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 of those is to handle your optimization efforts in-house, while the other is to hire a consulting firm to assist you in the project. 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 the simply disguise themselves as experts, and then go out and purchase links from link farms. 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. My third concern about these companies is that they are usually very expensive for the limited value that you actually might achieve.
If you read the first paragraph of this article, you know my recommendation: Do it yourself, unless you can afford the extremely high prices of someone like a Brad Fallon or a Leslie Rohde.
If you’re going to follow my informed recommendation, you need some help in the form of basic search engine optimization education and good, well engineered software to help you gather and analyze the immense amount of data required to indicate potential areas of improvement and to track the results of the strategies that you implement. I have a comparison of the most important SEO solutions on one of my websites.
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. I generally recommend it without any reservations. I recently learned that they are getting ready to release a new version, SEO Elite 2.0, so I recommend it now only on the basis of two conditions: 1) That you can get assurance that you will be able to get a special upgrade price for the new version when it is released in the future, or 2) that you decide to buy the same company’s highly recommended Keyword Elite, because they extend a substantial discount for buying both simultaneously (it comes as an upsell). 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). Leslie Rohde is the patron saint of optimization, a genuine genius. Much of what I have learned about search engine optimization I learned from Rohde. 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). But if you are in a financial pinch and want to begin with just one of the two, I’m going to break with my longstanding position of suggesting SEO Elite and recommend Optilink, instead–temporarily, at least, until I have an opportunity to thoroughly test SEO Elite 2.0.
Both SEO Elite and Optilink are comparably priced at just under $200 each, which is a bargain. Only if you are really pinched for cash, Rohde’s company also offers a less sophisticated aid, Optispider, that is only half as costly as the robust 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. I describe each of those alternatives in my lengthy review (see the link in the first paragraph).
I use both SEO Elite and Optilink regularly. They are tremendous time savers in both gathering the data and in helping make sense of it all.
