Scribe: The SEO Plugin That Breathes New Life Into Old Posts

by Mike Sigers

SEO Copywriting Made Simple

Wow!

That’s about all that needs to be said for the Scribe SEO WordPress Plugin that we recently installed on 10+ sites.

Wow!

That’s what you’ll say after you install it and try it out.

Wow!

That’s what you’ll say after you look at your server logs and see all the new traffic you’re getting from old posts that are now optimized and are actually doing what they should have done way back when blogging and WordPress were still in their infancy.

Here’s What I Had Before Scribe

The screencap to the right shows what I saw a lot of when I first installed Scribe.

I have well over 500 posts on this blog alone. Before we installed the current theme, Thesis, I’m sure I had 2, 3 or maybe 4 other themes and none of them made it easy to optimize my Title, Meta Description and the content of the post.

Now that I use Thesis, that part is simple, but what about all those old posts I wrote when I was new, fresh, hungry and more likely to post several times a week?

You know, those posts that are now long-tail search fodder and bring in thousands of viewers a month. Yeah, those posts.

I have, or did have, hundreds of posts that needed a way to quickly and easily do what needs to be done to them to make them more magnetic to the masses and more loved by the search engines.

Scribe has done that for me and I’m a happy little camper because of it.

Here’s What I Have Now Because Of Scribe

The screencap to the right now shows an optimized post. The posts now do better in the search engines, I get more traffic and it was easy to do.

I have a lot more of them to do, but when I’m done, I’ll have 400-500 more little search engine magnets out there sending me more eyeballs and more potential friends, more potential guest posters, more potential partners on projects and more people to leave comments, which is free content and search engine juice. What more could you ask of a plugin?

The More Of What You Asked For

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that besides the obvious Title and Meta Description love that Scribe and Thesis have given me, Scribe also tutors me and chastises me for doing a poor job with my Title, my Meta description and my content.

The screencap below will show you what I got after analyzing this post, which I did before it was finished, because I needed the screencap, for obvious reasons:

The last time I scored a 99% on anything was during kindergarten when I colored the horsey.

Since then, I’ve come to accept scores that were, shall we say, a wee bit lower.

An old post that I recently updated using Scribe scored a whopping 22% before I Scribed the heck out of it. 22 freakin’ %.

Updating old posts amounts to small bits of rewriting and we all know rewriting something is much easier and faster than starting from scratch. So going thru the rest of the posts in this site and several others will take some time, but not as much as writing 400-500 posts would have taken.

The payback is more than worth it and thanks to Scribe and Thesis, I’ll never have to do it again and from now on, the posts I write will be much better thanks to the fine folks at Scribe.

Do yourself a favor and head over there and grab a copy before the price increase, but even if they doubled the price, it’s worth every cent and more.

EDIT 3/05/10: Everything below has been altered from the original post.

I now have changed all the above links to affiliate links, meaning if you buy, I’ll end up retired on my boat at the lake a lot sooner, because I’ll get paid.

I originally had non-affiliate links, but literally a couple of dozen people emailed me and said they were buying simply because of this candid review and wished I was getting compensated.

Well, I’m still getting a hundred views a day to this review, so I’m going to allow you to choose whether or not you want to click an affiliate link or not.

If you don’t want me to be compensated, but do want to buy Scribe, just follow this link: Scribe rocks!

No hard feelings. I didn’t write this for compensation, as evidenced to the thousands who read this before I was convinced to change my links.

Again, I stress that the affiliate links is not a big deal. I don’t want something like that to keep you from investing in something that I positively know will make your WordPress powered site even better than it is now.

EDIT 2/26/10 approx 2 PM CST

I’m sitting at #1 in Google for the term – scribe seo plugin – ahead of Scribe’s own site and some very powerful sites.

I’m attributing it to my usage of Scribe, along with lotsa comments, left by you guys. And you guys wouldn’t have been here if not for uber-traffic sender Chris Pearson, creator of Thesis, which help power this blog.

Click here to see a screen cap of the rankings.

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uberVU - social comments
February 26, 2010 at 12:26 pm

{ 57 comments… read them below or add one }

Kevin February 24, 2010 at 8:20 pm

I read this. And the whole time I thought it was going to end up an affiliate post. When it wasn’t, it caught me off guard. Might give this a try…thank you.

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Mike Sigers February 24, 2010 at 9:19 pm

Hey Kevin,

You’ll not be sorry if you try it, I promise. It’ll speed up your daytime work and will make your nitetime work even more profitable.

Think of it like this: More posts that catch eyeballs means more chances to find out what those people want or need you to create content about.

More posts that rank well means more backlinks, which means better rankings, which means more eyeballs lookin’ at your content.

You only need to be 1% better than your competitor to beat them and this will make that even easier than ever.

There is no reason not to try it out. If you don’t like it, they’ll gladly refund your money.

If you don’t like it, it means you’re smarter than 99% of the world and paying $27 to find that out is priceless ;-)

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Patrick K. O'Brien February 26, 2010 at 3:26 pm

I hear what you are saying, Mike – we all want more eyeballs, don’t we. More eyeballs means more comments means more interest in what we post. When I saw your message on Twitter saying you’ve gotten 250% more eyeballs because of this particular post I thought I’d come by and check it out. I have to admit, I’ve read some rather fluffy reviews of Scribe, so I’m glad your review has less fluff and more stuff, if you know what I mean.

I do think it is kind of funny how everyone is now battling over ranking #1 for “scribe seo review” and “scribe seo plugin”. I expect we’re going to see a lot of turnover in the top 10 spots for the next couple of weeks, until things settle down. Me, I’m going to go after “scribe seo tastes a lot like chicken” when I do my review.

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Patrick K. O'Brien February 27, 2010 at 10:54 am

I’ve been called many things, but never “Dave”. :-)

I finally finished my Scribe SEO review, but I forget I said I would go after “scribe seo tastes a lot like chicken” so I may have to write another post for that. Instead, I drew a rather bizarre analogy between Scribe and Rachael. You’ll have to read the post to see which Rachael… ;-)

Pat Dave

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Mike Sigers February 27, 2010 at 3:18 pm

Thanks for adding your review to mine Patrick.

Mike Sigers February 27, 2010 at 3:03 pm

Thanks Patrick.

I’m happy to supply enuff stuff that ain’t fluff to make you not be gruff.

How’s that? ;-)

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Kevin February 25, 2010 at 9:11 pm

I signed up last night after reading your post, and you’re right — it is great.

This is the thing for me:

I know all of this stuff. I know how to write a fully optimized post, and this plugin isn’t going to teach me anything. BUT!

I’m a bit of a perfectionist. And if that thing is going to give me a 99%, you can bet your ass I’m not going to sleep until it’s 100%. So just giving me motivation to do that tiny bit extra, that’s where it’s going to pay off for me.

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Mike Sigers February 25, 2010 at 10:17 pm

Glad I could help, Kevin.

Finding a reason to go above and beyond is key for successful people and you found yours for a helluva lot less than it costs MOST people ;-)

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Dave Doolin February 26, 2010 at 3:48 pm

Kevin, I know all this stuff too, and I could actually write parts of this plugin myself… but it’s more time effective to use this one!

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 11:08 pm

So what’re you saying Dave? Do you mean to imply your time is best used creating content and not obsessing over nickles on the ground, while dollars float over your head?

Yeah, me too.

Thanks for saying it for me!

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Dave February 26, 2010 at 1:04 am

I’m like Kevin. I already know what to do and do a pretty good job of it. Scribe lets me add the extra dollop of perfectionist whip cream on top. For newbies to SEO I would rank it as a must-have for its training value.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 7:38 am

All that tells me Dave is that you’re on the road to success ;-)

Thanks for dropping by and taking time to comment.

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Stephanie Booth February 26, 2010 at 1:52 am

Putting on my old fart cap here, but god, I thought we had done away with eyeballs when the Cluetrain Manifesto was published ten years ago.

Other than that, I would have been interested in reading in your review exactly what this plugin does. What kind of analysis does it run on the posts? How does it work?

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 8:24 am

Well Stephanie, they have a video tour on their site and it shows you exactly what they do, but knowing that won’t make a difference in your life.

The thing that will make a difference is testing, while it’s still inexpensive, and then applying wisdom to the analysis of your own results, not mine.

There are some very good reviews out there, such as I’ve linked to in other comments, but not many are non-aff links, like this one and the one at:

http://www.selfhelpdaily.com/scribe-seo-plugin/

We get absolutely nothing out of telling OUR truth and taking time to answer all these comments, instead of actually producing salable content or some other revenue producing action.

I will say this, if you find a way to monetize your efforts without eyeballs, which happen to be attached to heads, which are integral parts of the anatomy of humans, who happen to have wallets, you’re now Queen of the World.

Why would anybody write for anything other than eyeballs, which turn into fans, who tell others about you, who send you money, loving comments or both.

Oh, by the way, I’m betting I’m older than you are.

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Peter February 26, 2010 at 3:42 am

Hi Mike,

You’ve persuaded me to get Scribe as an education tool given I know little about SEO.

That said I was surprise in the above post to click on the image ‘SEO Copywriting Made Simple’ and find that it linked to the image. Is that not a basic SEO missed opportunity? As images are also considered in Page Ranking (?) is it not best that images link to a useful source or not link at all?

Just curious if that would have made the post 100%. Either-way, I don’t know enough about SEO so I’m in!

Thanks for the Post.
Pete

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 7:45 am

Trying and testing is the only way to find out if something works for you or not, Peter, so you’ve made a good choice.

As for the image, I guess I could link it to them as well, so thanks for improving what I do ;-)

There was another factor that kept me from 100% and that was the way I wrote the Meta Description. To me, it’s for humans, not robots or search engines, so my version is okay with me, just like I’m okay with 99%.

Thanks for dropping by and taking time to comment!

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BrAndrsn February 26, 2010 at 4:41 am

Hi Mike,

Quick question:

I’m starting a new blog on Thesis, so do not have thousands of ‘old’ pages which are unoptimized. If I make sure I cover every step when I’m writing new posts, do I really need the Scribe SEO plugin?

Cheers,

Brian

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 7:48 am

For a very measley $27/month to get a visual reminder of what you have and have not done, to see what you need to do and for the fact that you’ll get just as lazy as I did after a while, I’d say yes.

The fact that it’s going to $97/month after today means if you decide LATER that you wich you’d made a better choice, it’ll cost you a LOT more then to do what you should do now.

Here’s a better review than I could ever write:

http://www.selfhelpdaily.com/scribe-seo-plugin/

Everybody should go read that dude before the deadline. EVERYBODY.

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Kirk February 26, 2010 at 5:58 am

Thank you for the review, Mike! Your review plus the fact that today is the final day for the Advanced plan at $27/month (vs. $97/month) pushed me over the edge to sign up this morning.

Even better: The Advanced plan purchased annually is $259/year — a 20% savings over the monthly purchase!

If you HAD used an affiliate link, which is not available at this writing anyway for Scribe, then I STILL would have signed up. I know that some people’s beliefs about money are so twisted that they begrudge website publishers getting affiliate referral fees even though it costs the buyer nothing extra. But I rely on affiliate links to help to pay for all the valuable research that I do prior to telling people about a particular product or service, and I am upfront about that with my website visitors, who love what I deliver to them. I encourage anyone to investigate techniques for removing their negative beliefs about money. Here is an example: http://www.kirkmahoney.com/recommends/The-Tapping-Solution/ — and, yes, it IS an affiliate link!

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 7:50 am

Thanks for stopping by Kirk and for adding to our conversation!

You made a wise choice by signing up and I truly believe it’ll make a difference in your world.

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Roman February 26, 2010 at 6:07 am

Well as much as I’d like to I would never buy this plugin before some solid traffic information – how has your unique hits gone up after using the plugin?
We need facts!

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 7:58 am

Whatever I write might be the truth and could be a big nasty lie, Roman, so that’s not the point.

The points are this:

a) My results won’t matter to your use of the service
b) You NEED to test and track your effectiveness with the service
c) If you don’t try it today, you’ll pay WAY more later when you do try it
d) If you sign up and don’t like it after a month, you can cancel and all you did was optimize 300 pages for $27, which is cheap
e) Facts don’t sell. I’m a salesman by day, read my About page, so I know that to be true
f) Benefits sell and if you’ll read this review, http://www.selfhelpdaily.com/scribe-seo-plugin/, you’ll see more benefits than I can write about
g) Just because I like you, I’ll tell you I’ve gained 33% more Uniques over the last week or so. Don’t tell anyone.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Roman February 26, 2010 at 9:13 am

Well I already thought that your reply was a big waste of time for me to read but thanks to the information you revealed under g) I am glad I read it :)
By the way – I’ve done some hardcore sales myself – I was a door to door salesman in the States.
I’ve made sales presentations to more than 10 000 people so I know a lot about selling. Sometimes facts do sell, but 99% of the time there is emotion behind the fact.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 9:17 am

I’m glad you’re trying it Roman.

It’s the only way to truly find the truth.

Thanks for being open-minded and for coming back to prove it to us!

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Lee Stranahan February 26, 2010 at 6:21 am

Mike,

Thanks for this article – I bought Scribe based on your rec and it’s great. I used it on my site http://www.SixMonthJump.com and in about 15 minutes I went from 60% to 100% (sorry, man).

In appreciation since there’s no affiliate link here, I’d love to give you free membership at my site, which also have an affiliate program…so maybe you can pay it forward a little.

Thanks again!

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 8:01 am

Thanks for believing and testing, Lee!

And thanks for taking time to come back and add your social proof pudding to our little fete!

Please send me an email to mike@(this domain) and I’ll take you up on your offer and I really appreciate your taking time to give back.

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Gaby Nunamaker February 26, 2010 at 7:04 am

Hi Mike,

My husband and I started a blog a month ago when I was accepted to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris (YEAH)!! Neither one of us had any experience in SEO and the $27/month seemed QUITE reasonable to improve the content of our posts. I intend on having this site for a long time as I enter the realm of professional chef so I wanted to start off writing good content right off the bat.

Scribe taught us many things about SEO we’d never considered (how many links you should have for every ___ words you post, description and title length, etc.). Those are easy enough to implement. The real power is the keyword analysis and suggestions for tagging. We had never come close to adding the right tags before. We also didn’t realize you can tag WordPress posts too. It’s been a revelation.

Overall, we couldn’t be happier with Scribe and I can’t see us NOT using it. Even though we now understand the guidelines, the keyword analysis is REALLY helpful.

Gaby Nunamaker
http://www.chefgaby.com

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 8:13 am

Thanks Gaby!

You did what the haters of the world are scared to do, you tried, you tested and you based your decision on your own results.

That tells me that you are on your way to success in life, because you’re an action taker, not a hater and not someone who bases their life on other people’s results.

Thanks for adding to our meal!

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Chris February 26, 2010 at 7:21 am

When I first saw Scribe I thought it sounded interesting, but on page SEO really isn’t that hard I wondered what it was all about.

I have never seen such a rip off in all my life! All you need to achieve the same results is to read one article from a reliable source about on-page SEO, and get the senSEO plugin for firefox (free). $97 is daylight robbery for this stuff.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 8:05 am

I love me some haters, Chris, so thanks for making my day. You’re my first one for Friday, February 26th!

I can only hope and pray that your in one of my niches, so I can sleep easy knowing that you’ll be easy to beat.

I’ll also know that you don’t make any money in your niche, if you even have one, because $27/month scares the hell out of you!

Show us your sites and all your fantastic SEO efforts and THEN we’ll take you seriously.

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Patrick K. O'Brien February 26, 2010 at 3:37 pm

This same reply was posted on another Scribe review. It got me curious about the senSEO plugin, which I plan to look at and compare to Scribe. But I prefer working in Safari, and the integration of Scribe with WordPress is so convenient, which is a big plus for those of us who sometimes forgot to perform all the on-page SEO tweaks that we should. Anyone familiar with senSEO?

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Moe Bedard February 26, 2010 at 7:49 am

I got this email from Chris Pearson this morning on this new plugin. While I really like Thesis and think this plugin is just “ok”. In reality, this is really just SEO 101 that can be learned in less than a day. You can do this for free with the all in one SEO plugin and there is no reason to have a probability meter on percentages. Most people over think SEO when it is one of the most simple things to perform on the web.

However, this may be a good “training” tool for those that are new to SEO to force them to think SEO on every post. It is like sitesell.com’s website builder. But, I really fee that $97 per month is a lot of much for a plugin though. Someone is going to do the make their own and offer it for free in 6 months or less.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 8:11 am

Well Moe, I see it like this.

You THINK this plugin is okay. I think it’s helping me see very vividly what I need to do each time I create a PAGE, not just a POST.

Pages are the key to better rankings, when used right and the best example I can give you is Copyblogger’s usage of Pages in his lefthand sidebar.

Here’s an example: http://www.copyblogger.com/seo-copywriting/

This service is just another tool, another piece of ammo. It may not make your ears wiggle, like it does mine.

Just like Einstein did, you have to try things, test them and see if it works for you.

Do it now, before the price increase, and just test to see if it maximizes your efforts, your time and your results.

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Joi February 26, 2010 at 8:56 am

Scribe is all of that and more. For anyone who thinks they know “everything SEO” already, I guarantee you still can learn something from Scribe and that it can help you.

After all, even the greatest athletes in the world have trainers and coaches. Knowing something and doing it are often two completely different things. Besides, we don’t always know what we think we know.

By the way, when she typed in her link, Stephanie Booth accidentally gave the wrong link. Her site is http://climbtothestars.org/ if you want to give her a visit.

We ladies have to look out for one another… with our eyes. LOL.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 9:14 am

Thanks Joi!

I fixed her link and I hope she listens to you ;-)

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Benjamin Zalasky February 26, 2010 at 9:00 am

Scribe doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know if you’re experienced with SEO. That said, I think it’s an incredible teaching tool. I’m using it with two clients right now (not charging them, just added the plugin to their sites as a bonus, as you’re not supposed to profit off of your Scribe key… or something to that effect).

As opposed to sitting down with them and teaching them all about optimizing content on top of their already busy workdays, I can get them straight into content production for their sites. I can also go in and tweak posts for them and show them how to get the most out of each page.

It also provides feedback almost immediately on-screen in the admin, which is a great way of showing a client that meaningful changes have been made to a site or page.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 9:12 am

Thanks for adding that for us Benjamin!

I think you nailed ONE of the keys when you said,”…on top of their already busy workdays, I can get them straight into content production…”

For people who have 1 site, never plan to do more, never plan to have that one site do anything, well then, maybe Scribe doesn’t work for them.

If they write articles, create content, build multiple sites and hope to actually profit from increased rankings and traffic, well then, Scribe does work for them.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Patrick K. O'Brien February 26, 2010 at 3:42 pm

Hey, Ben. Glad to bump into you here. That’s a pretty cool use of Scribe. There are so many business people and bloggers who just don’t get this SEO stuff. They really don’t. Scribe should be a pretty good fit for some of them, especially the ones that can actually produce content (don’t get me started). :-)

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Benjamin Zalasky March 1, 2010 at 8:34 am

“Scribe should be a pretty good fit for some of them, especially the ones that can actually produce content (don’t get me started). ”

Lol… I know where you’re coming from….

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dupatta February 26, 2010 at 10:51 am

Great tool, Reminds me of the theme zoom tool which had a great approach behind it except this one is much friendlier and more intuitive.

That being said, those of us who construct sites/blogs for attracting organic search traffic for affiliate sales or adsense already understand that keyword research comes before page construction and that on site seo really does have its limitations if you want to rank and attract traffic.

In fact the effectiveness of on site SEO pales in comparison to getting links from a variety of similar/relevant sites of varying PR values with your anchor text keyword in the incoming link. You need to see this tool for what it is.

It makes on site SEO easy and fun which is a very useful thing for bloggers just arriving at the proverbial “SEO” door and suddenly discovering an urgent need to update their old posts rather quickly.

Now as Roman mentioned, if you’re wanting traffic stats to prove or disprove the effectiveness of this tool , in all honesty, even if Mike had stats over a 6 month period for this tool, the data would not bear him out simply because regularly acquiring relevant, diverse, anchor texted links to your site is a far more important strategy for increasing keyword targeted traffic to your site.

And even more important is trawling through your stats regularly and discovering money keywords that you’re getting traffic from and building pages around these keywords even as you acquire anchor text links for these pages as well as your primary money keyword pages.

If you’re not a novice at building a page around your primary keyword and building links to it then $97 for this tool will seem like an awful lot of money.

For that chunk of change I would sooner get a membership to a recognized SEO authority like Aaron Wall of Seobook ($100) or Court’s “Keyword Academy” for $30 and get a real education about how to actually increase your traffic through “proven” methods over a 6 month period. These are the guys that practice and live SEO and have the track record to back it up.

On the cost free side there is Griz’s website that provides much of this type of information for free and is quite up front about not needing your money for affiliate earnings.

However for some people the time savings that this tool will provide for basic on site SEO that needs to be done anyway may be what they need so they can spend the time and energy saved on getting real SEO results.

Have you ever tried updating the onsite seo of a 1000 page blog using just the SEO plugin? That’s where this tool will be golden for some.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 12:32 pm

Thanks for that input dupatta. I appreciate your side and view.

No one toll is for everyone, just as we all have different needs, haircuts and shoe sizes.

The main point is, test it while it’s inexpensive. I can’t stress that enough.

Thanks for stopping by and adding intel.

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Miles Austin February 26, 2010 at 11:36 am

Mike, You’ve provided a learning opportunity for me on two levels with this post and resulting thread:

1) Scribe plugin – Most importantly, it is $27.00, I am in and will give it a try. If it works to improve my copy, and I know I can use the help, it will have been worth the investment. If it doesn’t, I will have learned that my work is better than I thought, and it was a cheap lesson.

2) The vast differences in how each of us approaches opportunities to learn and validate our current knowledge. It appears that some of the readers of your post possess all of the information on this topic. I have NEVER had the privilege of even being in the same room with someone that knows everything.

I implement and teach that you must “test and measure” every activity in your business endeavor, or you run the risk of leaving valuable time and money on the table…unless you already know everything!

I will come back in the weeks ahead and let you know what the impact of deploying Scribe meant to me in measurable results.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 12:34 pm

Miles, you have the exact right attitude for success.

I look forward to your continued input here and especially with the long-term usage of Scribe.

It is, as you say, different to be in the company of so many who know so much.

It’s a lot like my office ;-)

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Debra Gould, The Staging Diva February 26, 2010 at 12:09 pm

I just signed up for the paid version of Scribe after blowing thru their 5 trials in about 30 minutes working on a new wordpress site I’m about to launch.

I can see where this tool will get very addictive for the perfectionist in me. Planning to add it to all my sites.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 12:38 pm

Hey Debra,

I’ll bet that as the days go by that you “revise” fewer and fewer posts multiple times.

That’s one of the key points here.

You’re only gonna pay $27/month to learn that skill.

In 3-6 months, maybe less, you may be creating perfect content for pages, posts, articles, ebooks, curriculum, etc.

Won’t have been worth that very small investment in your future?

As “that” former candidate says, “You betcha!”

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Damian Saunders February 26, 2010 at 5:46 pm

The value I get from Scribe is time.
Sure I know the fundamentals of SEO copywriting, some of which comes naturally over time and experience, but it’s still a boring chore, and a distraction from writing freely. I like to write, but not obsess about SEO.
Scribe allows me to ensure I ‘ve done whole and complete work and given the copy SEO the time it deserves – which in my view is no more than ten minutes per post – and got all the ticks in the box.
My review of scribe turned up on the front page of Google within 9 hours (8 of which I was asleep). That’s very encouraging.
At the risk of sounding crass my time, based on my current income from online marketing, is worth $72 per hour (based on a 40 hour week). I have to look at what $29 (I didn’t procrastinate) per month represents in terms of value and time saved to be spent growing our business. If we we’re to obsess over and invest heavily in SEO I can assure you we’d still be running the business from the dining room table. It’s not worth that much time.
Having a tool that actually gets me focused on the content optimisation, gets the ticks in the boxes quickly and efficiently, does it in a few minutes, and frees me up to concentrate on more important ventures, is awesome value for me.

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Mike Sigers February 26, 2010 at 11:06 pm

Thanks for that Damien, I couldn’t have said it better if I’d tried to write a post about it ;-)

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Adrian Bold February 27, 2010 at 9:13 am

I’ve already made the investment in Scribe and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get more from their copy and SEO.

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Mike Sigers February 27, 2010 at 10:48 am

Thanks for adding a little social proof Adrian!

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Monevator February 27, 2010 at 1:55 pm

I agree it improves how I think about SEO and makes it easy, and I have signed up for the full account on a monthly basis, which I intend to keep up for at least a few months.

It does make me feel good seeing the high ratings, but have you got evidence it *is* increasing Search traffic though — especially on the old posts? I mean beyond what perhaps refreshing an old post in any fashion (showing Google it has changed) might have done?

It’d be great to see a ‘before and after’ shot from Analytics or similar. :)

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Mike Sigers February 27, 2010 at 2:58 pm

I have my server logs, where I have AWStats installed. I can actually see how many visits to each post, versus how many have been to that post in every month since it was written.

I have no intention of showing you any of those stats, simply because it’s not worth my time, nor will it help you in any way.

Testing your own results, on your own blog, in your niche, with your content is the only thing that matters for you, not what I or anybody else shows ot tells you.

We’re each different and so is our old content.

Action, as in you taking some, is the only thing that’lll make a difference in your world.

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Monevator February 27, 2010 at 3:38 pm

Fair enough Mike.

I have been using it, and testing it on old content. So far I’m not seeing any noticeable uptick in traffic, hence why I was curious.

I’m no expert on though.

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Mike Sigers February 27, 2010 at 11:00 pm

Like I’ve said somewhere in this thread, every one of us is different.

Each niche is different. Our content is of differing qualities. Our sites are built a bit differently. etc, etc.

For instance, you’re in a niche that’s populated by the biggest of the big media icons.

Why would anyone trust your content over WSJ, Barron’s, CNBC or whoever?

They probably won’t. No knock on you, that’s human nature.

Yet you might make some slight noise if you were writing about one, specific part of that industry, instead of the entire industry.

You should start another site and be really, really, really specific topic wise.

Test the new against the old. I’ll bet you could quickly beat this site’s traffic numbers.

Second, git rid of that losers game called AdSense ads.

Either create products to sell or sell somebody else’s products, but don’t create content for nickles while everybody around you makes bank.

For a better take on that topic than I could ever take time to write, read this post by Dave Navarro:

http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/the-dark-side-of-blogging-when-free-gets-ugly

Even if you only create and sell $7 products, it gets you used to creating content that’s worth paying for and that’s far, far better than AdSense.

Specific content about one topic per site will always out-monetize a general industry site.

“How To Use Your Kids Milk Money To Pay For College In 3 Years Without Sacrificing His Health” will always beat “How To Save Money”.

Hope that helps.

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Marc Lyman March 4, 2010 at 4:48 pm

Hey Mike! Glad to see you’re happy with Scribe. I started playing around with Scribe myself right after it came out, and so far, I’m impressed. Since I work with several writers on my site, Scribe has been a great way to get them more in touch with SEO awareness when writing content. Plus the whole grading system creates a nice competitive motivation. Still too soon for me to say how it’s effecting traffic, but I’m hopeful it will be very beneficial. Be well, and keep up the great info!

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Mike Sigers March 4, 2010 at 9:03 pm

Thanks for joining in with your thoughts Marc!

Scribe’s been VERY beneficial for us and the cadre of sites we own and manage.

Personally, I wouldn’t be caught blogging without it ;-)

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ClaudiaV June 30, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Well whatever you’ve done you’ve gotten a lot of eyeballs and comments on this post.

I’m heading over to the affiliate site now after reading this glowing review.

Could be just what my company is looking for.

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Patrick K. O'Brien February 27, 2010 at 3:54 pm

My pleasure. :-)

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