Article Marketing Robot – Experiences & Review

Nov 29, 2011 by dodod

When I started to learn more about the world of article directories then of course first of all I have started to discover and submit to these directories with Allsubmitter. Soon I have realized that although Allsubmitter is a wonderful all-purpose submitter tool, I might be a good idea to try a specialized submission software, simply because when it comes to article directories there are a lot of peculiarities Allsubmitter is not that good at handling. For instance some article directories are using reCaptcha which cannot be properly handled by Allsubmitter, but even worse, there are a bunch of article directories where you are supposed to copy a number into the captcha field that is displayed next to the field itself: again a problem Allsubmitter cannot automagically solve. Same applies to random-generated passwords sent in e-mails after registration for instance

Specialized directory submitter

This is a situation where a software with a narrower focus can be helpful: an article directory submitter, and Article Marketing Robot is one of them. I don’t know exactly why have I opted for this piece of software (perhaps it was the cheapest with its $97 price tag or the downloadable demo version? ), but I can recall that having read through some web pages of these submitter tools, I was totally fed up with extremely long web pages with an endless sequence of testimonials, bold headings written with Impact typeface, words highlighted with yellow background, special prices just for now, just for you: all in all the worst onine marketing style which might be boring, annoying but almost never believable or convincing.

Complete solution for popular directory scripts

So finally I found myself playing around with Article Marketing Robot, which can basically submit to directories built with only a few popular scripts like Article Friendly, Article Dashboard, ArticleMS, Article Beach or WordPress. Unlike a general submission tool, AMR can handle seamlessly the whole submission process: it manages directories, directory lists and link building campaings, it offers an article writing and spinning tool, scheduled submissions automagically handling all the stages of registration, e-mail confirmation, article submission and even provides a reliable and detailed reports on the success of our article directory submission campaigns.

Problems with AMR

Unfortunately Article Marketing Robot has its serious shortcomings too:

First of all it is written in .net framework (or what) which makes the entire software crawl on older or weaker machines. As I previously used a netbook only for the sake of Windows-only SEO tools just like AMR, I had to buy a brand new laptop so that I will not have to wait for so long until the software refreshes the database lists I am actually using.
When I started to use Article Marketing Robot, it included about 10.000 URLs in its directory list which should have been called as a pile of garbage with some article directories scattered around. It contained items like IP addresses, duplicated entries and a lot of other addresses which obviously never seemed to be a possible URL for an article directory. While having a lot of irrelevant URLs in the directory list is not really an issue with a tool like this which is based on the brute-force send and forget method, it’s just somehow disappointing when you are supposed to have paid for a quality software. Since then a lot of sites have been axed by the developer, but unfortunately quite a few working ones have been also removed from that collection with this purging.
When I bought this submitter, the built-in captcha connection with captcha solving services was broken, so I spent quite a lot of time with solving captchas manually. This was good for getting some hands on experience, but again, it is not quite fair that you are supposed to install and use various beta versions as a workaround for a bug once you are to have paid for a stable software.
Some features appear for a certain version and sometimes these disappear or are changed in the next release: well, you might argue that this software genre in general is far from being mature, but it is also weird when you see some big changes and removed features when upgrading from one minor release to other.
Finally it might be a bit embarrassing that you cannot see what’s happening under the hood: why can’t you send an article to your own WordPress-powered article directory, how come that there are a lot of sites which are created apparently with one of the supported scripts but the software can’t just recognize and properly handle these directories, etc, etc.
Using this submitter, you are quite close to spamming: I mean you are signing up and sending out submissions to a lot of sites regardless of their niche topics or submission guidelines, without being able to easily and properly control which category would be the best pick for your article.

Advantages of using AMR

Although the list of advantages will be considerably shorther, the major selling point of purchasing a specialized article directory submitter even if you are using an other tool for directory submission like Allsubmitter is that everything is way much faster than doing it manually or with an all-purpose link submitter tool.

Summary

While Article Marketing Robot is far from being a polished and mature software, it is well thought out enough to save a lot of time when you want to deal with article marketing. Article directory owners might not be that happy when their directories are hit by thousands of submitters, but AMR proved to be a useful tool to improve your rankings in Google for niche keywords with deep linking – even for international, non-English sites. You can submit to somewhere close to thousand different article directories, but don’t expect much more valuable links at the end of the process than just a few hundred.

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digiXMAS – A Sophisticated PHPLD Directory Submitter

Apr 20, 2010 by dodod

digiXMAS Directory Submitter is a semi automated directory submission tool for PHP Link Directory powered directories. Upon registering on the digiXMAS web site (aff.), you will be able to download and install this tool on your Windows desktop (Unfortunately there is no Linux or Mac OS X version).

You can give a try to a full-featured free version, the only serious limitation is that you can submit your site to a limited number of low quality web directories (150 directories with PageRank 0). If you order credit for a web site, for $15 you will be able to submit your site to all the 2550 PHP LD powered link directories included in digiXMAS’ directory list.

The biggest advantage of this directory submitter tool is that since it handles only one directory script, a wide range of features are available to ease the submission process: the submission is quick, the appropriate category can be choosen autmatically, and a detailed report of the success of your link building campaign can be easily generated.

The biggest disadvantage also comes from the fact that this tool is specialized to handle only one type of directory script: digiXMAS’ directory list is quite “homogenous”: since the PHP Link Directory script is extremely popular, it is installed to a lot of cheap, parked domains with little to no customization, in many cases using not only the same skins but just a few type of topic hiearchies, accepting a lot of spammy submissions.

The user interface

The user interface consists of three panes:

one vertical pane shows the basic data of the web site you are actually submitting (you can enter more sites and change the actual site here).
the upper horizontal pane shows the directory list: it not only gives a quick overview of the directories, but also displays the status of your submissions:
- pending means you haven’t submitted your site,
- success means that you have sucessfully sent your submission
- listed means that your submission was accepted
- and there are three more obvious statuses: in progress, failed and bypassed.
the lower horizontal pane is a kind of log of the submission process displaying different messages about the submission process.

The directory submitter has two “modes”: the above screenshot shows the user interface of the semi-automated submission mode. I am not covering the other, manual submission mode here, because I don’t find it that useful. Similarly to the Omnibius — a directory submitter I blogged about earlier — this mode basically loads the entire web page, where you have to navigate to the submission form, enter the missing data which could not be automagically entered such as Captchas and finally administer the status of your submissions by hand.

The key user interface element of the other, much more useful semi-automated submission mode is the pop-up dialog box where you actually choose the appropriate category, solve Captchas and finally send your submissions:

This modal dialog pops up whenewer the tool managed to download the necessary data from the link directory in question. If you press OK, the submitter sends the necessary data, changes the status of the submission attrubuted to the given directory and pops up the next dialog boxes showing the data extracted from the subsequent directories.

One of the best features of this directory submitter is that — based on your initial input — it simply learns which categories would be the most appropriate for your site. Below the OK button you can see two arrows which let you navigate between the category suggestions the system picked for consideration, based on your previous choices. Fortunately these arrows have to be rarely used since in the majority of the cases the system can guess the best category. The another time consuming and annoying step of directory submissions — the CAPTCHA solving can be also automated using an external service of Decapther integrated to this tool.

With the semi-automated mode the submission for hundreds of directories can be done quickly without virtually knowing how those web directories look like: you will always see the same uniform interface: no fancy skins, templates, etc. you should get used to.

The data you send to the directories can be edited in a separate dialog which gives you access to more Title/Description variants which will be rotated randomly thus ensuring that your link submissions generate link networks closer to the “natural” ones.

The submission report

A nice submission check feature makes this directory submitter complete: if you issue the submission check command, the tool will crawl all directories and check whether your submission has been accepted or not. Based on the feedback collected from the listed directories, the system generates a detailed status report of your link building campaign. A sample report published in HTML format can be seen here: http://www.digixmas.com/sample_report_1.html

The directory list

As I already mentioned the directory list consists of English directories covering general topics powered by PHP Link Directory script. digiXMAS does not feature neither non-English directories nor niche or other speciality directories. At the time of writing the list had 2550 link directories with the following Page Rank values:

PageRank 6: 5
PageRank 5: 28
PageRank 4: 59
PageRank 3: 192
PageRank 2: 279
PageRank 1: 298
PageRank 0: 1689

As you can see there are only a few directories with good PR values: unfortunately many of them have not earned this reputation as a web directory since among the high PageRank directories there are lots of domain names which were used for other purposes previously, and their high PR values are indeed inherited.

As for the many PR zero directories, in case of the majority of the included directories this low PR value reflects their bad reputation, but on the other hand there are always many relatively new directories listed, which couldn’t geta a PR value, and are to gain better PageRank values later.

The directory list of digiXMAS was always up to date during the past months I used this tool: the vast majority of the included directories works, the directories have appropriate categories, and many of them actually accept your submissions.

Conclusion

All in all, digiXMAS is the most advanced web directory submitter I have ever seen. It’s a pity that it is a Windows-only and PHP Link Directory-only tool, but irrespectively of these limitations, this directory submission tool is worth giving a try. Athough it is not a free tool you will not regret to spend some bucks on it. This tool is not a secret weapon but if you use it appropriately, it can contribute to the success of your link building campaigns.

Some other complementary services and tools can be also accessed on digiXMAS home page (aff.): you can also get an article submitter here or different submission services can be ordered if you want to outsource the directory submission.

More details on best practices — how to effectively use this tool has been published in a separate post: see my review on digixmas

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Fastbacklink.de – A German directory submission tool

Apr 10, 2010 by dodod

Although this directory submitter is only available in German and its primary scope is to assist German-language link building campaigns, I think it’s worth introducing for the English speaking audience because it has some rather interesting features which I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Fastbacklink is a web based tool which provides access and a submission tool for more than four thousand German directories at the time of writing. More than 4000 means that virtually every German language directory is included. This directory submission tool has an unique concept: it not only lists those directories which can be handled with this tool — automatically filling out the submission forms — but other directories where due to the peculiarities of the directory no help can be provided by the tool so you have to fill out the submission form by hand.

As you can see the tool lists the contained directories with their PageRank values, a short description and some other basic features like paid/free/reciprocal submission options. The tool lets its users to assess and comment the listed directories also giving you a tool to administer the directories where you have already submitted your sites and those ones where your submission has been accepted. Where you can see the arrow icon with green background it means that the submission tool can handle that directory, so you can start submitting with this tool:

If the directory in question is powered by PHP Link Directory then the submission page will be loaded directly in an iframe with all the appropriate fields filled with the pre-defined data (The texts have been removed from theis screenshot though), so you don’t even have to visit the directory — all the submission process is managed on Fastbacklink’s interface.

If the directory you are about to submit your site to is powered by easyLink, popular German directory script, you can do the first step of the submission process using Fastbacklink’s interface to choose the appropriate category and submission type. Having completed this first step a new browser window will be opened taking you to the submission form with almost all the necessary fields filled in with the details you specified before.

Perhaps the best feature of this directory submitter tool is the random description generator — you can create many short phrases and the tool randomly combines different description texts based on your short sentences. Something similar can be done with titles you enter — although this feature proved to be less usable for me. In theory these random descriptions can help you to get links with properties which resemble natural link networks surrounding valuable sites, thus achieving better results from your directory submission campaigns, but also many German directories require that you submit unique content — using site descriptions which cannot be found elsewhere.

The interface for entering all the necessary domain data

This directory submitter can be used on a paid membership basis. For 40 euros you can build links for four different domains. The cost for additional domains is EUR 10 each, but there is a flatrate too and you can order some other additional services and features.

The quality of the directory list

The directory data is quite up-to-date, the listed directories generally are working, and they are listed with appropriate data such as the availability of free submissions.

The only problem is that you cannot really filter the directory list by topics. Since the majority of the directories are niche or regional directories (there are many German directories dealing with extremely narrow topics such as links about solar energy for instance), generally only a smaller part of the available directories can be used for a certain link building campaign, therefore you have to read through a huge list to figure out which directory could accept your link submission.

Summary

If you need to build links on the German language web this tool is a must since it not only provides an extensive list of directories where you can submit your site but also gives you a bunch of handy features which will help you to work faster. Since the overall value of German directories is somewhat perceived higher by search engines than its English counterparts, relying only on this tool can help you to get among the top rankings in Google.de, Google.ch or Google.at for keywords with moderate competition.

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Omnibius – A Spanish directory submitter

Mar 25, 2010 by dodod

Omnibius is a free directory submission tool developed by a Spanish developer. Although it has an English interface and some English directories too, this tool basically focuses on Spanish directories. You can register and download the necessary Firefox add-on at http://www.omnibius.com

The reason why we describe this link submitter in more detail is — apart from featuring a great list of Spanish directories — that this tool has some really unique features which cannot be seen elsewhere.

The directory submission interface

The Omnibius directory submitter tool is built on a rather interesting concept: while the basic info about the promoted web sites can be accessed and edited through a web interface, the whole link building process is assisted by a Firefox add-on displaying the necessary controls on a simlpe Firefox toolbar:

The first part of the toolbar controls all the basic functions like login/logout, a link to the Omnibius homepage and the directory filter where you can create a customised set of directories to submit your site to:

Having generated the desired list of web directories you can choose between your web sites previously added through the Omnibius web interface and also choose a set of Title / Description with the next elements of the toolbar. (Here “dodod” stands for the name of the web site while “A Blog about Directory Lists” is the Title I chose.). Clicking on the Title the magic will happen: if you happen to do this while visiting a directory submission form, chances are high that the fields will be automagically filled with the data you set before starting the link building process.

With the following icons you can kind of annotate the directories: whether you have submitted your site and also if you have found your link in the directory or not:

These icons —perhaps you will use them the most— serve for navigating through the directory list:

Whenever you click on the next button, the content of these field will be changed showing the name of the actual link directory, the Page Rank value and whether is it paid or requires reciprocal links. Simly clicking on the name of the directory, it will be loaded by your browser, so you can start finding the right category and then the “add URL” button too:

The last elements in this toolbar would facilitate the user feedback on the listed directories: you can see comments, vote, report inappropriate data about the directory or report if the site is not working or not a directory anymore.

As you can see this toolbar helps you to access a lot of handy functions but does not eat up much screen real estate. In my opinion this is the reason why technically speaking Omnibius is one of the best directory submission tools which can handle any directories not only directories powered by a specific directory script.

The web interface

Although not as nice as the UI of the Firefox add-on, the Omnibius web site where you can edit and access all the necessary info about your sites and the submission process is also packed with a lot of features:

The directory lists

At the time of writing Omnibius has more than 900 SEO-friendly directories listed. The two third of these directories are Spanish web directories. This is quite an usable list while the other lists of directories are rather outdated, so for an English link building campaign this tool is practically useless.

The system also tracks a whole lot of data about the listed directories: you can even see how some key parameters of a directory changed in the past such as Page Rank, number of external links, number of pages listed in search engines, etc.:

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Directory submission tools

Jan 3, 2010 by dodod

Perhaps the most comprehensive and most up-to-date directory lists can be found at different web directory submitters a.k.a. directory submission tools. The reason for that is being a part of a (many times paid) service it is the owners interest to keep the lists continously actualized. On the other hand many of these submitter tools allow users — who have ordered the submission tool or signed up for membership — to give feedback on the directories listed. Therefore if a directory is down or the submission is closed, the users can inform about these problems the owner of the submission tool with just clicking one button.

Directory submitters working with one directory script

If a directory submission tool can handle only those directories which are powered by a certain link directory script — for instance PHP Link Directory — it not only means that such a tool can be created with less efforts, but these type of directory submitters generally offer a more sophisticated user interface and better functions. On the other hand the directories listed in these specialized directory submitters tend to be less usable.

One good example for directory submission tools with usable directory lists is digiXMAS. Although this tool does not offer any public lists of directories, having paid for the service you will be able to access an impressive list of PHP Link Directory-based directories consisting of more than two thousand directories. The reason why this tool collects only those directories which are built with the most popular directory script is that digiXMAS can interact with PHP Link Directory Script. As for the quality of the digiXMAS directory list: perhaps the biggest problem is that many low-quality or better to say useless directories are also included given that the owner of this tool thinks that no external link can cause a penalty in ranking.

General directory submitter tools

Directory subbitters designed to handle virtually any directory — no matter wich directory script they are powered by — tend to be less usable simply because these tools can only handle the different directories on a more general level. While offering less help in speeding up the directory submission process, these tools let you access a wider range of directories — not only those which are powered by a popular directory script, but some other, generally more valuable link collections too.

Although a free directory submission tool cannot generate enough revenue to cover the costs of maintaining an extensive link directory list, there are some directory submission tools which have quite usable lists, for instance the Omnibius tool, which is a neat combination of a Firefox add-on and a web-based submission service for completely free (you can check out the directories on Omnibius’ homepage). Although the tool collects some English web directories — since the developer of this tool is a Spanish speaker —, this tool is the most usable for Spanish-language directory submissions. Unfortunately quite a few directories are defunct or has been transformed into a paid or reciprocal directory without these changes being reflected in the lists.

One of the most accurate and up-to-date directory lists I have ever seen is maintained by a German directory submission tool: Fastbacklink.de. This tool offers an awesome list of more than four thousand link directories, but the vast majority of these lists are German-language link collections, so this tool is usable only for those who build links on the German web. The biggest shortcoming of this directory list (and of course the tool itself) is that you cannot filter the directories by topics. Having listed hundreds of niche and regional directories the lack of proper categorisation wastes you a lot of time while using this submitter.

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Directory Submitters

Directory of Directories of Directories

Article Marketing Robot – Experiences & Review

Specialized directory submitter

Complete solution for popular directory scripts

Problems with AMR

Advantages of using AMR

Summary

Related Posts

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digiXMAS – A Sophisticated PHPLD Directory Submitter

The user interface

The submission report

The directory list

Conclusion

Related Posts

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Fastbacklink.de – A German directory submission tool

The quality of the directory list

Summary

Related Posts

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Omnibius – A Spanish directory submitter

The directory submission interface

The web interface

The directory lists

Related Posts

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Directory submission tools

Directory submitters working with one directory script

General directory submitter tools

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