Revealing SEO Tools' Secrets with Fakhir Ali

Because they treat the tool as the strategy.

An SEO tool can tell you that a keyword has 10,000 searches, that a competitor has thousands of backlinks, or that your website has a technical issue. But none of those numbers automatically tells you what you should do next.

Here is the game: there is a real skill known as interpretation.

Two websites can have the same Domain Rating, the same number of backlinks, and similar traffic. Still, one can completely outperform the other because its links, content structure, topical relevance, and internal linking are better.

So I always tell people: don't ask the tool what happened. Ask why it happened.

I don't understand if it should really be included in the interview, but anyway. Domain Rating, or any third-party authority metric, is a third-party metric that tells your domain's backlinking strengths.

It's useful, but people sometimes treat it like Google's own score, but it isn't. A high DR doesn't guarantee rankings, and a low DR doesn't automatically mean a website is worthless either.

I've seen websites with relatively modest authority outperform much stronger domains because they have the right topical relevance and search intent. The mistake is looking at one number instead of looking at the entire backlink profile.

I look beyond the headline number. For example, I want to know:

• Who is linking to them?

• Why are they linking?

• Which pages are receiving those links?

• What type of content attracted those links?

• Are those referring domains actually relevant to the industry?

• Can I reproduce the reason they earned that link?

That's where SEO tools become really powerful. You aren't just looking at your competitor's backlinks, but you're reverse-engineering their acquisition strategy.

Exactly, and that's where a lot of time gets wasted. A backlink from a relevant website with a real audience can be more interesting than a link from a high-metric website that has nothing to do with your niche.

People see a big metric and think, "I need this link." I think differently. I ask, "Does this link make sense?" If the answer is no, the metric doesn't matter as much as people think.

That link building is simply about getting as many links as possible, but it isn't. Modern link building is much closer to digital PR, relationship building, and content distribution.

You need a reason for another website to mention you.

Maybe you have original research, or you created a useful resource, or you have a unique tool, or you're an expert with something valuable to say. The best backlinks usually have a story behind them.

You are right Elia and that's exactly where automation can help. I'm a big believer in automating repetitive SEO work, but I don't believe you should automate the thinking.

For example, finding and organizing backlink opportunities is something technology can streamline.

Deciding whether an opportunity is actually valuable? That's where the SEO's judgment comes in.

Yes, abosultely.

The interesting thing about a backlink workflow isn't necessarily finding one website. It's managing the entire process around it.

With TaskGlaze, the idea is to streamline backlink building so you spend less time manually managing the repetitive parts of the process.

Instead of treating link building as hundreds of disconnected tasks, you can think about it as a workflow.

• Find the opportunity.

• Evaluate it.

• Organize it.

• Work on the outreach.

• Track what happens.

• That's much easier to scale.

No, and I don't think any serious SEO tool should be positioned that way. I strongly beleive that tools should remove friction.

If a tool saves me from doing repetitive work for two hours, that's valuable. But I still need to decide whether a backlink is relevant, whether the website is trustworthy, whether the placement makes sense, and whether the link contributes to the overall strategy.

Automation should make an SEO specialist faster, not make them less thoughtful.

Keyword difficulty is an estimate, not a law of physics that nobody can break in the real world. Different tools calculate difficulty differently.

So if one tool tells you a keyword is "easy" and another tells you it's "hard," don't panic. You just need to look at the actual SERP.

• Who is ranking?

• What kind of pages are ranking?

• How strong are those pages?

• What is the search intent?

• Can you create something meaningfully better?

The SERP is often more important than the number displayed inside the tool.

It's an another metric people can obsess over. A keyword with 500 monthly searches can potentially be more valuable than one with 50,000 searches.

Why?

Intent. If those 500 searches come from people who are ready to buy, subscribe, book, or hire, they can be incredibly valuable. SEO isn't a competition to collect the biggest traffic number. It's about attracting the right traffic.

Thanks, Elia! I really appreciate you have arises that question because it really harmful to the SEO industry in my opinion.

I want to tell them: "Stop copying competitors blindly."

I see people put a competitor's domain into an SEO tool, export their keywords, export their backlinks, and essentially try to rebuild the same website. That's not a strategy.

Competitor analysis should reveal opportunities; not give you a blueprint to become a clone. Look at what competitors are doing well.

Then ask: What are they missing? That's where your advantage can come from.

They need to start connecting the data, like don't look at keywords separately from content, don't look at backlinks separately from pages, and don't look at traffic separately from conversions.

For example, if you discover that a competitor's specific article is attracting hundreds of referring domains, that's not simply a backlink opportunity.

It's a content opportunity.

You need to understand why that page earned those links.

Absolutely, but the definition of "SEO tool" should be changed.

We're moving toward a world where brands need to understand not only where they rank in traditional search, but also how they appear across AI-driven search experiences.

That means brand mentions, authority, topical relevance, structured information, content quality, and digital PR become increasingly important.

The old mindset was: "How do I rank this page?"

The newer mindset is: "How do I make my brand the obvious source to mention?"

It is, and that's why I don't think SEO is disappearing because of AI. I think low-effort SEO is becoming less valuable. And in this context, I would like to quote John Muller:

"From our POV there’s nothing really special you need to do for generative AI responses in search." -John Mueller

Adding to this quote, I would like to go with our company's motto: "AEO and GEO is nothing, but a good SEO."

So, if your entire strategy is publishing generic articles and collecting random backlinks, AI is going to make that strategy even harder to defend. But if you're building expertise, authority, useful resources and genuine mentions, you're building something much more durable.

Yes, there must be three rules that every beginner should follow:

• First: Never worship the metric. A number is useful only when you understand what it represents.

• Second: Always investigate the reason behind the data. Don't just see that a competitor has backlinks. Find out why they earned them.

• Third: Automate the repetitive work, not the strategy. Use tools to save time, organize information, and build repeatable workflows.

Your biggest advantage as an SEO isn't knowing which button to click. It's knowing which button is worth clicking in the first place.

Exactly, Elia.

The tool gives you the information. The SEO decides what the information means.

And that's the part nobody can completely automate.