After I discovered that one of the best methods for getting Google’s attention is by gaining plenty of one way links, I decided to try out SENuke. SENuke promises to dominate the first three pages of Google by using Web 2.0 marketing techniques. Basically, SENuke is designed to be a time saver. You can automatically create an account to literally hundreds of different social media & Web 2.0 sites to submit your articles, videos,  RSS feeds and links all in one hit.

The sales page did stand out and the testimonials  looked promising. With a free 7 day trial and no catch – I thought, why not. I can always cancel and get a full refund before 30 days is up!

And cancel is exactly what I’ve just done. Now first of all, I need to let you know that I’m not trying to rubbish the software. Because I’m sure there are plenty who use it on a regular basis with great results. But then again, all software has to be relevant to your situation and it wasn’t relevant for me. I believe this software brings about a debate – is it better to build quality content rather than the mass spamming of links?

By using this software, I felt like I was becoming a spammer. The more I read, and the more I thought about it, I realised that I wanted to play fair with Google. I want others to link to me because I had interesting content, rather than creating my own fake one way links on random, untargeted websites.

Customer Service

I can’t fault – at all. There were clear instructions on the website how to unsubscribe from the monthly subscription, and as soon as I asked for a refund, I got a very prompt email returning my initial month subscription – with a ‘thankyou’ note for trying out the software.

Look and Feel

SENuke Switch Module

SENuke may be fully featured, but it certainly is not user friendly. In order to use the software, you need to visit their website to watch the video tutorials.

While the software contains many different features, the overall layout and occasional bugs in the system does give the impression that there has been very little emphasis placed on the overall functionality and design from the beginning. It looks like different features have been ‘tacked on’, as they think of them.  The main options are accessed through the “switch module” menu item. I didn’t like this. To me I wanted to see a nice graphical layout of these options (including better names and explanations), and I think they could have developed a logical step by step progression through the options.

Reliability

I’ll often leave my laptop on for numerous hours at a time, and yes it does generate quite a bit of heat. However, at one stage I did notice my laptop’s fan making one hell of a noise. I wondered why.  After checking the system resources, it appeared that SENuke was chewing up the majority of my CPU while idle. That couldn’t be good!

SENuke on numerous occasions either created an error or was really slow.  I found the process of creating spinner articles a nightmare. For some reason, the cursor would often get stuck at one point, often requiring a restart of the software.

Account Creation

SENuke Web 2.0 account setup

If you want to sign up to a massive amount of Web 2.0 sites, you’ll appreciate the time you’ll save by using SENuke. All you have to do is tick the websites you want to sign up to, add in a few varieties of a username, pick a password and click start. SENuke also automatically connects to your pop3 email and verifies the confirmation emails all at once. Yes a great feature, how practical is it?

I could see the value in signing up for the social network and article directory accounts. However, I strongly disagree with the Web 2.0 profile module. The idea for this module is to signup an account and add your website link in your about me page. The issue is – these are all niche websites, and very few of them will be your niche.

Article Distribution

So once you have all your article sites activated, it’s time to create spinner articles. To prevent being penalised by Google, SENuke recommends that you create various ‘spins’ of your article so that each spin is 30% unique. This was painful. You basically need to re-write an article many times over by inputting alternative words, strings of works or entire sentences so that the system can automatically generate a unique combination. You then check the uniqueness button to see if you’ve reached the the 30%. What was supposed to be time saver became a long, tedious and boring activity.

As an example:

{Writing|Creating} spinner articles {took too long|was very time consuming|wasted a lot of time}. I felt like I was {destroying|ruining} the essence of an article by having to {develop|generate} alternative versions.

I’ve decided that my time would be far better spend developing new articles rather than rewriting old ones.

Video Marketing

To be honest – I saw no benefit in the module, (other than the ability to create spinner titles).  With free distribution tools like Tubemogul, I didn’t even end up testing this service.

Results

After submitting a few articles and signing up to the social media and article submission sites, I did see an increase to the links back to my blog – yet no drastic increase in visitors.  The links didn’t feel real, and I felt that I had taken the wrong approach.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised – because I’m never actually spending time on each website (to customise my profile and interact with the community), I really would only be using these sites to promote my links – which certainly isn’t the intention for these social communities.  I didn’t want my name to be associated with being someone that just posts links for shameless self promotion!

That’s when I realised – it’s far better to spend your time interacting with an online community  to create genuine discussions and build rapports. I’m sure the links and the traffic can only follow.

But the question is, should you try this software? We’ll I believe there’s only one example where it could be of benefit, and that is if you are creating a short term campaign that doesn’t have your name attached to it.

What are your experiences with the software? Do you agree with my viewpoint?

Links

• SENuke.com