Software Will Help in Your Search Engine Optimization Efforts

I spent a great deal of my time working on search engine optimization (SEO) for my various websites and blogs. An online business has two options for tackling the necessary, continuing task of improving SEO. One is for your business to handle optimization on your own; the other of those is to outsource the necessary research to companies who specialize in those services. I have three primary concerns about such companies. Some of them are not nearly as well informed as they ought to be about the details of optimizing for the various major search engines. They rely on rumors without the empirical data to confirm these often incorrect assumptions. Some of them are nothing more than linking farms that disguise themselves as SEO consultants. Such links can sometimes have very short term success, but eventually the linking strategies are made useless by sophisticated search engine algorithms that can uncover such schemes and cause your site to drop back farther in the search results than it was before you hired the self-proclaimed masters. The last of my reservations about these companies, at least the last that I will mention in this article, is that they tend to be overpriced for the limited value that a business typically receives.

You should already know what my recommended solution is from reading between the lines of my first paragraph: Take the time to educate your company team unless you want to hire the few very expensive geniuses in the field, such as Leslie Rhode, Brad Fallon or Dan Thies--if you can get them to work for you at any price.

If you're going to follow my informed recommendation, you will need to take the time to educate your in-house staff on the fundamentals of search engines and optimization for them, and you must also be willing to spend some money for well designed software to assist in the gathering and analysis of the immense amount of data that will be required. I have a review of the most important SEO solutions on this website.

I have long been a long term supporter of SEO Elite (see sales page).  This Callen designed program has been a leader in SEO software for years.  Until now, I have always endorsed it without any reservations.  However, I know that the company plans to release a new version of SEO Elite in the near future, so I hesitate giving it my full endorsement right now, unless you can find out if those of us who own the original will be able to upgrade SEO Elite 2.0 at a reduced rate or unless you decide to by another Callen miracle solution, Keyword Elite, because you can buy both at the same time for a substantial discount.  I bought both at the same time and, together, they are still among the best investments I have ever made!

The other top level SEO software is Leslie Rohde's Optilink (you'll land on the sales page).  Rohde is the genius who makes all the rest of us seem like nothing more than silly pretenders to the SEO throne.  Rohde taught me much of what I know about search engine optimization.  Pardon the lack of modesty...I know an immense amount about SEO.

To those companies that can afford the expense, I strongly recommend buying both products (as well as the amazing Keyword Elite).  However, if you are new to the online business world and you are going to begin your optimization efforts using just one, for the time being I am going to deviate from my usual recommendation and endorse Optilink.

Optilink and SEO Elite are very modestly priced for such robust software; they cost only around $200 each.  If your cash flow problem is temporarily significant, Rohde's company offers a much less sophisticated program called Optispider that is only around half the price of the better Optilink.  Furthermore, if you are shopping in the bargain basement, another software tool you could consider is Mark Ling's Traffic Travis in the same price range as Optispider, that is about $100.  If you follow the link in the first paragraph of this article, you can get to my comparison of all of these alternatives, and there are direct links there to each of the software products.

I am a frequent user of both SEO Elite and Optilink, and I believe that they compliment each other marvelously.  They are tremendous time savers in both gathering the data and in helping make sense of it all.