Automated SEO Audit Reports – Can You Trust Them?
Dental SEO companies will try to scare you with invalid claims about your website – be cautious.
Today’s blog discusses how some dental marketing companies are approaching dentists using ‘scary’ website audit reports in an attempt to gain business. Unfortunately this is a very questionable tactic and uses somewhat “sneaky” methods to confuse the layperson into believing their website is poor.
Let’s jump in and take a look so you know what to do if the same thing happens to you.
Two clients recently contacted us to advise that they’d received reports highlighting failings with their websites. In both cases this was an unsolicited approach from another dental marketing company where a “detailed” website audit report had been presented to try to establish an initial dialogue. Of course the eventual goal was to sell optimisation services i.e. SEO or even a new website.
We requested copies of the audit reports and quickly established that they were derived using automated SEO tools – both looked impressive to the layperson but were hugely inaccurate. Of the twenty or so “important” website issues highlighted, over 15 of them were either incorrect or irrelevant with the remainder only marginally useful.
Fortunately the clients contacted us to get an explanation rather than simply hire the company to fix a bunch of trivial issues which would have little or no impact on their Google positions.
Automated SEO audit reports – why you should be skeptical.
Not all such reports are entirely pointless but you do need a good degree of knowledge to be able to interpret them and sort the useful output from the chaff. But why is it that such reports are usually far from accurate and at best confusing, particularly to the uninitiated?
The key thing to understand is that companies build and sell the reporting software based on assumptions of how Google works and what it uses as ranking factors. These will only ever be assumptions as no-one except Google really knows what their ranking factors are. So much of the output of such reports is spurious, albeit potentially compelling to someone who has limited knowledge of what makes a website good, bad or indifferent.
Google became so concerned about this that they commented publicly a year or so back to advise website owners to be extremely cautious of the output of such reporting – simply because a lot of it is made up!
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-warns-against-over-reliance-on-seo-tool-metrics/530356/
For example, one of the reports we recently examined claimed an SEO ranking “quality” for the target website of 72% – this isn’t a real thing and there is no such measurement. At best it’s a comparison against other websites but even then based on factors that the tool designers have essentially made up. As far as Google and search ranking is concerned, it’s pretty pointless.
Unfortunately there were numerous similar examples of meaningless measurements scattered throughout the reports, some even detailing specific actions we’d taken on the websites to help improve rankings.
Are these types of reports completely pointless?
The answer to this “no” but they shouldn’t be used by the inexperienced. Similarly they should not be used as a lazy way to confuse unwitting website owners into subscribing for unnecessary optimisation services. Unfortunately it looks like the latter is now being used increasingly by dental marketing companies trying to grab new business whichever way they can.
Where the reports can be useful is to identify technical issues, which while not impacting SEO, should be fixed where possible. For example, the odd broken link, unexpected ‘page not found’ (404) errors etc. Rarely will such tools identify issues which, if “fixed” would really make a significant change to the website ranking.
What does make a difference to where your website ranks in Google?
While there are some technical factors which make a significant difference to how a website performs, much of them will have already been addressed if your website was built competently. Other technical elements are often the subject of incremental improvements but still relatively minor in the overall Google ranking scenario.
Many factors affect where your website ranks but these are still the key elements:
- Excellent, original content which attracts people to your website and compels them to stay
- Content which answers user’s questions well and ideally, better than other websites – this is a key performance factor, openly cited by Google
- Easy to use – if it works for people, it will also work for Google
- Technically competent and fast loading
- Compliant with Google’s website performance and publishing criteria
- Back-links from other trustworthy websites – Google views these as a vote of confidence
- Competent, on-site technical SEO with no attempt to spam
If you can achieve the above, then you are well on your way to a great website which works for users and should also earn great Google rankings.
Summary
SEO audit tools are becoming commonplace to try to convince website owners that there are fundamental flaws with their sites which they need to pay to have fixed. Very often, this is NOT the case and it’s simply a predatory web company trying to convince you to hire them.
Such audit tools do have a use but the output needs very careful and experienced analysis to sort the good from the bad – much of what gets reported typically has no effect on Google and your website ranking position, so please take care.
If you’re a UK dentist or perhaps a practice manager who has been approached in a similar fashion and you need some experienced assistance to help you really understand what’s going on, please get in touch with the Dental Media SEO team on 01332 672548 for a no obligation discussion.