Should You Automate or Go Manual on Your SEO? Let Battle Commence!

​BIO: Chris McDonald is a UK freelancer for Webris, specialising in content marketing. Secretly, he plays rugby for England in his dreams! (It’s good to have goals, right?)
He’s passionate about the power of the written word, but when not tapping away at the keyboard, he loves all things health & wellness, advocating to be kind and thoughtful of others.

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Before we get stuck into the argument of whether you should automate your SEO or not, let’s be clear on something…

… manualizing the entirety of your SEO just isn’t feasible.

So, when going through the pros and cons of both, keep in mind that a lot of the manual SEO is in relation to things like guest posting & link building.

Even so, you may need to strike a balance between the two.

Ready?

Let’s go…
A focus on the key differences between manual and automated SEOLet’s start with the automationAutomated SEO comes largely in the form of tools, whether that’s standalone tools:

• Ahrefs
• Semrush

 and SEO WordPress plugins, like:

• Yoast
• RankMath

Sure, there are more than these, but let’s be honest about them being pretty kick-ass. I’ve used all four of the above and they all nail their jobs really well.

On top of this, you’ll also find some contact information scrapers, like Hunter.io.

This is where I draw the line, and you’ll see exactly why in a bit!
And manual SEO?Since SEO is such an all-encompassing term, taking a manual SEO approach will still need to focus on some tools, such as:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Spreadsheets — Docs & Word

But, there’s a slight twist here.

Instead of heavily relying on the data extracted from Ahrefs, Semrush, GA & GSC, you could export them into your own spreadsheet and develop your own database and tracking system.

PS. Don’t forget that the main contender for manual SEO is completely avoiding any form of automated outreach.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

​The argument for automated SEO In a world where we seem forced to strive for synergies and efficiencies, automated SEO definitely has a huge gravitational pull.

And it’s entirely understandable to default down that path.

But, I still feel you should arm yourself with both the pros and cons of using software…

Benefits of using SEO automation

Speed, time and money saving wombo-comboI can’t imagine what SEO was like before you could get a list of thousands of relevant keywords within seconds.

Image the blood, sweat and tears that would’ve gone into that!

With the speed of our current SEO tools, this leads to a time-saving, which also means there's less of an opportunity cost to you and your business.
Will deliver business-wide results fasterEverything scales faster with automation, fueling the fire of the business engine.

You can then spend more time on bottlenecks in other parts of your enterprise, pushing and pulling resources around as you need.

The result?

Scaling-up your business faster than expected. 

Less of a need to outsource your SEOPreviously, being an “SEO specialist” was such a niche skill with high demand and low supply that most of you would’ve outsourced your SEO needs in a heartbeat.

Now, having an in-house SEO specialist is a lot easier thanks to the automation that tools bring us.

While that person still needs their head screwed on, it’s a lot easier to “learn SEO” than ever.
Excellent for planning and schedulingMany SEO tools have built-in scheduling options, enabling you to run the following processes as and when needed:

• Keyword research
• Data reports
• SEO audits

This further streamlines your project management, aligning tasks in sequence to deliver business and client results.

Gone are the days of having to plan your day around researching SEO when you can just hit the button and go off and multitask!

(Yes, I’m a guy, and yes, we find multitasking hard!)

Perfect for peer review and gap analysisSomething I love about SEO automation is that it opens up the world to analyze your competition, especially in the form of keyword gap analysis.

Both Ahrefs and Semrush do this very well, but in Ahrefs, simply hit the “Content gap” link in the “Site Explorer” section:

Then add in the URLs that you want to analyze to see which keywords they rank for that you don’t:

It’ll then churn out a bunch of keywords for you to analyze further.

Tip: Starting with a keyword all of your targets are ranking for is a good place to start

Automated SEO isn’t all unicorns and rainbows… here’s why

Might create a bad repIn terms of automated outreach, especially, spamming a site with a generic message can really annoy someone, to say the least.

The reason I’m writing this very article is because I reached out to Cheryl here at Ginger Marketing.

And I made damn sure to read her requirements, more specifically this one:

By sending the ill-advised and generic “Can I send you some topic ideas”, Cheryl specifically asks for you to send one.

Doing the opposite is a big NO-NO (a bit like putting jam on a scone first), and will mean your message is highly likely to be ignored.

You can still use automated outreach, but you’ll find yourself tweaking a draft email every single time, which erodes the time efficiency the automation brings.
Likely to incur Google penaltiesGoing in like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball and getting links to any site that exists won’t do yourself any favors.

We know that toxic backlinks are definitely a thing, and by reaching out to every site and their dog with your eyes shut will land you in hot water.

It kinda makes sense when you think about it… why would Google give your site any love if you have one of these super dodgy sites linking to you:

• P*rn
• Payday loan
• Unindexed

And by using a completely automated outreach approach means you won’t necessarily filter them out.

That said, there’s an argument for using something like Guest Bloggers Wanted, which you should totally check out.
Learning barrier with some automation toolsI LOVE software.

Not in a weird way, just that I find them to be logical.

But even so, be aware that you may need to invest some time and expect process destabilization while you get used to some SEO tools.

For example, I find Semrush to be quite jumbled and confusing, whereas Ahrefs seems more logically laid out.

Coupled with this, you should marry your chosen SEO software to your responsible person’s skills.

Just because Ahrefs seems to be more popular, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you…

Outsourcing might still be a necessity

​Depending on what your business does, it doesn’t really make sense to hire an SEO specialist if you’re not in the SEO space consistently each day.

That said, you should still have someone responsible for SEO, such as a marketing manager, but outsource your SEO work to an expert(s).

This kind of defunks the need for you to do any SEO automation and to commit to a hefty (depending on your budget) monthly subscription.

But I know that some outfits do still buy up all the tools because they like the bells and whistles, but still outsource the main SEO labor.

If SEO isn’t your business’ core competence, should you really be doing it?
All about manual SEO

Image by Лариса Мозговая from Pixabay

To reiterate, I’m not talking about sitting there with a quill and ink, crawling through a website, writing down every word that it contains, then manually adding up how often each one is used to determine the “keywords”.

I’m not that insane.

Manual SEO is more about using some manual approaches to make your SEO even better.
Reasons to consider manual SEONo data/token/report restrictionsSomething I find really frustrating is that, depending on your subscription plan, SEO tools still restrict you with things like:

• How much data you can use
  
• Number of reports you can run in a week
  
• Amount of rows you can export as a CSV file
  

So, what you can do, especially if there isn’t a huge amount of data to go through, is manually record them in a spreadsheet so you don’t use up your daily, weekly or monthly quota without needing to.

I’ve even found that this is quicker, especially if you only need to grab a couple of low-competition long tail keywords that a competitor is ranking for.

Going through the rigmarole of exporting the data, removing unnecessary columns and rows, copy and pasting it into your main spreadsheet, re-sorting and then refreshing pivot tables or running macros isn’t always necessary!
The power of human contactWhich of the below do you think is going to work better for outreach…

Someone using automated SEO to grab any old backlink going:

For starters, using automatic outreach tools leaves you open to making mistakes, such as not completely the {First Name} field.

Also, the majority of sites that accept guest posts guide you on exactly what to do, so asking to send over some topics doesn’t always float.

More importantly, there is zero personal approach in that email.

While you may think that “I’ve just been through your site and I love it” is a personal approach, it really isn’t.

Instead, something like this works much better:

​

I’ve highlighted the personalisation, but actually the whole email is full of it!

And yes, I have been to Edinburgh and liked Princes Street, but I’m sure you can find a way of personalising every manual outreach email you send.
More control over SEOWith the manual outreach approach in mind, you can completely pick and choose the:

• Type of sites linking to you
• Context in which they do so
• Relevance of the site to yours

All the above gives you total control over this side to your SEO roadmap.

In addition, and this is a severely underrated aspect, networking via this manual approach could lead to further work and “SEO juice” between your two sites, for a long time to come.
Backup in case automation failsWhile this isn’t a regular occurrence, sometimes having a manual database of keywords, for example, can save you in a pinch when you can’t log in to our chosen SEO tool.

A classic case of this is when you have shared access to Ahrefs and more than one user is logged in, booting the other person out.

This can slow you down, but the worst thing is when you can’t get in at all.

Having saved reports within the software that you can’t access is nothing short of frustrating.

And the same can happen with something like SiteBulb. It’s an exceptional piece of kit, but I love that you can export ALL the data and analyze it further when needed.

Why you should avoid manual SEO

Like wading through mud

Image by hamperium from Pixabay

Imagine taking your SEO 100% manual. You’d been doing it forever!

Even a simple task like asking Google to index your new page would be painstakingly slow.

And that’s even on a small blog. What if you were to build your dream monster site and pump out a few pieces of content a day?

Good luck with that!

Even manual outreach is considerably slower than automating it.

Restrict business growth

Essentially, the more time it takes you to do something, the slower you’ll see results.

Caveat: As long as you could’ve generated the same result in a faster method.

Not using SEO software’s in-built gap analysis, for example, means you’d have to:

1. Manually collate keywords from the competition
2. Uniformly sort the data as needed
3. Analyze the data

Whereas a decent piece of SEO software will do all of the above at the click of a button.

The time taken in the manual approach essentially means a greater opportunity cost to other areas of your business/site/blog.

Combine this one small example with a manual approach to other SEO practices, and you’ll definitely stunt your growth.
Staff buy-inExpect a heavy amount of resistance!

Asking your team to carry out manual processes when they know it can be done more quickly and simply through automation is going to be a rough gig.

While you may eventually make them see the light, it won’t be an easy negotiating process.
It’s actually more costlyAutomated SEO will bring economies of scale to your enterprise i.e. saving the time cost of manual processes to increase your team’s output.

The sheer amount of effort involved in doing things manually may save you a three-or-four-figure monthly saving in not subscribing to an SEO tool.

BUT, the time it will take your awesome team of humans to do the same is so far removed that they might as well be on the moon!
Do I really have to tell you which is better?Now, you might think I’m going to scream, “AUTOMATE ALL YOUR SEO”, but I actually believe in a combination of the two.

And, actually, if you’re a very casual blogger, going manual isn’t so much of a rough deal.

But, even if you’re looking to write one post a week that needs some SEO attention, automation is going to be vital.

The pure time-saving and removing the need for expertise will have serious knock-on benefits.

So, my advice is:

• Go 100% manual on your outreach
• Automate keyword research and gap analysis
• Automate on-page SEO
• Combine manual and automatic methods for data analysis and reporting