(Be sure to see new updates / edits below!)

Since it’s been the rage this week, I had a look at Auto Traffic Buddy to see what it was all about.

I had a roller coaster of emotions.

First, like most of you (I’m pretty sure) I don’t actually read every word on a salespage. So upon skimming and deciding to purchase, my understanding was that AutoTrafficBuddy is a WordPress plugin that was supposed to get links to inner pages, not just the homepage.

Sounds delightful. In fact, sounds like something very much needed. Homepage links are wonderful, but for each of our individual posts to really shine, we’ve GOT to be building deep links to the individual posts as well.

I was excited.

Once inside the member’s area, I watched the first “Overview & Intro” kind of video. That video talks about using feeder blogs – blogs you set up – that’ll automatically post backlinks to your post pages.

I was super, duper bummed.

One of the reasons I don’t care for plugins like Backlink Energizer (which also builds deep links) is that I’m required to set up (or buy a pre-set up package) or a ton of usernames and passwords at all the sites the plugin posts to. Juggling a zillion usernames and passwords, for a zillion sites, niches, pseudonyms, etc. is hardly my idea of a good time. You with me on that?

And yeah, of course it can be outsourced, and I have two dedicated link builders who can do it for me. It’s just that I’ve not found those kinds of links to be valuable enough in the past to even have my outsources spend a lot of time on them.

So I’m looking at Auto Traffic Buddy, and I’m thinking I’ve now got to create 20 or 30 accounts somewhere – wherever the plugin posts to – and that this idea has been done before a few different ways and ugh, I don’t really care to put in the time and effort.

I’m a lazy marketer.

Ok, maybe I’m not lazy, but I do like things simple. I’m not one of those people you’ll find happily pouring over a multi-tab spreadsheet, glistening with excitement over the data. I like things to “just work” as add as little friction to my (and my outsourcers’) workflow as possible.

Truth be told, I almost shut the whole thing down right then and there.

But I figured I’d dig a little deeper before I gave up.

And then, I was thrilled.

As I watched the rest of the training videos, I realized that the Auto Traffic Buddy crew realized what a lazy pants I am (ahem… I mean, someone who likes things simple) and built in to their system a way to create all the external sites – the places that link back to your blog – with about 3 clicks. No passwords, no usernames, no various URLs to sign up. It takes approximately 10 minutes to make them all, after watching the training (18 minutes). I did it myself. It was beautiful. Your AutoTrafficBuddy plugin is then installed on your WordPress blogs, pulls in the info it needs to post to those external sites all on it’s own, and poof – deep links are being built for you.

(This reminds me of something else I HATE about creating a zillion accounts at external sites and then trying to get them INTO some kind of software. There’s text files, or maybe CSV’s, and you have to format them just so… or everything borks. If you decide to add a few new external sites, you have to re-upload, some solutions don’t know to check for duplicates. Point being, it’s a MASSIVE headache. Because I’m into laziness simplicity.)

Needless to say, this isn’t the case with ATB. Loved it.

So now it’s out there building links to my blog posts – deep links, at that.

It’s not tough to get links to one’s homepage, but getting internal links, to each of your articles, can be quite a bit more tedious, so I really appreciate that about Auto Traffic Buddy.

WHO THIS ISN’T FOR

• You must have a self hosted WordPress blog to use the ATB plugin

WHAT AUTO TRAFFIC BUDDY WILL DO FOR YOU

• Setup should take you about 1 hour – including the training, creating the external sites and installing the plugin
• Automatically links from the external sites to your individual blog post URL’s – not just your homepage
• I’ve already seen an update pushed through and it downloads and installs directly in the WP Dashboard, no downloading from their site and re-uploading to all of your sites (a real time suck, and a problem a lot of plugins have)
• It’ll build links to past posts (those already published) as well as the new ones you publish going forward, so it’a good match for old and new blogs

I’m not going to tell you this is the answer to all your link building prayers – no one service will be (see Link Mixology for more info on mixing up the kinds and sources of links for best results). It is, however, a smart and simple (yay simple) solution to getting links built to your internal pages, automatically.

It’s being installed on all of my niche sites, and I recommend you look into is as well. I’m getting trackbacks and am able to see the URL’s my backlinks are posted on, which is a level of transparency you won’t find in many systems.

While there are a lot of products and solutions for homepage links, there isn’t a whole lot out there that is so easy to get started with for deep links as Auto Traffic Buddy.

Even if you’re not particularly interested in having your inner pages rank for a given keyphrase (i.e. you focus your efforts on just having your homepage rank for one “big kahuna” keyphrase), having links pointing to those inner pages makes you sites link patterns look more natural to the search engines. Do most sites (real, natural sites I mean!) have 10,000 links pointing to their home pages and none pointing to their inner pages? NO! Most sites have the majority of links pointing to their homepages, sure, but they also have some links pointing to their internal pages. Using the ATB plugin helps you emulate that kind of natural, normal internal backlink pattern.

Take a peek at Auto Traffic Buddy and see if it’s right for you.

 Edited 4:39 p.m. – The ATB team just sent a message I thought you’d want to know about – and I’ve got a HUGE tip for you too:

With an Auto Traffic Buddy Purchase, you also get access to “Traffic Launch Pad,” a Mac & PC compatible software that gets you links with just the push of a button. It’s one of those submitter softwares – nothing that’ll rank you on your own, but something to add to your arsenal. These kinds of softwares DO produce links, and they can be one branch of your plan to get all kinds of links from all kinds of sources.

Anyway, the version of the software they’re working on right now, “Pro” will submit to 400 sites, auto ping after submission, save a history for you, has proxy support and a scheduler, will re-try timed out submissions and will let you import a list of URL’s.

I’ve been using the “Basic” version and it works as smoothly as they say – you really do just click “Go” and it submits. No filling out forms or CAPTCHA’s. This “Pro” versions sounds great – I’m really looking forward to it, and, of course, you can get your hands on it too as soon as it’s out as an Auto Traffic Buddy user.

So here’s the tip: Of course you’ll use the TLP Pro version you get with ATB to submit your sites, duh! But ALSO use the software to submit the URL’s of your external sites – the ones that you are getting Auto Traffic Buddy links from!

(Thinking deeper, this goes for all of the places you get links from – submit them all with TLP Pro to ensure your backlink sources are getting indexed and have a couple of links themselves.)

The TLP Pro bonus add-on is available for a limited time, and they haven’t specified how long, so you should probably just go for it now if you’re at all interested.

Enjoy some new links (all automatic – woo-hoo for the lazy!) from Auto Traffic Buddy and your freebie TLP Pro!