Why automated SEO reports are useless
Quite a few years ago I was working on an SEO campaign for one of my own businesses and struggling for first place position on page one of Google for several keywords. The keywords were on page one and within the top 5 positions, but not in first place where the lion’s share of customers land.
More importantly, I was getting frustrated as I was following established SEO methods and all the automated SEO reports such as Ahrefs, Majestic etc. I had been reading that indicated that my keywords should have been in the number one position but they weren’t.
Now these reports all look pretty impressive with pie charts, diagrams, plenty of jargon etc. and If you have an SEO company working for you no doubt they will be providing you with similar reports.
All SEO companies use similar resources and the reports they provide you with are supplied to them under a white label. ultimately when they arrive in your inbox they will have your SEO company’s logo printed all over them to appear as though they have been produced in-house.
My reports at that time showed that all key indicators such as Domain Rating, Referring Domains, Backlinks etc. were higher than any of my competitors but my keywords were still lagging behind in the actual search results. More frustratingly I knew I was offering a better service at a lower price than my competitors and I was losing natural traffic and customers as a result.
Not having the time to research this any further I decided to outsource to other SEO consultants to hopefully find a solution. I contacted numerous SEO companies and offered a considerable sum of money as an incentive for anyone who could simply provide an explanation as to why the SEO reports I was reading contradicted the results.
So as I sat and waited for the replies unfortunately I didn’t get any answers at all. I was greeted with complete ignorance of my original question, just offers of costly monthly SEO packages to provide even more backlinks. The fact that reports were stating I already had more backlinks than my competitors didn’t seem to matter to the SEO companies and not a single so-called SEO “expert” even attempted to answer my original question, so unfortunately my frustration continued with this issue for some time to come.
It only happened through a chance conversation many months later which led to further research on my behalf and I eventually stumbled upon what the actual problem was and the answer to the question that had been evading me for so long. I have to admit that this issue had been a thorn in my side for so long and it was a massive relief to finally find the answer and start achieving better results, surprisingly however it wasn’t the answer I had expected.
The Big Reveal?
ok now at this point you might understandably be expecting the big reveal, for the best part if you are looking for answers to any topics on any subject you can often find the answer with a Google or YouTube search – but try searching this one I can guarantee you won’t find anything.
Whilst we give away a lot of invaluable advice for Free, giving away information that was so painfully and difficulty earned just didn’t seem right.
A lot of companies profit greatly on their intellectual property and whilst we are not all about profiting greatly we do need to make a profit. So with a great deal of thought, we have decided that on this occasion we will reveal the FULL answer only to clients who are taking part in our Business Support.
What I can say however to those second guessing it is this – you need to know that the information in these reports is not entirely correct and do not give the full picture- so dont sweat it too much- keep following established SEO methods and keep working away with your relevant keyword content and backlinks.