From the white-hat perspective, the main tasks to automate are search engine rank tracking and competitor research. If you optimize for multiple keywords, then a rank checking software is a must in order to monitor ranking progress over time, compare rankings in different SEs, compre yours and competitors rankings etc. Other than that, finding out where competitor links come from is something that can't be performed without a software. However, you will still need to review the data manually and utilize competitor's backlink sources in a smart way.
People use automated tools to simplify mundane task such as keyword research, blog commenting, and checking rankings. The effect from this is that with autmation tools you can speed up the process of mundane tasks so you can focus on research and writing better content for your websites. Here is a list of tools I know people use, or I use myself, direct links, no affiliate bs. Backlink Building & Checking Tools Licorne AIO (Trial) – You can download a 5-Day Trial of this extremely useful backlink building tool, it really stacks up closely against Ultimate Demon, SENuke XCR and XRummer, In many ways it exceels all of those tools combined. RankSignals - Simple and clean interface, they also have a great Chrome Plugin that you can use to instantly check a site’s PageRank, Unique & Total Backlinks and the Alexa rank. OpenSiteExplorer - Owned by MOZ, opensiteexplorer is a great way to check your Domain & Page Authority, Total Backlinks and nice list of the Anchor text, and the linking page’s page & domain Authority aHrefs - Gives you a lot of information, but sadly you have to pay to get some of the more interesting details about your domain. MajesticSEO - Useful for checking how many backlinks you’ve got, but other than that, the free version of MajesticSEO is not that impressive. Social Media Tools CoolSocial - Great way to quickly check how your social network presence is going. BuzzBundle (Trial)- This insanely powerful tool gives you the ability to interact with forums, twitter, facebook and blog comments all from one place, this way you don’t have to waste time searching for places to comment. SERP Rank Checking Tools RankTracker (Trial) - This tool is one of my personal favorites, you give it your url, then you can choose between a plethora of search engines and put in your keywords, and then it goes out to each one and fetches your search engine position. Copy pasted from my blog
I strongly believe to do the SEO manually only... I don't know but i dont trust Automated softwares as much... And as per white Hat prospective we should go with the manual technique only... You can check the ranking, competetion and keyword research apart from that.. Try to stay away from the Automated tools... People do use tools for articles, directory,SMB and for other things.. But i am not in to it...
It can hurt your website if you are a newbie to this automation tools, better you hire a pro to guide you in the whole process, so your website will not be banned by Google. Otherwise, these tools are really powerful in terms of link building, I recommend you looking for schema which explain how to link to your money site, go slowly with sure steps, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT automate everything, your links building should seems like it is building naturally. There are too many points to take in consideration. Just make sure to understand everything first, best luck for you...
Automated SEO tools can be very helpful. However, you might have to be careful to use them ethically. Also, whenever possible, mix in actual human-run search engine optimization campaigns.
Licorne AIO as a really great SEO Automation tool, however, one of the things that it lacks is adequate tutorials that can take a newbie step by step on how to use the program. Because of that, together with a SEO colleague of mine, decided to create tutorial series that can teach you how to use the program. You can find all of the tutorials here: www.LicorneTutorials.com
See them as drugs, they give you a short term boost in ranking but in the long run fade away and you end up worse than you started. I highly recommend you use manual tactics in your seo backlink profiles and use quality content. Its the only way forward to be safe of any algorithm changes in the search engines plus your visitors will love you. The downside however is time investment.