SEO Tools

A lot of people try their hand at SEO and look around sites like digital point to find out how they should go about doing it. I did. Invariably, they come to some of the many, many websites out there that promise #1 rankings, auto publishers, and tools that will allow you to build tons of backlinks, spin your content, create thousands of fresh articles daily, and overall, just make you the most kick ass SEO guy out there.

However, I think there are some great tools out there for SEO, ones that can help you get links and rank higher legitimately.  All SEO marketers buy and try products. Most of us buy tons of products that turn out to be useless but you live in learn.  I use a bunch.  If you are out there looking for SEO products and services that actually work, here’s my product history:

Jetsubmitter-  This program promised to take a parsed article (i.e. an article you did this to: I {like|love|hate} {purple|yellow|green} {dog|cats|rabbits}) and then submit that article to hundreds upon hundreds of article directories, ensuring you get lots of links in return. The only problem is that their article summary tool doesn’t work and half of their directories don’t approve articles. It cost me $40 dollars to figure it out.  The program is a waste for those interested in article marketing. However, they offer a free spinner that is useful.

SEO Elite- This tool is great. It’s built by Brad Callen who is well known for his SEO tools and programs. This checks keywords for top sites and who links to them, you can find out where you rank for a number of keywords, and, most importantly, it allows you to find out who links to your competitors. I’ve used this program to find tons of links in niches that are hard to get into. I found that if you have a good site, people will link to it. I’ve gotten pr6 links I would not have known existed otherwise.  I don’t use this as much as I used to but I think it is a powerful tool and I recommend it. It’s $167 dollars.

Article Submitter-  This product is also by Brad Callen. Article submission is a great way to build links. After the jetsubmitter fiasco, I bought this, another tool that promised to auto submit your article to over 300 directories.  Turns out 1/2 the directories don’t work and neither do they auto submit.  I got the directory list down to about 120 that were still active and only about half actually proved articles. This cost me $120 dollars and was a complete waste. It sits unused on my desktop.

Unique Article Wizard- This article program is 67 per month and I love it. I was skeptical to use it at first because you have to pay monthly but it is totally worth it. You submit three versions of one article and they send it out to 700-1000 directories. It’s totally worth it and has gotten be links and pushed my rankings in Google up. Most SEO people I know use this service and all rave about it. It is worth the money.

Linkvana- This network of websites allows you to post content on websites that are pr2-5. It’s a network of thousands of blogs and gives you a chance to earn a ton of backlinks. The service is $147 dollars per month! It’s very pricey but that keeps out the spammers.  A few respect internet marketers I know use the site so I think its credible. You can post as many posts as you want and have as many websites as you want. I think it only has value if you make as much per month as it costs and have multiple websites. It shouldn’t be your only linking strategy but, if you can afford it, get it.

Connect Content- Connect Content is a creation of blogger RT Cunningham. It’s designed to bring together other marketers and let them swap links on their blogs. It’s a good faith system. You put the links you want up and someone throws them on their site when they talk about it. I do the same. Everyone wins. It’s all clean, whitehat, and legit. It’s no different than me linking to a friend’s post in a blog because I like it. I’ve gotten 25 links from it so far. For $120 dollars a year, it is worth signing up.

Article Marketing Automation- This is like Unique Article Wizard excepts it posts to blogs. You also have to spin your content and most blog owners auto set this so that they won’t put your article up if it is not over 90% spun. This means you spend a lot of time making sentences over and over again. I found that the network for this site is small and while you get in post links (the best kind), you only got about 60 links from each article. Most weren’t even indexed by google.  In the end, I couldn’t justify the monthly $47 dollars when there are better tools out there.

Bookmarking Demon- This tool autosubmits your pages to 101 bookmarking sites. You can create multiple accounts and go to town. I found only about 70 of the sites worked but with the 3 accounts I have, I build links pretty quickly. They are low quality links but it’s better than nothing. This program is $147 dollars. It is well worth it and a great buy, especially when your SEO client buys it for you! I run it everyday.

So I have tried many products and most of them are very bad for your SEO needs. However, there are many tools out there that will help you find and build links to rank high in google and make money only. I suggest putting some money into your SEO efforts if you want to get a better return and make it go quicker.

Filed Under SEO Software | 3 Comments

Where to Get Links?

We talked about the importance of backlinks in our last post but a lot of times people think that is all well in good but where do I get links? Getting links for your website can be really easy or really tough depending on your niche.

Everyone has a website about their travels, pets, or kids- so getting links to those niches is really easy and there are a million blogs you can go find to get links from. But for non-blog niches where do you find links? There are a number of ways to get links. I’m only going to talk about the legitimate ones here.

Google wants links to occur naturally. That is you write such an excellent piece of content or have a great website, people want to link to you. That is natural link building. Which is great- I hope your website is that good people will link to all the time.

Realistically, that is not going to happen enough times to get to the top of Google. To get to the top of Google, you need to be proactive- you need to go out and get links.

Here are some ways to increase your links using LEGITIMATE means (no BLACKHAT SEO here!!!)

  • Create great content people link to naturally. (right?!)
  • Submit an article to the major directories such as EZINE, GO Articles, Article Dashboard, Article Base
  • Use Unique Article Wizard to submit different versions of your article to over 1000 directories. I find that it takes about 20 minutes to rewrite the content to make it unique. About 200-400 links end up being indexed by Google. (Sign up with my referral!)
  • Head over to the Griz Niche Support to find people who have similar web sites and go trade some links. It’s free!
  • Sign up for Connect Content to do the same. (12 per month!) I’ve been with it for about 2 weeks and I have gotten 20 links so far.
  • If you have a self hosted website, submit to directories.
  • Go search out people in your niche and ask them to do a link trade (a time consuming process though!)

How many links you need to get and what kind of backlinks you need depends on what you are trying to rank for.  An obscure longtail keyword like “pizza shops in amherst, mass” would not need as many links as as “travel credit cards” or “beagles.”   Check the links of your competitors and see exactly what you need to beat them from the number one spot.

Filed Under links | 3 Comments

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