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Want to improve rankings and traffic? Stop blindly following SEO tool recommendations – Search Engine Land

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SEO tools can be invaluable for optimizing your site – but if you blindly follow every recommendation they spit out, you may be doing more harm than good.
Let’s explore the biggest pitfalls of SEO tools and how to use them to genuinely benefit your site.
SEO tools are a double-edged sword for anyone involved in content creation or digital marketing.
On the one hand, they offer valuable insights that can guide your strategy, from keyword opportunities to technical optimizations. On the other hand, blindly following their recommendations can lead to serious problems.
Overoptimized content, cosmetic reporting metrics and incorrect technical advice are just some pitfalls of overreliance on SEO tools.
Worse yet, when site owners mistakenly try to optimize for these tool-specific metrics. This is something Google’s John Mueller specifically commented on recently when urging bloggers not to take shortcuts with their SEO:
I’ve worked with thousands of sites and have seen firsthand the damage that can be done when SEO tools are misused. My goal is to prevent that same damage from befalling you!
This article details some of the worst recommendations from these tools based on my own experience – recommendations that not only contradict SEO best practices but can also harm your site’s performance.
The discussion will cover more than just popular tool deficiencies. We’ll also explore how to use these tools correctly, making them a complement to your overall strategy rather than a crutch.
Finally, I’ll break down the common traps to avoid – like over-relying on automated suggestions or using data without proper context – so you can stay clear of the issues that often derail SEO efforts.
By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to get the most out of your SEO tools without falling victim to their limitations.
Without fail, I receive at least one panicked email a week from a blogger reporting a traffic drop. The conversation usually goes something like this:
This is a common response. I’ve gotten the same email from both novice and experienced bloggers.
The issue is one of education. Visibility tools, in general, are horribly unreliable.
These tools track a subset of keyword rankings as an aggregate, using best-guess traffic volume numbers, third-party clickstream data and their own proprietary algorithms.
The result: these tools tend to conflate all keyword rankings into one visibility number!
That’s a problem if you suddenly lose a ton of keywords in, for example, positions 50-100, which lowers the overall visibility number for the entire domain.
It’s likely those 50-100+ position keywords were not sending quality traffic in the first place. But because the blogger lost them, the visibility index has decreased, and boom, it looks like they suffered a noticeable traffic drop!
Plenty of visibility tools and metrics exist in the SEO space, and many have value. They can and should be deployed quickly to pinpoint where actual SEO research should come into play when diagnosing problems.
But as SEOs, we educate clients that these same tools should never be the final authority on matters as important as traffic drops or troubleshooting possible SEO issues.
When forming solid hypotheses and recommended action items, always prioritize first-party data in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc.
It’s not just these “visibility metrics” that give tools a bad name.
Many of the most popular tools available in the niche provide outdated metrics that have been debunked as a waste of time for SEO priority purposes.
One of those metrics is the popular text-to-HTML ratio metric.
Briefly defined, the metric compares the amount of text on the page to the HTML code required to display it.
This is usually expressed as a percentage, with a “higher” percentage being preferred, as that signifies more text in relation to the code.
Even though this has been repeatedly denied as a ranking factor this is still a reported audit finding on most crawling programs and popular SEO tool suites.
The same can also be said when discussing the topic of toxic links and disavow files.
Yet, Google has publicly communicated multiple times that toxic links are great for selling tools and that you would be wise to ignore such reports as they do nothing for you.
I can only speak to my experience, but I’ve only ever improved sites by removing disavow files.
Unless you actually have a links-based manual penalty that requires you to disavow links (you shouldn’t have gotten them in the first place), you should stay away from these files as well.
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Finally, another great “tool recommendation” to ignore is the purposeful non-pagination of comments.
One of the simplest ways to increase page speed, reduce DOM nodes and improve a page’s bottom-line UX is to paginate comments.
For years, the most popular SEO plugin on the planet, Yoast, provided a Site Health Warning that discouraged users from paginating comments.
Fortunately, after much back-and-forth on Github, this was resolved. You’ll still find this recommendation on many auditing tools and SEO plugins even though it’s against Google’s own pagination best practices.
It’s important to understand that the best tools have moved beyond antiquated lexical models like keyword density, word count, TF-IDF and basically “words” in general.
Semantic search has been the order of the day for years, and you should invest in tools that offer actionable insights through information retrieval science and natural language processing.
Think entities, tokens and vectors over keywords and strings. That’s the recipe for tool success.
Using SEO tools can be a powerful part of your strategy, but it’s essential to use them wisely.
While they provide an incredible range of data, a tool’s recommendations aren’t always tailored to your specific goals, audience or site context.
Let’s look at some best practices for using SEO tools effectively, ensuring they serve your strategy rather than controlling it.
SEO tools work off their own metrics and internal algorithms, providing data points that can help guide strategy.
However, they lack the human understanding of what makes content genuinely valuable to readers.
When a tool suggests adding more keywords, for instance, think twice before keyword-stuffing – it may boost certain metrics, but it often sacrifices user experience.
Every piece of tool data should be taken as a starting point, not a final directive.
Relying on just one SEO tool can lead to a narrow or skewed view of your site’s performance.
Each tool has unique metrics and algorithms that emphasize different aspects of SEO, so combining insights from platforms like Google Search Console, Semrush and Ahrefs gives you a broader understanding.
Cross-referencing can provide a more balanced perspective, helping you make better-informed decisions.
Many SEO tools focus heavily on technical metrics – heading structure, backlinks or schema deployment, for example.
While important, these shouldn’t overshadow your focus on quality content. A content-first approach remains at the heart of effective SEO.
Tools can help refine and enhance, but content that’s useful and engaging for your audience is what ultimately drives long-term success.
SEO is constantly changing, with Google’s algorithm updates reshaping best practices regularly.
Revisit and adjust your strategies to keep them aligned with the latest insights.
Tools also frequently update their metrics and algorithms, so it’s wise to monitor new features or recommendations that may add fresh value to your approach.
SEO tools sometimes emphasize optimizations that may work well for search engines but less for real users.
For example, a tool may recommend pop-ups to capture leads, but if they interfere with usability, they can lead to high bounce rates and lower overall revenue.
Always put user experience at the forefront, focusing on aspects like site speed, mobile responsiveness and accessibility.
As I state regularly in audits, SEO is all about the little things.
For most sites, it’s never one issue identified by a tool that will control your future fortunes. It’s more of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation, causing sites to underperform.
Tools can provide insights, allowing you to best triage your site in these situations. But they should never be followed blindly. Unfortunately, many users (and SEOs) do just that!
In the end, SEO tools are best used when the user approaches them as “aids” rather than “solutions.”
Focus on weighing all tool recommendations to genuinely benefit your site audience, and the end result will always be a solid foundation on which to propel long-term growth.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
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Authority Solutions® Co-Owner Mitchell From Shares Insights on Brand Protection at World of Search 2024 – GlobeNewswire

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November 06, 2024 09:00 ET | Source: Authority Solutions® Authority Solutions®
Manila, Philippines, Nov. 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —

Authority Solutions®, a leader in digital marketing and SEO services, proudly participated in the World of Search Conference 2024, held at the SMX Convention Center in Manila from September 26 to 29, 2024. The event attracted over 500 attendees, including top SEO professionals, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Mitchell From, co-owner of Authority Solutions®, took the stage as a speaker to discuss the timely topic of Protecting Your Agency from Brand Infringement.
Mitchell From’s presentation focused on the growing threat of brand infringement in the digital space and shared practical strategies agencies can implement to protect their brand identity and intellectual property. His talk offered business owners valuable insights on securing their online presence in an increasingly competitive market.
“We are honored to be part of this prestigious conference,” said Mitchell From. “We wanted to help agencies understand brand infringement risks and provide them with actionable steps to protect their reputation. Although we focus on SEO and digital growth for our clients, protecting the integrity of a brand’s digital presence is key. We wanted to offer actionable insights that agencies can implement to ensure they thrive in this space.”
The World of Search Conference 2024 offered a platform for industry leaders to share the latest advancements in SEO, digital marketing tactics, and innovative tools. Attendees had the opportunity to network, exchange knowledge, and explore new strategies to stay competitive in the search marketing world.
About Authority Solutions®
Authority Solutions® is a leader in SEO based in Houston, dedicated to helping businesses enhance their online presence and achieve higher search rankings. With a strong focus on delivering measurable results, Authority Solutions® tailors strategies to meet the unique needs of its clients, ensuring sustainable growth in a highly competitive online marketplace.
Source: https://thenewsfront.com/authority-solutions-co-owner-mitchell-from-shares-insights-on-brand-protection-at-world-of-search-2024/

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Legal SEO & Content Tips, Unlearning Bad Habits & More with Alex Valencia [PODCAST] – Search Engine Journal

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Recovering from a Google Core Algorithm Update with Lily Ray [PODCAST] – Search Engine Journal

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Join this leadership discussion for proven techniques to build long-term relationships and keep your clients coming back.
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Lily Ray of Path Interactive talks about what to do when you’re looking to recover from a Google core update or your SEO performance is declining.
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For episode 176 of The Search Engine Journal Show, I had the opportunity to interview Lily Ray, the SEO Director of Path Interactive.
Ray, a sought-after conference speaker, talks about what to do when you’re looking to recover from a core update or a declining SEO performance.

Lily Ray (LR): Yeah, I don’t buy into that because my team and I here we help clients recover. But that being said, it’s very, very difficult so I understand why Google says that.
And another thing they always say is like, “We tell people that there’s nothing you can do because we don’t want webmasters to go out there and just frantically change a bunch of things that maybe weren’t actually problems, think more long term than that.”
So I do think recovery is possible, but I think it requires a really, really heavy investment in resources and in time and a lot of patience as well.
One thing that we see a lot of is Google rolls out these core updates several times per year, but maybe for two or three core updates after you’ve been addressing some of the problems with your website, you might not see any immediate impacts in performance or positive impacts in performance.
You might even see some negative ones, which can be really disheartening. But, over time, if you invest the right time and energy and focus on the right things, you will ultimately see a recovery.
It might not be a full recovery, it might just be partial. But we’ve seen time and time again that it’s possible to recover.
Brent Csutoras (BC): So obviously seeing a decline is concerning, for company owners and businesses themselves but also for the people who are managing those offices or those initiatives… So how do you approach [these changes]? What would you say are the beginning steps to assess why you’re seeing a change?
LR: I think the first thing we like to look at is which algorithm update affected them.
Maybe they’ve seen improvements over the last couple of ones from 2018 but then in 2019 they started to see some big negative declines on. We like to assess maybe what happened on those dates.
So we start with that and then we dig into the data and obviously look at what’s really happening with the sites.
Using Google Search Console, for example, you can get a really good glimpse of which particular pages were affected, which keywords were affected.
Google talks a lot about the fact that it really has to do with relevancy.
So it might be that your website’s perfectly fine, but they’ve kind of recalibrated something in terms of what’s relevant for that query and your website or your webpage might not be the relevant thing anymore.
So we gather data about:
So it’s very case by case, but you start with a high-level theory and then you really have to dig into the data to see what’s really happening.
LR: The thing about recovering from core updates is that it’s very multifaceted. It requires looking at a lot of different components of what’s affecting your website simultaneously.
So there’s no silver bullet, there’s no singular thing that you can do to recover, unfortunately, which makes it hard for somebody who doesn’t have a depth of experience in recovery to address some of the problems that might be affecting the website.
But what I like to tell people and what we kind of do here at my agency is we start by doing like a gut check and really asking ourselves like, “Is this truly a high quality website? Is this content truly helpful?”
Because what can happen is you get caught up in thinking your own content is great or thinking that your own SEO strategies are great – because maybe they worked for five or 10 years – and this is actually becoming more and more true in the past couple of years with the algorithm updates.
Some of these sites have been enormous in terms of their market share and how successful they’ve been with SEO. They have a whole team of writers that are writing in the style that they’ve learned works for them from an SEO standpoint.
And suddenly those strategies stop working, which is kind of terrifying. So what we do a lot of is like the clients will come to us and say, “We’ve done everything. We’ve had a great SEO strategy and a great SEO team and we’ve been doing this and it’s been working for us for years.”
And then we kind of start to get under the hood and we say, “Actually like this doesn’t work anymore or this never should have worked in the first place or your content is maybe not as good as you think it is.”
So it’s a lot of tough conversation.
LR: In my experience what happens is when you start to really dig into what’s happening with the website, maybe the technical performance, some of the history and the other strategies that they’ve used throughout the years, particularly as it relates to links.
You’ll start to uncover like, “OK, there’s a bigger problem here than maybe we realized.”
Like we’re working with a site right now where we keep having to ask them questions about their backlink profile because, from their perspective, “No, no, everything we’ve done was legitimate. We worked with the best legitimate companies to pay for links.”
Which is like the key term, right? And we’re like, “You know what? Like I think maybe Google’s getting smarter about that over time. So maybe that worked for you a couple of years ago, but it’s not going to work anymore.”
And their perspective is that everything they’re doing is great because it used to be great.
So it’s tricky, but I think it requires knowing the direction that Google’s algorithm is going in. And I think that’s made a lot of big changes and big leaps in the last couple of years.
We know from the Search Quality Raters Guidelines where they’re trying to go with the algorithm and a lot of the times the things that are in those guidelines don’t jive with the strategies that companies have been using for the last 10 or 15 years.
LR: It’s a great question, I don’t think there’s a specific number and it really depends on your industry.
I’ve seen some sites that they don’t publish very often and they just have a small handful of really meaningful and helpful evergreen pieces of content and that’s all they need. And maybe they build one new one a month or one or two new ones a month or something along those lines.
I think this notion that a lot of companies have, which is we need a new blog constantly. We need one a week or we have this kind of editorial calendar that gets you into a situation where you have a lot of content that probably isn’t performing very well and you might not be auditing that all the time.
And that’s one of the things we look at when we’re recovering from core updates is like do you have 10,000 articles that are not really doing anything?
It might even be bringing down the overall quality of your site. So I think it depends on your industry and the demand for content, but more content is not always better.
More Resources:
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Google: We Rarely Show Sitelinks Search Box, Even When Markup is Used – Search Engine Journal

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Achieving SEO excellence: insights from the Casino Rank team – Five Reasons Sports Network

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With so many casino sites competing, landing a top spot on Google feels like hitting the jackpot. Casino Rank has made great progress in search engine optimization
Casino Rank believes that transparency and trust are key to a great online casino experience. Their goal is to share accurate and useful information with you.
Their adaptability to SEO changes has also been a major factor in staying ahead of the competition. We explored their SEO approach and talked with team members to learn how they’ve become a leader in the field.
Content is a big part of Casino Rank’s strategy—not just any content, but content that’s optimized for search and truly valuable to readers. Emily Thompson, a writer for Casino Rank, believes authenticity drives their SEO success.
“We learned early that our audience wanted trustworthy and engaging info—not just keywords tossed around,” Thompson says. “Our strategy involves figuring out what people are really searching for when they type something like ‘best casino bonuses’ or ‘how to play blackjack’. Instead of just aiming to rank higher, we focus on teaching and informing. The rankings naturally follow.”
Emily highlights that Casino Rank doesn’t just produce generic articles. They also provide specific guides on how to play slots like Starburst, which has proven popular among players. They’ve invested in detailed guides, player stories, and comparison articles, helping them stand out in a crowded market. “Google rewards expertise and detail. By making the best page on a topic, we’re not just boosting our SEO; we’re also helping visitors find exactly what they want.”
SEO experts often talk a lot about keywords, but the team at Casino Rank thinks about this in a unique way.
Dave Davis, who knows a lot about poker and blackjack, gives us some tips on how they handle keyword research. “Yes, keywords matter, but it’s more about what people really want,” Davis explains. “We look at what people are searching for—and more importantly, why they’re searching. That helps us create content that answers their needs, using keywords in a natural way.”
Davis adds that instead of trying to rank for every keyword, Casino Rank picks its fights wisely. Their approach considers how users behave while betting, aiming to meet their needs naturally. “If a keyword doesn’t match what we’re offering, we skip it. We aim for organic traffic that turns into real interactions, not just numbers that look nice in reports.”
It’s not just content that matters for SEO; the technical aspects are crucial too. At Casino Rank, technical SEO, like speeding up the site and making it mobile-friendly, is key to staying at the top.
Emily Thompson shares, “We work closely with our developers to keep the website running smoothly. Great content won’t help if your site is slow or hard to use. You’ll lose visitors and rankings.”
Link building is vital for SEO, especially in competitive fields like online casinos. Keisha Bailey, a casino bonus expert, leads Casino Rank’s link-building strategy.
“To build authority, we need reputable links,” Bailey explains. “We focus on creating valuable content that others want to link to, like industry reports, bonus comparisons, and interviews with top poker players.”
SEO is more than just getting high rankings; it’s about turning visitors into leads and loyal customers. For Casino Rank, SEO is one piece of a larger strategy for generating leads.
“We think about the whole user journey,” Bailey says. “When someone visits our site, we want them to feel like we understand their needs. We guide them—whether they’re a beginner looking for tips or an experienced player comparing bonuses. By adding value at every step, we’re not just bringing in traffic; we’re building relationships.”
Casino Rank’s success shows how powerful real, user-friendly SEO can be. By mixing know-how, good content, and technical skill, they’ve found their place in a very tough market. If you want to learn from them, here’s the takeaway: focus on value, honesty, and giving users a great experience.
“In SEO, just like in poker, patience and sticking with it are key,” Davis says.
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