A query on SEOElite

[tridean]

Hi All,
I've done a search on SEOElite on this forum and have found mixed results on whther the program is worth it or not. This has prompted me to ask the q's below.

According to a couple, the SEOElite is good but it requires a lot of work. My question to this is, compared to what? So what I mean is, is the amount of work you do in SEOElite, still smaller compared to other methods that try to create the same outcome?

There are other comments about Reciprocal linking not being effective anymore. Is this really a correct assumption? Would I get more ranking from Google if I have a one way link coming from a PR5 page that is a directory and has nothing to do with my site, compared to a reciprocal link from a PR5 page that actually has a complimentary theme? (Of course all other factors being equal such as number of outgoing links etc)

Any thoughts would be very welcome as I'm quite confused. I had a coach last year who told me one way links far out rank reciprocals. This is OK in theory, but when I do research on my competitors who are ranking higher than me, the backlinks they have are all reciprocal. And I mean ALL. I have yet to find a site above me with links (outside of directories) that aren't reciprocal.

If anyone could help me that would be really great!

Best wishes
Dean

[thamisgith]

I wish I could answer all your questions - I'd be rich by now.

What I can say is that I use SEO Elite and it is very good but it can be hard work. It is absolutely not a quick fix. However, Brad Callen does have other offerings and I think he now has a link exchange, which you might also find interesting.

SEO Elite will give you a huge amount of data on the backlinks to the sites which are competing for your target keyword(s). It's also a good way to check how your own links are building, not just how many you have but what the anchor text is.

I would recommend it - but only if you can spare the cash and there isn't anything else you want to buy right now.

[tridean]

Hi Hamish,
Thankyou for your reply.

I guess you've come pretty close to answering my question. What was confusing on other posts was that the main points being made was that work was involved. This to me could have had two meanings.

First, everybody who bought it assumed it was a magic bullet, or
Second, all that had bought it had never manually researched their competition and copied their linking strategy. This is really all I'm trying to ascertain.

Does it save you time compared to doing it manually?

And the other point was that there is a general feeling that reciprocals will sonn be thing of the past. I wonder if this is completely true. My belief is that reciprocals will have weight if the two linking pages are somehow complimentary. For example a wildlife figurines site and a wildlife picture site sharing links. Surely, there must be some merit placed on that.

Anyway, I'm thinking of purchasing SEOelite because my main site has a lot of category pages. It has taken me almost a year to get into Google's top 30 for my home page, but that's only about 2% of all possible traffic that my site is optimized for. Because of directory submission placing a lot of emphasis on only having your home page listed, it makes getting the category pages listed a daunting task. To go through each category page and my competitors linking stratgey for each keyword is a mammoth task, and I'd just like to know that SEOElite is going to save me some time.

Thanks anyway

Dean

[thamisgith]

Hi Dean,

Glad I could be of some help.

Does it save you time compared to doing it manually?
I would say yes it does. It produces a mass of information on either your competitor's sites or your own in a matter of minutes.

My cautionary note was just in case you were one of those looking for a "magic bullet" - which you're clearly not. So, since you're prepared to put the effort in to use the information this software can provide, it probably would be a good buy for you.

One way links are pobably better than reciprocal links - but that doesn't mean that reciprocals are worthless, especially not if they come from a related site and you have good anchor text based round your target keyword. I can't see them becoming worthless in future either - but that is just opinion.

I get a lot of traffic from MSN and Yahoo, it beats me why everyone is so obsessed with Google. You can spend forever getting up Google and increasing your PR only to crash and burn at the next Google dance.

Have you already read Brad Callen's SEO book? There's a link in my sig file (it's the last one I think). He may answer a lot of your questions. Also get on his mailing list, he sends great tips and hints out from time to time.

Finally, if you want some one way links then think about writing some articles and submitting them to the various article banks. If you already have a content rich site then you probably have the basis for the articles there.

Good luck!

[tridean]

Hey Hamish,
Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

I must admit, I have been doing a fair bit of research on this product on other forums aswell, as I am tired of spending money of products, and as you'd expect the results are mixed.

I got some words of advice from someone else to try a free program called WEB CEO. What I wanted to do was see why other sites ranked higher than me and I have to say I was horrified by the results. I looked at several sites and their back links for a category keyword I use and I must say, if they are ranking highly because of their backlinks then we are all in serious trouble.

I'd say that about 60-70% of all the back links from these 10 competitors are on Made for Adsense sites. It made me want to puke! For the rest, they were either in directories or in links pages, yet not one of these pages (including the MFA pages) had a PR. Not one and this was disturbing.

Whether this means that the current PR of web pages is now not accurate or not, who knows.

Dean

[thamisgith]

Hello Dean,

I know what you mean - but look at it this way: if they can get decent search engine rankings based upon crappy links just think how easy it will be for you to beat them if you go out and get some decent links from closely related sites.

As far as PR being accurate - I think it's a pretty meaningless thing. Look at the top 10 search returns for any keyword and you'll find PR2 sites in position 1 with PR 5 sites lower down (or completely off) the page.

Don't worry about PR, just build a decent content based site and get some links from related sites. You'll do fine!

[aaanativearts]

Page Rank only helps you if everything else is equal. That's why you see PR2 sites ranking above PR4 sites. If my page is keyword optimized and metatag optimized and I have a great title and decription and I use heading tags or bold or itallic text on the important keywords I'm targeting and I've been on the net for 7 years but my PR is lower than yours, it's still going to outrank the site you made a couple months ago, that has a crappy title, no or poor keyword optimization, or a list of links to unrelated web sites on the front page or something else that Google doesn't like.

One way links do carry much more weight than reciprocal links IF the link is coming from a website built around a RELATED subject, particularly if that site is listed in DMOZ or is considered an authority in that niche.

However, if the link is one way from a directory that is nothing more than a link farm, and your link is grouped with sites that aren't related to your site, or you spammed someone's guestbook with an unrelated link, that link isn't going to help you much. And if you are reciprocating to such a "bad neighborhood" it could even possibly get your listing dropped from the index altogether.

Even tho reciprocal links don't count as much as a one way link, they are still valuable. Google may eventually ignore them in their algo altogether, but what you really get of value from those links is TRAFFIC if it's done right. If I'm on a site about my favorite hobby, and the webmaster on that site recommends a related site that is also about some aspect relating to my hobby, especially if the link is in the body of an article or directly following it, there is a VERY good chance I will click the link and actually visit. Then when I get to your site I may click an ad on that site or buy whatever they are selling, because it still fits my interests. But if the site hides your link off in an obscure links list that they don't link to from their article pages, I will see very little traffic from it, and it probably won't help my google ranking a lot, either.

When I do exchange links with another site that has approached me, I always ask if they have other sites. Many people have more than one site on related subjects. For example, I have a site called healthanddiets that covers many aspects of the health field. I also have other sites that deal just with one micro-niche of the health field. So if I link to your diet focused site from an article about some kind of diet on my healthanddiets site, I'll ask you to link from an article about a diet for people on chemotherapy, for example, to my cancer site. Then all three sites have a one way link and they are still all relevant links for the sites they are linking to. And because my link is on an article page and not hidden in a links directory, I will get about a 100 times more traffic from that link.