You Can’t Automate Search Engine Optimization

Lisa – SEO Analyst – I am happy deciding on seotoolset with you at the back of it.

Search Engine results are automated the likes of Google might have 1000’s of experts putting all there skills in designing the perfect system but at hte end of the day everything is automated. So to know it 100% I dont agree with

Thought you’d be interested in my post on the topic, written a little earlier and not in the ecommerce360 context, but in a more general SEO context. Goes into why networking is key to SEO, and how you can’t network automatically.
http://seoroi.com/seo-faq/can-seo-be-automated/

Hot topic!
In the late 90s I invented a solution that allowed joe blo to automatically create a full featured web site with over 50 components using software. Within six months Microsoft and a dozen other mega-companies came out with their own version. It was all hyped the same way Commerce360 is hyping their offering. It’s the same reality.
There’s a great advantage to automating some aspects of the web development arena, including SEO. Without human intervention and participation, no matter how sophisticated it is, no matter how good it does the things it starts out to do, it’s destined to grab only a portion of the market, because the web changes too often and in too many complex ways.
Heck – the shear need such a solution will face in having to continually be changed to meet the changing algorithms will be a major downside (and thus the argument that this is like building cars is way off. And trying to say that tax software is so evolved that it’s replaced human participation is completely untrue.
Sure, it may have replaced some (mostly those who go after the very low end of the client market) – but in any industry that requires complex thinking, continually shifting methodology, and true “analysis”, there will always be a need to very high quality human participation.
Hey – did any of us even mention how ridiculous the notion is that software can properly evaluate a client’s competition?

Susan, Matt may be at conferences calling for more human editing at Google, but I bet there are brilliant engineers at Google feverishly working to make sure that doesn’t happen. From a business standpoint a human layer is incredibly expensive and inefficient, and we all know Google is about the business.

Ben, my point is I think those who will be out of a job are the individuals that don’t think they can ever be replaced. I hope to stay employed by never having that attitude and finding new ways to take advantage of the automation rather than having it taken away from me.

Again, I’m not advocating that anyone move to automation yet, or that technology is significantly advanced to make that even feasible. I’m just saying that dismissing the concept out of hand as being something that cannot be done may be a bit shortsighted.

I compleletly disagree with the point made above that ‘someday there may be no such thing as human SEO’. There will always be a role for humans in SEO as in every walk of life. If you truly believe that the future is all about automation, you are sorely mistaken (and I presume you are planning your pension because you’ll be out of a job!!).

Lisa:

Hear, hear for English majors! I think balancing automated SEO processes with a human touch allows a small business to maximize their Internet marketing dollars for better effect. Using both at the the same time is a great synthesis of technologies used in a new way: the very definition of innovation. I cross-posted on your piece to http://blog.innovators-network.org. The Innovators Network is a nonprofit dedicated to bringing technology to startups, small businesses, nonprofits, venture capitalists and intellectual property experts. Please visit us and help grown our community!
Best wishes for continued success,

Anthony Kuhn,
Innovators Network

Wow, Lisa, I go away for a couple days and look at all the discussion you stir up. That’s my girl.
Jill, we’re all about using tools to assist with our job, yeah, but that’s different than what’s being proposed, I think. I think our analysts would definitely agree that our toolset is just that, a set of tools that help measure, align and slice a Web site. You can’t just push a button and turn off your brain. Our tools help us optimize our client’s sites (and they help our subscribers work on their own sites) but if you’ve ever tried them out, you’ll know that they’re far from doing it for you. They’re just doing some of the stuff SEOs used to do by hand.
Bob, I think because it affects humans and is influenced by humans, SEO is always going to need humans. Google started off completely automated too and these days, Matt’s at conferences talking about the need for a human layer. I think that’s more indicative of the direction of the industry than the idea that tools are going to every out grow the need for a human brain to make judgment calls.

Lisa,

While I completely understand your position, I have to make a comment about your arguement.

Every crafstman since the Industrial Revolution started has thought his or her job was too ‘complicated’ to be replaced by something automatic. Is SEO more complicated than building cars, doing taxes or sending email?

CAN SEO be automated? Sure.

Is it economically viable? Well, with some 20 billion plus web pages in existence a quality SEO automation prodcut would be wildly successful.

I have worked in the tech industry long enough that I would never say anything is too complicated or too difficult. I think you have a valid point and it is unlikely that Commerce360 is going to have an SEO automation tool that will replace a human being any time in the next 10 years. I think that right now a human can do a better job than software, but don’t kid yourself. SEO will change, tools will become more and more comprehensive, and someday there may be no such thing as human SEO.

The danger in automation is that it tends to produce boring, formulaic sites that the search engines can easily spot and downrank. It seems to me that some of the big firms have trouble attracting and retaining enough talented SEOs, so they fall back on tools.
We know that two very talented SEOs just left Commerce360. Maybe management is trying to replace these folks with tools, or maybe the talent left because they want nothing to do with cookie-cutter SEO. We’ll never know for sure, but the correlation between these two circumstances intrigues me.

Lisa wrote:

“Surely, you would agree with me that knowing how many keywords to put in the Meta tag does not an SEO campaign make. There’s far more to it than that.”

Since there actually is no particular number of keywords to put in your meta keyword tag, I agree, it doesn’t make an SEO campaign.

Although I would take it a step further and say that it has no part in an SEO campaign whatsoever.

Nor do most of the responses that automated tools spit out. They’re just not right/accurate/correct, and therefore not useful.

Jill, not exactly.
We have automated tools to help us be more efficient in our day-to-day activities. They’re able to show us areas that may need improvement and then it is up to our skilled analysts to look at the problem and decide how to address it. Companies are successful as a result of their combined brain power and creativity, not because of the automated process. That’s true in any industry.
Surely, you would agree with me that knowing how many keywords to put in the Meta tag does not an SEO campaign make. There’s far more to it than that.
The fact is, the entire space is becoming more personalized. The search engines are rewarding Web sites that are able to understand and compliment the intent of users. It takes a person to know what that is, not an automated tool.
Are tools helpful in the SEO process? Of course, but they’re only going to get you a small part of the way there. It’s up to the individual SEO to take it the rest of the way. There’s a reason it’s so difficult to find a good search engine company. Automation alone isn’t going to cut it.

Your post is very confusing to me, Lisa. Your company is based on automated tools and how to do SEO by the numbers, no?

So you have analysts to help read the tool info and explain how to use the automated info they spit out. Like write to X keyword density percentage. Put X number of words in your keyword meta tag.

Sounds pretty automated to me.

Totally agree that SEO cannot be fully Automate. If not the internet world will be full of spam(rubbish) which soon will cause the dirty internet world. Finally will come out another new job called SEC(search engine cleaner) who clean up all the spam for relevancy as Save The Earth project now.

bravo Lisa… bravo!

very well stated and very much to the point!

I’ve been really excited about this topic, and more so by the emotional response (hiss) from the SEO community. The reason why is the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT has been made in my industry (chiropractic) for years. Some say “machines can do it better.” But whether it’s nerve networks or social networks the experts will ask “can they really?” I think not.

I couldn’t have said it better myself, Lisa. Excellent post! Besides, haven’t others already attempted to do this? It is not like Commerce360 is inventing the wheel or anything.