My Scribe SEO review
There’s some real meat to this review of Scribe SEO (and even a cool video) further down, but let me give you a bit of background as to why I’m writing this first. Why? Well, before you know what something can do, I think it’s important to answer the question of “Why bother?”
So:
What you have to understand about this review of Scribe SEO — a software service that helps users SEO optimize their copy (and which works with Wordpress through a plugin) — is that I’m the same guy who wrote a post called “Screw SEO,” after which Michael Martine stalked me with nunchucks for dispairaging his craft.
And yet, when Brian Clark asked me to demo Scribe (a Copyblogger project), I thought it might be cool to give it a try. But it gets more ridiculous: Today, you can find me on the Scribe site, giving a shining testimonial. So given the aforementioned “Screw SEO” mentality, you’re probably wondering what gives.
Allow me to explain: I guess I don’t really think SEO sucks per se. It’s more that I feel it sucks conditionally.
For me, most of the time, SEO feels pointless because I blog about nothing that anyone would ever search for. When I wrote “Christmas is Gay,” for instance, I wrote it because the idea seemed funny to me, not because I expected people to Google “gay Christmas” and find that post.
(Note to self: Google “gay Christmas” and see what comes up. I’ll bet it’s interesting.)
But I’ll admit it… there are times I should probably be optimizing. I have a really good aWeber tutorial that would probably be earning me some business if people could find it in the search engines. And I suppose I’d get a few more clients if I optimized for the phrase “Wordpress blog setup,” maybe.
When people pointed this out to me — that SEO and compelling content worked together and that a few SEO tweaks would essentially help me get more mileage out of what I had already written and done — my reply was always that the effort wasn’t worth the reward.
In other words: I was doing fine as it was, so optimizing was too big of a pain in the ass to be worth whatever increase in business I might see from it.
In order for me to give a shit about SEO, one of two things was going to have to happen: Either the reward I could expect from optimizing was going to have to get more promising, or doing the work to optimize was going to have to become so stupidly easy that I’d basically trip over it.
So, to the punchline: The reason I like Scribe is that it makes SEO stupidly easy and obvious.
(I’m pitching the above to the Scribe folks as their slogan. I haven’t heard back yet.)
When you use Scribe as part of your workflow, it happens like this:
1. You write a post naturally, the way you normally would, using your normal writing voice to talk about the topic.
2. As you write, Scribe is staring at you in the corner of the “Write Post” window. From the get-go, it’s yelling at you if you’ve forgotten something obvious.
3. Once you’re done writing, you click a button to analyze the post. Scribe then tells you which keywords you’re already naturally optimized for.
4. You can then decide to roll with the keywords that are already primarily emphasized (and Scribe will tell you how to do that), or you can decide to emphasize different keywords (and Scribe will tell you how to do that, too).
It’s right in your face, which is what I needed in order to care about SEO. It also uses intuitive visual cues — like, if you’re doing things right, you see green stuff up there in the corner. If you’re not, you’ll see red stuff. If you’re so-so, you’ll see some yellow. I know, I know… you’re wondering if I really need it to be this simple. The answer is yes. If I’m to do it, then yes… it has to be this simple. And I’ve found that a lot of people are like me in that way.
But enough explanation… let me show you a little video of Scribe in action. (NOTE: If you’re reading this in a feed or on Facebook, you’ll probably need to click through to my site to see the video.)
(You can also click the button in the lower-right corner to play it full-screen)
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Now, Scribe isn’t a magic bullet. It won’t get you millions of visits simply because you’ve used it but done nothing else, and won’t do all of your work for you because it hasn’t developed Hal-from-2001-style evil artificial intelligence capabilities (yet). There’s still some stuff you’ll need to do on your own, to allow Scribe to do its thing for you with the best results.
So here are some things to keep in mind:
Keyword choice matters.
At some point, you’ll want to figure out which keywords are worth targeting. If you write a post about whale oil lamp efficiency, Scribe will help you get laser-focused on those words and you’ll likely rank #1 for “whale oil lamp efficiency” in no time. But chances are nobody is searching for that term, so it’s kind of pointless.
Links matter.
As described in the video, this post is partially an experiment to see how well I can rank for the phrase “Scribe SEO review.” Because incoming links help a post’s ranking, I’m going to try my damnedest to get Copyblogger to link to this review. If they do, having an incoming link to this post from a high-authority, highly-relevant site like CB is going to help me place better. The more links you get coming to whatever you’re trying to optimize (ideally from relevant, popular sites, using your desired keywords in the anchor text), the better the ranking.
The other principles of SEO matter.
If the above two points aren’t things that you already fully understand or if you know little else about SEO, I’m going to very strongly suggest picking up a copy of IttyBiz.com’s SEO School. SEO School is by far the most accessible, most no-bullshit / no-technobabble guide to SEO I’ve ever seen. You get SEO School and Scribe and I think you’re off to a fantastic start.
In fact, if you care about SEO and write or work in an area where search engine visitors matter (“wedding photographers in oregon”, “IKEA cabinet repair”, “Wordpress tips and tricks”) I’d go so far as to suggest a full starter pack that will take you from knowing virtually nothing to being pretty damn near as optimized as you can be given who and where you are. Pick up the following and you’re golden.
SEO School: To teach you the basics of SEO quickly and easily in a way anyone can understand and implement.
Scribe SEO: To allow you, in a very intuitive and natural way, to implement the copywriting part of what you learn from SEO School.
Thesis: Scribe was designed to work as a compliement to Copyblogger’s most visible product — the Thesis theme for Wordpress. Thesis is widely regarded as perhaps the best out-of-the-box-SEO-friendly Wordpress theme currently in existence, and contains all of the code machinery that Scribe uses to work optimally.
(Note: Thesis is not required to use Scribe. You can also use Headway (which I also really like), and you can use any other theme if you install the All-in-One SEO plugin.)
The three-pack I’ve recommended above won’t magically make your site a magnet for whatever terms you want to target, but it will give you a hell of a lot better shot at it than if you just kind of dick around and don’t really have any idea what you’re doing.
For many niches, search engine traffic is EVERYTHING. If that’s you, and you’re either just starting out or if you haven’t been optimizing, invest a few bucks and pick this stuff up. Even all three together are hell of a lot less expensive than an SEO consultant, and you’ll likely be paid back quickly in new profits if you do things right.
Look, I’m going to be blunt here. Do I suddenly care all about SEO, and am I going to start optimizing everything I write? No, absolutely not. I still don’t give a shit 90% of the time because I don’t write often about stuff that is all that optimizable (like Christmas being gay). But sometimes I’ll do a tutuorial. Or I’ll create a service, or a product. And those will be things I really probably should at least try to optimize.
And now, with Scribe, I can do that without hassle, and absolutely will. So yeah, my definitive word is that if you’re like me, you should get it.
How to add plugins and themes to a Wordpress site or blog
So you want to install some stuff on your blog, right? Some cool stuff? Well, there are two main kinds of cool things to install on your blog (or, for that matter, on your $100 website, if I built one of those for you — they’re proving to be really popular, don’t you know). Those cool things are themes and plugins.
Let’s start with plug-ins.
Plugins are so badass. If you want your blog to do just about anything (give a list of related posts following each post you make, add a contact form to your contact page, shave sheep), chances are there is a plugin that will make doing it super, ridiculously, retardedly easy for you.
Starting with Wordpress 2.7, the kind folks at Wordpress (which is the software that runs your website or blog if you’re awesome (and if you’re on Blogger or something else instead, you should totally migrate to Wordpress)) have finally made adding plugins very easy.
Here’s how you do it:
1. Log in to your blog’s admin console.
2. On the left, click “Plugins,” then “Add New” under that.
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3. Enter a term into the search box that describes what you want. So for instance, if I wanted to add a contact form, enter “contact form.”
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4. A list of plugins will come up. Choose one, and click on “Install” at the right.
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5. Now, click “Install now.”
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6. After that, you’ll want to activate the plugin by clicking “Activate Plugin.”
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Congratulations! You’ve added a plugin. Way easy, huh?
Themes
Your blog or website’s “theme” determines, in a nutshell, what the blog or site looks like. Change your theme and you totally change the look of the site. Again, thinking like the awesome people that they are, the Wordpress development team finally added easy-install theme functionality when they rolled out Wordpress version 2.8, similar to what they already had for plug-ins.
Here’s how you install a new theme.
1. Find a theme.
Now, disclaimer here… this quick install only works for themes that exist in the Wordpress Themes Directory. The bad news is that a lot of people develop themes that aren’t in the directory, and if you want to install those, you’ll still need to use FTP (which is kind of geeky). But the good news is that there are a hell of a lot of themes in the directory. Like, most of them are in there.
So go to the directory, browse through the themes, poke around, and find one you want to use. DON’T DOWNLOAD IT. Just note that theme’s name.
So for instance, I’m going to use iNove.
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2. Go to your blog’s admin console and on the left, click “Appearance” on the left, and then “Add new themes” under that.
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3. Enter the name of the theme you want in the search box.
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4. When your theme comes up, click “Install.”
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5. This little lightbox display will come up. Click “Install Now.”
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6. Now, just activate the theme by clicking on “Activate.”
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7. Now go to your blog’s main page and refresh. Voila!
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Congratulations. You are now a tech geek. Please form an orderly line at the left to receive your pocket protectors, taped-up glasses, and punch in the gut by the high school quarterback.
P.S: But what if you’re on a version of Wordpress below 2.7 and don’t have these options available to you? Well, fortunately, I have a solution for you.
Wordpress in general is cool, but here’s why versions 2.7 and especially 2.8 are particularly badass
The title says it all. But if you’re on a version 2.6 or earlier and would like to upgrade and be 1) more secure, 2) more stable, and 3) able to easily upload your own new themes and plug-ins, I’d be happy to do it for you.
