Rationale
This brief overview of SEO tools is intended as a time-saver that conveniently provides you with the info you need to make an informed decision and purchase the right SEO product that's worth your every dollar.We've taken a look at eight competing SEO software products designed for link exchange, and are now presenting our comparison below.
Is This Data Biased In Any Way?
Of course it is ;-))You see, because we're offering a powerful ALL-IN-ONE SEO tool ourselves (by the name of LinkAssistant), we can't promise to love some of its incredibly limited competitors more than we love our child and creation (joke) ;-))
Honestly though, for the purposes of this study, we've taken every effort to avoid hype and slick marketese, so that you can make an informed decision.
And don't forget, you can always get a second opinion on the matter by searching in Google for SEO tools listed here, and visiting their home sites.
Feature-By-Feature Comparison
Let's cut to the chase. The table below includes eight most featureful, well-developed SEO tools designed for link exchange. We deliberately ignored some poor-quality SEO products (which sometimes cost a small fortune, by the way.) And, we've actually taken a close look at (alphabetically): ARELIS, Dynamic Link Promoter, LinkCheck Pro, Link Exchange Manager, Reciprocal Link Checker, SEO Elite, SEO Studio, and Zeus.Zeus is not listed here because we found it so very complex for an average Joe. The user interface is non-intuitive and although the program seems to offer a variety of features, we find its poor usability and complexity discouraging. To Zeus users: This is a one's man opinion.
Note that we also focused on the most important features as we see fit. That's why this SEO tool comparison is surely not comprehensive, but it can give you a pretty good idea of how good an investment each program is:
Link Assistant 2.5.20 |
SEO Elite 3.2 |
ARELIS 4.4.2 |
Link Exchange Manager 1.3.1 |
LinkCheck Pro |
Dynamic Link Promoter 1.0.35 |
Reciprocal Link Checker |
SEO Studio 2.0.4 |
|
Finding Quality
Link Partners (Using Keywords, Competitors' Websites, Existing Links Pages) >> |
Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | By keywords only |
Checking Your
Link Partners' Google PR And Link Popularity >> |
Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Measuring Your Own Website's Popularity Over Time >> |
Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Sending Personalized Emails Using Customizable Templates >> |
Yes | Yes | Limited |
Limited |
Yes | Limited |
No | Yes |
Receiving And
Organizing Emails From Your Link Partners >> |
Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Generating Links Pages That's Fully Customizable >> |
Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
Does the generated links pages support categories? >> |
Advanced |
Plain |
Plain |
Plain |
No | No | No | Plain |
Checking If Link Partners Link Back To You >> |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
Yes | Yes | Yes |
Displaying The Status Of A Link Partner And Managing Statuses >> |
Yes | No | Yes | Limited |
No | Limited |
Limited |
Yes |
Updating Multiple Link Partners' Properties At Once >> |
Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Built-in Browser To View Websites And Generated Links Pages >> |
Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No |
Finding And Autocompleting Link Submission Forms (LinkMachine.net, LinksManager.com, AutoLinksPro.com, LinkMetro.com, etc) >> |
Yes + semi-automatic for others |
Link Machine only |
No | No | No | No | No | No |
Customizable Workspaces >> |
Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Making Your Links Page Available Online via FTP >> |
Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
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Finding Quality Link Partners
It's important to exchange links with quality Websites. And "quality" here means primarily three things: Content relevance to your site's theme, link popularity, and Page Rank of your link partners. With LinkAssistant, all three factors can be taken advantage of to easily find thousands of excellent link exchange partners as well as filter out poor-quality, low Page Rank sites.
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Checking Your Link Partners' Google PR And Link Popularity
LinkAssistant does provide this useful feature, enabling you to evaluate both your potential and current partners Search Engine-wise. This includes your partners' Google Page Rank values as well as their general link popularity in major Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Remember, it is often the quality that matters, not just the number of links pointing to your site!
Besides LinkAssistant, only SEO Elite and SEO Studio offer a similar capability, while Reciprocal Link Manager only lets you do it with one link at a time.
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Measuring Your Own Website's Popularity Over Time
Exchanging links is all about increasing your Website's "popularity" in major Search Engines and getting free, organic traffic, right? LinkAssistant provides a handy feature that enables you to track the popularity of your own Website over time.
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Sending Personalized Emails Using Customizable Templates
Sending email invitations for link exchange is a good way to encourage a potential partner to link to you. Since you will probably be sending them emails by the hundred, the software underlying this feature is all-important. LinkAssistant offers a simple yet powerful email client that can both send AND receive mails, while featuring an unlimited number of customizable message templates.
None of the competing products can receive emails, and many offer only limited support for templates, which can often not be modified to fit your needs. Some otherwise good products, such as ARELIS, will only let email one partner at a time. Imaging you need to send some 120 partners an invitation email. With LinkAssistant it's a few clicks. With ARELIS, for instance, it's just that — some 120 clicks.
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Receiving And Organizing Emails From Your Link Partners
Like I said, LinkAssistant is the only SEO tool that enables you to receive mails as well. Now you can forget about constantly switching between your link exchange software and your email client (MS Outlook or whatever you use.) You can do completely without a standalone email solution, if you want.
Also, a unique feature of LinkAssistant is that it allows you to quickly display the mail related to any specific link partner — literally in a click.
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Generating Links Pages That Match Your Website's Design
Automatic generation of a Links Page is a basic feature, and almost everybody offers it. However, LinkAssistant is the only one supporting advanced categories within your links page, letting you conveniently group your partners by industry, or specialization. Besides, LinkAssistant features a built-in HTML editor with syntax highlighting, enabling advanced users to fine-tune their links page to their liking.
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Checking If Link Partners Link Back To You
Obviously, this is a must-have feature. So obviously everybody offers it. At the risk of sounding biased, what beats us is why some of the guys will only let you scan one partner at a time and call it 'automation'. LinkCheck Pro is one example.
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Displaying The Status Of A Link Partner And Managing Statuses
Displaying the status of a link partner is important. It allows you to easily evaluate your partners and see which ones are not keeping their part of the deal. With LinkAssistant, the statuses are flexible and customizable, letting you change each partner's status anytime. With other SEO tools, the support for this feature is limited: The statuses are hard-coded and cannot be changed by hand.
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Updating Multiple Link Partners' Properties At Once
Quite often you need to change, say, categories or statuses for many link partners at once. And what you may need more often is to update their Google PR or link popularity values. Any other software only allows you to do that for one link exchange partner at a time. With LinkAssistant, you can globally update any info for multiple partners in a single click, saving a lot of time.
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Built-in Browser To View Websites And Generated Links Pages
LinkAssistant offers you a fully-functional built-in browser, tightly integrated with all other features. It'll let you preview you partners' Websites in a single click, grab all the links from a page and make these sites your link partners, fill out link submission forms automatically and more.
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Finding And Auto-Completing Link Submission Forms
Many people use some server-based scripting solution to manage their link exchange campaigns. This is sometimes referred to as "link swapping networks". LinkMachine.net, LinkManager.com or Link-Swapper.som are examples of such link networks that feature a link submission form you have to fill in before you send a link exchange request.
LinkAssistant is able to find websites on these networks and fill out their forms automatically. The three link swapping networks mentioned above are fully supported.
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Customizable workspaces
A Workspace defines which info you want on your screen right now, helping you browse, locate, and view your link partners faster. LinkAssistant supports an unlimited number of completely customizable workspaces and filters, making your work more efficient.
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Make You Links Page Available Online Via FTP
This is a unique feature of LinkAssistant that makes it a complete, all-in-one solution link exchange environment that allows you to accomplish all your link building goals.
A Brief Summary
From all link exchange SEO tools we looked at, SEO Elite and ARELIS come closest to LinkAssistant, but they both have many limitations, and/or fewer features. For instance, some of the must-have features SEOElite lacks compared to LinkAssistant include the ability to properly handle email correspondence, generate a professional links directory and upload it via FTP. However, these SEO products ran quite smoothly and never crashed. Other products are not nearly as easy to use as LinkAssistant, and lack many in fact essential features. Yet others are really a pain to use, and can cost you almost a fortune.An Equally Brief Disclaimer
We try to update this comparison on a regular basis. But obviously we can't promise absolutely everything down to every little detail is chiseled in stone and is still true right now. You can find the last update date of this document below, and we can guarantee everything described here was true at the time of writing.If you find a mistake in this study, please let us know. Thanks.
