I recently read an old Blog Post about the subject of Linking Foot Prints and the damage they can cause if a Linking Campaign is not carried out correctly. The real reason for this is whether my inbuilt nagging suspicions that most Automated Link building Systems can actually cause more harm than good is justified or not. If anyone wants to find out more about Link Building Footprints and the upside / downside of these then take a glance at this post. It covers quite a lot about this particular subject, is not necessarily the definitive word on the subject but covers most of the basics of Link Building AND Spamming etc.
So back to my “Bete Noire” about Automated Link Building Systems.
The reason for this being that they are so automated (as the name suggests), almost everything is done for you that it is almost like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The real downside is that when you automate something, it necessarily creates a repetitive system and process to carry out this task and thereby hangs the problem, the very repetitiveness of the process itself. It is this repeated action, the repeated submission process, repeated analysis that causes the potential problem. It is all too easy to reverse engineer.
Now OK most folk would call me a complete conspiracy theorist here but all I can respectfully suggest to most readers here is that if I can come up with the logic of reverse engineering an automated Link Building Process then you can bet that Google, Yahoo/MSN et al with their seemingly endless budgets have whole teams dedicated to unwiring the latest attempts at automating a sneaky way to bypass their systems.
The answer to all of this? Programmable defects, programmable flaws or mistakes to replicate an organic Campaign. Take into consideration the Human element, the ability above all to screw up that makes the Human Race such loveable beings.
The reason behind my thinking in all of this stems from my experiences in another Industry that has also seen its fair share of Automation and “Electrification”, the Rock and Roll Industry. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s (yes folks I am that old) amongst the vanguard of new technologies taking the Industry by storm were programmable synthesizers and Drum Machines. Now these were all very fine but once you had programmed the machine and pressed the “start” button, off it went and delivered by and large what it was supposed to do, over and over…..and over……and over again almost “ad infinitum”. The trouble with all of this is that all the songs using these techniques started to sound the same, the beats and rhythms were the same and all became very boring until some bright spark (at Yamaha I think if I am correct) came up with the idea of replicating a real Human drummer and replicating the pitfalls that used to come along with them also. OK they left out the downsides in that at least a machine was less likely to sleep with your girlfriend but you get my drift? Basically the concept was (and is correct) that there wasn’t a drummer out there (and never has been) that kept perfect time in a piece of music from start to finish. There was the odd one that came close but never any one that got it totally spot on from start to finish and that was what made the music so real, it was this very human flaw that makes music so listenable and enjoyable. So to replicate this, Programmers now started to introduce the concept of the programmable unpredictable “flam” or grace note to break things up a bit and make machines sound a bit more like humans.
So how does this all tie up with my gripe with Automated Link building Systems? Well it is this constant repetition that gets my goat. It is not a case of repetitive excellence it is more a case of just plain old repetitiveness that makes it so easy to spot and do something about.
Come on guys and gals, if you are going to try and come up with latest and best thing in automated systems then come up with something that replicates the human ability to screw up and make your programmes look like the real thing and include mistakes to make them look like the Campaign was indeed carried out by Humans and not systems.
There, got that off my chest.
