SENuke was the grandaddy of all automated SEO and link-building programs and it defended it’s crown for a long time, despite many competing products popping up on the marketplace. Now, after countless months of delays, the successor to the throne is finally here.
Without further ado, here’s my SENuke X review.
Important Note:
SENuke X Overview
| Name: | SENuke X |
| Creator: | Areeb Bajwa, Joe Russell |
| Medium: | Backlink Building Software |
| Price: | $147/month |
In a nutshell, SENuke X creates backlinks automatically by submitting articles to article directories, creating social bookmarks, submitting press releases, uploading videos to video-sharing sites and creating profiles on forums and web 2.0 sites. This, in itself, is nothing groundbreaking, as there are quite a few programs that do something along those lines. The critical factors to whether it’s all it’s hyped up to be are:
- What are the success rates like? (i.e. if the software attempts to build 100 links, how many actual links will I end up with?)
- How many backlink sources can it submit to?
- How automatic is it really?
In case you are wondering about the last question: All autmation software still needs some degree of “baby sitting”. Ideally, you can do all the work once, then have the software take care of the rest. In many cases, however, you need to frequently intervene to activate a next step or do some other manual task. One of the most promising features of SENuke X is that it’s supposed to be almost completely hands-off.
Some Numbers
First, let’s take a look at how many target URLs or backlink sources SENuke X comes with. SENuke X can automatically create and verify email accounts on Y! Mail, Hotmail and AOL Mail. These email accounts can then be used to create the various accounts that you’ll submit content and backlinks to. These are:
- 39 Web 2.0/Free Blog Sites
- 86 Article Directories
- 25 Social Bookmarking Sites
- 29 Video Sites
- 5 RSS Directories
- 21 Press Release Sites
- 131 Non-Forum Profiles
- 430 Forum Profiles
This makes for a total of 766 different sites to potentially get backlinks from. In addition, it’s also possible to add your own custom lists of forum profile targets. While many submitters have larger target lists, what’s worth noting is that all of the sites SENuke X submits to have at least a PageRank of 1 on their homepage.
Using SENuke X
SENuke X comes with a very good wizard, that makes setting up a backlinks campaign a real breeze. Since a video says more than a million words (that’s a saying, right?), here’s what I made for you:
(Video is expandable to full-screen mode)
Success Rates
An important factor with any kind of automatic submissions is the success rate (or failure rate, depending on whether you're a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type of person). In short: How many of the submissions actually work?
I've done a few hundred submissions and account creations with SENuke, so far and here are the numbers:
On the account creation, I saw an overall success rate of 86%. That is impressive.
On the submissions across several campaigns I've done, the success rate has been between 70% and 80%. This is a good success rate and it has a lot to do with the fact that SENuke X gets updated several times, most weeks. Sites where submissions fail consistently tend to get weeded out and new sites are added on a regular basis.
Complaints
Overall, SENuke X has been working really well and I've been impressed with most of it. But of course, I also found some stuff to complain about during my testing.
During my initial test, the scheduler did not work the way it should. It seemed like it would just get stuck and manually starting certain task projects didn't help, either. This issue was fixed only a few weeks after my review was published and ever since, I have not had any new problems with the scheduler. It now works the way it should: you simply set up your campaign, tell the software over how many days it should spread the submissions and leave it running. So that's one complaint off the list.
One thing that's a real pity is that you can't go back to the diagram, where you draw out a "link-map" for your campaign, and add new parts to it. As far as I can tell, you can only start a new sub-campaign from scratch, including new profiles and accounts created for everything, if you want to use the diagram mode for building more links to the same site again. You can add new submission projects to an existing campaign, but not using the diagram.
Finally, something that struck me as strange (but isn't a huge problem) is that only .wmv, .avi and .mpg are supported for video uploads. Just seems weird that probably the most universal format for online video, .mp4, isn't included and neither are flash formats.
Out of all the above, the only really fatal flaw is the problem with the scheduler. SENuke X is significantly less useful as long as that isn't fixed.
Conclusion
SENuke delivers on it's initial promise and it manages to be the most automatic link-building tool I've seen since SERPAssist. The latter failed to impress me mainly for two reasons: 1) it didn't produce significant ranking results for the sites I tested it with and 2) it had a very limited amount of backlink targets, a problem that it doesn't share with SENuke X.
With a recent update, SENuke X 2.0 no longer needs to rely on a browser to create accounts and do submissions. Before this update, the software did most of the tasks by running several instances of Internet Explorer and automating the form-filling and clicking necessary for the submissions (which is the way almost all of these link building softwares work). Now, it does the submissions utilizing so-called "sockets". The practical effect of this is that it's a lot faster, uses fewer resources and is a lot more stable.
Overall, this is a huge improvement to the software and it's a feature that can justify the additional cost of SENuke X over some competing products.
Get Your 14 Day Free Trial of SENuke X
Bonus Video: How to Use SEnuke X
Shane,
I always find tools such as SENuke appealing in theory, but less so in reality.
It seems like this is a solution aimed at those who have large numbers of sites and just want to throw out any content that will pass Copyscape.
For those of us that try to produce original meaningful content with our names attached to it, it’s hard to see how this could be useful.
Please correct me if I’m missing something?
Yeah, that’s about right.
The concept of SENuke and similar link-building tools is that you blast loads of (usually rubbish) content all over the internet, to get backlinks. However, since practically no one except the Google bots ever see that content, you can still use this type of link building to promote sites you are more involved in.
The thing is: This type of link building currently works. I don’t know if it will last very long, but right now, you can get sites ranked with this “content blasting”.
Bruce
The beauty of SENuke X is that you have control to submit whatever quality of content you prefer to use.
I come from the same side of the fence as you regarding quality original content. However this does not stop me using SENukeX.
The power is in the ability to string all the tasks together – Article submission, Web2.0 sites, Social Bookmarking, RSS etc etc in a user defined sequence that you can reuse on many projects.
You just create the quality content required for each stage and input it at the project definition stage. Then press the button and walk away.
So in essence you could replicate something that is similar to Shane’s backlink battleplan but without the hard work.
Rich
Hi Rich,
that’s a good point. Even though I’m sure 90%+ of SENuke users will be blasting garbage content with it, you can actually keep everything high quality.
I’m somewhere in the middle with my own submissions. I don’t use particularly high quality content, but all of the content I use is readable and makes sense (i.e. not spun to death).
It all sounds very clever Shane but I can’t help agreeing with Bruce – just seeing the facility there to scrape together other people’s content (presumably without their links) to create content just makes me feel that SENukeX users who do this are going to get their fingers burned in the end. I appreciate that you advised against this in your video.
I think that I will just keep ‘pegging away’ trying to produce the best content I can and enjoy learning along the way and getting pleasure from having created something I am proud of rather than racing for the money pot!
This is certainly not the only way to get sites (or rather pages) ranked. And a tool like this can definitely be abused for some heavy spamming and stuff that I’d rather not do, myself.
I think the main focus is more on “quick and dirty”. It does automatically, what would otherwise take you ages to do by hand. If you have a “quick and dirty” affiliate website that’s honestly not going to rank on it’s own merits, then tools like these are the perfect match.
Having said that, I personally prefer a more involved and less spammy marketing and SEO style myself. I’ll still use various automation tools for most of my affiliate sites, though.
Look forward to your review – always valuable information.
On the Warrior Forum, there is ongoing discussions (arguments..lol) about the different tools available to accomplish a diversified backlinking campaign.
The problem is each tool had different functions and it is very difficult to compare products as to functions, price, trial period, web properties, ease of use, etc.
Maybe someone like you could make sense of this sense and maybe do a side by side comparison of features / benefits.
It appears that most mentioned products to compare/analyze are senukex, magic submitter, seo link robot, sick submitter, scrapebox….
Thanks
Hi Curt,
Yep, there are many candidates and it really is difficult to compare them all. I have been planning to do something of a side-by-side comparison for a while and I think now that SENuke X has been released, the time is right. :) It’ll take a heck of a lot of work, though…
It’s useful if the person is already building the exactly same stuff (manually/outsourcing) that the software promises, so the user basically will save a lot of time/money and will have a ROI.
If the person is not used to building backlinks etc I dont recommend. First discover what works for you and then start looking for automation. (Unless you want to spend 127 monthly not receiving return)
‘
Also if the person is lazy and havent build any backlink before for one websites, sorry, but SENUKE doesn’t make magic. Even having a 1 click software the person will not take action.
Oh yeah, that’s absolutely true.
Quite simply: If you already have a bunch of sites that are making you money from your SEO/link building efforts, then test SENuke and see if it helps.
If not, then don’t even think about it.
Shane, just want to say thanks for the great review of SENuke. Frankly, it’s better than their sales vid/letter, and the fact that it comes from someone who is an unbiased expert makes it even better. You’ve helped me make a decision about whether or not to move forward with SENuke, and I really appreciate that.
Thanks for your comment! Glad it helped. :)
Hi Shane, I think rich’s point about using to automate certain parts of your back links battle plan is where it could work for me. I too need the quality to be better than the sort of rubbish that gets posted on my own public blog at DJI, but I guess the acid test for most people will be can they scrape together enough income from IM to justify 127 dollars a month? For me, as long as it does deliver the juice, the cost is nothing compared to the Monet I make doing seo for clients. So I eagerly await your next update…
griff
Shane,
I’m also playing with SENuke X, and so far i’m loving it. Apart from some teething issues.
In My opinion you get OUT of SENuke X exactly what you put INTO it. In other words, feed it with quality, you will get more links sticking as it is valuable content. Put in garbage and site moderators may just look for the DELETE account button.
I did read, elsewhere that to really see great effect with automation tools like SENuke X you shouldn’t treat your web 2.0′ like one page submit and forget’s.. Better link juice from a 2.0 where you update and look after. Build this account up like a personal blog and you will be better rewarded.
Chris
ps. So far i’m loving what I see with SENuke X.
I agree. One-pagers won’t ever help that much. They can still give you a boost (just like almost-empty forum profiles), but if you actually build them out, they’ll serve you much better.
The only problem is creating all that content…
I suppose what I don’t understand is how you “feed it with quality” when it is spinning and distributing content all over the place.
Even if you start with quality, how do you monitor the process to make sure that something you wouldn’t want your name attached to isn’t floating around on one or more sites.
With spun content, I’ve found that if you spin each sentence rather than individual words, the resulting texts remain readable. Same goes for ordering/outsourcing spun content. Always ask for sentence-spinning.
In general, you can’t control what’s on the Internet, about you (wikipedia “Steisand Effect” for example), but in terms of link-building, SENuke only does what you tell it to do. You have control over the content you distribute yourself.
Shane,
I also agree the best way is to take the time and spin each sentance at least three times. I also like to spin the headings and sub-headings. Many sentances will be easier to re-write, so i’ll add as many variations into there as I possibly can.
This way I am pretty confident that each and every article I send out in unique to a certain extent, and the big bonus is it’s actually readable.
Shane – quick question. I tried the old SEnuke, and to be totally honest, didn’t like it. (Actually, very much hated it…LOL.) It seems if much of what I didn’t like (mainly, the lack of intuitiveness) has been addressed here. Also like the scheduling feature a la SERPassist.
Here’s a big question with me, though – one of the things I didn’t like about the old SEnuke was how bad it tied up my computer (and I’ve talked to others that said the same thing). If you didn’t have a separate machine, and didn’t want to have to purchase a VPS to run Nuke X on, is it worth it to try this out, or are you basically going to be tying up your computer for days on end?
This is why I’m considering trying out a few other services – even though they might be a tad more expensive – that are server-based, instead. (I am most interested in Backlinks Genie.)
Thanks.
I have found it to run quite nicely in the background. It does reduce responsiveness occasionally, but I can still do everything I normally do, without any issues. So far, anyway.
For example, while I was recording and editing that video, SENuke was running in the background.
An option I’m considering is to have it generally running at night and turning it off during the day, so that it uses up zero system resources when I’m working.
Whether or not you spin content or create your own “unique meaningful” content, one thing is for sure – SENukeX will likely save you invaluable hours in the area of keyword research, account creations, content submissions/promotion, submission/promotion strategy design, & content indexing.
As long as the automation is done in a way that is not detectably spammy then why would you waste your time doing the same work manually. There is no “meaningful” email account creation and you probably won’t get any brownie points for submitting your articles manually.
It just makes sense to automate where it is effective, useful, and cost-effective.
If you’re worried about creating meaningless content that will eventually go out of style in the search engines, then create a whole bunch of meaningful, unique content but let programs like SENukeX automate it’s promotion.
If SENukeX turns out to be a solid effective program, then it will likely save you both time and money over outsourcing the same amount of work or doing it yourself (manually).
The points regarding automation are not disputed. That’s what intrigued me about the software in the first place.
What I am not clear on is if it can still be effective without using the spinning functionality. That seems to be a significant part of the marketing campaign.
If the system can be used to mass distribute original content as well as automate some of the time consuming SEO that is already being done, then it becomes something worth looking at.
On the other hand, if the content distribution function is built around creating content that is “good enough” to qualify for SEO benefits, then the market for the software is IMO, limited to those in the IM niche.
You can use it for unspun content, but it’s generally recommended to spin.
It’s certainly not limited to any particular niche, though. The idea here is to create “link-fodder”. All the pages it creates are really just containers for your backlinks and you’ll likely never get an actual visitor through the submitted content.
The only exception there are the videos, which you can also automatically submit using SENuke X.
Shane,
Thanks so much for going ahead and making the time in your schedule to test this new software out. I have been very aware of the hype around the launch of this new ‘power-house’ but like a lot of people who are commenting here I am not convinced it is going to help us in the long run. The last thing I want to be doing with any software is creating a spam network that is going to come back and bite me in the bum and basically be another black hole to pour money into on the internet.
Keep us posted to your findings and let’s keep the dialogue going for some time to come.
One thing I would like you so comment on is this: does using this kind of software leave some kind of foot-print out there? Basically it’s a machine doing all the submissions work, which may not be detectable to humans, so will another machine (Google) eventually be able to detect when this is happening and bring out a ‘SENukeX (or other) Update’? Just wondering….
Cheers,
Graham
That’s a good question.
From what I’ve seen so far, SENuke X doesn’t leave any obvious footprints. The links themselves are the most recognizable thing about the submissions (standard is that you simply get three links, one line each, at the end of the article), but this can be randomized in various ways.
SENuke X at $127 a month. I have Stephan Hawkins Link Robot. This was a one time fee of $157. Link Robot Team has continued to improve on this automation tool. I think I will stay with the Link Robot. This tool has been consistently good.
Thanks for the review.
Regards
Stanley
Yeah, Link Robot is an interesting contender, especially because of the one-time fee.
Thanks for the initial SENuke X review Shane, I’ve been deciding whether to try it out with all the buzz going on. Tempting to get on the 14 day trial just to see whether it’s worth the hefty $127/mth price tag… but not sure whether anyone would be able to see results testing for only 14 days?
By the way, how did you make the ‘get your 14 day free trial of senuke x’ green button on your blog? Is that a wordpress plugin? I can see the buttons on your other pages and was wondering how I can replicate that on my own affiliate sites?
Hi Jenny,
14 days is a bit short for seeing clear results, but I think it’s worth a shot. Even if you cancel after the trial, you can still benefit from it and give one or two of your sites a nice backlink push during that time.
The button comes with the theme. There are a bunch of shortcodes for creating buttons like that. Practically all premium WP themes come with shortcodes for buttons, boxes and all sorts of fancy stuff, nowadays. :)
It says 14 days but it is actually a 30 day review
Hey Shane,
Great review. I think this launch is competing with a similar type of software called RankBuilder 2.0 (Alex Goad) at almost half the cost. I was about to test SeNuke X out until I got RankBuilder 2.0 on my inbox. Are you familiar with it? I have a few sites on page one and I need automation now as I expand my portfolio. Which one would you go for? They both look promising
-Errol
I have yet to test Rank Builder, so I must withhold judgement for now.
I have RankBuilder, temporarily. It is UK based and apparently requires using UK emails (a stupid flaw IMO). I have 600 emails that I have to MANUALLY activate because I used a US address!
Their service is terrible — I’ve been going back and forth with them for a week on this issue with no joy in sight.
The failure rate is high.
Their videos are outdated, since they updated their software and split out several function. Even their customer service is still quoting original version information.
In short, it is severely lacking. I am about to give up on it and request a refund.
I hopes this helps.
Nice to see you are reviewing this software. I have been on the fence regarding this and reading through your comments does not help me to decide. I am more against than for.
It all looks superb in practise. However we have just had one big push from Google and I wonder what the next thing will be.
What worries me the most apart from junk content that it probably produces for 90% of users is the fact that it builds your email addresses from the good old spam email companies.
Yahoo, hotmail etc etc. Not only does it build them, it creates junk email addresses. jdprggtf1234567@hotmail.com is not exactly encouraging. When will google decide enough is enough and ban the spam email addresses that do not make sense.
They can see when someone has hundreds or thousands of emails coming from the same server going to junk sites, and I am sure it wont be long before they jump on this.
I like the idea, but think the best way forward is to build quality pages first and then add to the site slowly and with more quality pages, followed by quality posts, and then build your own network of links.
Having the time to do these things when you are in a full time job is difficult. But nothing beats good quality, and if it is unique google will reward you for it eventually.
Just my thoughts.
Regards
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
In the long run, I think you are right. I also believe that “content blasting” will lose it’s effectiveness over time and that Google will keep moving towards rewarding good content all around.
Personally, I keep doing what works now, while also working on some higher quality/more involved stuff. People have been saying that crap content and spammy link building will lose it’s effectiveness for as long as I’ve been in online marketing. All the while, I’ve created a bunch of not-so-great sites and built lots of more-or-less spammy links, resulting in thousands of dollars earned for me.
What I’m trying to say is: Don’t stand by the sidelines worrying, when you could be making money in the meantime.
Hi Shane
Thanks for the review. I am only now just being introduced to these types of products and have been in and out of the WF reading peoples opinions about products.
I guess as a relative newbie to these automated back linking tools I think I would be better off starting with a one off purchase to get my head around how it all works and then perhaps invest in a better tool and a monthly program.
Can you give me your recommendations on SEO Link Robot please. I don’t see it in your Back Links Battle Plan [member by the way]
Big call to do a side by side comparison [Curt's comments] but I bet we would all like to see that.
Cheers mate
SEOLinkRobot is not as powerful and not as feature rich as SENuke X. However, it also costs less. It does some very cool stuff and it is a useful link-building tool, just not quite the same as SENuke. I guess you get what you pay for.
Should be great for affiliate marketing, or pointing to your tier ones and twos.
Shame it doesn’t do double-passing for profiles (which it probably could with the scheduler), or get live URLs of Articles or Profiles to index and RSS. Custom profiles and article sites (using your own footprints) are a great plus.
Thanks for your initial impressions Shane, please keep us updated!
Sick Submitter supports double-passing. Bang-for-your-buck wise, Sick is definitely worth looking at, although it takes a lot more customization and setup before you ever get a backlink out of it.
Honestly speaking, I am disappointed to see you Shane jumping on board and promoting SeNukeX too. I am definitely sure that SeNukeX works in helping your sites rank, but I do see how it can warrant the high price of 127/mth (going up to 147/mth) just for the maintanence of web 2.0 sites – because there are cheaper alternatives to do all the rest of the stuff you listed that SenukeX can do, some even with just a one-time fee.
•28 Web 2.0/Free Blog Sites
- This can be easily done even manually without having to pay for captcha credits in SenukeX, and since you are going to have to babysit SenukeX anyway it doesn’t really matter. What you do is to install Lastpass or Roboform on your computer, group these web2.0 sites into 15 sites each (bookmarks), and open all at one go. Then use the autofill feature to sign up and log-in, and just load your pre-spun articles into each respective site. If I already have a spun article, all these just takes me at most 5-10minutes, whereas Senuke probably takes around the same time too.
•72 Article Directories
-You have AMR and a lot of other article submission bots for this, no doubt about it.
•22 Social Bookmarking Sites
-Bookmarking demon, or outsource it onto fiverr. $5 for quality 20 + manual bookmarks
•20 Video Sites
-You have TubeMogul and Pixelpipe and some other services for these, most of which are free
•5 RSS Directories
-Free RSS submitter on this website:
http://www.imtalk.org/cmps_index.php?pageid=IMT-RSS-Submitter
•25 Press Release Sites
-This can easily be done in the same manual way with the web 2.0 sites
•66 Non-Forum Profiles
•875 Forum Profiles
-Sick Submitter (12.99/mth WSO), autobacklink bomb, outsourcing it for a cheaper price than paying for the subscription fee of senuke.
Lastly, you have contenders like SEOLink Robot (which is still a bit buggy at themoment) and also Magic Submitter (67/mth) that is constantly being updated and the owner is almost 24/7 to help you or add in any updates that you want. Honestly, I see no reason why someone would want to use Senuke other than just being an affiliate and get people to sign up under their links. Of course I have to stress again its not that Senuke doesnt work, but the fact is that you can get all of the things that senuke does for a MUCH LOWER PRICE!
And also check out this rant by a fellow IMer and some of the comments:
http://lostballinhighweeds.com/nuke-your-bank-account-with-senuke-x
Can you imagine how many people ask me about SEnuke X? If I don’t publish a review, I’ll just be answering emails asking about it all day long.
There’s always more than one way to skin a cat. Yes, you can get all the backlinks SENuke builds for you in various other ways as well. That doesn’t make the tool useless. So far, the success rates with SENuke are very good and it takes absolutely minimal hand-holding. If you get a positive ROI on your investment, then why not use it?
Simon
I think you are unfair in your criticism. Shane has been extremely unbiased and offered his opinions – there was no hard sell. This is exactly what we need in the IM space – people who give honest appraisals of stuff.
Personally, I own pretty much everything out there for link building, and I intend to keep my SENukeX subscription, simply because it can save me hours a day over using other tools independently. Yes, there are problems with the scheduler, and I fully expect them to be sorted out soon. However, once it is all running properly, I can setup linking campaigns that will run for weeks, in the matter of a couple of hours. For professional webmasters, that type of time saving is worth so much more than the monthly subscription to SENukeX.
Andy Williams
Thank you, Andy.
Hi Shane. I think this is a bit expensive for what it is and you have to pay more for the spinner if I understood your video right. I also don’t think that their annual or lifetime packages are very good value, the payback would take many months. I know this is a rewrite but I don’t think the original life members are getting this free, in fact I got a mailing from someone who said they had the old and just forked out $2k for the new one.
We all know that Google is starting to tackle duplicate content, to begin with it has reduced the ranking of sites like eZine, others will follow. Next it will start looking at backlinks, it’s new +1 system will eventually give it a very different means of ranking and give it a tool to make some headway against facebook.
So I predict that a tool like this has 12-18 months of value and then it will need a serious upgrade. What makes the price less value is that we have to keep it on a PC or virtual server
What I like about it is what I like about your product; the project management and planning aspect, there is the temptation.
Thanks for the walk through, I will be buying it but only because of the time saved.
Honestly, right now I am reviewing the Software for a 14 day trial.
After looking at the whole thing and testing it, the most amazing factor why it is selling hot and should sell in future, is the templates you can create or diagramming your entire chart of back links and link wheels. Though anyone could do it manually but as its easier to put the robot into action then why all the manual labor.
After all its our Time that is more valuable than the hardcore labor.
Most of the IM’s may love the software because we are designers of the optimization patterns and not people who do it manually.
Yes you could outsource the jobs and get it done in 3-5 days, but just imagine how many people you need to hire to do this sort of work and for how many websites.
I like the software and I think will give it a try for few projects before the outcome of results.
Shane, I would love to see your review/comparison for SENUKE and SERPassist. I think that would make some decisions a bit easier for most of the marketers.
Yeah, the templates are a promising feature. All that’s needed in addition is some content.
I reviewed SERPassist a while back and my conclusion was: the technology is impressive, but the results aren’t. The main problem was that there weren’t enough sites that SERPassist could submit to. Now, I’ve just checked again (on the site, I’m no longer a subscriber to SERPassist) and it looks like the software now submits to even fewer sites than before! According to the official list, only two bookmarking sites are still left and there’s now a total of only 38 target sites left, that the software submits to.
Either that list is wrong or SERPassist is in some trouble. As much as I would like to like it, I have to say: No matter what ninja-automation you do, if you can only submit to 38 sites in total, you’ll never see great results…
Shane,
Back again. Been thinking about some of things you had said about the software. While I appreciate you making time to give a ‘review’ I think it would have been truly unbiased if you had done so not as an affiliate. Basically you are doing the vested interest review thing, trying to be impartial review thing but because you are an affiliate you have underlying motive to make it sound good. It’s really hard now-a-days to trust reviews because of this. In the ‘real world’ it’s called – a conflict of interest and business people and politicians are busted for this kind of thing.
I would also like to ask the question: just because something works does that mean we should use it? Does that make it ‘right’? Some analogies come to mind: going fishing with dynamite – yes, you’ll catch fish but you’ll ruin the environment for yourself and others. You could make a withdrawal from the bank with a machine gun but eventually you’ll get stopped and never be able to get near a bank again for a very long time. My point is: let’s not just look at the green, the fast buck, we could make now but to the future for all marketers.
The internet was initially invented to help humans share information and quality content but it’s fast becoming a battle ground for the auto-bots battling it out for dominance.
Hi Graham,
It has been my policy right from the start to always use affiliate links, whether the product in question is any good or not.
From you reaction, it almost seems like I’m hard-selling and trying to push people to buy SENuke. However, all I’ve done is say “yeah, it works so far” and shown a video demoing the software.
As for the question of “should it be used?”, you make a very good point. I think content blasting using a tool like this can indeed be likened to fishing with dynamite, to a certain degree. I think it depends on your marketing style whether this is a good idea or not. A tool like SENuke was created to promote “thin” affiliate sites, in my opinion. If you have a site with a couple of pages and it’s all about promoting some golf-swing ebook or a “how to build chicken coops” product, then you’ll never get “real” editorial backlinks, you won’t create social buzz and get lots of momentum from visitors and user-generated promotions and content. You also can’t run contests or legitimate press releases for a site like that. So, you’re left with building links yourself and automating that task makes a lot of sense.
If that’s not the kind of marketing you want to do, I completely understand. No one’s forcing anyone to do that. It just happens to be one of the ways in which many people are making money online and it’s the most commonly taught method. Hence the popularity of tools such as SENuke.
All those that are not happy that Shane has put an affiliate link in this article, should ‘jog on’! He has taken the time to write a review, after actually using it. That is rare for many a guru. If you read Shane’s blog, you would know he is one of the few straight up people in this industry, who isn’t trying to send bulks of BS emails and offers about endless garbage. If you buy because of his review, why shouldn’t his link be used. The alternative is for him to stop putting affiliate links, stop writing real reviews and to join one of the IM cartels who peddle tons of rubbish.
Shane you mentioned you were creating a product creation around the middle of April, any update on this?
Hello Again Shane,
Just to let everyone know the latest offer from SENUKeX about a life time offer for $618 only that comes to less than $2 a day. That’s great.
Now it makes sense using the software for lifetime. This is really cost effective now compared to $127 per month which amounted to more than a $1000 annual.
Thanks again Shane, for a wonderful review and your inputs on SerpAssist.
I always feel that any software and idea will be welcomed with criticism and praise. SEnuke X is designed to ease out your time which is an invaluable asset specially internet marketers. All the opinions are either based on what we see or what we experinece and this should not sway you from adopting wrong backlink building technique’s. I mean SEnuke is an automation tool which asks for instructions to be put in by humans. It’s a tool which is build to save you time and you can use it the fair way to build backlinks and get up the SERPS. In the end, the way you use it will determine the outcome.
Hi all,
Neevan mentioned, above, that SENukeX is doing a lifetime offer for $618.
Does Neevan, Shane, or anyone else know the steps we need to take to get the $618 price?
I still see the $1997.
Thanks,
S G
I think there’s a misunderstanding, there.
There’s an option to pay 3x $680 or something like that, for the lifetime option, instead of paying 1x $2K.
Oh O.K., gotcha, thanks Shane….that makes more sense.
Oh! My Mistake Shane, S.G. Apologies.
Here is the copy of the mail
Naveen,
By popular request we are going to be offerng
a payment option for both the lifetime and
yearly options.
The lifetime option will be three monthly
payments of only $697.
The yearly will be two monthly payments of
only $517
This multipay option is for the “No Trial”
versions only but you still have a full
30 days to cancel your subscription and be issued
a complete refund.
I feel obliged to jump in & ask those that aren’t happy with Shane’s affiliate links – do you know any good review sites that don’t receive affiliate commissions? Or maybe they use a different model – with loads of onsite advertising (do you notice the lack of banner advertising on shane’s sites?)
To me, content is everything. Be an Expert. Write good content about a subject you know well, back it up with good data, communicate this content, engauge with people, build trust, build a brand, recommend (and sell) good products, listen to your customers, understand their needs, address their needs…
Marketing. It’s hard work!
Keep it up Shane!
I think I’m going to have to quote you on this bit:
“Be an Expert. Write good content about a subject you know well, back it up with good data, communicate this content, engauge with people, build trust, build a brand, recommend (and sell) good products, listen to your customers, understand their needs, address their needs…
Marketing. It’s hard work!”
Probably over and over again and expecially the last line!
I’m pretty startled to see some of the comments against Shane’s use of an affiliate link…
He’s the most transparent marketer I know. He’ll tell you not to buy something 10 times more than he’ll tell you that something works.
If you think that an affiliate marketer has a conflict of interest by using affiliate links then we’re all screwed aren’t we?
Finally, just because you can sanction 10 different processes to achieve the same result for half the price doesn’t render the convenience of having one, single automated system redundant.
It sounds like I’m all for SE Nuke X, but….
I actually don’t like the look of SENuke X myself – the JC Penney fiasco, the fact that Google is encouraging webmasters to report spammy link building practices of their competitors directly to them, the probability that there are a number of highly paid PHDs much cleverer than us working their butts off to figure out how to algorithmically devalue trashy links, and that most internet marketers are using these commonly accepted link building approaches is enough for me to try and find an edge by distancing myself from the mainstream by putting together a system for high value, contextual, editorial links that will last the distance.
The tricky part is making something scaleable and largely hands off. For me that involves paying talented writers – but that’s an investment risk I’m willing to take because I can see it paying off in the long run.
Do us all a favour and lay off the criticism for using affilite links – we’re all marketers here.
Does it really work better and save you TIME & MONEY? compare to outsourcing for manual backlinking regarding not only success rates but the time you have to invest to set it up and to check it up to be sure it is working as it supposes to work.
Also money wise, for $127/mo I can make a pretty good outsourced campaign including content creation and distribution. Of cause there is campaign management time involved but still it could be less then checking up on how software is working and correcting it all the time.
As more I try to incorporate automatic tools into IM as more I understand that human approach is the best one that guaranteed you the best results.
It’s mainly a time-saver, IMO.
Whether or not it’s cheaper than outsourcing depends entirely on how many campaigns you run. SEnuke costs a flat fee and outsourcing usually costs more, the more work you have.
If you put SEnuke on a VPS, crank up the multi-threading to the maximum and have it running so many campaigns simultaneously that it’s literally submitting 24/7, it’s way cheaper than outsourcing (hint: that’s what many link-building service providers do). If you use it occasionally, for just two or three sites, then it’s more expensive than outsourcing. :)
So, it definitely depends on how you use it.
It’s not a revolution in link building or anything like that. Just another tool worth looking at.
I think you speak from the heart, Shane (scarface)
Shane, thanks so much for the new videos you’ve added to the review. They are super helpful! I have signed up for SENuke X but I’m still on the fence if I want to keep it. I’m still not sure of the quality of links SENuke X builds and whether to jeopardize any money sites with it.
Earlier this year I had 4 sites I was promoting. I used Backlink Battleplan on 3 and I outsourced link building using SENuke to SEONuking via Vita Vee’s forum just to see the difference. SEONuking got me to page 1 of Google for two different keywords fairly quickly. But after the Google farmer update (not directly after but maybe a couple of weeks later) I noticed my SENuke promoted website disappear from Google while the Backlink Battleplan promoted sites have held their positions fairly well. Of course it’s not completely an apples to apples comparison given the promotion and link building timeframes but there seems to be some relation there. Also, note that the delisted site had some other promotions applied to it first like using UAW and I know the SEONuking team does blog network submissions in addition to just using SENuke.
Does it make sense to use SENuke X on sites that are a link away from your main money site instead of direct links? For example creating a Squidoo lens that links to your money site and then using SENuke X on your Squidoo lens to get indirect link juice? Hopefully this shields your main site from getting slapped just in case Google starts to crack down on these kinds of links.
I definitely agree about using additional link building techniques to get higher PR links along with SENuke X.
Thanks!
I find it interesting that you’re finding the sites you apply Backlink Battleplan seems to be less affected by the latest Google update. Do you have any guesses as to why that is?
When using automated/semi-automated link building tools I usually try not to have too many links going directly to my money site. I personally like building some good link hubs like what you are suggesting using SENuke for.
I’m not sure and I also can’t be 100% sure that it’s because of SENuke that my one site got dropped from Google. It could be a coincidence. Also, the way the SEONuking team used SENuke was that they used only the Social Network, Bookmark and RSS nukes. With Backlink Battleplan I was getting a whole lot more variety with video etc. Also my backlink battleplan sites were promoted for a longer time so there were more links built over time.
Rich (below) made a very interesting comment that if SENuke links were penalized then all you’d have to do is nuke your competitors to beat them. So it doesn’t make sense that nuke links would be penalized.
Any thoughts, Shane?
Hi Shane
I must admit I am not so sure about SENuke X as I was at the start.
I feel that the diagram you build at the start of a project should be accessible once the project has started. It appears to be forgotten which makes it difficult to actually see the promotion strategy used.
The diagram was the thing that really looked attractive to me over the system I was using (Magic Submitter).
But I am also confused by some of the comments. As I understand it you can’t get your money site penalised by using SENuke. But what you might see is your links devalued in some way by Google. So your nuking will be wasted.
So the only risk in using SENuke X is that you may have to get a lot more links before you see any improvement in rankings.
If I am wrong in this assumption then all I have to do is Nuke my competitors to get them penalised. :)
Any thoughts on this.
Rich
Shane, great review. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I think you forgot to update the price? If I’m not mistaken it’s back up to $147 a month now.
Personally I decided not to buy SENuke X in the end because my internet connection here can sometimes be unreliable and from experience that usually messes up the submissions (stuck halfway and so on).
Hi Shane,
As Always great info….I didn’t read through all the comments but just with regard to the early ones about content quality…one of the things against us smaller operators, especially at start up, is time. SEnukex seems to give us the opportunity to write quality content…spin it and send it out on a limited basis that is much faster than solo operation…then write another article and do the same, all targeting the money site. The scheduler allows a slower drip feed off a number of articles and you can put together a few of small campaigns rather than one constant big blast…thus balancing the automation with the content quality. Much harder to do this when you are writing yourself and trying to distribute them as well…plus keep the day job going.
I would imagine that Google will also find it harder to slap you down if you do it this way because the articles are under different names (aliases?) and it will not appear as a spamming exercise because the articles are different.
The old catch cry ‘moderation in all things’ suggests that if you are crafty in your use of senukex you can use its benefits without drawing the attention of the big G.
Gordon
Personally, I’ve got one foot in both camps:
I *generally* agree with – and appreciate all of – Shane’s honest, unbiased review-comments (I have been a big fan of his since his Back Links Blue Print) …
… and on the other hand, I am beginning to appreciate the “Old School” approach of providing value (as in unique content) – especially since I’m afraid that in a while (a few years .. or a few months?) we’re going to look back at the Farmer Update with envy .. as in, the worst is yet to come .. and there goes a lot of work on the less-than-quality sites we’ve labored to publish & promote.
So I guess I come down on the side of Paul McCarthy, for all the reasons he cited (post, April, 11th .. above). Those reasons … and the (now) $147/mo price. (smile)
Richard
Hi Shane,
I have just started the 14 days trial yesterday. SEnuke is the first more complex automation tool I ever used. My first impressions after walking through the setup and running the first project:
- It seems to be very powerful
- As an automation newbie it took me some hours to study all the training videos and get to first project running.
- The training videos may be sufficient for an experienced user (especially those from old Senuke), but not detailed (step by step like) enough for newbies. There are no PDF tutorials offered at all.
- There is no training video (especially for beginners) describing the necessary first steps to get a first minor project running
- My breakthrough came after I purchased a 10$ quick start guide pdf (23 pages) from an experienced user which I discovered inside the user forum.
- After reading this I took me only 10 more minutes to push the start button for the first project.
- If you do not use the auto decaptcha service (like me) it takes you about 30 minutes sitting at the pc to fill out all teh required captcha manually.
Today I will test some more features (like the wizard), but at this moment I’m willing to start paying the monthly fees of 127$. It looks like being a good roi if you are running more than 6 or 7 sites.
And a last remark: Thanks to you, Shane, for your great and helpful reviews. Please keep on walking this track.
Wolfgang from Gemany
Hi Shane,
thanks for this great review !
I’ll give this software a try, but I have some questions that might interest all of us that are promoting non english websites : do you have any experience with the success rates for non english content ?
Will submitted french articles, for instance, ‘stick’ with the same success rate as english ones in the articles directories or not ?
And / or are there some measures to take to improves SENuke X’s efficiency for non english promotions : like non using the articles directories at all, for instance, and/or selecting ‘International’ as category in RSS directories,… ?
In a related topic, is it possible to add one’s own sources (RSS directories, article directories, and so on…) ?
Adding language specific new sources might be a way of going around some english language limitations ?
Wishing you and all the marketers here a brilliant day,
Emmanuel
I notice that many people are not getting the exact results as SENUKE X claims it would get them. Just to update everyone here. If you create Web 2.0 properties, Scraped content is great but if its not originally written i.e for visitors to read rather than just for Search engines, there is a 30% chance you might get your listings on top.
Why many people get top results and many don’t is totally dependent on the competition for that keyword/key phrase. If you are trying to rank for a very competitive search, I suggest using original and well optimized content. Even after the spin you need to make sure the on page optimization has to be in order and it is readable by the general visitor. Google Panda / Farmer update is all about this.
Using automated software’s only give you the ability to save time on designing your own strategy, but at the end you know for Google, Content is king.
I have tried it on many of my websites. Any scraped and spun content does not get you even near 30% of your goals for competitive searches. Even if it does, the fall in rankings sooner or later is guaranteed.
SENukeX- great Automation Tool. But you need to work with it. As far as the project management in SENUKEX- I guess it still needs some improvement, as I tend to agree, its a bit confusing managing multiple properties.
Maybe Project Tab Grouping can help this software do wonders.
Who needs SeNukeX when ‘Backlink Battleplan’ is so good?
bottomline is this, dont be lazy, set up the profiles properly and add good content, this will take many man hours out of linkbuilding.
Hi Shane
Just a quick thank you for all your hard work in preparing this review of SENukeX. I really appreciate the depth of experience you bring to bear on this kind of product, the excellent video and commentary you provided, and your integrity.
And something else – You seem to have a good bunch of commenters too! I’ve learned a lot from their comments and your responses.
I think you are right to include your affiliate link in these reviews. How else will you be recompensed for the time you spend in creating it? But you do a good job of helping people to decide whether or not this product is for them. What more can we ask? We are all grown-ups, and can use our own discrimination in assessing your objectivity.
SENukeX isn’t for me. I am only just beginning to understand the risks and benefits of various linking strategies. This tool is very powerful, and I think it needs to be wielded by people who know exactly what they are doing! Maybe one day.
Looking forward to your next product review.
Alex
Hi Shane,
Thought you might like a recent update from an SENukeX ‘power-user’! I’ve been working with it for 6 weeks now on a mix of ‘client’ SEO work and for my own money sites. Here are my thoughts so far:
Firstly the learning curve is pretty steep, both from the standpoint of grasping its technical requirements and also conceptually in terms of understanding SEO and back-linking.
I have also found that the failure rate for a fully automated campaign is too high for my liking and even though the system advises how to improve the rates such as manually clicking verification emails etc., the effort to do this undermines the value of the automation, especially when you have multiple campaigns running.
However (and here’s why I’ll be carrying on with my subscription) taking aspects of it to automate parts of a campaign, for example on some aspects of your Backlinks Battleplan it works really really well and you can get an almost 100% success rate. This is a huge time-saver and, most importantly, I’m seeing really effective SERPS results with it. The developers have ironed out the bugs that it had when it launched and they have added quite a few new sites already.
So I think that despite a price point that has caused some heated forum debates here and there, if you have a lot of sites that need work, or like me, you offer commercial SEO services to real life businesses, the cost as a fixed overhead to your business versus the cost of the time for manual backlinking make it a worthy addition to a broader internet marketing ‘toolbox’.
It’s not for beginners looking to promote their first few money sites because they are unlikely to see enough return to justify the cost / effort to learn it. But as an internet marketer’s portfolio of sites / products grows, they’d soon see benefits, even at $147 a month. The simple fact is that it does automate lots of backlinks and they do create enough juice to anchor a page at the top of Google. Which is the whole point of it!
Hope this is useful to anyone thinking about jumping into SENukeX!
All the best
Griff
PS. How long before SECockpit arrives?!!!
Hey Griff,
Thank you very much for this insightful comment!
SECockpit: soon. Will announce this weekend. ;)
I tried an experiment and hired one of the warrior forum members who specializes in senukex. As part of the project I provided several unique articles (which they never used in the project) and was assured everything in the backlinking project was above board and professional.
When I began to follow the links provided at the completion of the project I could not believe my eyes!
It was embarrassing to have been responsible for littering the net with such trash.
A complete waste of time, money, and energy.
Senukex in the wrong hands is a very powerful littering tool.
Wow! Shane— you really know how to put together a REALLY great review. LOVE how you really broke this all down for us.
And you read my mind, after watching your first video i thought, cool… i’m ready to give this a try now, but what would be the best way to use this.
Then in video 2, you go right into that! lol…
BUT, i don’t know if i missed this somewhere or not, but do you recommend using this tool to link directly to your money site?
Or would it be better if I hand created some unique content for a handful of web 2.0 sites then used SEnuke to build links to those web 2.0 sites?
Then either way I assume i would use a strategy to get the high PR links you talked about linking directly to the money site.
Again, THANKS SO MUCH for this review Shane!!
Lance
Thanks for your comment!
To answer your question: do both. Yes, you can use this to build links directly to your money-site, but you should also build second-tier links. You can do this right within the software, of course, but you can also create new mini-campaigns to blast backlinks at links you’ve gotten from other sources than SEnuke X (e.g. blog network posts, guest posts,…).
I have been looking at the software for a while and would like to know, are all of the links that are created going to be n/a in page rank and if you are building links to those pages, they too will be n/a, so how long will it take to get page rank if you are only using senuke x and doing article, blog and social bookmarking daily.
Steve
SEO Link Robot is a one time fee of 497. I have learned a lot here and I think after reading all the comments I decided to try SEO LR. Im glad I found Shane’s sofware.
edsel
Hi Shane,
I have a site that I created this April 2011, last Aug it becomes PR3 and one of my KW is on page 1 sitting on #7 sometimes 8. what do you advice so that I can move this KW to #1? This is an Amazon site. Also I’m thinking of selling the site in Flippa for a good change.
thanks
edsel
Very nice to have a decent review of someone who is not trying to oversell something….
most of the review out there are just trying to convince people from buying from their affiliate links but from the first line we can see on your review that you are trying to help and give the best idea possible. Thanks!
If you have to choose or compare Senuke X or Using buildMyrank for building Backlinks for your niche sites. What will you choose and why ?
Hello Aldo,
SEnuke X vs. BuildMyRank is an apples to oranges comparison. The two are just so completely different.
I use them both and they are both very useful, so I really don’t think I can answer this question.
Basically, with SEnuke X, you have the ability to build all kinds of backlinks to your site. None of the backlinks are super high quality ones, but there are lots of them and there’s a good amount of link variety.
With BMR, you get higher-quality links, but you only get exactly one single type of link and there’s going to be fewer of them. On their own, they won’t be nearly as useful as when you combine them with other kinds of link building.
Well Thanks a lot Shane.
You helped me with your answer since i wanted to confirm that information about BuildMyRank.
Yeah Mixing This type of links could do a nice job.
How many liks does Senuke create which are nofollowed – most of the web2.0 are nofollowed, after that you have the problem of account delection – this happens all the time. So at the end you get a few dozen links for quite a lot of manual intervention.
I cant see the point myself.
Hi Shane,
I guess the bottom line is, how quickly and effectively can it rank a site in say a micro niche with a exact match domain once you’ve done the appropriate on page seo?
Hello Shane,
thanks once again, for answering my questions! as i am a macuser and cannot use magicsubmitter, i think i will go to senuke
Hi Shane. How effective do you think this product would be for a software company website that is generally high quality and corporate/branded? Could it still be useful and actually worth the money? Or is it better to manually build high quality links?
Hi Shane
I would like to ask you something. If money is not an issue; would you recommend to have both SENuke and Magic Submitter Softwares? Do you think Magic submitter have some extra benefit to add and if yes what are they?
I am real confused between the two; i know that SENuke is worth the investment but just wondering if magic submitter has got something extra to offer.
Thanks in advance.
Hi Sean,
Even if money really isn’t an issue, I don’t think having both SENuke X and Magic Submitter is worth it. Ultimately, they are too similar. It would be smarter to invest in one of these tools plus something like BuildMyRank or a blog network subscription.
Shane,
When using The Best Spinner within SENuke X, and spinning at the sentence and paragraph level, how many spun articles would you recommend creating that would ensure only high quality articles are getting submitted? 10-15? How many words on average do you make your articles and how many backlinks do you add per that number of words?
Thank you.
Hi,
I must say I ve really appreciated the comment section here. I am going to to try the 14 trial offer of senuke and check the whole thing for myself.
I am a first time visitor here but I will be back. Thanks.