3 Free Search Engine Optimization Tools You Need to Stop Using
When you’re a business owner, it’s easy to become a compulsive user of any search or SEO tools you can get your hands on.
While your plight may be well intentioned, dear entrepreneur, unfortunately many free SEO tools give skewed results. Here are just a few and some reasons why you should stop using them.
1. Alexa.com
Alexa has been a popular comparison site in the past and I’ve had a lot of clients use it for competitive review. However, it’s not a great use of a tool unless you’re talking about websites with very large numbers.
Let’s take our website as an example here.
First of all, Alexa won’t show any traffic data unless you’ve seen more than 100,000 visits in the past year. For a lot of small businesses, their web traffic simply isn’t hitting that high of a number.
Global and national ranking could be valuable if you’re comparing your numbers to a competitor. But really…how much information is that giving you?
Last but not least, you’ll see some Analytics data when you use the free version of Alexa. Now since this is my website, I can tell you that these stats are inaccurate:
- Alexa reports my bounce rate is 54%, when in fact it is 78%
- Alexa reports my pageviews are 1.4/visit, when in fact they are 1.6/visit
- Alexa reports my time on site is 2:52, when in fact it is 1:41
Obviously the numbers aren’t staggering in their difference, but they certainly aren’t right on point.
2. Compete.com
Like many other free search tools, the free version of Compete.com doesn’t show a whole lot of information…unless you have a larger sized company or are looking up the stats for a larger sized competitor. Even then, the stats are minimal: data overview, traffic sources (only the top 3), and similar sites (again, only 3).
In addition, Compete uses a “Compete Rank” to rank the website against other like-sites. Be cautious when using sites like this and always compare apples to apples. In other words, Compete Rank only makes sense in comparison to other Compete Ranks.
3. Google
Last, but certainly not least, the biggest misuse of a free SEO tool out there? Why, Google.com.
Compulsive Googlers everywhere could admit that they Google their business at least once per day and while that shows how much they care about online success, your Googling is not an accurate way to determine the rankings of your website.
You see, Google tries to help give us the best search results they possibly can. In doing so, they use a number of different variables outside of your search term. Those can include (but aren’t limited to):
- Your search history (if you are logged into your Google account)
- Your location
- Your personal features
Even using “incognito windows,” I’ve seen search results get skewed terribly.
Your best bet? Use a paid service like Moz to determine your results. Better yet, use a free tool like Google Search Console or Google Analytics.