few robots that don’t drive any traffic to my site. At least there are some well-behaved robots out there, although maybe not all of them are as well-behaved as they act.
And then there is this:
FLASH CONTENT WAS FOUND ON THE PAGE
Flash content cannot be viewed by all devices.
http://www.youtube.com/v/9Ja0NAF_cH4?version=3
Yes, there is a video embedded on the site. I’m not concerned by this.
For these two warnings I’ll give the tool a “C”. If you’re going to warn people about this stuff, be more specific. That is, don’t just raise red flags and sound alarm klaxons.
Next, we get this:
IMAGES SHOULD HAVE DESCRIPTIVE ALT TAGS
There were images found with missing alt tags.
The example provided is for a Paypal button. I think SEO tools need to step up their game and filter out obvious functional images. I grade this a “D”.
The social media metrics section is just atrocious, but you know, it’s hard to find good social media metrics. I will score this a “D-“.
Now we get to the backlinks counter. Dude, you’re telling me I have only 808 backlinks? That deserves an “F–“.
As for the number of pages indexed, I don’t know where to begin. Maybe we should take this grading system into deep negative territory: ——F+++++ (does that make sense).
The keywords analysis is just too superficial. You take one page out of thousands and try to tell me what my most important keywords are. Um, where does one begin with that? Come on. No decent SEO tool should make this kind of superficial analysis.
Finally, let’s look at the SEO recommendations:
HIGH PRIORITY
We can’t find a tag, make sure there is one within your tag.
It looks like your site is blocked by the robots.txt file and won’t be indexed by search engines.
It looks like you have flash content on your site. Remember, flash content can’t be seen on many mobile devices or without a plugin.
You need to increase your back links, you should consider creating an email outreach program.
Create more content rich pages, as it will help you rank for more long tail keywords.
In addition to all the previous bad analysis, now I’m being told I need a meta description tag. Under the low priority tag it’s telling me that the majority of the keywords found on the page are not included in the page title — which I was also told was too long. Mindlock ensues.
So, under the WEB PERFORMANCE category I am assigned my various scores, which includes many “F” grades (I love the advice to use a Content Delivery Network — not for security and performance, but apparently “for SEO”). The majority of my scores were “A+” so I’ll give this section a “B” grade.
As for the “SITE SPEED” section, I’m told to combine all the scripts into one script. As a programmer with 30+ years’ experience I just find that to be so naive. But, dude, it’s a WordPress blog using some advertising scripts and embedded widgets. When you get THEM to figure out how to use 1 script for everything, I’ll find a new platform.
MY TAKEAWAY: Stay away from SEO tools that try to tell you how to optimize your Website.
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
How Long Does It Take SEO To Work?
Guest Post Link Building: Why It Hurts the Web
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness for Non-expert Websites
On-Page Optimization SEO Checklist
SEO Metrics Online: Which Measurements Should You Use?
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Michael, I think it’s obvious to everyone that read this article: close down SEO theory. You’re OBVIOUSLY in no position to teach others the fine art of SEO, if you don’t have a tag within your tag.
😉
Michael,
That was a good read.
I’m not much of a user of SEO tools but I do find the SEO Quake Mozilla plug-in to be useful before launching a static page – just to make sure of that everything’s OK.
– Have I placed alt attributes to all images (if needed)?
– Did I remember to write the meta description?
– Is there a piece of Google Analytics code on the page?
– How many times have I repeated target keywords throughout the page (not a certain amount that I go for – just so that I know if I’ve done it at all or way overdone it).
I agree with not following the advice of the tools, however, some of them (such as the SEO Quake plug-in) are handy when testing for SEO sloppiness.