The plight of many a webmaster is attracting traffic to their website without the expense of hiring professional search engine optimisers, paying for underperforming banners nor endless pay per click campaigns.
The thought of free search engine traffic is often enough to make these webmasters giddy, but just how? What’s the best way for the least cost and least amount of work?
Sadly (or perhaps not, for the rest of us), generating significant and sustainable amounts of ‘free’ traffic from search engines means getting websites ranked high in search results. A major factor in search engine ranking is link popularity; just how many inbound links does a website have and what are the sites that provide those links.
Undoubtedly, there are many more factors involved in search engine ranking and only the search engines will know for sure, but all else being equal, inbound links have been proved to improve search engine rankings.
So when a reasonably priced product comes along and claims to bring you all the benefits of sustainable, free search engine traffic by means of improving your search engine rankings with inbound links, most webmasters will jump on it.
If they’re like me then they might well jump on more than one! 
But, how do they compare? Are they distinct enough to warrant the purchase of both? Is one better than the other at improving search engine rankings?
To go some way to answer this, over the next few months, I’m going to put them to the test. One on one.
It would be a great test if it were based on a sample of hundreds or even thousands of websites. When you get around to carrying out such a test, let me know!
Meanwhile…
The Competition
In the red corner, we have the mysterious Hermusa; claiming over 5,000 niche resource directories under its belt. Hermusa says it will automatically submit your website details to relevant, targetted directories for increased link popularity.
Creator, James Brausch had this to say about the directories Hermusa used,
We won’t tell you which ones because we are tired of the copycat off-shore software developers stealing our list.
In the bluecorner, we have the clean-cut SubmitNow! with over 260 SEO-friendly directories in its arsenal. With its link building potential centred around the popular Info Vilesilencer list of constantly vetted directories, its reach is much broader, but it still promises to pack a powerful punch.
So there you have two very different approaches to search engine marketing. Each product offering an easy and quick way to submit to a large number of directories for similar benefits.
The Bout
The plan is to build and launch two new websites using freshly registered domains. Both will operate in the same niche and both will be constructed in a similar way using the same selection of free-to-reprint articles.
Each website will receive no love nor attention other than from the hand of either contender and each website will receive just one dose of one of the two tools.
After a period of at least one month after the tools do their work, the results will be measured using MSN’s link search feature.
It promises to be an interesting match! 
Hermusa software may promise that they have a database of 5000 directories. But look at the backlinks their own website has. They have less than 10 backlinks and that too mostly from their own websites. I feel. a good company should set an example first before trying to sell any service.
Okay, I’ll bite. How does your own website live up to that same measure?
I have to tell ya. I been usin Hermusa for 3 months on at least 7 different domains with decent content and wide niches. Never got a SINGLE link from it. No, not even one. Keep using it because it’s so simple to use, but no links back EVER.