Software vs. Manual Link Building and Management.
Posted Sunday, January 8th, 2006. Filed under Internet Marketing Tips, Link Building, SEO Questions, SEO Research, SEO Tools.
I can't think of any software offhand that our link team uses, though I've tried most of them (SEO Elite, Axandra, Link Proctor, Link Explorer, OptiTools, Zeus, PR Prowler, etc). I know many of you think automation is key, but in building links we tend to do manual searching, manual emails, manual checking. Do you use any SEO software? What for, and why?
We do use some free online tools though, like Aaron Wall's Link Harvester and Hub Finder, and some of our own We Build Pages tools.
Reader Comments
Doggone Fresh: So you're saying there's no speed difference between a professional link building service and Joe Schmoe doing it himself? I've been doing manual outreach and it's very slow — I get a lot of bounced emails and sometimes send emails all day without a single reply.
Jim: It depends on the person's knowledge and methods. A professional who knows what they're doing should get you better links faster. We search by linkdomain, similar pages, and regular searches, trying to find natural sites, not SEO'd ones. We mostly pay for advertising on relevant real pages rather than asking for free links.
Jim: Getting links can be frustrating, but the scores of nice ones get us excited — the numbers game is over, we get excited about quality. I did a happy dance twice this weekend after buying two sites, even though getting there meant lots of bounced emails and being called names along the way.
Jim: As for a higher response rate: offer money. If your email even smells like a shitty link request, they'll delete it before hitting the first sentence. We don't have a standard template — it comes down to what you can offer of value, what you're asking, and what they'll take.
