AutomatedLinksOnTap.com Review
Overview
Effective, affordable and automated SEO is really the ‘Holy Grail’ for online marketers and online businesses. The fact is that we know this very intimately because just a couple of years ago we were just getting starting on all of this ourselves. That is exactly what led us to create AutomatedLinksOnTap.com in the first quarter of last year.
While we know that it is a bit odd to be “reviewing” our own product, we feel that it is important that we give you a thorough review of the Automated Links On Tap product just as we do any other product. Will there be some degree of bias? Sure, that’s inevitable, but we read on because I believe you’ll see very objective analysis of the product and as its creators we can surely provide you with insight into what it does and why better than any other.
The Automated Links On Tap product is fundamentally different than any other linkbuilding system or tool reviewed on this site. It is crucial that you understand this subtle but very important distinction. AutomatedLinksOnTap.com provides a full service SEO campaign for your site and is designed to be a complete package. Most tools and services provide only a single type of links – they specialize in one. The AutomatedLinksOnTap.com service, however, combines various types of links and content in order to provide a full spectrum campaign that is meant to be free standing without the need for other tools, subscriptions or services.
So, for example, while a typical linkbuilding network provides high PR blog posts, that’s all it does. As good as it is, if you only use it and nothing more, after a while it will leave a footprint on your site because the only type of link you will be acquiring is high PR blog post links.
Likewise, a great article submission network like Traffic Kaboom is also very effective at its core competency of getting you lots of low quality contextual backlinks from lots of different domains. It does that very well. But once again, if that is all you use, after about three months you’ll likely see your site rankings take a dive. This is NOT a fault of Traffic Kaboom – it is one of the best article submission networks out there right now and comes with our highest recommendation (we use it every day). But the problem is that it only provides one type of link and if it’s the only tool you’re using, well, it’s going to leave a footprint on your site.
Mixing It Up – Keeping it Natural
We talk a lot about the need to “mix up” your linkbuilding and SEO for your site. The fact is that you need to have a wide variety of link types in order to keep your site looking natural in its linkbuilding profile. If you think about this for a minute, it makes perfect sense. You don’t need to overcomplicate this – it’s really just common sense.
It’s simply not natural for a site to only have high PR blog post links or only have social media links and nothing else. You see a site that has no SEO being performed on it will naturally acquire a wide variety of different links – from blogs, from directories, from high PR sites, real blog comments, a ton of low PR and low quality site links, some press release links, some social media links and many other types.
This is the problem that *any* single link type SEO tool shares. It doesn’t matter how good the tool is, the fact is most all of them out there are designed to be a “part” of your SEO campaign and not your “entire” SEO campaign. That is where AutomatedLinksOnTap.com separates itself from all of the other services that we have reviewed on this site because it is designed to be a standalone SEO solution for your site.
Features of AutomatedLinksOnTap.com
Creating AutomatedLinksOnTap.com was a real challenge because from the beginning we picked a price point and worked backwards from that. We had very specific goals and fitting all of them into this price point was quite challenging.
- It had to be effective – This is, obviously, the most important of all. If the service didn’t provide results, well, as Metallica sings “Nothing Else Matters”.
- We have fixed the price at $397 – This is very, very limiting. There’s just only so much you can do in this price range and it becomes a major challenge to be effective.
- It had to be diversified – This is partly the same as the first point because you can’t be effective if you don’t have diversification of link types (as we’ve mentioned above). So we knew that we were going to have to include a mix of services and a mix of link types in these packages. That makes pricing even more difficult because we have to integrate and source various solutions.
- It had to be 100% automated for our clients – Now I want to be very clear on this, it’s automated for the clients – not for us! It’s actually a very complex system that we have behind the scenes, but for those that purchase it is a simple five minute one time setup and nothing more. This is something that any programmer or product developer will tell you, the easier a given product is for the consumer, the harder it is for the supplier or developer. Case in point is the iPhone. It’s a super elegant and simple design, yet it was extremely complex and took years to create.
- It had to be Panda friendly – Now this was also no small feat. We first released this product in March of 2011, right after Google’s onslaught into the Panda furry of 2011 which continues to wreak havoc for many site owners even today. To provide effective results it needed to provide not only a good mix of link types, but also a good mix of unique content. Most tools out there rely heavily on spun content or they require you to provide your own content at your own cost which significantly changes the monthly cost of their service.
- Lastly, it had to do the things most people will not – What do we mean by that? Well most fail at SEO because they are not consistent, they don’t mix up their links and anchor text and they don’t do the hard or costly SEO tasks that are highly effective, like monthly press releases, for example. So we knew we had to address all of those items.
When you throw all of those requirements into the mix and try to come up with a solution that addresses all of them, well, you’ll see it’s almost an impossible task. And indeed for most people it truly is an impossible feat. We’ll talk more about that in a bit when we talk about the pricing below.
How It Works
The features of AutomatedLinksOnTap.com are really outlined in the goals of the product above. As we’ve stated, this is not a link network where you need an interface to manage your linkbuilding efforts, etc… So the process is pretty basic, here’s how it goes.
- Step #1 – After your purchase you are directed to a page that provides you instructions to contact us at the Helpdesk and provide us your domain, keywords and URLS.
- Step #2 – Next we get it all setup and create an account for you on our online rank reporting system to baseline their rankings as they exist now. This way, when you login you can monitor their performance.
- Step #3 – Receive your reports at the end of the month. We can’t report on every last link created but we do report on the vast majority of them. All reports are delivered to you via the helpdesk. Furthermore, we deliver you the content that we created in the SEO process as well. After all, you paid for it, right? This way you can use it for other purposes if you so desire, but we don’t recommend it.
- Step #4 (optional) – Each month you can adjust your keywords if you wish. We limit this to a single change per month because after the month’s SEO begins, we can’t make changes. So the best procedure is to contact us about a week before your monthly renewal and inform us of the keyword changes at that time. Some people use these packages to “maintain” existing rankings so we rely on you to determine when it is time to change up the keywords. We do, however, recommend you give them 90 days before making a change.
Other Features
There really aren’t any other features per say, but we do include some different bonuses with the product that are geared towards helping your understanding of SEO as well as additional tools and marketing resources (our Article Marketing Lies eBook).
The Results Using AutomatedLinksOnTap.com
This is the part that we’re most proud of – the results. Because results always speak for themselves. As we’ve said above, all of the great pricing, marketing tools and fancy interfaces in the world mean nothing if you don’t get results.
We pride ourselves on our candor and NO BS approach to Internet Marketing and SEO – that is something that you can continue to rely on. Every one of the charts on the sales page comes directly from client results – no games are being played, no fancy Photoshop work, etc… what you see is what you get.
We launched the service in March of 2011 and today we have many of those first clients that debuted with our then brand new product still subscribed today – trust me, they wouldn’t be paying if they were not getting results.
That being said, let’s be blatantly honest here – these packages are not going to be enough for everyone. We have clients paying $5000 a month for SEO and clearly they’re doing a lot more than we could do in these $397 packages. So, are they perfect for everyone? No, of course not – nothing is and we wouldn’t tell you otherwise.
These packages are, however, ideal for the average Joe website targeting long tail keywords that are low to medium competition. If you’re trying to rank for “car insurance” or “make money online”, well, forget it, no $397 package in the world will get you those rankings. However, for most small businesses, niche websites and especially local businesses these packages are very effective and certainly affordable.
These packages have also been extremely well received by resellers in the “local Internet Marketing” space. Most local businesses pay around $500-$800 a month for local SEO services. With our reseller program (please contact us via the Helpdesk for details about the AutomatedLinksOnTap.com Reseller program) those that simply want to rebrand and resell these packages to their own clients can do so and complete outsource the work to us freeing them up to focus on client acquisition and letting us handle the dirty work. Because we are selling multiple quantities to a single reseller and our support load is much lower since we only have to deal with one contact for 5 or more sales, we are able to offer reducing pricing for those resellers.
AutomatedLinksOnTap.com Support
All support is handled through our Helpdesk at http://ctcsupport.com just like any of our other products or services. Nothing is outsourced – we staff our own helpdesk support team members and don’t be surprised if Mike or I “chime in” every now and then as well – we remain very involved in the oversight and management of our business. After all, the name is “Mike & Troy’s” – right? <grin>.
When you first purchase your account is normally setup within 48 hours, unless you purchase on the weekend – we don’t staff the helpdesk over the weekend. The same turnaround time is also our normal for other requests. Many times we are able to turn them around in the same day, but we have staff in four different countries on various timezones so often times they will be answered the next day just due to timing issues.
Can’t I Just Do This All Myself?
Yes, you certainly can. SEO is simple but it’s not easy or cheap. Now, what the heck does that mean? Well it means that the actual tasks involved in SEO are not complex – it’s pretty basic and simple stuff. But most people fail because they do not do it and do not do it consistently. That is why for 95% of you reading this review you would be far better off purchasing the AutomatedLinksOnTap.com service for your site than trying to do it yourself. But, we haven’t even talked about the financial reasons yet.
You can do everything we do in these packages, well, sort of…
See the first thing to consider is that we have the economy of scale on our side. We are doing SEO on hundreds of domains and we can leverage accounts and tools in a way that your average consumer cannot. Some of the tools and networks that we use in this service cost thousands of dollars per month – the average person doing SEO on a single site simply cannot afford to invest that much. Because we’re spreading that cost across all of our clients and our own domains as well it is cost justified for us and our per domain cost is dramatically reduced from what you could obtain.
If you pick and choose from the services we review and recommend here on ArticleSubmissionReview.com and try to assemble a package that does everything we provide in these AutomatedLinksOnTap.com packages you will spend a minimum of $650 or more a month to achieve similar results. We say similar because you won’t be using the exact same tools and networks that we are. You will also have the added costs of your time and the real cost is the cost of failure.
What do I mean by that? Well it’s simple. When comparing costs you won’t be taking into account the most critical factor that will affect your results – YOU. In other words, do you have the time and discipline (not just the money) to do SEO on a DAILY basis for your site or sites? For most people the answer is no, even if a very reluctant “no”. But that is the single biggest reason people fail with SEO – it really is not just about the cost, you have to factor in this cost of failure as well.
What We Don’t Like About AutomatedLinksOnTap.com
Okay, so this is awkward, huh? I mean let’s be honest here, do you really expect us to criticize our own product? Well, you should. That’s right, you should. We’re candid with you on everything and we’ll be candid about the shortcomings on our own products as well – as best we can.
Like any system, product or tool there are limitations and AutomatedLinksOnTap.com is no different. The biggest limitation that we have is that a package can only be used for a single domain. They are designed that way from the ground up and all of our pricing and cost structures are built around one package per domain, so sorry, there are no exceptions to that.
If you look at the packages and what they include you’ll see that it also doesn’t make sense to break them up. For example, how could you do a single press release a month and divide it across multiple domains? The real issue, however, is that in order to provide these very robust packages at such a low price point we simply must be rigid in their implementation – we can’t customize them.
Those who request that we break a package up across multiple domains really don’t understand SEO and are trying to accomplish more than is feasible for a price that is also not realistic. If we broke them up, the diversification of links and the quantity of links would not be a good balance and the results would not be good either.
We also don’t like that the service currently forces you to go through the Helpdesk. That is less than ideal for both us and you as the customer. We are, however, continually improving this service and already have a programmer actively working on a solution which will allow you to submit the details of your order directly after purchase and without having to go through the helpdesk to do so. We will also be integrating AutomatedLinksOnTap.com with our soon to debut Customer Portal which will allow you to log in and retrieve your reports and content directly from your account. That data will also be archived for you as well.
Lastly from a consumer perspective we wish that there was a way to provide a trial period or money back guarantee on the product, but the fact is this is a service and not just a tool. Because of the service aspect we incur significant costs when setting up a new client. In fact, one of the only reasons we can offer this product for such a low cost is that it is very effective and we know that people will stay subscribed – we actually lose money on it the first month.
Thus, like any other service or contract, we cannot provide refunds of any kind for this service or offer any trial period. You can cancel at any time and though we caution you to give it at least 90 days because any realistic SEO campaign can take a little time to build momentum, you are not locked into anything other than the current month. You can cancel at any time and prevent future recurring charges, but it won’t stop the current month of service or entitle you to a refund, partial or otherwise.
AutomatedLinksOnTap.com Pricing
The pricing is fairly simple. Currently there is one price – a $397 package.
While many will argue that $397 is expensive, I challenge you to try and price it out yourself. You’ll need several services to get this type of diversification of links and those range in price per month EACH and they do not include the content. When you add up all that you get in these packages you’ll see that they are extremely affordable.
About Troy
Troy Broussard is avvid writer, owner of ArticlesOnTap.com, a regular contributor to sites such as TopMarketingStrategies.com and ArticleSubmissionReview.com. Troy also enjoys creating information products and is a regular speaker at many Internet marketing events. Check him out at Google+ for other work.
On January 16, 2012 Eric wrote:
Hey Mike and Troy,
I had to drop a comment here on your amazing service. I tried doing SEO on my personal site myself for a few months and didn’t really get anywhere. I found all the work just too time consuming and tedious. Not to mention I was always afraid I was doing something wrong. I have been using Mike and Troy’s ALOT service for a few months now on my website and the rankings have just continued to go up. I cancelled various subscriptions to services that I had, and just put my site in their hands and it was the best decision I made. I now don’t worry about the SEO and have time to work on my website and conversions, the things I should be doing. And to be honest the services I cancelled almost add up to the cost of using your hands off service, and if you add in the man hours I used to spend trying to do things myself, this service is a bargain. Thank you for your help. You have a very happy client in me. And for anyone reading this, don’t hesitate to put your trust in Mike and Troy. They deliver.
On January 16, 2012 admin wrote:
Eric,
We really appreciate your comment above. Its clients like you that make this worth doing. Thanks.
- Mike
On February 1, 2012 Ivan wrote:
I started a new business in a fairly competitive sub niche of dog training and for the first two months used nothing but Automated Links On Tap. Results? I’m currently ranking top 3 for most of my main keywords WAY sooner then I ever expected and my business has taken off making us over $1,000 profit a month in the first 3 months. This service gets my highest recommendation. Thanks Mike and Troy, keep the top rankings coming!
On February 2, 2012 Steve Radford wrote:
Guys – just wanted to drop a comment in here to thank you for all your help and let people know what a fantastic service I think Automated Links on Tap is. I launched my website about 18 months ago in the highly competitive online job market – I started off using a local consultant to do my SEO and after 6 months was getting really frustrated at the lack of results, the high price and above all the lack of transparency. I started to do some link building myself using the tools that you guys recommend which really helped me learn and started to give me some results, but a lack of time lead me to try your Automated Links on Tap Service. To be honest I don’t think I’d ever go back to trying to do it in house – not only does it work amazingly well, but I LOVE the fact that I get fully detailed and transparent reports showing exactly what links you’ve built etc.
We’re 7 months in and so far you’ve worked on 15 keywords for me (5 at a time, rotating keywords every few months as rankings max out at number 1 or occasionally to provide anchor text variation as you have recommended). We are now at number 1 on Google for 12 of those terms, and the other 3 more competitive terms have shown vast improvements and all in the top 5 (which is impressive as we’re competing against some very established online job boards who must have huge budgets for this sort of thing).
I’ve recommended your service to many people already and have no hesitation in doing so again. Quite simply it’s fantastic!
On February 2, 2012 admin wrote:
@ Ivan – thanks so much for dropping by and leaving the great feedback. It is much appreciated. We have heard similar results from many clients on this service.
- Mike
On February 2, 2012 admin wrote:
Wow Steve – that is a great testimonial. Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your feedback for others. It is much appreciated.
- Mike
On February 2, 2012 Paul wrote:
Totally agree with the testimonials above for your ALOT service. Just over 2 months into the service and my main keyword has jumped from nowhere to rank number 1 in G, plus some other keywords have been bumped up to the first page as well.
I started with the ALOT service because I was concerned that my past linkbuilding was leaving a footprint in the search engines, with too little variety in link type and anchor text. So much so, that before I joined the ALOT service, all my pages had either slipped onto the 2nd page, or worse, nowhere to be seen in the top 300 results. After two months with ALOT, all the pages and keywords that got hit in Google are now back on either the 2nd page, or 1st page of Google.
So, I for one am a happy puppy with your service, and will be adding more sites to the service going forward.
Thanks ALOT – pun intended
- Paul
On February 2, 2012 admin wrote:
Hi Paul – thanks ALOT for the excellent feedback as well!
- Mike
On February 3, 2012 Mark wrote:
Just like McDonald’s – IM LOVING IT!
On February 3, 2012 admin wrote:
LMAO – thanks Mark!
- Mike
On February 3, 2012 Mark wrote:
You should also mention the new rankreports.net account you guys give out as a ALOT member in this review – I think that is an awesome new edition.
On February 3, 2012 admin wrote:
Hi Mark, yeah we haven’t really announced that yet, only been rolling it out to few clients at a time. Thanks for the doubling rating – I ll take it!
- Mike
On February 6, 2012 George wrote:
Why is your service #4? It should be #1.
I have proof for that.
On February 6, 2012 admin wrote:
Hey George,
The ratings are actually set by readers, every time someone comments on the site and leaves star ratings, that effects how they rank on our site. If you believe in our service, by all means leave a star ratings and help us move up the ranks.
Thanks for the kind of words!
- Mike
On February 7, 2012 George wrote:
Yes, i just did.
I cannot believe how fool is all the people who vote for other services at the time they havent used yours. I have used all the services listed here and i am the one who really knows whats happening.
Articles on tap automated service = the only service that does not leaves footprint.
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
Hey everyone – just wanted to say thanks for the feedback and great comments.
No service is perfect and we’d love to be able to offer even more than we do with AutomatedLinksOnTap.com but for the price point we feel that it is a great package.
We are continually refining this product and enhancing it – so that’s one of the keys to people’s results. It is not a stagnant offering – what we deliver varies from month to month.
Thanks again!
-Troy
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
@George
Hey thanks George – I too believe our service should be rated #1!!! But like Mike said we try to keep things “objective” here and leave the ratings to the users…
Take care!
-Troy
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
@Steve Radford
Thanks Steve. As a long time client of ours you know how we strive to always deliver the best we can – it really means ALOT (lol) to us to see the feedback from satisfied clients.
Thanks again!
-Troy
On February 12, 2012 Xristos Kostouros wrote:
I can confirm what @George said about leaving footprints.
No wonder why AutomatedLinksOnTap.com should be #1. Leaving a footprint nowadays is the most important aspect.
Chris
On February 13, 2012 Troy wrote:
Thanks Xristos,
We try to mix things up as best we can with these ALOT packages to reduce the footprint as best we can for the price point. Everything, of course, is always a compromise. With these packages we designed them to be priced at $297 and to be effective. We ideally would like to make them even more diversified and leave even less of a footprint, but it’s always a delicate balancing act between features and price.
Thanks again for the feedback…
-Troy
On March 5, 2012 BillBrad wrote:
We have been using ALOT for one month – 2 of our keywords have made it to page 2 from not in top 100. 1 Has made it to page 2 from page 3. One is #11 from #44 and the 5th well, still needs some work. But regardless, great work for one month guys! Looking forward to the continued great service!
On March 8, 2012 Pat wrote:
Hey guys,
Decided I’d leave a review for Mike and Troy’s service. Similar to BillBrad, I’ve been using ALOT on my site for almost exactly 1 month now. At the beginning of February 2012 I was ranked around #45 for my main keyword (competitive keyword and I do not have an EMD). Today I’m sitting at #10. Woo! Mike and Troy certainly use linking techniques that are viewed favorably in the eyes of the Big G, so there’s really no concern in terms of getting a “penalty”. Even after the latest Panda update (3.3) my page has maintained its steady climb toward the #1 spot.
A few words to those of you thinking about signing up for the ALOT program. I would suggest only giving Mike and Troy 2-3 keywords to start with. If you give them too many you’ll be spreading your anchor text too thin and probably won’t see results. I started with 2 keywords, and now I’ve added one more for a total of 3 keywords for the month of March.
Another thing I should mention is that you shouldn’t expect results immediately. My site didn’t budge for nearly 3 weeks, and then all of a sudden it shot up 25 spots overnight. Such is the way Google works sometimes, so keep that in mind.
Also, make sure your on-page SEO is up to snuff or else your results probably won’t be nearly as good as what BillBrad and I have experienced. If you’re not sure what to do in terms of on-page optimizing your content I would recommend investing in Easy WP SEO (http://easywpseoplugin.com/). It’s a WordPress plugin that will literally tell you exactly what you need to do to optimize your page.
And finally, make sure you’re writing quality content on your site! Don’t be like a lot of the people out there who just post useless crap on their site and load it with affiliate links. I’m currently trying to outrank people who are doing that (and having success so far). Make sure you provide value to your readers. Google is getting much better at sniffing out junk content which actually makes me pretty happy. So join the cool crowd and write good content!
I’ll be back later (maybe a month from now?) with another update.
PS – ALOT is the only form of backlinks I’ve been getting to my site. No other services or work from me. Just wanted to clarify that.
On March 9, 2012 Tim wrote:
How many URL’s (same domain) and keywords would you target per month with this service if they were medium competition keywords? If you had a 30 page site, would you just target 2-5 pages a month?
On March 9, 2012 admin wrote:
@ Tim – take a look here:
http://automatedlinksontap.com/faq.php
- Mike
On March 9, 2012 Tim wrote:
Thanks. However, it doesn’t mention how many keywords per URL you recommend? It looks like I could have 5 keywords and 5 URL’s, but what about anchor text diversification?
On March 10, 2012 Jolen wrote:
Pat, +1 mate.
ALOT is just too good to be free to the public.
On March 10, 2012 admin wrote:
Hi Tim,
The package is meant for no more than 5 keywords as a whole. Whether you do 5 keywords for 1 url or 5 keywords for 5 urls is your call. It is different for all sites and niches. We recommend diversify as much as possible, but these packages are meant to mean smaller, lean and mean and more focused seo campaigns. For diversity – we highly recommend using BMR. You can create 50 posts in BMR and target each of the 50 for a unique keyword and url for a wide diversification subset. That is how we are using BMR now. We focus with the ALOT and diversify with BMR. I hope that helps.
- Mike
UPDATE: BMR is no longer recommended as it has been closed down.
On March 14, 2012 Catalin wrote:
Is too good to be true! Finally i found a good service. I come from Italy and is hard for me to do everything OK specially this days. I have used many other services before yours and nothing is comparable with yours. I have many other web-sites and is too difficult for me this days to do the right job for all my sites.
I like your packages and now i know someone is doing the right job any day. I waited three years to achieve some rankings with one of my web-sites and you until two month from number 15 i reached number 3 this days. I need to be clear the terms is too competitive and like i said Is Too Good To Be True! Thanks Troy!
On March 15, 2012 Pat wrote:
Tim, I would definitely follow Mike’s advice on diversifying as much as possible. With Google’s latest update they seem to be putting a heavier emphasis on anchor text diversification from what I can tell. I’m now starting to think that bumping my keywords up to 3 may not have been enough for this month. Time will tell.
On March 15, 2012 Pat wrote:
*3 keywords for a single URL
On April 8, 2012 Pat wrote:
Hey guys,
Back with a quick update. My site is now bouncing between #4 – #8. It seems to change daily. I’m hoping it will settle in soon. I think the main reason that it’s bouncing so much is that the top 10 for my keyword is very competitive. People are constantly building links to their sites for this keyword.
As far as revenue, once I hit the first page my sales skyrocketed for about 5 days straight…and then they tanked and went right back to where they were before. I was on track to making $50 per day, but now I’m back to making one sale every 2 weeks. I have absolutely no idea why this would happen. I didn’t make any changes to my sales page, and my traffic has actually increased. It’s like everyone just decided to stop buying from my site all of a sudden. If anyone has experienced this please let me know!
On April 12, 2012 Dean wrote:
I have been doing SEO for many years, i signed up for this and what a disappointment!!!!!!
I have not seen one positive thing happen to my site at all, you cant speak or get hold of anyone, i wonder how many of these comments are genuine as opposed to automated like your so called site
And please please dont get smart with me, i have been doing this for a long time, if you guys cant provide a report then i feel very sorry for you and customers like myself
This hocus pocus stuff you doing which you refuse to show the results for isnt showing any results
Lets see if you let my comment through – all your comments on this site are “love comments” show us the real comments like what or where are the rankings
Sorry dont bust my nuts here, im challenging you now – Show me the results – IF you cant show then you are a complete fraud everything is too hush hush with you guys
I would love to see a reply from you without the bashing like you have done on your other comments when people challenge you on your “SEO”
On April 12, 2012 admin wrote:
Hi Dean,
I can assure you every single one of these comments are real and genuine from ALOT clients. Join one of our webinars on Thursday’s and you will see lots of happy readers, followers, and subscribers there. As for your comments above I will address them one at a time.
#1. You aren’t able to speak with anyone? We communicate via our helpdesk. I just took a quick look in our helpdesk and we have 3 tickets for you all time. The 1st ticket was opened March 5th – 38 days ago. It was your initial ticket giving us all of your information for setting up your account. It was replied to within 1 minute and you never replied back. The next day it was replied to again giving you your rank reports login details where you can check your rankings, again you never replied. Your 2nd ticket was opened March 14th – where you asked for your rankings login, which we had already provided on March 6th. You were supplied that information again and didn’t respond yet again. Your 3rd ticket was opened 20 minutes ago, I will personally respond to that ticket myself, but I elected to come here and reply to your public comment first. So as far as I see it, you have been communicated with every time, and quickly, but you have never responded nor asked any question that were not answered.
#2. Who said we don’t supply reports? Everything is explained here: http://automatedlinksontap.com/faq.php
There is manual content creation that goes on for these accounts. When you first sign up the first 7 business days is content creation. Then the linkbuilding begins for a 30 day campaign. Then we gather up the data and supply you a campaign report. That puts us around 37 – 40 days after your initial purchase before you see your initial reports. You purchased 38 days ago. I have instructed our staff to prioritize your reports. You should see them today. But I don’t see where you ever asked about this or asked a question about this. Just that you came here on the site leaving a comment stating you don’t receive reports – did you ever read the FAQ or ask us?
#3. Hocus Pocus and refuse to show results?? I am sorry, I am not sure what you mean. We never stated we do any kind of magic, or hocus pocus anything, nor do we hide anything from you. In fact we are the complete opposite of others that promise miracle cures. We state up front to everyone that SEO is a campaign and some keywords can take up to 90 days or more to see results, and some may never see results. We don’t promise the moon. We promise to provide a service and that service nets the vast majority of people great results. Unfortunately it doesn’t work for everyone. I wish we could promise that everyone would do great. But we cant. SEO is always best effort. What results are you looking for us to show you exactly? We provide you access to your rank reports, you are able to check your rankings and see if anything has moved. Where is the fraud, what is it we are hiding? What is hush hush? What would you like us to do, get on phone with you every day? You purchased a service, it began, we are performing the services – it is a month long campaign – we really have nothing else to talk to you about. I am not sure what you were expecting, we don’t do coaching on the $297, we don’t do site analysis, we don’t do one on one consultations – what did you need that was missing to make you feel like we are not being hush hush? You can reach out to us on the helpdesk at any time – you didn’t. You can join our weekly webinars, you can attempt to contact us in any way shape or fashion you so choose – but you never did. And now you come here talking about hocus pocus and hush hush and fraud.
#4. Sorry Dean, I am not sure what you are challenging us on. We aren’t hiding anything, I posted your comment. I am responding for all to see. We have responded to you on your helpdesk tickets.
But here is my answer to your challenge.
If you check your rankings for the 5 keywords you provided.
Keyword #1 was 11th when you signed up it is 4th today
Keyword #2 was 19th when you signed up it is 2nd today
Keyword #3 was 4th when you signed up it is 1st today
Keyword #4 was 8th when you signed up it is 15th today
Keyword #5 was ranked 5th when you signed up it is 14th today
You don’t see results?
There are your results Dean. You stated you have not seen one positive thing happen to your site since you signed up. Did you even check the rankings?
You went up in 3 keywords and down on 2 – Are they stellar results? Well it has only been one month – Keywords bounce and results vary. Some people get great results, some people get good results, some people get no results. It is a fluid business. But all in all its not bad for a 1 month campaign. And truth be told I have no idea what else you are doing or have done. G has been tearing rankings down this year for old practices. Those two keywords that went down appear to be pretty competitive, we have no idea what else you have done to those two keywords in the past and that may be why they are suffering. It could be because your competition is doing better than you. It can be many things. It could be that they will bounce back up higher as happens many times – it has only been a 1 month campaign thus far. Since you have been doing SEO for many years you should be well aware of the fact that SEO is not a one month service, and you can’t judge a campaign’s effectiveness in 1 month.
Long story short Dan. You cant please all of the people all of the time. We have communicated with you and replied to you when necessary. We provided you access to our rankreports.net and the last time you logged in was March 14th. We measure campaigns by results, not reports, you have been shown your results and they look good for 1 month. You will receive your reports today. But we provided the service you paid for and moved 3 out of 5 keywords up the serps. Seems to me you have your answer to your challenge.
I am not sure why you are so angry, and giving the service all 1 star rating’s, based on the performance I showed you above it is BS – but to each his own. We don’t provide miracles, and while you accuse us of hocus pocus and fraud and hush hush, it appears you are the one looking for the magic button that doesn’t exist and that we don’t sell that nor ever stated we did. Thanks for trying the service, best of luck to you.
- Mike
On April 12, 2012 Dean wrote:
Thanks for the reply – I think i have my wires crossed here, i have signed up to many networks and lose track on them, yes i do see now through your report you do provide one and yes i have seen that through using your service in combination with few others there has been an increase in rankings
Thank you for answering the question and am looking foreward to seeing the report
On April 25, 2012 Pat wrote:
Hey Mike and Troy,
Just wondering how many anchor texts you guys now tell new users to use for their campaigns. When I signed up in November it was 3 maximum. However, I think it might be better to allow people to add more now if you’re not already. I recently received an “unnatural linking” message from G Webmaster Tools and the only source of my links has been from ALOT. I’m thinking the anchor text limitation might have had something to do with this. Just a thought.
On May 2, 2012 Pat wrote:
Hey guys,
Just wanted to post a follow up on my last comment about receiving an “unnatural links” message from GWT. I’m hoping this will help future users of ALOT.
After the Google update on April 25 (Penguin) the page that I had gotten ranked to #4 through the ALOT system is now sitting at #195 for its main keyword. Other pages of my site have seen drops as well, but not as drastic. I attribute this to the fact that I only had 3 keywords running on my ALOT campaign. On March 15 I commented that I was worried the lack of anchor text diversity might hurt me…apparently I do have a crystal ball! I guess the only reason I set it at 3 anchor variations was that the ALOT system uses a pretty natural link profile. On top of that, these campaigns are designed to be focused on a narrow range of specific keywords (I think the maximum you could have was 5). Also, once you set your keywords for the month you’re kind of stuck until the next round/month.
For those of you who are going to sign up, I still believe that ALOT is a good program. However, make sure that you provide as many keywords as you can for your campaign from the start. You can only change your keywords once per month, so do it right at the beginning!! Once I had set my 3 keywords I was stuck for the month and I was kicking myself because I knew it might come back to haunt me (and it did, big time). The old limit was 5 anchors..not sure if that has changed.
Using more anchor text might slow your results down a bit (or maybe not with the new G algorithm) but it will save you from the huge headache that I’m currently dealing with. I’m losing nearly $600 per month due to the fact that I didn’t vary my anchor text enough, so don’t make the same mistake.
Anyway, hope this helps a bit. I’m glad to see that Google is trying to fight spam, but unfortunately SEO is necessary for legitimate businesses like mine to compete. Hopefully I’ll recover soon.
Mike or Troy, any feedback on how many anchor texts you allow now?
On May 10, 2012 Jim wrote:
Hey Pat, any update on how your site is doing? I’m interested in purchasing ALOT, but now I’m not so sure post Penguin?
On May 12, 2012 Pat wrote:
Hey Jim,
My site is receiving about 15% of the traffic it used to. Some pages for long-tail, unpopular searches are still ranking #1. It seems that Google has selectively removed my site from the first page for any keywords that get over 500 searches/month. Very nice of them.
The page I had in the ALOT system is now not in the top 1000 for any of the terms I was running through ALOT. I’m not sure if G has figured out what blogs are in the ALOT system, or if it’s just the anchor text issue that I mentioned in my previous post. I’m guessing it’s almost entirely an anchor text issue.
So far, I have not touched my site (no new content, no new backlinks, etc.). I’m hoping to start experimenting with some new backlinks soon to see if I can “dilute” my anchor text and get the penalty removed. I’ll report back if I make any progress. No telling how long this might take though.
On May 21, 2012 Jim wrote:
Thanks for the update Pat! Let us know if anything changes. Good luck!
On July 7, 2012 Pat wrote:
So far I have not done anything with my site. It is now completely out of the top 300 for my main keywords. Unfortunately, I don’t have a way to go back and change the anchor text for my links since I don’t have access to the ALOT network. However, I’m in the process of trying something that Mike and Troy mentioned in a recent webinar. I’ll be taking one of my hardest hit pages (also my biggest money maker) on my site and copying the content to a new page. I’m hoping the penalty is on a URL basis rather than sitewide. I’m currently waiting for my old, penalized page to be re-cached by Google before I create my new page. I’ll come back with updates.
Very frustrating that I see little junk affiliate sites now ranking where I used to be and they have very high exact match anchor text links. So it goes in SEO I guess.
On July 9, 2012 admin wrote:
Hi Pat,
You could always open a ticket through the helpdesk – if you don’t ask – you don’t receive.
As for what you are trying, I am guessing you are referring to G Hell Webinar – we had one person email us today, 4 days after the webinar saying how he had success using those methods – 4 days – that was awesome. Hope it works for you Pat!
- Mike
On July 10, 2012 Pat wrote:
haha, I might just do that! Don’t want to overload you guys though…although I guess changing anchor text is a lot easier than writing posts! Maybe we could try that and see what kind of influence it has on the new URL as well as the site as a whole. Maybe you could share the results in another webinar if things work out well.
That’s pretty awesome that it only took 4 days. G just cached my old page this morning, so I posted the new page about 5 minutes ago. I’ve also linked from my old URL to the new one with a generic anchor. I’ll come back with updates.
On July 20, 2012 Pat wrote:
Just a quick update. It has now been 10 days and I have not seen any changes in ranking. I’m hoping that this will change over the weekend. Not holding my breath though.