Are link building program actually any good?

[Kestrel]

After reading much from Brad Callen and the Seo elite gang, I always felt that SEO elite would be an essential purchase at some point. So when the price was reduced over Christmas I quickly bought it.

However, the results of the program don't quite match what was promised.

The main function of the program, to submit link requests, basically finds me a load of dud link request sites. They are either not valid, or are all part of linkpartners.com, all with very large amount of links pages, and adding a link to these sites really won't help my PR too much.
It also seems like the main purpose of the program is to build a high quantity of links, with many sub-directories. Surely this can't be good SEO.

Would it not be better to concentrate on adding good content on my site, and then hope to receive higher quality back-links, while at the same time creating a better webpage for my visitors?

I have seen far too many websites with ridiculous numbers of links directories that it actually scares me. They look horrible and I would almost be ashamed to have my link in there (although I can't really say no can I)?

[Dave]

Hi Kestrel,

I purchaced SEO Elite recently and I'm very pleased with the program.

The main function of the program is that it allows you to quickly find out why the big boys like playwinningpoker, lowlimitholdem and flopturnriver rank so highly in the SERP's and how you can duplicate their SEO strategy on your own sites.

The great thing about the internet is that there are no secrects. You can view their source code, meta tags, who they link to, who links back, the PR, the anchor text used..... every clue as to why they are on the first page of Google for competitve keywords and you're not is there for you to discover if you do the research.

If they can do it so can we. They're just average guy's like us. They may have a bit of a head-start on most of us but they're not invincible..... they can be beat..... or a least equalled.

SEO Elite isn't magic, you have to use the functions properly, read the action guide and follow it's instructions , put in a lot of time and effort, experiment and really think..... but it's an indispencable, time saving SEO tool IMO.

Why am I endorsing this product publicly? The last thing I need is more, well informed competition out there but I've come to realize that there are very few people able, or willing to put in the time and effort needed to be a serious threat to my livelihood. There's just so many poker niches and keyword phrases to target that there's room for a lot of us to make good money....... for me a little competition is a good thing..... I enjoy the game.... the challenge of affiliate marketing.

I have seen far too many websites with ridiculous numbers of links directories that it actually scares me. They look horrible and I would almost be ashamed to have my link in there (although I can't really say no can I)?

The three heavy hitters of the poker affiliate world I mentioned above don't have ridiculous link directories. So how do they do it? Why do they rank so high in the SERP's? I'm starting to figure that out, thanks in part to SEO Elite....... and so can you.

[Nick]

No offense to anyone here, but you won't find anyone who is any good at SEO using SEO elite. It's a tool that shows you information that is so publicly available and easy to find that it's a complete waste of money. SEO is not as easy as simply doing link exchanges, it's evolved to being something far more complex and in a way, far harder to manipulate.

Who are the sites that will succeed in 'SEO' in the future? The ones that have built a good site, have tons of great, unique content and are well known through general marketing not just optimizing for the search engines.

[PPP]

Research is one thing. A tool may or may not be helpful in that.

Automated link exchange programs are a massive negative. When the search engines say do not use automated programs, I take that to mean do not use automated programs...

As always great post Dave!

No offense to anyone here, but you won't find anyone who is any good at SEO using SEO elite

Not to take a page out of PPP's book, but that is an absolutely retarded statement to make just because you don't personally use any SEO tools. Of course SEO Elite or any SEO program for that matter isn't a magic ticket that will boost you to the top of search engines. Any good webmaster knows that.

However it is a tool that will bundle all that "public" information you mention in one easy step of pushing a button. If it is easier for you to querry whois and use 6 different tools to do research, then so be it have fun. Personally I would rather invest a few bucks to have software at my fingertips that can get every bit of information I want and save it into excel files.

I agree with the point that automated link exchanges suck, unless you want to generate a bunch of PR0, PR1, and PR2 links on sites that get no traffic and barely have SE rank on their own. So yes, using SEO Elite for link exchanges is a waste.

All webmasters use different tools........each person has to find what works best for their business.

[Nick]

The information that SEO Elite throws out isn't even really useful. The links are based on PR which as you may or may not know, is hardly a good way of telling whether or not a link is worthwhile from there. You're far better off doing your links search on yahoo or MSN where they actually list the backlinks in order of weight (strength) of the pages, as that will be far more useful.

I disagree. I think if your a bottom feeder (not you) but someone in general looking between PR1-PR4 links then yes it won't tell you much. You can't tell me though that the PR of a site doesn't have any bearing on if it is a good link.

I'm pretty sure if ANY PR7+ gambling site offered to link to you, considering it was not obscene or in bad taste that you would take it......because you know the value of high PR links. If I remember the higher the PR, the higher the "vote" for your site.

Why would I want to individually have to do link searches, all-in text, all-in anchor searches, analyze page rank, find out where my site ranks for individual keywords, find out how many pages are indexed, analyze backlinks for all the search engines, find other well optimized sites, show alexa rank, show whois, show other optimized sites for an individual keyword, get email addresses of potential link partners and a few other things I use it for.

Your right, the information can all be found by other sources, but personally I am not going to use 7 different methods for finding info out when researching competitors sites, which is primarily what I use it for.

To say it is trash software just because you don't use it is senseless. No one is saying it will boost your site to the top of the SE's........it's just a tool that encompasses many tools into one. And if your using it to get a quick overview on your competition it is actually quite helpful.

When I want to get a full run down on a competitor's site I can press one simple button and have a good majority of the data in an excel spreadsheet within a minute........why is this so useless when it is relatively inexpensive?

[freydaddy]

i bought seo elite and found it to be useless also, i ended up getting a refund and the guy who sells it never even turned my registration key off, so i am still able to use it even though i got the refund, which i havent used it at all which should tell you how useless i think it is!

[Dave]

My original post here was directed at Kestral, to help him get the most out of a product he's already purchased.

I wasn't expecting the heavy hitters of this forum to express their opinion of this tool. Great stuff.

I'm really surprized to hear so many negetive comments. I've gained a ton of information about the competition and snagged several PR5 backlinks and even a 6 from sites I have hand-picked from the huge amount of info SEO Elite spits out in just the few hours I've been playing with it.

These link exchanges are from quality, on-topic websites I probably never would of found by traditional means.

Or maybe I'm just not the "Genius" Jeremy thinks I am. B)

All I know is that this tool has been a huge time-saver for me and I'm sure it would be for newbies and others who are maybe not quite as SEO web-savy as the NickOr's and PPP's of this forum.

[PPP]

Maybe to be more clear about my comment, a research tool is fine. An automated link exchange tool is suicide. I don't know what this product does, but it sounds to me that it can be used in a way that is helpful. It may also have the ability to be unhelpful, bt I don't know what exactly it does or can do.