SEO Content Machine vs. Article Forge Comparison
| Tool | Content Quality (out of 5) | Uniqueness | How is Content Created? | Topic Coverage | Speed (words per second) | User Experience (out of 5) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Article Forge | 3.09 | 100% | AI/Deep Learning Models | 100% | 5.84 | 5 | $57/mo - unlimited articles |
| 2. SEO Content Machine | 1.56 | 0% | Scraping & Spinning | 68.5% | 3.20 | 1.5 | $27/mo - unlimited articles |
Introduction
We wanted to find the best automated article generator so we ran a series of data-backed tests on the top five tools in the industry. You can find that post here.
That post got quite long and we weren’t able to go into as much detail as we wanted. So we did a direct comparison between Article Forge and SEO Content Machine to determine the differences between the tools.
How we set up the tests
First, we generated our dataset of articles using a list of 54 pre-selected keywords. We made sure that list covered a variety of topics and niches while also ranging from short tail to long tail topics.
The tests and analyses we ran cover the following seven categories: overall content quality, uniqueness, how the tools create content, speed, user experience, topic coverage, and price. Below are the results of each of the tests.
Content Quality
Justifying the use of an automated content creation tool depends heavily on the quality of the output. But, it takes more than just reading a few sample articles to get an overall understanding of the quality a tool will produce. So, to do that, we ran two studies using Mechanical Turk and the SEO Content Machine and Article Forge articles.
In the first study, participants rated articles from 1 to 5 based on the following criteria: relevance, flow, readability, syntax, factual accuracy, cohesiveness etc. Participants gave Article Forge articles an average rating of 3.09/5 while giving SEO Content Machine articles an average of 1.56/5. From our testing, an average rating above 3.5 would not need any edits, while an average rating between 3 and 3.5 would likely need a few edits before use. Further, an average score between 2 and 3 indicates that the articles would require major revisions before they would be usable, while anything below a score of 2.0 is unusable.
For the second study, participants were asked to compare two articles about a given keyword (based on the same factors as the first study) and decide which article was higher quality. In the side by side comparison, participants preferred Article Forge 375.3% over SEO Content Machine.
Uniqueness
Since the Panda update back in 2011, Google has been targeting duplicate content and its algorithms are only getting more thorough. So, it is more important than ever to make sure your content (wherever you get it) does not contain any duplicate content.
We tested for duplicate content using CopyScape, and every single Article Forge article came back completely unique. Unfortunately, SEO Content Machine came back with duplicate content in every article…
To further illustrate the amount of duplicate content found in SEO Content Machine’s articles, we broke down the number of plagiarized articles found in each SEO Content Machine article:
For reference, Article Forge had no plagiarized content.
How the articles are made
After seeing the huge difference in uniqueness between Article Forge and SEO Content Machine, we needed to know why that was the case. The reasoning is pretty simple: SEO Content Machine uses the “scraping and spinning” method while Article Forge uses deep learning (AI) models.
SEO Content Machine does not try to hide the fact that they are scraping and spinning content. The tool includes a URL finder that they claim can “Query Google to find up to the top 300 ranking pages” for any keyword. They also have a writing assistant that “Finds 100s of topic relevant sentences for your next article”. These two facts stated on their homepage plus the complete lack of unique articles make it clear that SEO Content Machine is using the scraping and spinning method. Unfortunately, Google has openly stated that scraped content will not help rankings so using SEO Content Machine would not be useful.
On the other hand, it is clear that Article Forge is not scraping and spinning content. Instead, Article Forge is using deep learning artificial intelligence to write content automatically. First of all, their content has no duplicate content, ever. Beyond that, the articles read and flow naturally (unlike the abrupt transitions that often exist when a tool is scraping and spinning content), and were rated the highest by the quality study participants.
Topic coverage (can it write about any niche)
While finding a content generator that can create high quality and unique content is extremely important, that really only matters if it can write about your keywords. To test topic coverage, we first calculated the percentage of articles created compared to keywords provided.
Article Forge generated articles 100% of keywords provided and SEO Content Machine created articles for 98.1% of keywords (all but one).
We then ran a second test to determine the percentage of articles that actually contained the given keyword.
100% of the time, Article Forge articles contained the given keyword. SEO Content Machine articles, on the other hand, only contained the keyword 69.8% of the time.
When combining the results of the above calculation, you can expect Article Forge to be able to write about your topic 100% of the time while you can only expect SEO Content Machine to be able to write about your topic 68.52% of the time.
Speed
We calculated speed by timing the content creation process from entering the keyword to receiving the resulting article. Because SEO Content Machine is a desktop application, the initial setup time is much longer than Article Forge (a web-based tool) but we did not factor in that time because that is a one time cost.
In addition, both content tools have bulk article creators so we could have generated all the articles at once with each tool. However, we decided to time the process for individual articles to make sure we had a base speed.
Article Forge gives you the option to choose your article’s length so we chose the longest setting to judge the maximum article creation times. The Article Forge process took an average of 2 minutes 2 seconds while the SEO Content Machine process took an average of 3 minutes and 29 seconds per article.
Over a minute and a half is a large difference, so we broke the calculation down into words per second to make sure article length was not creating a biased answer. On average, Article Forge writes at a rate of 5.84 words per second while SEO Content Machine writes an average of 3.20 words per second.
From these calculations, we can see that Article Forge writes longer articles, faster.
User experience/ease of use of the tool
Article Forge has a much more seamless user experience than SEO Content Machine for the following reasons:
- Article Forge is web-based so there is no setup time
- SEO Content Machine is a desktop application with a lengthy installation process
- All you need to do to use Article Forge is enter your keyword(s) and click “Create New Article”
- SEO Content Machine requires you to set up and use “Captcha Credits” before you can even begin to create articles.
Both tools do include:
- Controls that allow you to customize your article creation process (including article length, and add titles, images, videos and even links automatically).
- A bulk article generator which allows you to create multiple articles at a time.
- API access so that you can add content creation to any of your SEO pipelines.
- Foreign language generators so you can create content in languages besides English
Price
Both tools offer monthly and yearly subscription options and both include unlimited articles per month.
SEO Content Machine’s $27/month plan is less than half the cost of Article Forge‘s $57/month plan and their $120/year plan is just over a third of the cost of Article Forge’s $324/year plan.
Overall grade and takeaways
| Tool | Content Quality (out of 5) | Uniqueness | How is Content Created? | Topic Coverage | Speed (words per second) | User Experience (out of 5) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Article Forge | 3.09 | 100% | AI/Deep Learning Models | 100% | 5.84 | 5 | $57/mo - unlimited articles |
| 2. SEO Content Machine | 1.56 | 0% | Scraping & Spinning | 68.5% | 3.20 | 1.5 | $27/mo - unlimited articles |
If you are looking for a tool that can help you create unique, high quality content that can rank, we recommend Article Forge.
While SEO Content Machine is cheaper than Article Forge, their content is very low quality (1.56/5), not unique (every article contained plagiarized content) and does not cover all keyword topics (covers 68.52% of topics). This is likely due to the fact that Article Forge uses artificial intelligence to write articles while SEO Content Machine is simply scraping content from other sources and patching it together.
SEO Content Machine also requires a lot more manual effort to download, set up, and run than Article Forge, which has an extremely intuitive web-based interface that creates articles in a little over half the time. All in all, Article Forge is charging a premium over SEO Content Machine but its performance in the above seven categories is more than enough justification for the price tag.
