It’s fairly easy to come across DIY stuff on the web. Things like the WordPress All-in-one SEO plugin, sites where you can develop your own personalized website for free, other places where you can upload and share files. Advertising makes it possible for just about everything to be free on the web … but is it as good as the version you pay for? Today we’re looking at the all-in-one SEO plugin from WordPress … comparing its capabilities to an actual SEO or web marketing firm.

SEO

WordPress SEO Pack screenshot

In the red corner, weighing in at 14 pounds … WordPress plugin!

The name might be accurate in a WordPress setting (for example, this plugin may have consolidated several other WordPress plugins into a single one), but calling it an all-in-one SEO pack, even in light of all the other DIY tools there are available out there, is a big leap! The plugin simply gives you a platform to enter your title, meta description and meta keywords. It’s useful for bloggers without HTML knowledge or editors, but is a tiny tool in reality.

Here’s what you can get other automated tools for in the web marketing field that the WordPress plugin doesn’t do:

  • Page index checker
  • Search engine rankings report
  • Link popularity checkers
  • Tools for suggesting keywords (although the quality is invariably dubious!)

In the blue corner, weighing in at several hundred pounds combined … your SEO team!

It’s easy to see which is going to win in this match up. In fact, I’m no longer sure if it was fair to compare them in the first place … sorry about that :-) . When it comes to the benefit of humans over automated tools, there’s just no fight. Instant knockout … go to the pub for the rest of the night! Humans can:

  • Determine keywords that are truly relevant to your business
  • Build links that are relevant as well as ones that check the boxes (Pagerank, followed, etc)
  • Actually write content! This is a big part of SEO, unfortunately the WordPress plugin can’t do this for you.
  • Test and assess what’s working in a campaign
  • Too many other things to list … get in touch with an SEO specialist!
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