The next Search Engine Strategies is only a month away, this time in one of my favorite cities in the US, Chicago! One of the presenters at this year's SES Chicago is Search Marketing Veteran, Bruce Clay. Bruce will be leading a session on the topic of SEO tools: "tools that will help you to accomplish your tasks including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems, page level information, site level information, on-page optimization and much more." I had a chance to ask Bruce a few questions about his session and how he leverages SEO Tools for his own strategies.

[Manoj]: With so many different tools available, how should search marketers go about evaluating the quality of a tool's results.

[Bruce Clay]: Tools present data, not wisdom, so every search marketer has a responsibility to select tools that answer questions. Even with analytics tools, they are at best sample-based. It is not an exact counter (JavaScript issues) so we are sealing with degrees of significance anyhow. Where there is variation is when the meanings change from vendor to vendor, so what one sees as a unique visitor may be unlike the others. The best approach is to assess several, select the most appropriate tool, and then keep using it until something better comes along.

[Manoj]: How important is it for a search marketer to have useful tools available at their disposal

[Bruce Clay]: “I know that half of my advertising dollar is wasted, I just don’t know which half” is only solved with quantifiable data that clearly answers questions. Without tools the job is impossible.

[Manoj]: At your company, how do you find the right balance between using tools and using your own thoughts/judgment for analysis?

[Bruce Clay]: Wisdom is where judgment and intuition influence search marketing, and tools are not wise. Setting business rules, setting methodology, watching the competition, being sensitive to changing market landscapes is not the realm of a tool, but repeatedly executing a process to help with all of these other tasks is the job of tools. The company looks to tools and automation for data gathering tasks, and to people for the rest.

[Manoj]: What is your favorite competitive analysis tool?

[Bruce Clay]: Google in conjunction with site and page analysis. We also use Compete.

[Manoj]: At your session at SES Chicago, what do you hope attendees will walk away with?

[Bruce Clay]: My business card, and perhaps a much better understanding that no tool will do it for you. Search marketing is competitive, and we cannot pass that responsibility off on tools.

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