Blogs,Funeral

Automated SEO Tools: What Are They, and What are the Pros and Cons for Deathcare Marketing?

Posted on

Automated SEO tools supposedly take the guesswork out of search engine optimization by providing the skeletons you need to build content that performs. But are these tools worth the cost, and how much do they drive the needle on deathcare marketing?

 

What Are Automated SEO Tools?

Tools like INK, Surfer SEO, and Clearscope do SEO research for you instantly. You enter your keywords and these tools scour data about top-performing pages, returning information about those pages such as:

  • Average length of existing content or how long competitive content should be
  • Typical subheaders used across content
  • Primary and secondary keywords
  • Semantic keywords and topics other pages seem to cover
  • Potential People Also Ask questions you may want to answer

You can use that information to create pages that are supposedly more likely to perform in search results. Most SEO tools have a scoring mechanism, and the higher your content scores, the more likely it is (according to the tool) to rank higher.

 

The Pros of SEO Tools for Deathcare Marketing

One of the biggest benefits of these types of tools is time savings. The tools don’t do anything you can’t do yourself—you could review the top pages in Google for keywords to see how long they are, what phrases they use, and what header structures seem to work best, and you can also do your own keyword research. With an SEO tool, that work is done for you in seconds or minutes.

Another benefit is that the depth of information provided supports the creative process. Your marketing or writing teams may not have to come up with ideas from scratch all the time, because the SEO tool’s content suggestions often translate easily into outlines for posts and pages.

 

The Cons of SEO Tools for Deathcare Marketing

These tools aren’t perfect, though, and disadvantages include:

  • Cost. Many come with a hefty price tag. Semrush’s version, for example, starts at more than $200 per month for some projects.
  • Sameness. Everyone else can use these tools, too, which means content in each niche may start to look the same across competitors’ pages.
  • AI still doesn’t trump human. SEO tools might suggest 2,000 words on a topic, but your audience might be better served with 1,000 words. Or, a tool could suggest repetitive headers that would annoy your readers. Taking the suggestions straight from an SEO tool without any thought can make your content machine-like and less human—not something you want in deathcare marketing.

 

The Bottom Line

SEO tools can be valuable, but they’re best when paired with content marketing and writing know-how. They’re a starting point you can work from, but shouldn’t be treated as the end-all expert on the content you create.

Check back on our blog next week for a deep dive on SEO tool suggestions and which ones you can ignore.

Related Posts