SEO Zen Review – Will This Plugin Take Away all the Hard Work?

alex-beckerProduct: SEO Zen
Creator: Alex Becker
Price: initially $97 – $127, plus upsells
Website: seozenpro.com
Rank: 30/100

A Google search will bring up countless positive websites promoting SEO Zen, but is it really worth all the hype? It’s quite hard to find an honest SEO Zen review since everyone out there is just trying to sell you the program, regardless of whether it works or not.

What is SEO Zen?

SEO Zen is basically a WordPress plugin that allows you to simply input some information and it automatically creates a website for you in supposedly as little as 60 seconds (although it will probably take you a bit longer). It creates websites with auto generated “unique” content and builds the website in a silo structure, which will help them rank well in search engines.

Here’s a video by Alex Becker showing how the plugin works. It looks amazing, doesn’t it?

Just remember the old saying though, that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

 

Here is what the video does not tell you:

 

The “unique” content this creates is actually auto generated spun content, which is not actually unique

  • Using article spinners to spin content is a technique that is not used anymore by any respected online marketer – it creates content that is at the worst unreadable, and at best dull and boring (and still sounds strange) – remember when you are marketing online the goal is to get people to trust and buy from you. Nobody is going to trust content that seems like it was written by a machine!
  • You’d need to tweak the content quite a bit for it to be “good” – and with all that invested effort you could have just written your own article.
  • It’s also a dangerous game to play in the search engines – spun content is seen these days as a no-no and can get you punished by Google, is it really worth the risk? If you get caught your website can get slapped and no longer rank!

If you want the auto generated content, you have to purchase a costly upsell!

  • Yep, they want you to buy an article spinner in addition to the SEO Zen plugin itself, which is deceiving since you are not told you must make an additional purchase! The video really makes it seem like this is included in the software.
  • How much does it cost? You have three options – pay a $37 monthly fee, $197 for a year, or $497 for lifetime access! (That’s an expensive price to pay for bad content that will only end up hurting you!)

 

The high PR backlinks he demonstrates won’t do much to help you

He claims the plugin makes it easy to generate tons of backlinks on relevant high PR sites, but there are several issues with his claim –

  • For one, creating backlinks just for the sake of having backlinks isn’t important anymore when it comes to ranking and will do nothing to help.
  • The type of comment he posts in the video (his example, he just writes “good post” with a link back to his website) isn’t going to be approved by 99.9% of website moderators. I would never approve something like that on my sites because it’s obviously someone trying to game the system (which won’t work for them anyway) and it’s of no value.
  • GOOD “backlinks” are things like social shares on Facebook, Google +, Pinterest – things that actual people are sharing because the content is engaging and captures their interest – which most likely won’t happen if you are creating all your posts from auto-generated content.

 

Achieving a “silo” style website does not require an expensive plugin

seo-zen-pricing

I’m honestly not that familiar with the exact science behind a “silo” website, but from everything I’ve read about it, it sounds very similar to what would happen naturally when you follow any quality training on building out an authoritative niche website.

It’s true that you will rank better if you have lots of pages of similar content that relate to one another and are internally linked. However, if you use lots of pages of spun content it won’t do you many favors, especially in the long run. It’s best to use your OWN content, because then it will be truly unique and probably more reader friendly, which will benefit you more in terms of ranking, plus lead to better conversions.

 

The product’s “risk-free guarantee” is lying to you

Their 30 day money back guarantee is lying to you, as many people say they were told otherwise when requesting refunds, with receiving messages saying such things as, “We only grant refunds if the product has not been delivered” which is clearly not what this bold statement below seems to imply (it’s taken directly from their main webpage):

risk-free

 

 

Is the SEO Zen plugin of ANY use?

If you used the plugin with YOUR OWN written content, I could see how it could make some of the tasks of putting together a WordPress silo style site a little easier, but would that really be worth $127?

The real benefit of this plugin isn’t that it creates a “silo” site for you -you can easily do that on your own. The mass appeal is that it auto creates tons of content for you, so you never have to go through all the hard work of writing articles yourself. But as I’ve already discussed, in reality using such content won’t get you very far.

 

Any product that claims to create a fully functioning, content rich, rank-able website in 60 seconds is most certainly lying to you!

 

A little invested effort on your part is going to be necessary to make a website that is content rich and ranks in the search engines. Just remember, your own hard work will lead to better, longer lasting quality results that would never be achieved with a product like SEO Zen.

 

Want to learn how to create a quality niche website that ranks?

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Comments

  1. says

    This looks like a recipe for disaster. Spun content is so 2010. Google’s Panda and other updates put an end to these types of SEO practices. Better to invest the money on a good content writer.

    Thanks for shining some light on this SEO Zen thingamajig, Wendy.

    • Wendy says

      Yeah, I know, definitely not going to have a successful business if it’s one that is built on spun content! Good luck ranking (or keeping rankings) and connecting with your customers that way!

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