Today, I had a chat with ex-problogger turned software developer Caroline Middlebrook. She has recently launched the IMAutomator, a social bookmarking service that helps bloggers and site owners with SEO and link building.
What is the main benefit of the IMAutomator?
Quite simply – it's a time saver. It is a suite of tools to automate those link building tasks that take so long to do manually. The tools are designed to be as quick and easy to use as possible thus providing the user with as many backlinks as possible in the shortest amount of time invested.
Is it mainly nofollow or dofollow bookmarking services?
It's a mixture and not always clear cut. For example, a new trend that I'm seeing is that only links that get on the front page are dofollow and the rest are nofollow so it's not so easy to classify them. Obviously when adding support for new sites for IMAutomator, priority is always given to those that are dofollow.
Do you actually benefit from nofollow bookmarks?
That is a subject of much debate in the Internet Marketing world! Dofollow links are certainly more useful for Google but there are other search engines that occupy the market and also, some nofollow links can actually lead to a dofollow link in an indirect way. For example, one of the big sites is Delicious which is nofollow (IMAutomator doesn't support Delicious yet but it's on the list!) but many other sites crawl Delicious and re-post the links on dofollow sites! My personal approach to IMAutomator is that I'll prioritise dofollow sites but if there's a site with fairly high PR that's nofollow then I'll include it anyway!
How can bloggers measure the increased rankings?
There are a number of metrics that you could track. You could track the search engine ranking of the pages you are bookmarking, you could watch the PR, you could count the backlinks, monitor the traffic and so on. However these metrics alone can be misleading because to get the most from the software, members also need to pay attention to the content they are bookmarking. Sometimes bookmarks are submitted to IMAutomator without optimising the titles for keywords. In many cases, I don't even see keywords being used. For these submissions, those backlinks may have very little effect. IMAutomator can save time when bookmarking content but it cannot provide traffic, rankings etc if the user is not doing the on-page SEO of the bookmarked content in the first place.
This is an area that I really want to expand on in the near future. I already have several articles on the site around this subject and once the software is a little more stable I'm going to develop some training videos that really show the members how to get the maximum SEO benefit from the tools.
Is it a free service?
Yes and no. The software has been in beta since the first closed release in December and whilst in beta everything is freely available to all members. However, the Pro version which will carry a monthly fee ($25 for the first release) is just around the corner. There will ALWAYS be a free version but this will only include the social bookmarking tool and submission will be restricted to a subset of the full list of supported bookmarking sites. The second tool is an RSS Submitter and will be ready in a matter of days! Each new release after this one will bring with it at least 2 new tools, enhancements to existing tools and of course lots more supported sites.
New tools will be in beta for a little while to allow the free members to have a play with them before they become part of the paid version at which point only those members who have upgraded to the Pro version will have access to them.
How long did it take you to set up the IMAutomator?
Far too long! 
It has been in fairly consistent development for almost a year now and there is probably enough work planned to occupy another year or two!
How come nobody thought of this concept before?
They have! There are lots of similar products on the market, some free, some paid, but of course all these tools work slightly differently, do different things and appeal to a slightly different audience. I'm aiming at the busy marketer who wants an easy life – quick and hassle free tools that just work behind the scenes on auto-pilot.
Do you think Google and other search engines will catch on to what the IMAutomator does?
Oh yes I'm sure they will but at the end of the day these tools simply do the same job as a human but in far less time. One of the principles upon which IMAutomator is built is integrity – ensuring that good quality links are submitted to appropriate sites in the correct categories and so on. I've seen other similar tools that boast the creation of hundreds of accounts so that your links can be spammed thousands of times to the same site over and over again – you'll not see these features in IMAutomator! Basically, we want to play nice with Google and all the supported sites whilst saving the user a big chunk of their valuable time.
What is your best advice for anyone developing new software?
Just get started and totally ignore what everybody else is doing. I'd apply that to anything really – if you have an idea, just go for it!
What is happening to your blog?
I've made the decision to take it offline. It's been town for quite some time now and to be perfectly honest it's freed up all of my time so that I can now concentrate 100% on IMAutomator. I still get emails every day from people asking me to bring it back and I may still do so at some point but for now it's the best decision for me. I'm sure the Wayback machine still has the best posts archived somewhere
Caroline Middlebrook left her day job as a software engineer in 2007 to pursue a career online. After running a highly successful blog for a couple of years, she has now developed a suite of online software tools called IMAutomator which automate the process of building backlinks to your sites. Membership is free so go ahead and create your account!
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