I wasn’t expecting to spend a Thursday evening writing a review of some random SEO AI tool, but here we are! Life comes at you fast.
Especially when you’re bombarded by this ridiculous advertisement:
There are some notable claims in this company’s marketing material:
- “You no longer need to hire an SEO agency”
- “Don’t pay $2,000/mo for an SEO agency, do this for free” *
- “See how effective your SEO is”
- “Automatically write blogs and upload them”
- “No longer need to hire an agency to show up #1 on search”
*Please see my section below on SEO pricing
Additionally, this video on Youtube makes a strong pitch: their AI finds hundreds of “code edits” on your website, and implements them automatically. This is supposed to be helpful to folks who don’t know how to edit the code on their site.
All of these claims were wild to me. I already knew it was probably BS, but I dropped everything I was doing to try the product, write about it here, and hopefully save someone from spending money on Seona.
Does Seona Work? Can You Rank #1 on Google With Seona?
You will not rank #1 on Google in an even marginally competitive niche with Seona, and you will probably not rank at all. The claims Seona makes are ridiculous. But does it work at all?
Technically, it does implement changes on your website and suggest various search engine optimizations. I’ll dig into these below, and at the end of the blog, I’ll write about why you will not be able to win on Google with Seona. Also, I don’t recommend that you implement Seona’s recommendations, and you should absolutely not let it automatically apply changes (which is the default feature).
Seona Pricing and Installation: My Experience
Pricing
Seona starts at $49.00/mo. They also have a 7 day free trial, which rolls into an automatic $600.00 fee for the year if you forget to cancel the subscription. I DID remember to cancel my subscription, as soon as I finished writing this blog post. Whew.
Installing Seona on a Website
I picked one of my clients’ WordPress sites (a painting company in the Greater Atlanta area) as my test subject. Seona recommends that you install their plugin, activate it, then click “confirm” in your Seona dashboard. I followed these steps – and it did not work! I cleared the cache, and it still did not work.
The troubleshooting documentation suggested that I disable all plugins, except for the Seona plugin, so that nothing blocked the Seona plugin from working. Excuse me?! Just disable all plugins except for yours? No way.
So I found an option on Seona where you copy their javascript code snippet, and paste it into the header file of your WordPress site. I did this, and it worked.
Ironically, if you know how to do this, all of the complicated “code edits” the Seona recommends will no longer be useful to you, since you can quickly do it for free on your own.
You can also connect Seona automatically to Squarespace, Wix, and other CMS platforms without pasting in the code snippet, but I did not test them.
What SEO Recommendations Does Seona Make?
It Automatically Suggests, Writes and Publishes Blog Posts
One of Seona’s key selling points is that it automatically generates 5 blog topics for you, writes them, and publishes them on your website. As it turns out, Seona just hooks up to Chat GPT’s api. From what I can tell, Seona does not insert meaningful internal links to your service pages from the blog posts – which is one of the main benefits of having blog posts on many websites.
Just read this blog post that Seona was going to auto-publish for me!
Enhancing Your Home’s Exterior with Carpentry
Begin!
Adding carpentry projects to your home’s exterior can significantly improve its appearance and increase curb appeal. Here are five residential carpentry projects that can transform your home’s exterior:
– Seona AI Assistant’s Blog Post (Straight From Chat GPT)
- Deck Installation: A new deck can provide additional outdoor living space and enhance your home’s value.
- Fence Replacement: Upgrading your fence can improve privacy, security, and aesthetics.
- Garden Structure Construction: Building a pergola or a gazebo can create a cozy outdoor space for relaxation.
- Siding Replacement: Updating your home’s siding can give it a fresh look and better protection against the elements.
- Front Porch Revamp: Renovating your front porch can enhance your home’s welcoming feel and improve its overall charm.
Begin! This is bad. The content is terrible, it’s obviously Chat GPT, and it will embarrass you more than provide any kind of SEO benefit. Furthermore, the blogs are not targeting any queries with search volume or any degree of intent.
Remember, the recent Google algorithm update absolutely hammered many sites featuring numerous AI-generated blog posts.
Seona Makes Page Speed Recommendations
Seona has a dashboard where you can view pagespeed insights from Google. This is literally free in Google Search Console! Seona doesn’t even implement any tricky code changes that would help you score a 100% in pagespeed insights. This isn’t as much of a ranking factor as people seemed to think 2-3 years ago.
I didn’t spend much time on this section, since it’s a total waste of time.
Edits To Your Open Graph Code
Seona heavily emphasized edits to the website’s Open Graph code. This is not even a ranking factor or signal on Google search. OG is used by Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms to structure your content when you share on social media. There were no suggested improvements to the site’s schema markup, which actually is used in Google’s SERPs. And I know there is room for improvement on this client’s site as far as schema is concerned.
New Meta Titles and Descriptions
Seona recommended about 88 meta title and description changes. I inspected 40-50 of them. If I had let Seona auto-apply these changes, they would have categorically tanked my client’s rankings.
The meta title suggestions were bad. Seona literally removed keywords from my client’s title, prioritized the brand name first, and demoted the geographic modifier. These are all things that would hurt our rankings and leads
Meta descriptions aren’t a ranking factor anyways, but even so, the suggested meta descriptions would have hurt our click through rates. They were generic and removed keyword repetitions that would have been bolded in the SERP.
Here’s an example:
It tried to remove “Interior + Exterior,” which are very important in this particular title. It placed the brand name first and pushed the city location to the end, which also is not ideal in this situation (I have tested this).
There Are More SEO Recommendation in Seona as Well
By this point, I had seen enough. This tool is garbage, and it wasn’t worth spending more time on it.
When You Discontinue Seona SEO AI Assistant
You apparently lose all of the code edits when your subscription ends. So let’s say you paid $1,200 over the course of 2 years for Seona and used it as intended – when you decide to stop paying, it reverts the edits on your site. It essentially de-optimizes your website. This is a bad-faith move – if you get a professional to optimize your site, of course they are not going to log into your website and delete your meta titles, internal links and so forth.
You’d have to back up all of this information, then re-enter it yourself after discontinuing.
Reasons Why You Will Not Rank With Seona
Seona claims that you can rank #1 on Google with Seona alone. This is literally impossible in most categories. If you have a blog about something like opera or samurai armor or something else obscure, maybe you can get traffic, but even then, you won’t rank on Google at all with Seona’s garbage blog posts and tepid on-page optimizations.
Meta titles take SERP analysis, actual keyword research, strategy, and industry insight. Internal linking structure also takes a great deal of real strategy and human implementation.
And the biggest thing – backlinks! Your site needs backlinks to rank on Google in any moderately competitive industry. This is a huge topic that there isn’t room for in this blog.
Should You Pay an SEO Agency $2,000 Per Month?
Seona arbitrarily pulled that number out of a hat, so I wouldn’t worry about it. As a “solopreneur,” I have a bunch of clients paying me between $500/mo and $1,200/mo for SEO, and they all have different needs. Agencies have overhead, so minimums are sometimes higher. There are SEO agencies charging $2,000/mo, $6,000/mo and so on — some are overpriced, some aren’t!
Either way, “using Seona instead of an agency” is not an option. If you have a real business that relies on leads or sales from Google, you will be shooting yourself in the foot by using Seona.
About Me
Yes, I’m an SEO and Google Ads professional. I provide marketing services for music schools, contractors, a handful of B2B travel agencies, and a few other categories. I don’t think you should overpay for SEO or Google Ads services, and my fees are always extremely reasonable. As a result, it bothers me when a tool like Seona comes along, and the founders make ridiculous claims that will never in a million years work. You are literally throwing $600/yr away.
I’d be happy to chat about it, or speak with you about Google Ads, SEO or web development for your company. I will probably not recommend an instant SEO AI assistant.