Regularly evaluating your SEO tools ensures they align with evolving search engine algorithms and your current business goals. It helps you identify gaps, improve performance, and invest only in tools that truly deliver measurable results.

Search Engine Land contributor Maria Georgieva has published an article featuring useful strategies to evaluate SEO tools in 2026.

She says, “Rising prices and AI hype make SEO tools harder to justify. Learn to evaluate platforms, test workflows, and connect work to business value.

Evaluating SEO tools has never been more complicated.

Costs keep rising, and promises for new AI features are everywhere.

This combination is hardly convincing when you need leadership to approve a new tool or expand the budget for an existing one.

Your boss still expects SEO to show business impact – not how many keywords or prompts you can track, how fast you can optimize content, or what your visibility score is.

That is exactly where most tools still fail miserably.

The landscape adds even more friction.

Features are bundled into confusing packages and add-on models, and the number of solutions has grown sharply in the last 12 months.”

How to evaluate your SEO tools in 2026 – and avoid budget traps

Search Engine Land

Sharing is caring