UPDATE 12/6/2011
WP SEO Automation began selling with resale rights about a week ago, so you’re now seeing many people selling it for $10. When resale or PLR rights are offered to a software product, that’s usually an indication the product creator is unlikely to continue to update and support it. That may not be the case with this plugin, but just be aware.
As for me, I got a refund because I doubt it will be supported, so there’s no use keeping it to update this post in the event future updates are released. If I hear they are, well, then I’ll buy it again for 10 bucks.
WP SEO Automation was recently introduced on the Warrior Forum, and is now being sold on Clickbank. Supposedly it was created because other on-page SEO plugins are “too complicated” and filled with “useless functions.”
As the name implies, it purports to “automate” on-page SEO tasks, but that’s a stretch. The things it automates that Easy WP SEO and other plugins don’t are of only marginal value, in my opinion.
WP SEO Automation is not, in my mind, a serious player in the on-page SEO plugin arena. I promote only Easy WP SEO because I sincerely believe it’s far and away the best there is. But you’d probably be better off using any other plugin mentioned on this site than WP SEO Automation.
Features
Since other on-page SEO plugins are deemed “too complicated,” it’s no surprise that the feature set of WP SEO Automation is very limited. A features comparison between it and Easy WP SEO is shown in the table below.
WP SEO Automation is really not an SEO analysis plugin, though I’m using the same analysis-related terms in the table as in previous posts for the sake of consistency. The only thing it analyzes (or, at least, calculates) is keyword density, though it just displays it and does not offer any guidance as to whether it’s in an appropriate range.
Easy WP SEO vs WP SEO Automation
| Easy WP SEO | WP SEO Automation | |
| On-page factors analyzed | 23 | 9 |
| Keyword density | ||
| Keyword in title tag | ||
| Keyword in heading tags | ||
| Keyword in URL | ||
| Keyword in meta tags | ||
| Keyword decoration | ||
| Keyword in image ALT tags | ||
| Keyword near beginning of post | ||
| Keyword near end of post | ||
| Adequate content length | ||
| Visual SEO Checklist | ||
| Automatic image ALT tag keyword insertion | ||
| Automatic keyword decoration | ||
| Decoration method (admin or client side) | user selectable | admin only |
| Keyword density adjusted for word length of key phrases | ||
| Analysis of entire HTML document | ||
| Analysis of multiple keywords | ||
| LSI keywords function | ||
| Readability analysis | ||
| Drag and drop internal links into post content | ||
| Drag and drop images from media library | ||
| Video tutorials and help | ||
| User-selectable SEO factors | ||
| Copyscape integration | ||
| Analyzes content other than posts/pages | ||
| Membership plugin support | ||
| Import/export plugin settings | ||
| Detailed SEO reports | ||
| Price (multi-site license) | $37 | $27 |
What WP SEO Automation Has That Easy WP SEO Doesn’t
Automation of H1 and H2 Tags
WP SEO Automation will automatically put your target keyword in H1 and H2 tags and add them to the post.
The question is, would you really want it to?
As you can see from this screenshot, your keyword is mindlessly displayed in H1 tags at the top of the post, and in H2 tags at the end.
To me, that looks anything but natural.
It seems likely that you’d want to at least put your keyword in some kind of useful context, like a meaningful phrase or sentence, rather than having it just hanging out naked at the beginning and end of your post. In that case, you’re going to have to do some editing, which pretty much throws “automation” out the window.
Furthermore, the vast majority of WordPress themes already enclose post titles in H1 tags, which makes putting your keyword into H1 tags unnecessary.
That is, as long as you put your keyword in the post title.
You DO put your keywords in your post titles, don’t you??
Automation of Internal Links
WP SEO Automation puts a self-referencing link with your keyword as anchor text to the post itself. This has some SEO value, and is one of the SEO factors that Easy WP SEO takes into account. But if there is already a “Recent Posts” type widget in your sidebar, like with most blogs, then this is redundant.
By the way, if you do have a “Recent Posts” widget, Easy WP SEO will see those links automatically, since it analyzes the entire HTML document. There’s no need to put a self-referencing link in your post.
WP SEO Automation also inserts a link to your site’s home page with the target keyword of the post as anchor text.
I don’t see the value in this at all. In fact, to my knowledge this could actually damage the ranking of your main page.
Yes, it’s a good idea to link back to your home page, as long the anchor text of those links contains your site’s main keyword for which you’re trying to get the home page to rank.
But, it’s likely that every post on a site is going to target different keywords. What good does it do to keep linking to your main page with a bunch of different keywords? It’s like telling Google you want the home page to rank for a multitude of different terms.
You shouldn’t be trying to rank your home page for anything but your site’s main keyword, except for perhaps one or two other closely-related terms.
Incidentally, the post link inserted by WP SEO Automation does not use the permalink structure set up on the blog while the post is in draft mode.
As you can see in the image (click to enlarge), the link to the post uses the default “?p=xxx” link to the page instead of the %postname% permalink I’d specified in the WordPress settings.
The correct permalink IS used if the post is already published. So if you’re going to use this feature, you’ll have to publish your post first, THEN use WP SEO Automation on it.
Myself, I prefer to get my posts optimized before publishing them.
Other Automations
WP SEO Automation will automatically decorate your keyword (bold, italics and underline) and put it in image ALT tags. Nothing special here, as Easy WP SEO and every other plugin reviewed on this site (except ClickBump SEO!) does the same thing.
WP SEO Automation: The Good
Keyword Density
I’ve harped on this site before about the importance of accurately determining keyword density when keyword phrases of multiple words are used. I’ve looked at the code of WP SEO Automation, and it DOES take the word length of key phrases into account when the density is determined. So I give it props for that. Easy WP SEO and BloggerHigh are the only other plugins that do that.
Configurability
WP SEO Automation lets you choose which optimizations to perform, which is a good thing. So if your theme encloses post and page titles with H1 tags, and you have your keywords in the titles, then you can shut off automatically adding keywords in H1′s.
WP SEO Automation: The Bad
No Analysis
As I said before, this plugin is not an SEO analysis plugin. It performs no assessment of your posts and pages at all, like Easy WP SEO and every other on-page SEO plugin does.
If you don’t want any SEO guidance, that’s fine, this one offers none. But given the popularity of Easy WP SEO, SEOPressor and the rest, it seems clear most WordPress site owners prefer using a plugin that gives some indication of how well they’ve optimized their content.
Having an SEO score is nice, unless you find that SEO percentage “confusing” or somehow frightening. :o
Missing SEO Factors
WP SEO Automation doesn’t take into account some important on-page SEO factors. The most notable one is having your keyword in the post or page title. This is one of THE most important on-page SEO elements, and this plugin ignores it completely.
Others include having your keyword in the meta description, permalink, and near the beginning and ending of your post. Though I suppose the last two are covered if you let the plugin plop your keyword in H1 and H2 tags as discussed previously.
When this plugin was sold as a WSO, the headline read, “Automatic On Page SEO! Massive Google Rankings With 1 Click!” The implication appears to be that if you just let WP SEO Automation do it’s thing, your post is going to get high rankings. Even if your post is missing key on-page factors and is only 200 words of thin content??
I don’t think so.
WP SEO Automation Falls Short in the Automation Department
If you have existing sites with lots of post, you’re going to have to go into each and every post individually and click the WP SEO Automation’s “Apply Changes” button. How is that automation?
With Easy WP SEO, you can apply keyword decorations and other optimizations across your entire site from one central location.
Easy WP SEO Is The Superior Plugin
Easy WP SEO has far more features, analyzes your content and optimizes it more thoroughly. Yeah, it costs $10 more (or $27 more, now that it’s a reseller product), but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
So if you’re serious about getting higher search engine rankings for you WordPress posts, you owe it to yourself to use the best plugin in it’s class.
Buy Easy WP SEO today, and you’ll also get access to my Easy WP SEO bonus package!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for the great article. I was going to buy the auto program but now i’m going to buy Easy WP SEO. cheers
Thank you for a great article. I got an email offering WP SEO Automation for $10 so immediately googled for a review and found you on page #1.
As a relative newbie with no SEO or webmaster skills to speak of I found this very helpful. Not so much for the comparison of the two products but rather for your explanation of ‘onpage’ SEO in words I could actually understand.
With new pages/posts my strategy is to have:
a) one link to home page (preferably in 1st paragraph)
b) one or two links to (my own) topic related posts
c) one or two links to authority sites (eg: wikipedia, WebMD)
Do I need to do more than that? More importantly would it be prudent to trust a plugin to do any of this?
One other concern I had which you didn’t mention was linking between my own sites that are hosted on same IP. I’ve been told this is bad for SEO, however, my doing it had nothing to do with SEO but more for visitor experience and duplicate content avoidance.
If you could point me to other articles that might clarify my thinking on these issues that would be awesome.
Yes, WP SEO Automation started selling with resale rights the other day. There will be a number of people selling it for cheap.
Your linking strategy sounds good, though 1 outbound authority link is enough. I don’t think there’s any advantage to having more. I don’t think having links between sites on the same IP will hurt, it just won’t help. But you’re not doing it for SEO anyway.
Personally, I wouldn’t hand off my internal linking to a plugin. I prefer my content be and appear completely natural. I don’t know if a plugin can pull that off, but I’ve never tried any of them.