SEO is like a never-ending story. There are always things to do. And these things need your undivided attention, from keyword research to content audits and performance reporting. Many of these are repetitive, recurring, and time-consuming. And that’s why you need SEO automation.
What is SEO automation?
By automating SEO, you use tools and software to do the repetitive optimization tasks for you. These tools don’t eliminate the need for a person to be involved, but they can do the heavy lifting. These tasks often contain data-heavy and time-consuming work.
Think of all the manual work you must do to run an SEO campaign. You have to crawl your website for technical errors, do keyword research, track how your ranking develops, and generate insightful reports — important work but tedious. SEO automation tools take these tasks and do them for you. These tools work faster and more accurately than you do. As a result, you can focus on the fun stuff — the creative and strategic work.
For example, you could manually try to find broken links on your site, but that would take forever. An automated tool can do that in minutes and provide a nice report. For your content, keyword research tools can generate a list of terms to target in just a few minutes. You’ll even get search volume data and information about the level of competition.
The benefits of SEO automation
Automating your SEO has many advantages. Handing over repetitive tasks can save you a lot of time, leaving you with more time to work on your strategy and content. Automation is also more accurate in handling data, which leads to fewer errors and, thus, more dependable data. SEO automation streamlines your work and allows you to scale quickly once your site grows.
Tasks you can automate right now
Today, most SEO automation tools are designed to handle specific tasks. We’ll list the most common tasks you can automate.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. It is also very time-consuming to do manually. You’re looking at search volumes, competition, relevancy, and more, and you’ll have to make deductions from that. It’s not weird that almost everyone uses keyword research tools such as Semrush and Wincher to do the hard work.
Keyword research tools can automatically:
- Generate lists with relevant keywords for your topic or niche.
- Give essential supporting data such as search volume and difficulty.
- Suggest related keywords that you can use to build up your.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you run a gardening blog. Keyword research tools like Semrush can identify not only popular keywords like “best gardening tools” but also related terms such as “gardening tool maintenance” or “best hoes for gardening in specific conditions.” These insights allow you to build content clusters that improve your site’s authority.
Content optimization
Content optimization is another field in which SEO automation comes in. For instance, Yoast SEO can analyze your content to make sure it is properly optimized for search engines. An SEO tool like this gives feedback on:
- How you use keywords in your content and suggest improvements to make.
- How readable is your content, and are your sentences too complex?
- Where and how you can add relevant links to other content on your site.
- Improvements to make to your meta descriptions and titles (with AI in Yoast SEO’s case)
Yoast SEO is a very popular plugin for WordPress and Shopify. It helps you optimize each post or page on your site to make it user-friendly, search-engine-friendly, and, of course, make that process as easy as possible.
Website audits
Automatically auditing your website regularly is also a popular form of SEO automation. Such an audit can help you catch issues that might influence your site’s performance. These can include:
- Broken links.
- Slow loading speeds.
- Missing meta tags.
- Duplicate content.
Tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb can perform these audits automatically. These tools even let you schedule recurring audits, so you’re always updated on your site’s health. In addition, the tools provide actionable reports that highlight what needs fixing.
Rank tracking
There are many ways to gauge your site’s performance; one of the most important is to check its rankings. However, tracking your rankings manually is a lot of work. Luckily, rank-tracking tools such as Wincher, Semrush, and Ahrefs make this incredibly easy. These tools automate this process and provide you with regular updates on your keyword positions.
Among the things these tools can track are:
- Changes in your rankings over time.
- The performance of specific target keywords.
- Competitor rankings for similar keywords.
You get all kinds of reporting for your rankings. Plus, with the built-in alerting systems, you are always on top of things without constantly monitoring them.
SEO reporting
Another part of your SEO work that can be automated is reporting. Building custom reports is grueling work that can take hours of precious time. Luckily, tools like Looker Studio can combine data from different sources, such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Semrush, and others, to build custom dashboards that update automatically.
With proper SEO automation tools, you can create reusable templates for your reports, so you have something predefined to start from. These can also be generated automatically at scheduled times to save you even more time.
How to get started with SEO automation
At one point, you will be ready to start automating your SEO workflow. But where do you start?
Find the tasks you need to automate
Think about your work and find the tasks that take the most time or recur most often. Such tasks are often the best options to automate. For example, if you spend much of your time on reporting, that would be a good option.
Choose the right tools
Not all tools are created equal, so choose one that does what you want them to do. Here are some options, but there are many others.
- Yoast SEO: Optimizes on-page SEO and provides content suggestions.
- Semrush: Offers keyword research, content outlines, and optimization
- Google Search Console: Tracks performance and identifies site issues.
- Screaming Frog: Conducts in-depth site audits.
- Looker Studio: Automates reporting by integrating with Google Analytics and other data sources.
Start small
Diving head-first into SEO automation might be exciting, but it will probably not end well. Please start small. Pick a couple of time-consuming tasks and see how you can make them more manageable and insightful. Once you see what works and what doesn’t, build from there.
Final thoughts on automating your SEO
SEO automation is a handy way to save time, improve data accuracy, and scale your work. We’re not looking to replace people but rather support them in their jobs. Tools can do many tasks, from keyword research to audits and data analysis. This leaves you more time for your high-impact work!
Start small and experiment with a range of tools. You’ll find what works and what doesn’t, which will help you fine-tune your process. Ultimately, you want SEO automation to help you work smarter, not harder.
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