Turbo-Charging Robosoft with DynamicPAD (Part 2)

42 thoughts on “Turbo-Charging Robosoft with DynamicPAD (Part 2)”

1. OK, that basically makes sense (read it quickly), but quick and probably stupid question, please excuse my ignorance. The robosoft fields include a link to the online PAD file. This method will effectively make the robosoft fields themselves random, BUT the link to the online PAD file would stay static. OR point to a dynaimc file generated on the fly on the server of course.

   So my question is: Isn’t that a problem, or would it also be necessary to perform the same step on the PAD file on the server (well, similar steps)? Or do you just omit the link to the online padfile from Robosoft?

   I hope that made sense, and that you have a great answer. Love the article, thanks for sharing!

   1. I know what you mean. The PAD URLs are all deterministic, so they are not random.

      In your normal PAD entry, you just set it normally as you would on any other day of the week.

      In the DynamicPAD setup (second image in the first part), you set a static part for the PAD file as well as the address to your DynamicPAD script/server. So, for example, if you have this location for your DynamicPAD server/script:

      http://www.domain.com/dp/

      And you decide to have your “ACME Amazingizer” PAD named:

      “acme-amazingizer.xml”

      Then your DynamicPAD URLs **for that product** will all look like:

      http://www.domain.com/dp/app-00b31342c6/site-007310de455/lng-eng/acme-amazingizer.xml

      The “app-###” portion is the actual ACME Amazingizer. The “site-###” is for a specific download site (it can be omitted).

      The “lng-eng” portion sets the language, and can be omitted.

      Those URLs are returned in the PAD file properly.

      But basically, however you construct the URL, that gets taken care of by the DynamicPAD script.

      That’s a large part of the beauty. Just set the address, and everything else is taken care of.

      Does that sort things out any for you?

      1. Thanks Cynic,

         Yup, that helps a lot. I’ll give this a whack within the next month and let you know how it all works out.

2. Heads up: the link at the top to Turbo-Charging Robosoft with DynamicPAD (Part 1) doesn’t work.

   1. Thanks! Fixed! 🙂

3. Having done my fair share of SEO myself, I’m wondering about your recommendations changing the keywords as well. On my own site, fewer keywords can help focus their value (a bit), but when submitting to other sites, I imagine as many as possible is the best approach, and thus not separate lists for different sites. Any thoughts on that?

   1. Changing the keywords somewhat and targeting different ones works because it’s more natural. People use synonyms for things all the time, and that’s what this attempts to mimic — a natural approach to the core keywords.

      I think it’s probably better to approach “keywords” more as “key concepts”, and then it makes more sense.

      Being in software, you might want to think back to those times when someone that isn’t in software says something kind of odd. They misuse a term or use a different one that you wouldn’t. They’re still trying to address the same concept though, and they are still understandable. It’s those kinds of things.

      The search engines use algorithms to address word stems, so using different forms of a word works the same way. e.g. Singular vs. plural, or gerund forms of verbs, or different tenses of verbs, etc.

      It’s an extension of the same concept as stemming. It just takes it to the level of synonyms though.

      For my Photo Resizer software, some related terms are picture, image, and graphic. Graphic is pretty far removed though, but picture and image factor in very well for what people actually search for. So in terms of homework, yeah, that needs to be done.

      Terms for me to use then include things like, “Photo Resizer lets you resize images”. There I get the plural “images” in, and the imperative mood for “resize”. But that’s the general idea.

      I used that strategy before with great success. In one case I managed to rank in the top 10 even after a year in a very competitive set of keywords.

      I hope that clears up the idea behind it.

      1. Actually what I meant to ask was, I assume you have the same SET of keywords for every site… i.e. that is not something you vary in your excel file, right?

         1. Ah… You mean the /Program_Descriptions/English/Keywords node, right?

            Yes. I vary those. But to be honest, I don’t think they’re really all that crucial. Most download sites use that value for a set of links inside their site. Those pages then just list software with those keywords. The SEO value there is basically internal for the site. Your benefit is only by being on those pages and associated there for if a crawler looks at it.

            Typically, I rearrange words and use different phrasings. Not much customization. Just enough to make it different so that the page doesn’t look so much the same as every other site with your PAD file.

            In the Excel file, you can completely ignore it if you like. Leaving it entirely blank will then default to the regular PAD value.

            The other thing you can do is to write a half dozen sets or so but not repeat them. The DynamicPAD Helper program will pick up on that and automatically create General_# entries so that they end up random.

            You can tweak how that happens in the source code as I uploaded it as a Visual Studio 2010 project. It should port easily to MonoDevelop on Linux, but I’ve not tried. There’s nothing special in there.

            Does that help?

         2. The other thing you could do is to create sets of keywords and then find all the permutations and enter that in the Excel file. That would provide maximum randomness for different submissions.

4. Hello Cynic,

   Thanks for your posts about turbocharging robosoft. Yours seem to be the only post which discusses about this topic.
   Since your post is little old, firstly I wanted to know whether this technique still works after penguin update.
   Actually without using dynamic pad , my website got penalised by google.
   I went through the article and while trying to do the steps , I got stuck at this place. To be very honest I’m not a IT guy or html freak, so if my query sounds silly, I apologise for the same.
   The place where you say,
   of “” with a space.

   I tried to add the word space but I guess that’s not what you meant, what do I need to replace “” with in html or whateever.

   1. I think you mean this:

      Next, go to the file location for the report and open it in a text editor. Replace all instances of “< br / >” with a space. Save the file.

      No – I mean a literal space character, i.e. ” ” — that character between the quotes – not the word “space”.

      But for your first question – yes. It works. It’s worked for years, though it doesn’t work as well now as it did 10 years ago. I remember swamping search results this way. It was pretty sick. Now, it’s still highly effective, but not completely batshit crazy effective.

      This tactic will work for a long time to come. It’s based on pretty simple SEO principles that you’ll hear all the gurus blabber on about in one form or another. This is just a turbo-charged version for software developers (primarily).

      I hope that helps.

5. Hello Cynic,

   Thanks for your quick response. I highly appreciate the same. I managed to get it right till the excel part. Now you talk about mixing and matching all the fields in excel. There are almost 1200 fields. Do you suggest to create say 12 sets of different copies for the alternate keywords, description etc and repeat it for every 12 different cells or websites and keep doing that till 1200? Because we shouldn’t leave any blank fields for the alt name, description etc right? all those columns should also be filled if I’m not mistaken.
   But my main problem is how many variations do we create and keep repeating and copying for the rest of them. Moreover just by changing singular into plural etc would that help and be considered as a variation?

   Also what you meant to say was that the most important ranked websites should be at the top. So we create unique copies for the top ranked 10 or 20 websites and copy the same copy for rest of them?

   1. Singular/plural is all about “stemming”. I don’t know the exact effects, so you should check some SEO forums or something, but just off-hand, I’d say mix it up some where it makes sense. Just make certain that you have natural language — don’t butcher the language as that’s more likely to set off alarms.

      For the numbers, sort the sites by ranking in Robosoft and get the top ones all done with your best variations. Then go down the list.

      You don’t need to fill in all of them though. You can leave blank entries as those will be filled in with your default values.

6. Hello Cynic,

   Looking over some of the comments, I agree that the keywords column is more for internal ranking but… the product name and the company name… Usually here is where we use the anchor text keyword right?This is what is crucial and is supposed to be varied enough so that Google doesn’t penalize you.
   So say if I’m trying to rank for the keyword “Make Money Online”. My company name would be “Make Money Online.” My product name would be make money online eBook.
   Now if i do this for the entire pad submission, I would surely get penalized because of the repeated anchor keywords. So what do you suggest and how many keywords should we use? For example if we are gonna do submission to at least 800 websites, then 300 of those could be the original keyword and the remaining as some variations like click here, make money online review, make money online download etc? So this way the link building will look natural

   1. Sounds like you’ve got it! 🙂

      Just come up with natural ways to express the idea. You can use synonyms and different grammatical structures.

      I’d try to stick as close to the company and product name as possible though. Try using “for” or other things like that to extend the keyword range. You can also setup new pages there and use different URLs to go along with them. e.g. Making Money Online for Students, Making Money Online for Housewives, Making Money Online – something something, etc.

      The real rule to follow is to target the language at your audience. That’s what Google loves. If you are trying to effectively communicate with your target audience, and giving good information, Google will slurp it up real quick.

      Just remember that you’ll need links from other sources as well, but this is a huge number that you can get for free.

      Oh, one last thing… Make certain that you’re using Robosoft properly and NOT spamming. If you spam, Mykola will yank your license very quickly. That’s in the license agreement, so just make certain about that.

      The point isn’t to mislead — the point is to be accurate in many ways. 😀

7. Hello Cynic,

   Thanks again for clearing more of my doubts. When you talk about creating different pages and using different product or company keywords to point to them, my main question is do you ever point to your main money page.
   Somewhere I had read in your blog that you don’t point the backlinks to point to your main money page. You create a .htm page or something. But then if we don’t point to our main money page then how will that page climb in rankings?
   Also I noticed that your photo resizer is not ranking anymore in top 10. But as u said this method doesn’t work as good as it used to 10 years ago but still gets the job done to some extent.

   1. Yeah… I’ve really neglected Photo Resizer… The best way to rise in the ranks is to keep releasing and submitting. Google loves fresh material.

      For the “main money page”, I’m not sure I know what you mean. Basically, I’d just link to product pages, then link to payment pages from there.

      1. Sorry, if I wasn’t clear. What I meant by the main money page was that suppose you have a 5 page website and it is only one of the pages that you need to get ranked which is going to bring in all the revenue, so is it okay if we link back to that page or should we create another page.

         For example, in one of your posts you have mentioned this as below as using some orphaned page for backlinking.

         Backlinks are a big deal as well. But there’s no way that I’m going to link to most of these sites from my main product page. It’s nutty. They really don’t offer that much value to warrant a link. I won’t even link from the actual site. I will create an orphaned backlinks.htm page and link from there, but it won’t have any links to it from the real site. It’s an orphan page and will forever stay like that. If a site offered some real value, then sure. But they just don’t offer that much value

         1. Well, I suppose that you can try to get just the one page ranked. That’s pretty much standard. Doing other pages really depends on your strategy for the site, etc. If it’s just 5 pages, then I wouldn’t bother with other pages.

            For backlinking, yeah… Most sites aren’t worth it. You can filter those that require a link in Robosoft though, but you’d do that before you export the list from Robosoft. It doesn’t matter though.

            However, linking from an orphaned page will only trick some sites. Most use crawlers to check. So, you can try, but it will only work on some, not all.

8. Hello Cynic,

   I tried enlarging your completed excel file from part 3.However even after zooming it, the excel file seemd blurred. Would it be possible for you to share that completed excel file just as you shared the first file. That will give a fair idea of what you had done exactly. The thing is I wanted to try to be as perfect as possible and not screw up. If it’s something too personal and cannot be shared then it’s fine but if it’s something that can be shared it would be great.
   The file that I’m referring to is the file which is below of when yo say :
   “And after it’s completed, it could look something like this:”

   1. Oh – that image isn’t really important to zoom on. Look at the white space — that’s the point. What ISN’T there is the point. i.e. You don’t need to fill in everything. Just fill in what you want to alter, and the defaults work to fill in the rest.

9. So here is what I understand finally as I’m about to make the 3-5 copies to be reused. The important things to alter are the 2000 word description and the press release plain and normal apart from the 450 character descriptions etc Because here is where the duplicate content issue comes mainly.

   If we want to, we can also change the product name and the product url if we want to? Am I correct? But you prefer to leave it as it is.

   1. It doesn’t matter too much if you recycle the 450 character content into the 2000 character content as the site will only display one or the other on any given page. Same goes for the press release info, but you’d want to write that in a different style anyways.

      For the product name, you don’t want to use totally different product names, but use sensible variations, e.g. If the product is “Rocket Jets”, then perhaps something like “Rocket Jets for Grannies” and “Rocket Jets for Guitarists” or “Rocket Jets for Skiers”, etc. The point there is to phrase your product with the purpose for it, which is likely to be some of it’s keywords. You can also mix in the company name, e.g. “ACME Rocket Jets”, etc.

      For the URL – yes – you can have specific pages for some sites, which makes sense. If you get people coming from a site and the demographic/audience is predisposed to something, then you can customize a page for them. Just think of them as regular landing pages, which they are. They then funnel into your site or sales path however you think is best.

      1. Thanks a lot for your support, finally I want to ask this:
         Let us say I build a 5 page website targeting the keyword “strip the fat”. Now let us say the name of my product is “strip the fat ebook”. Now this I do exactly as you said using dynamic pad create all the different descriptions etc so that everything seems unique. But there will always be one problem. After running robosoft, when i check my backlinks using ahrefs in the past, I’ve noticed that the product name or company name is used as anchor text link. Since we will have only one anchor text link( product name) and although different descriptions etc, wouldn’t the search engine still penalize us?

         Because it’s not that I will be getting a lot of different anchor texts like strip the fat review, click here using robosoft.
         What is your viewpoint for this. Is it ok to have one anchor text link but different descriptions etc. Will that still seem unique to search engine?

         1. Google analyzes the text on the page along with the anchor text, then follows through to look at the actual linked page, so there’s nothing to worry about being penalized, unless you’re doing something to try and be deceitful. So different text and anchors are good to have, as long as they hit the proper keywords/phrases.

10. Here is what I’ve done finally,

    I created 5 copies to be used for the websites ranked from 1000-100. (i.e total of 46 cells). I kept on copying and pasting repeatedly the 5 copies. Now I only created 5 copies for these columns and the remaining columns i kept blank. The columns for which i created 5 copies were: alt keywords, charc descripton 45, 80,250,450, 2000, ALT PRESS RELEASE & ALT PRESS RELEASE PLAIN.

    Is this ok? Do I need to go more deep in terms of websites or till 100 is fine? Do i need to fill in any more columns?Because I dont have any ALT apllication url, screenshot, product name etc as they are going to remain the same and robosoft can pick up default values.

11. Another problem I’m noticing is that when I’m trying to paste the 2000 word press release or description they seem to be extending to other columns also. I tried extending the 2000 word description column but inspite of that the words seem to extend to other columns. Is there any way around this?

12. Hello Cynic,

    I was awaiting your comment. Although I know this has to do with Microsoft excel. I tried everything possible with excel such as shrinking the text to fit etc but it still didn’t work. Is there any other way?

    1. Make certain that you’re working with Excel as a text file. The easiest way is to simply copy and paste from Excel into a decent text editor, e.g. EditPlus or Notepad++.

       For the 2000 word description, go back and read over the steps above. You’ll need to substitute (escape) in the proper CR/LF characters (“\n” or “\r\n” as a regex in most text editors) so that it’s all on 1 line. They need to be escaped characters. They should be “%0D%0A”. Check that above there. You probably missed that part.

       Sorry for the delay — been busy and not getting much sleep here…

       1. Hello cynic, can instead of the tedious method of exporting carriage return and line break from notepad to excel, can I just create a line break in excel itself by hitting. Alt+Enter and type the second line- The website here suggests the same as to how to create line breaks in excel – http://www.officearticles.com/excel /carriage_return_within_a_cell_in_microsoft_excel.htm

          1. Hello cynic,

             I managed to do it using notepad++. Here is what I did, I downloaded notepad++, I used the regular expression and searched for /r/n and replaced with the %0D%0A and everything came in one line. Now I copied the entire thing into the 2000 word description column in excel.Although everything came in one line, my other row entirely disappeared and

             1. .. I was only left with the 2000 word description. so all my website details and 250 word description etc got pushed to a separate row. Now what do I do? Between I hope you managed to catch some sleep and hope for your reply soon.

13. Now when i checked again after copying the 2000 word description when I double click on each of the rows like site name, category url etc they do seem to show up but otherwise they are not visible, so I guess they worked fine, have they?

    1. Hello Shekhar,

       Make certain to follow the directions above explicitly, and always err on the side of caution.

       “For each of the special cases of the 2000 character description and press releases, individually, search and replace the line breaks with %0D%0A. It is now on a single line that you can copy into Excel. ”

       Do not try to copy your 2000 char desc into a file that you’re working on, Excel or Robosoft or intermediary files.

       Work on your text in its own file. THEN, replace the characters in it so that you have it on 1 line. THEN copy and paste that into the files you need to work on.

       It sounds like you’re trying to do the replacement at the wrong time. Go back, retrace your steps, and make certain that when you paste in the 2000 char desc, you have it already all on 1 line.

       Let me know if that fixes things for you. I think it should.

       Cheers,

       Ryan

       1. Hello Ryan,

          I did work out the 2000 word description in a individual text file of it’s own.

          As I said, I downloaded notepad++, I used the regular expression and searched for /r/n and replaced with the %0D%0A and everything came in one line. Now I copied the entire thing into the 2000 word description column in excel for that particular website? Now inside excel it is properly fitting in one column.So I hope I am on the right path?

          Also:
          I created 5 copies to be used for the websites ranked from 1000-100. (i.e total of 46 cells). I kept on copying and pasting repeatedly the 5 copies. Now I only created 5 copies for these columns and the remaining columns i kept blank. The columns for which i created 5 copies were: alt keywords, charc descripton 45, 80,250,450, 2000, ALT PRESS RELEASE & ALT PRESS RELEASE PLAIN.

          Is this ok? Do I need to go more deep in terms of websites or till 100 is fine? Do i need to fill in any more columns?Because I dont have any ALT apllication url, screenshot, product name etc as they are going to remain the same and robosoft can pick up default values.

14. Hello Ryan,

    If it is possible and you have time, then can I email you the final excel file of mine, in case if you can have a look and tell me if I’m going wrong somewhere by any chance before I proceed to next step.

    1. Hello Shekhar,

       I just emailed you so that you have my email address and can send that to me.

       But like I said, I’m really busy at the moment, so I likely won’t be able to get things back to you immediately. I’ll try to get things back to you ASAP, but just please be happy if I can get it back to you in under a week. Sorry – I’m just drowning in commitments.

       Oh – and if possible, do try to include your basic texts that you want to use and make sure that they are labeled as per the Robosoft/PAD specs so I know what they are supposed to be.

       If you have worked with the basic Visual Studio project, then also send that if you have made any significant changes. But please do label them so that I can easily pick out the changes (normal C# comments will work just fine).

       Cheers,

       Ryan

15. Hello Cynic,

    I hope you get time to look over my mails this weekend. I actually sent you two emails. One of them had the attached file and another of a recent submission that i had done using robosoft(without dynamic pad). Both the sites lost rankings in serps in a short time after a brief rankings.
    I guess post penguin google does not seem to like of you try to rank for money keywords.
    I hope using dynamic pad this problem does not happen..

16. Hello Cynic,

    I hope you get time to see my mail this weekend as well. Firstly I had sent you a mail about anchor texts, secondly I spent the entire week without being able to install visual c++. I keep getting this error “the type initializer for module threw an exception.”

    I kept looking everywhere in the forums online like stack overflow etc where people keep saying that the errors are due to .net framework, but ive the latest net framework v4.0.30319.
    I don’t know if it’s due to some .dll file or missing dll file, if you know anything about this just let me know.
    Moreover which visual studio should we install, the ultimate 2012 one which is almost 1.00 gb .
    I only installed visual studio c++ 2010 express which is only 47 mb.

    1. You’ll need Visual C# Express. Not the C++ one. You can find it here:

       http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-csharp-express

       You can then open up the project in that without any errors.

       1. Hello cynic,
          As per your instructions, I did install it and run visual c## express but then even then I get the same error. I’m using windows 7, I did run all the windows update and all as well as I did run the program as an administrator. When I searched in google I saw that lot of people having this issue but I couldn’t find a proper solution. All of them say it has to do with the .net framework etc.