Brian Dean’s SEO That Works is a legit program and in this review, I’ll discuss the strategy that you learn about, something I have experience with.
Quick report on SEO That Works:
Creator: Brian Dean. This current review will talk about the 3.0 version.
Price: Currently it is not active and you can sign up to a waiting list. In fact, as of June 5th, 2019, I still see that it’s closed.
Overall Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.
From what I have seen/heard, the course is expensive, but the content and strategy is quite good. This is a recommended program, but one of the problems is that it’s currently unavailable (the other is the potential price).
While it’s good, and worth joining, if you’re not looking to wait, I’d recommend an even better SEO program that IS open and here it is:
What is SEO That Works 3.0 (also known as STW)?
It is a 4 module course on starting out in the world of ranking websites and gaining high rankings with them, but all through a specific white hat approach. From what I have read from various third party places (I am still waiting to join), the main idea is that you create a niche site and create extremely high value, long articles, then get them to be shared by high authority figures in your niche (people with a lot of traffic coming to their sites).
And this is a great SEO strategy in my experience, on all ends.
Then if they like it, they will share it with their followers, this will give you backlinks and you will get higher rankings and more traffic.
While this is the summary of the basic idea, there is a lot more within the members area, things such as explanations on how NOT to do backlinking (which is great because people don’t know the difference very often) and overall, the solid way to become successful in the business.
Now I did mention that I am waiting to try and get an inside look of SEO That Works.
This may dilute and inflate my review right now, and I totally understand that position, but I am not exactly your average joe when it comes to SEO, I am actually an expert on it myself (here is my $1 report on affiliate marketing, which mainly comes from doing SEO). I have blogs that get 20,000+ visits a month (and that’s considered good).
But in this business, there’s more ways than just mine to succeed and that’s why I was drawn to Brian’s course. From what I have read (and I’ve read many different blogs reviewing this), the course is very white hat oriented which is a relief for me personally because I know how dangerous the opposite side of that is (black hat).
Reading about Brian’s reputation in this field and seeing his advice gave me relief in knowing that once the course does get released, that it will be worth checking out for me.
In fact, I have to say, his strategy isn’t new. Allow me to explain:
A few years back, I had studied a course created by another successful expert in this field: Jon Morrow. He designed a course known as “Serious Bloggers Only” and the core strategy of it is closely related or even identical to STW 3.0.
Jon Morrow also has a good reputation in this field and when I read the background and what I’d be learning from Brian, I immediately remembered Jon’s course.
That is one of the reasons why I know it’s legitimate.
The other is that based on the other strategies I had read about, that being white hat marketing and GOOD backlinking tactics, I know that from my own personal experience works too and in fact it is the core strategy I personally use in my blogs to achieve success today.
In case you don’t know, white hat is a short term for ranking sites the legal and none penalizing way where you take the long road and create good content to grow your site (without relying on spam, bots, spinners, black hat backlinks, ect…).
Final Rating: SEO That Works
Green Flag
6 out of 10 stars. Yes it really does work, but as of right now, it’s closed. I’ll be in line to get into it when it opens up and will update this review if that happens.
My final thoughts: So there’s 2 things I really want you to know:
1) If you can’t wait for Brian’s course to open up, join Jon Morrow’s Serious Bloggers Only. You will find the info to be quite similar and workable.
Also it’s pretty cheap at around $50 a month. From what I have heard, Brian’s course isn’t as cheap, but I am holding off on that until I see the official price show up.
2) Now before you jump onto Jon’s course or Brian’s (when it opens up), let me tell you once again that I have a lot of experience with SEO and a lot of success with it. The course these guys provide is good and solid, but it’s not the only good one out there.
My personal success, which frankly I consider to be an easier and cheaper way to reach that same level is through a program called Wealthy Affiliate which is an SEO course as well, and it’s fundamentals are similar to Jon and Brian’s courses, but the differences are the following things (which make it superior):
Also one more important difference is that they stress how important it is to create high quality content as the key ingredient to succeed in SEO and that backlinks come as a result of doing that. I can tell you that this is true because I get more and more visitors with the more amount of content I create, but this also improves the share value of that content meaning more traffic comes in.
I’ve been approached MANY times (via email) by other bloggers asking me if I wanted to do guest posts with them or joint ventures (this is common when you have a successful blog) and again this was thanks to Wealthy Affiliate.
So overall, to finish up this review, I’d like to end it on saying that Brian has a great course and there’s huge demand for it. In this world of ranking websites we have right now, I know full well how hard it is to find good courses and in this review, you now have at least 3 to consider, with my personal pick being Wealthy Affiliate. I would also recommend that one for beginners.
Whichever one you choose, do understand that it WILL take a lot of work, a lot of writing and a lot of passion in that writing to reach success in this business. People cannot expect to write anything and get high rankings or shares these days, it has to be high quality and that also includes having the passion to write that way. All 3 courses will teach you to do this.
Hi there Vitaliy,
Gotta make a slight comment as to the price of SEO that works. I was absolutely dying to get in on it when it was available in February! Despite being a big fan of Brian Dean’s work, I gotta say I was pretty shocked at the price.
It is in my humble opinion, and I would love to hear yours, that SEO is getting easier and easier as Google and it’s AI is getting better and more intuitive. I source the latest two updates Mid may and April(ish) as examples. One being related to over optimization (keyword stuffing, using keyword too many times in H tags) and Google now liking the use of synonymous keywords and getting much better at identifying keyword synonyms.
The other update is more related to Google bot efficiency, like the use of tags that repeat or create a ghost copy of your article on your site, thus forcing the Google bot to crawl the same article several times..
Hi Derek, I honestly can’t say that SEO has gotten easier since I started it. What I can say is that it’s gotten more complex to understand for people who try to trick it, and less complex for people who use pragmatic approaches to succeeding with it. In terms of understanding, it’s easy, but in terms of succeeding with it, it’s hard to do all the work to get there. That’s the best way I can describe my personal take on it.
I used to be on the former side when I started in that I was trying to get quick, high rankings using any tool and trick I could find, but when my business crashed because of Google’s updates, I ended up becoming the latter type of businessman and started studying the pragmatic approach to SEO that I talked about in which I focused on great content production and targeting niche markets, all of which was taught to me via Wealthy Affiliate and it is still the main blueprint I use for SEO today, and it works perfectly fine.
I know that Google has been updating and doing new things but I have honestly stopped worrying about every single update they do. The blueprint I’ve been following has always adhered to the rules Google set, so the only people who need to worry about these changes are those people who seek to exploit holes in Google’s algorithm.
If nothing else, the 2 specific changes you mentioned regarding Google’s updates didn’t really surprise me…
First, the mention of Google seeking to devalue sites which try to over optimize makes perfect sense. I see a lot of make money online blogs which constantly and blatantly try to do this and it’s annoying for the reader (well from my point of as one that is…). I have always wondered if Google would do something about this. While a penalty is a bit much, making sites which do this not rank as high is a good equalizer.
Also what you mentioned regarding synonymous is great as this is basically another word for LSI keywords getting more appreciation, and it’s something I’ve talked about a lot and practiced on my own blogs.
And finally, the strategy of writing or making a ghost copy of a new blog post that you mentioned is new to me. All I know that is within that topic is having a blog roll as the homepage and that doing this helps Google spiders land on your homepage first, see the new content and crawl it faster.
However, since I don’t know the specifics of the strategy you mentioned, I can’t say much, but what I can tell you is that a blog which has good authority ranks quite quickly in Google. In my personal cases, I see new blog posts rank within an hour or a few, and if it’s with competitive keywords, usually on the 2nd or 3rd page, then work their way up to the first, while less competitive keywords usually hit the first page right away for me.
So overall, to me, like I’ve said, my main thing is following the blueprint laid out in Wealthy Affiliate. It’s consistently worked no matter what new changes have come to the SEO world. To me, it’s all about writing naturally and with high quality.
Excellent review. Thanks very much for sharing and as a Wealthy Affiliate member myself I couldn’t agree more that it is the cats meow of online training for SEO and many other things. I noticed you mentioned you are on the wait list. If the wait lists do get opened back up do you think it would still be worth checking out?
If the entry price isn’t so crazy, then yes, I would check it out, but ultimately, I know my go to program for success is Wealthy Affiliate and it being free to try is a major reason why I say everyone who enters online marketing or needs help succeeding should start there.