Why Are Third-Party Tools Not Enough to Make Accurate SEO Predictions?

SEO tools play an important role in our SEO work, but they are not the only thing you should rely on to make accurate predictions about your SEO progress. You should also use other sources of information, such as data from our website analytics, to help you make more informed decisions about your SEO efforts.

Third-party tools are not always accurate, and they can sometimes give us false information that may lead us astray. One of the main challenges with using these tools is that they often can’t consider all the factors affecting our SEO work. For example, they may not be able to account for changes in Google’s algorithms or for new features that Google may be testing.

Here are seven things that SEO tools can’t tell us that we need to remain aware of and push to close the gaps on:

1. What Your Real Goals Should Be

Many tools can help us perform research on the front end of SEO engagements, but they can’t always help us understand what our real goals should be.

We rely on technology early on, but the sometimes wide variation in data provided in different keyword research tools should indicate that we should tread lightly here.

Keyword research, competitor research, auditing tools, and other data sources can help understand the current standing of technical issues on a website. Paid tools like Google Keyword Planner provide us with data to help determine potential traffic and goals for a given keyword. But we need to remember that this is estimated data and not literal traffic numbers. The numbers may be based on sampling, estimation, rounding, and historical data.

That’s why it’s important not to rely on these tools as our only source of information. We should also use other sources of information, such as our website analytics, to help us make more informed decisions about our SEO efforts.

2. How Many Leads or Sales You’ll Make

While researching this article, I asked some of my team members what they wish they could know that SEO tools don’t currently tell us. One response was from our SEO Strategist, who said:

“I wish I had a way to more accurately predict how many leads or sales my SEO efforts would generate. I know there are a lot of variables that go into that, but it would be helpful to have a better understanding of that.”

This is a valid concern and something that we should all be aware of. SEO tools can help us generate traffic, but they can’t always accurately predict how many leads or sales we’ll generate from that traffic. There are too many variables involved, such as the quality of our traffic, the conversion rate of our website, and the sales cycle of our product or service.

Let’s say you’re using some tool to do keyword research, and it tells you that a particular keyword has the potential to generate 1,000 visitors per month. If your website’s conversion rate is 2%, then you can expect to generate 20 leads from that keyword. But, if your website’s conversion rate is 10%, then you can expect to generate 100 leads from that keyword.

As you can see, your website’s conversion rate can have a big impact on the number of leads or sales that you’ll generate from your SEO efforts. But it is also important to note that these are just the estimates that have been layered on top of the estimates and may not be accurate.

The more data we take from these tools to predict how our efforts will pay off, the more variables we put into the equation. We need to understand that these tools are not always accurate and that we should use other sources of information to make more informed decisions about our SEO efforts.

3. What Your Content Strategy Should Be

Content is a big part of SEO, and it’s important to have a solid content strategy in place. But, while there are tools that can help us with our content strategy, they can’t always tell us what that strategy should be.

There are a lot of different factors that go into a content strategy, and it can be challenging to determine what will work best for your company or client. There are many different variables involved, such as the overall goals of the website, the target audience, the competition, and the resources available.

While most tools can help us evaluate already published content and ranking well, we try to find mentions and links and look for ways to improve our content. The challenge is that we can’t get the exact answers we need from SEO tools.

We need to take all the insights we can gain from the tools and use our knowledge and expertise to determine our content strategy. We can use the tools to help with our research and give us ideas, but ultimately, it is up to us to determine what content will work best for our company or client.

Content strategy is something that should be carefully planned and executed. It’s not something that can be effectively done with the help of SEO tools alone.

4. Give a Guarantee or Promise of Performance

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are no doubt improving quickly. However, at this time, the tools available to us that utilize these technologies can’t make a guarantee or promise of performance.

They use projections and simulations that are based on past or predicted future trends. Moreover, site auditing tools rely on technical factors and don’t take a holistic view of content or the broader range of things that influence search engine rankings. As a result, they can’t give us an accurate picture of what our rankings will be.

Additionally, we need to be aware that even if we fix all of the issues in a site audit and focus on specific keywords, there’s no guarantee that our rankings will improve. There are too many variables involved, such as the quality of our traffic, the conversion rate of our website, and the sales cycle of our product or service.

Ultimately, we need to use our best judgment and focus on what we know will work to improve our website’s visibility and traffic. We can’t rely on tools to give us a guarantee or promise of performance. They can only give us an estimate of what might happen.

5. Tell Us About the Future

The one thing that is constant in SEO is change. Technology is always evolving, and search engines’ algorithms are constantly being updated. As a result, what works today might not work tomorrow.

This is why staying up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in SEO is important. We need to be aware of what is happening to adjust our strategies accordingly.

However, SEO tools can’t always tell us what the future holds. They can give us insights into what is happening now and what has happened in the past, but they are currently limited in their ability to predict future trends accurately. These tools are based on models and simulations that are subject to change.

To predict the future of SEO, we need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, read industry news, and attend conferences and webinars. We also need to experiment with different strategies and test their effectiveness. Only then can we hope to predict the future of SEO accurately.

6. Do the Work For Us

There are a lot of things that go into SEO, such as keyword research, competitive analysis, on-page optimization, link building, and content marketing. It can be a lot of work, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

This is where SEO tools can be helpful. They can automate some of the tasks involved in SEO and make our lives a little easier. However, they can’t do the work for us.

We still need to put in the time and effort to research keywords, analyze our competitors, optimize our website, build links, and create compelling content. We can use tools to help us with these tasks, but we can’t expect them to do the work for us.

For instance, the reporting and analytics tools can sometimes fill the gap, but often we have to find different ways to integrate and tag leads and sales as they come through to get manual feedback from sales and stakeholders to connect all the dots. This is something that we need to do ourselves.

7. How to Prioritize And Pace Your Work

The Internet is full of content about how to prioritize SEO work. You will find many tools that will evaluate your site and give you a list of recommended updates that you can use to improve your SEO.

However, the priority and process for an SEO project or campaign can’t be left up to technology. You need to use the tools to collect the data and insights, but you have to trust your experience and expertise to review the information and prioritize it.

You also need to be aware that even if you fix all of the issues in a site audit and focus on specific keywords, there’s no guarantee that your rankings will improve. The reason for this is that too many variables are involved, such as the quality of your traffic, the conversion rate of your website, and the sales cycle of your product or service.

To prioritize your SEO work, you need to focus on what you know will work to improve your website’s visibility and traffic. You can’t rely on tools to give you a guarantee or promise of performance. They can only give you an estimate of what might happen.

There are a lot of great tools for SEO, like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and Moz. However, these tools can only do so much. At the end of the day, it’s up to us, as SEO professionals, to make the decisions about what to do and how to prioritize our work.

Making the best decisions requires a lot of experience, intuition, and expertise. To make accurate predictions, we need to make these tools account for as many variables as possible. Latest innovations like CORE AI are making this easier for us to make accurate predictions by constantly learning and iterating. This technology is making it easier for us to make the best decisions about SEO.

Our job is to make sure we’re always ahead of the curve and use the latest tools and technologies to help us make the best SEO decisions. This way, we can continue to provide value and grow our businesses.