SEOpressor and the Scribe plugins? Forget about it! Here’s the thing, there are people with a certain mindset that like a To Do list – and yes, I’m one of them!

But why would I pay somebody to write my To Do list for me? Writing the list is half the fun!

First let’s be clear! As far as I’m concerned Daniel Tan’s SEOpressor plugin for WordPress is very similar to the Scribe WordPress SEO plugin by Brian Clarke of CopyBlogger – a heavy hitter in the Pro Blogger community.

The difference is purely in the details and the payment options as far as I can see and that Scribe integrates with popular SEO plugins like All-In-One-SEO for WordPress ( which unlike these 2 is both free and ‘must have!).

As I recall Scribe is a monthly payment  between $17 and  $97 per month depending on number of sites and posts ( I signed up and let it lapse once I realized it wasn’t for me) and SEOpressor is a one site or multi-site option one time payment.

SEOpressor is a heck of a lot cheaper at $37 for one site – I think the unlimited site license is an extra $47 (I didn’t get it!)

I like to ‘tick’ boxes as much as the next person when I’ve done something and enjoy seeing any ‘To Do’ list get smaller as a result and that’s where these two (separate) plugins can seem appealing to an anally retentive person such as I.  ( BTW I’ve never really understood that ‘anally retentive’ phrase – it should mean constipated if taken literally shouldn’t it?)

Essentially what these plugins do is analyze your posts ( retrospectively too once either one is installed) and then, depending on what ‘search term’ you are suggesting the post is optimized for gives you a percentage mark on how well you’ve done so far and suggestions how to improve.

This can become addictive – can I get a 60% to an 80% approval rate up to an 85%? Is 100% achievable?

And THIS is when the  SEOpressor and Scribe plugins becomes a bit silly, if you let them!

Bloggers like me will spend valuable time trying to boost their ‘score’ on individual posts rather than just adding new content!

Now the argument is that this is worth doing because, after all, they are only telling you what Google wants to see in a post to rank your new post higher and, OK, that kind of makes sense right?

The ‘recommendations’ each suggest in your dashboard are probably different enough to avoid lawsuits but to me it’s like packets of pre-grated Parmesan versus pre-grated Gran Pardino – both tasty italian cheeses that add flavor when liberally sprinkled over a bowl of pasta, but not much difference taste-wise when bought pre-grated…

Personally I prefer to grate my own fresh parmesan and avoid the packaged stuff!

In other words I prefer to optimize my posts via good on site SEO myself and not rely on generic, one size fits all, SEO advice aimed at the mass market.

I’ve already had 2 emails heavily promoting the SEOpressor plugin arrive in my Inbox today telling me that it’s a ‘must have‘, ‘mandatory‘ bit of kit!  It’s already very popular on Clickbank it seems with a ‘gravity’ of 190 ( which means it’s selling well).

Here’s a little video of my SEOpressor walk-thru ( yes folks I actually DO try these things out for you!). Enlarge video for full screen lusciousness via the icon in the player toolbar.

In my view you need to be able to write a blog post and automatically know, second nature as it were, what you need to do to make it Search Engine friendly – IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!

SEOpressor versus Scribe WordPress plugins…

PS: In spite of my  heavy duty SEO of my using that H1 tag above I do realize that this post is unlikely to rank high in Google, let’s say for the search term “seopressor versus scribe wordpress plugin” and I’m not aiming for that but it will be interesting to come back to in a couple of months to see.

PPS: Do you find it refreshing to read a review suggesting that you do NOT buy something?

Addendum June/2011

OOH,OOH! WAIT! I take that back!

Jason and Will have just brought out a very funky plugin that does the same as SEOPressor ( morein my opinion in that you can set your own parameters for the SEO you wish to obtain! Rather than accepting somebody else’s ‘rules’). It’s about a quarter of the price of SEOPressor! Thank you VERY much!

Find out more about Jason’s cheap plugin that’s better than the expensive ones HERE!