Manual or automated Web 2.0's?

I've been watching Matthew Woodward's videos on tiered link building and I noticed that he's automating the process of creating web 2.0's.

If I'm right, manual web 2.0's are better than automated ones because they look more natural maybe? However, the amount of web 2.0's created in the guide are lots so maybe 10 of automated web 2.0's are the same as 1 manually created web 2.0?

The guide I watched is here: http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/the-ultimate-guide-to-tiered-link-building-part-1/

It doesn't matter what you do whether manual or automated.

It's basically the same, it's your finishing that matters.

It's just like trains.
The old trains have operators as drivers while the new trains is driver less.

They both serve the same purpose, move passengers or goods from one location to another.

With SEO it's the same thing with slightly difference.
You need to know what you want in a manual web 2.0 and also try to make your bot do the same if it can.

Both, automate the posting and account creation, manual spinning content adding video, images and that kind of stuff

fc-dh said:

Both, automate the posting and account creation, manual spinning content adding video, images and that kind of stuff

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This guys got it, robots can work 24/7 but they don't re-write like a human brain.

It's not about whether they were manually or automatically created, it's about the content. If you can find a way to make the automated content look as natural as manually created content, search engines will never know the difference

Thank you guys fo clearing it all up for me.

Sammyy said:

Thank you guys fo clearing it all up for me.

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make sure the profile of web 2.0 also looks natural as it also plays a vital role. (IMO)

It depends what you want to achieve. Building a really high quality foundation for a site, invest a couple of $ in some VAs to create them manually. Instruct them how to do it right, change themes, fill bios, insert profile images all the usual stuff.

With a perfect setup for automation, you can reach almost the same quality of the initial setup. When it comes to the content, I personally believe in unique content if it's a web2 / buffer I really care about much more than spun stuff. No need for it to be magazine quality, but it should be readable and unique. It happens just too often your buffer starts to rank for some KWs, pulls in some traffic and you'll want to directly monetize it. Beside that, I believe in reasonable content pulling much better CTRs to your moneysite (assuming the buffer starts to rank) than spun crap, even if it's unique.

It's like asking what car is better, Mercedes or BMW. You'll have 50/50 results as both have advantages and disadvantages. Automation is cheaper but in most cases more obvious and lower quality, while manual is a bit more expensive but looks more legit if done right. Which one to choose? Depends on your budget, goals and how serious you're about the project you're building them for.

Yes, of course. I'll make sure that's done right.

innosoft said:

make sure the profile of web 2.0 also looks natural as it also plays a vital role. (IMO)

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Thanks for the more in-depth look into the whole thing, I'll take all these things into consideration.

theseo1 said:

It depends what you want to achieve. Building a really high quality foundation for a site, invest a couple of $ in some VAs to create them manually. Instruct them how to do it right, change themes, fill bios, insert profile images all the usual stuff.

With a perfect setup for automation, you can reach almost the same quality of the initial setup. When it comes to the content, I personally believe in unique content if it's a web2 / buffer I really care about much more than spun stuff. No need for it to be magazine quality, but it should be readable and unique. It happens just too often your buffer starts to rank for some KWs, pulls in some traffic and you'll want to directly monetize it. Beside that, I believe in reasonable content pulling much better CTRs to your moneysite (assuming the buffer starts to rank) than spun crap, even if it's unique.

It's like asking what car is better, Mercedes or BMW. You'll have 50/50 results as both have advantages and disadvantages. Automation is cheaper but in most cases more obvious and lower quality, while manual is a bit more expensive but looks more legit if done right. Which one to choose? Depends on your budget, goals and how serious you're about the project you're building them for.

Click to expand...

I can't stress enough the importance of not looking automated. Not to google or search engines but to the MODS of that site. I have no doubt they run daily scans for the account creation template, the "hello world" post, the sample pages, and the blank about me areas. Plus, the side bar.. the SEO aspect of keywords and meta. They run that through their checker and delete massive hordes of these new automatically created web 2.0s.

That's not to say that you can't use the basic theme, but there are certain things that are a dead give away... that being on of them.

You can auto create the accounts... but you need to go in and change the theme, update the about me, add a few widgets, add a menu that doesn't say "home" (another dead give away), etc. -- or pass someone to do it, which Is what I am going to start doing.

Automate the creation, send list to VA with instructions on "freshing up" each web 2.0. Begin posting your articles to your network.

I'm in the process of doing this with FCS networker. Seems like a solid plan.

Mass creating accounts and submitting 1-spun article that reads like crap is not going to get you anywhere. It'll be auto deleted and you'll create a thread "why aren't my web 2.0s sticking!" -- believe me, I know.

Put in the effort OR pay someone else to. 1 button web 2.0 mega networks are a thing of the past

-Sean

Make some web 2.0s manual and build some automated web 2.0s on them as tier 2.
also make automated web 2.0s directly on your m$

If you can make automated content come across as natural, you can start following Matt right away.

All you need is quality content, if you're going to use these web2.0s as your first tier. It doesn't matter manual or auto web2.0's.

It matters a lot if you do tier 1 links manually or with full automation and there is a lot more to it than just looking natural.

It is all about patterns and stick rate. Automated tools follow the same pattern every time they create accounts and post. They also work at great speed. That might seem great but actually it is a major downside if you want your accounts to stick. For a web master it is very easy to spot the patterns of automated tools and all alarms will go of when you create an account in less than a second.

Here are some of the indicators that web masters can easily spot:

• Time from sign up page is loaded till signup form is submitted is less than 2 seconds (that is not human).
  
• Time from posting page is loaded till posting form is submitted is less than 2 seconds (that is not human).
• No mouse movement or keyboard presses (this can be detected easily).
• Only pages ever visited is login page and the posting page.
• Welcome message never opened.
• No avatar uploaded.
• No profile information filled in.
• All logins result in a post 2 seconds later.
• Content can't pass automated plagiarism check.
  
• No activity after first post.
• Only one post published.
  

As a web master it very easy to log all these factors. The link can stick for a while, but at some point the site owners will decide to run a little clean up script. E.g. They run a script that deletes accounts that:

• Are inactive.
  
• Only have one post.
• The post was created in less than 2 sec.
• The only pages ever visited is the login and posting page.

The factors can be combined and more can be added, but the above would clean out 99% of the bot created spam pages.

It is extremely easy to spot as a web master and this is why the people see there links disappear. You got cleaned out.

If you are lucky a site with all the alarm bells ringing will not be deleted right away, but will receive a quick manual review. It takes a few seconds to see that the content suck and then the site is gone.

When you create a web 2.0 property manually and with quality content it will pass all the checks above and will live a long life.

Here is a little check list if you want web 2.0 to stay alive.

• Delete sample posts and other dummy text.
• Change the theme.
• Create an 'about us' page.
  
• Open the welcome message (if there is one)
  
• Fill in the profile with most details (even if you don't get a link from the profile page)
• Upload an avatar.
• Post content that can pass a human review. It should be 100% readable without the very clear mark of spun content.
• Post content that can pass automated plagiarism check.
• Don't flood the article with links (I never post more than one).
• Have an image or video that actually fits the topic and is not violating any copy rights.
• Ask your self: "Does this site look like a crap site created really fast only with SEO and marketing in mind?". If the answer is yes the risk of the site being removed i greatly increased.

But here is the best advice: Long term SEO is not about doing things fast it is about doing them right.

Doing things right might seem like a lot of work but in the long run it will turn out to be less. The links you create will stick and so will the rankings of the sites that benefit from them.

The time you spend researching, tweaking, scraping and testing automated tools could be used to actually create quality links. And the money you spend on captchas, indexing links and proxies could stay in your pocket or be used for quality content.

That said automated tools certainly have there place in a successful SEO campaign. But in my opinion they are pattern generators that are unsuited for tier 1 and long term results.

Still there are options that are much faster than manual and still provide the same quality. One of them is Autofill Magic (see sig...). I created this tool as a semi-automated tool that speed up manual work 10 times. It fills the forms, keep track of your accounts and much much more.

Everybody use Autofill Magic a little different and even though Autofill Magic is many times faster than manual link building, it is still slower than automated tools. This makes accounts created with Autofill Magic look natural. There is no pattern and no unnatural speed.

I checked up on a project I did 2 year ago. One of the very first Autofill Magic projects I did before the launch. At that point I created 91 sites. Today 66 of those are still alive. A lot are gone because the sites closed or are no longer offering a free blog option. That is a stick rate of 72.5% over a time frame of 2 years! (including natural loss) No automated tool will beat that.

So in short: Yes it matters if you use a bot or if you do thing manually. For tier 1 link go manual or semi-automated. For tier 2 and 3 you fire up your automated tools.

JasonS said:

All you need is quality content, if you're going to use these web2.0s as your first tier. It doesn't matter manual or auto web2.0's.

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I agree and disagree. You need quality for your first tier... but automated can be detrimental even if it's stellar content. A simply check of "account creation time" "standard theme" "one post with one login" "no about me page" "never deleted welcome post/page" is all it takes for a web 2.0 to get swept away in the mass deletions.

These mods can quickly identify what is auto junk and what is not. Logging in, making some "real" changes will make the web 2.0 stick. I might it a point to change the theme on every single on I create.