Should You Pay for SEO Tools – Is it Worth it?

“Ignoring online marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone.” – Anonymous

The world is practically online now; everything you need is available on the internet. The businesses that were earlier happy with their offline customers have also entered the online arena, taking competition up a notch.

So, standard optimization efforts won’t be enough anymore. Hence, popular SEO optimization expert entities like Ahrefs, Semrush, etc., have developed an array of helpful tools. There are both free and paid SEO tools abundantly available in the market.

But should you spend that extra buck and avail a premium-grade tool?

Why Do You Need SEO Tools?

Some of the key benefits of these tools are discussed below.

In-Depth Analysis

What would usually take a team of experts is now achievable with tools like Semrush and Google Search Console. These will provide you with a complete analysis of your website’s SEO metrics and their performance. Especially if you use the paid versions, like the one Semrush offers, you will get hold of several valuable insights.

This makes paid SEO tools highly beneficial and certainly worth the investment. Just activating by a certain tool on your website, you get an extra pair of eyes that not only looks over it but also provides you with a report on it.

Detects Issues

These not only analyze your website but also find out extremely minute issues that might get unnoticed by you. They regularly monitor the activities on your website and notify you whenever it detects anything that is unusual.

Usually, these appear on the dashboard of the respective optimization tool you are using. Since these are a norm now in the world of SEO, more and more companies are coming forward with different issue-detecting tools. At present, there is a specific tool for detecting broken links, duplicate content, and any other optimization issue you can think of.

Saves Time

Since you only have to connect these tools with your website, there is hardly anything else you have to do. From keyword research to farming URLs, the tools will do almost everything for you and provide you with a lot of time to focus on your business.

You can also utilize this time to develop new strategies, which again will get streamlined with the help of the right tools. Hence, concentrate on the meaningful tasks that are on your hand and improve your efficiency while the tools are doing their job.

Helps You to Enhance Website Progress

It is obvious that since you will get access to detailed analysis reports, you will be able to modify your website more precisely. However, the progress is not limited to your efforts, but they always provide some inputs of their own.

Especially if you use paid SEO tools, you get not one but multiple solutions for each issue your website faces. Among them, you can choose the one best suited for your site and implement it to see significant progress in performance.

Negative Aspects of Paid SEO Tools

Although the paid SEO tools certainly perform better than their free alternatives, they have their own disadvantages as well, such as:

Expensive at times

SEO tools offered by reliable companies are often costly. The most popular SEO tools in the market are available on a subscription basis, but the value depends on the package and can be significantly higher.

Given below are some examples:

• LongTail Pro – Starts from $37 per month
• Ahrefs – Starts from $99 per month
• SEMrush – Starts from $99.95 per month
• Alexa – Starts from $149 per month

It would certainly be difficult for small-scale businesses to afford these numbers. Furthermore, you require at least 3 to 4 different tools to begin your optimization journey while adding more as time progresses.

Hence, it would be better to opt for SEO optimization services from professional agencies.

Can Be Inaccurate & Misleading

It doesn’t matter if you are using the best paid SEO tool; it cannot be 100% accurate at all times. Though there is some truth to its reports, blindly believing them will not lead your website to progress. Rather it can mislead you into making wrong decisions, which will, in turn, affect your website’s overall performance.

For instance, if you use a certain SEO tool to check the search volume of the keyword group “Credit”, the results you will get might be very different from reality. You can refer to these results to select secondary keywords but completely creating your keyword list based on this will be unwise.

In most scenarios, you will even come across instances when the reality is totally different from what that particular tool is informing you.

Does Not Fix Every Issue

You might think that since you are paying so much for an SEO tool, it will fix all the optimization issues for you. But no, they might provide you with a long list of issues and suggested solutions. The rest is totally up to your discretion. Now implementing the correct SEO strategy can also become a hectic job if you are doing it for the first time.

Moreover, the tools that somewhat work are not always user-friendly, adding another layer of difficulty. So, if you do not pay much attention while selecting the tools, it might become a complete disaster for your website.

No Guarantee of Rankings

SEO is already as unprecedented as it can be, and the paid SEO tools you use do not make it any better. No matter how many issues you fix or how much website analysis you conduct, in the end, there is no guarantee that these measures will help your website rank higher.

There are two reasons why this will eventually happen, the first being their incapability of being 100% accurate, and the second is their popularity. It has been quite a few years since SEO tools hit the main market, and now every other established company is using them.

What to Do Before Selecting These Tools?

If you were already considering investing in some SEO tools, you should do the following before you actually subscribe to one:

Check if You Can Find an Alternative

Paid SEO tools are not the last thing that can provide you with optimization assistance without consuming much of your time. If you spend a little time researching, you will find there are several experienced SEO companies providing similar assistance at a rather cheaper rate.

However, make sure the agency of your choice does not use black hat SEO. It is even better if it has the experience of working on similar websites.

Research the Accuracy and How it Has Helped Others

Like any other product on the internet, these tools also have directories where their customers leave reviews and ratings. Go through some of these listings and see how much benefit the other customers got from these tools.

Also, do some research of your own, try some trial packs (if available) and see how user-friendly and accurate they are. The only issue is that you cannot judge all SEO tools based on their trial pack, as optimization takes time to show results. So, under such circumstances, you will have to rely on reviews.

See if the Company is Only Running on Brand Value

Popular companies that have already made it big on the Internet might just slack on their tools’ development part. This makes it crucial for you to check and judge every tool, irrespective of which company developed it. If there is a chance of communicating with the customer support, do that and understand how involved they are with the concerned tool.

Alternatives to Purchasing SEO Tools

Instead of spending a fortune on a handful of paid SEO tools, you can:

Look for Free SEO Tools with Similar Services

There are numerous free SEO tools available in the market which offer standard services that can get you started on your SEO optimization journey. However, remember as there is no guarantee about their accuracy, the free ones can act as a suggestion.

Take Professional Help

Another thing you can do is put your faith in professional SEO agencies that possess years of experience in this field. Invest a little more but invest it where the results will be more substantial. The experts you outsource will also provide additional and valuable insights which a tool simply cannot.

You can discuss your concerns and come up with a solution unique to your website. With these small changes, you will be increasing your website performance and SERP ranking.

Are Paid SEO Tools Worth It?

So, in the end, to answer if you should pay for SEO tools – it depends. However, you should not invest in paid SEO tools if you are low on funds and your website is relatively new on the internet. During this stage, you require proper expert assistance to grow instead of correcting what already exists.

Yes, once your website is already stable, you can consider subscribing to some of these paid tools. These will then help you to detect what’s holding your website back, which you can then quickly correct with the help of optimization experts.

Conclusion

Therefore, this piece talked about the different positive and negative aspects of paid SEO tools that will help you arrive at a decision. It also discussed some easier alternatives to investing in such tools, whose application varies among individuals and businesses as per the circumstance.

What is your take on this? Are paid SEO tools worth it? Let us know in the comments section below.