SEO Software: Is It Worth the Money?

When searching for “SEO software,” Google says there are 42,000,000 results. So where do you begin? Even if only small amount of these results are really product pages, that leaves you with way too many SEO software programs to make a selection. Some half year ago, I was close to buying some SEO software package (forgot which), but as always when you need to make the actual purchase common sense kicks in (sorry guys). I just can't justify the cost. You need to do better to convince me.

Most of the tools will run a link audit or ranking report and/or do competitive analysis. Just add the URLs you need data on and let the program come out with a report. The data will help making the right decisions for the SEO campaign. 

Now if you run a small company, you'll most likely not be pulling in new clients every day. And would you really need to do a run every week? If you were running a SEO company with lots of clients however, you would be more than happy to use a tool to do your reports, so you can use your time to focus on building links, developing the right content etc. Then it will be worth the price.

But that's simply not my business.

But still, you need to keep some SEO knowledgde in-house.  A tool can be chaeper compared to hiring an employee or agency, but it is still a tool, not actual SEO knowledge. The SEO software will come up with a list recommendations, but you don’t have the knowledge to effectively implement these in the specific case you're at, what then?
Next, initially and with every new version you need to make yourself comfortable with your tool. Will you have the time to do so? Analytics data you need for your meta keywords, adsense ads and campaigns is presented by Google will be interpreted and presented in it's own format. This makes you dependent on their interpretation. And what happens if your beatiful tool misses out on the next thing Google does and loses it's edge? What will that do to your company and customers?