I get this answer all the time from other SEO experts when I ask them what they think about automated SEO software and they always respond with "It is bad and Google will penalize you if you use them." Their opinion is not based on their experience but what they have read on other SEO blogs from people who have never used or understood the automated software. But I am a firm believer that those SEO blog are wrong or they took them out of context. Not all SEO software is bad in fact they make your life and work a lot easier if you know how to use them. But that is just the thing, the reason those SEO experts think automated SEO software is bad is that they know nothing about them. Well, I am here to teach you a little bit about how they work and why they are not all bad.
Automated SEO Content Software
There are only a couple different SEO software's that allow you to put up your own unique content on different article websites, press release website, blog websites, and forums. Most SEO people would say don't do this or you run the risk of creating duplicate content which Google will consider plagiarizing and they won't rank your content and potentially penalize your website. This is false because this duplicate content has a source of where the content is coming from and as long as that source has a canonical tag Google will know this contents original creator is this person or website and will give them the credit and it will not hurt your content or website.
The point of creating content is to get as many people exposed to it as you can so they can read it and share it. If you are not putting your content on multiple content resources you are missing out on a lot of potential viewers. One of the automated content distribution software I use is SEnuke and they do a great job of distributing content to many sources and keeping the content original with the ability to add the source. The problem with SEnuke is that it is complicated and you will need an expert that is familiar with the software to help you. This has helped my clients grow on the search engines by leaps and bounds and Google has never penalized me for using this software.
Automated Social Media Software
Again this is another area that SEO experts think does not help your digital presence and you have to do everything manually for Google to accept it and rank it. That is not true! Yes, there are many SEO tactics and strategies that you must do manually but this is not one of them. When it comes to posting social media on multiple accounts with multiple social media platforms this can be tedious and time-consuming. The software that will make your life easy if you do have many clients that need to post a lot of content on multiple social media platforms is Hootsuite. Hootsuite will also allow you to monitor all the social media accounts at once and post comments as well. I have been using it for years and it has saved me a lot of time.
Manual SEO
The main aspect of SEO that can only be done manually is on-page SEO. When it comes to optimizing pages or content there is no automated SEO tool for this. There are tools that allow you to analyze SEO content to see if it is being optimized correctly that Ahref and SEMrush offer but when it comes to optimizing title tags, meta tags, alt tags, anchor text, H1, and keyword density this is something only an expert can analyze and make changes that Google will notice.
Conclusion
In my personal opinion and experience the only time Google will penalize your website is if your business practice is shady and your customers have given you so many bad reviews and reported your website to Google so they have to penalize you. Or you have a lot of spammy backlinks going to your site and Google penalizes you for that as well. Other than that it is not easy to get penalized by Google. So if you are a small business or a large business and you are afraid to use specific SEO software or tactics because you will get penalized just be aware that it is difficult for Google to notice you enough to get penalized. That being said you should always do your research on certain SEO software and tactics but also test them out yourself and see if it helps you increase your search engine ranking, exposure, or just makes your life a little bit easier.