Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing Help

www.theonlinemarketingguy.com by Duane Forrester

SEO Software

Search Optimization Software SEO Software – Some Insight We’ve already covered software which checks your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) elsewhere. This section will focus on using software which claims to help you actually optimize your website. The first thing you must understand is this: Software cannot physically make any changes to the coding of your pages. This means it can scan it, make recommendations and show your reports – but YOU still have to make every single recommended change. So, we’re still talking about the same amount of work here – maybe more. Next up, it’s critical to realize something about the recommendations made by software applications. Those recommendations are only as current as the last update you have. If you forget to download an update for the software, recommendations being made are coming form out-of-date criteria. On top of all this, every software application is different. Different teams of programmers and engineers – people, who may or may not actually have any direct search optimization experience, build each. Then there is the cost of the software. You’re going to have to fork over some good money for the better-built software applications. Sometimes you might have to even pay for updates. If it’s cheap software, skip it entirely. I will never recommend any piece of optimization software to anyone. I don’t use them myself and believe they will, at some point, lead you down the wrong path. Better for you to gain a solid understanding of the basics yourself, then be able to simply do what you know typically works. The only real software I use are code validators such as this one from Rex Swain, which checks the header codes returned when a page is requested: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html and this one form the World Wide Web Consortium which checks a page for validity: http://validator.w3.org/ (this tool will help you understand if there are items in your page’s code which will trigger errors in a users browser). That’s it. I don’t use “optimization software” and neither should you – even if it’s free.