Advanced Link Manager

Today, we’re reviewing Advanced Link Manager v7.1 build 6 from the team at Caphyon Ltd.  We’ll also take a look at Caphyon’s Advanced Web Ranking software tool.

As you are well aware by now, I write software …

I also create web sites.

Now, I was searching Google for something better to help me keep track of my link-backs.  Currently, I use a purpose written database that I created many years ago, and has done the job admirably … to a point.

My database does the basics, and it makes things easier than doing everything manually, but it’s not all that sophisticated.  So, I was searching for a sophisticated link manager program to help organise the chaos that can be tracking links to your site.  You know the problem … you’ve created a web site and you are performing the normal SEO tasks to get more exposure for your site.  One of the key tasks to perform is to get back-links to your site from other relevant sites on the web to increase your link popularity.

So, what’s so hard about that I hear you ask ? Well, you are right, it doesn’t have to be … it’s fine to do the basics yourself :

1. Find links back to your site and enter them into a spreadsheet or database
2. Evaluate the quality of the site linking to you
3. Find relevant sites that you want to exchange links with
4. Ensure that those sites are high quality and that they really are relevant to your site
5. Find a contact email address for the owner of the site you want to link with
6. Email the owner of the site
7. Record the URL, contact details, and the date you tried to contact them
8. Keep a record of the email you actually sent them so that you can refer to it later
9. Wait for a reply from the owner of the other site
10. Manually create a link to their site when you get affirmative replies
11. Periodically verify that their link to your site still exists
12. Repeat for every single link you want to create to your site

Hang on a second … that really is hard !!

That’s quite a lot of work, which needs to be repeated on a regular basis and has quite a bit of information to keep track of. Surely someone has written some quality software to make all of that much, much easier …

Of course they have !! The team at Caphyon have written Advanced Link Manager to do all of that and much more.  Let’s take a closer look at Advanced Link Manager, what it offers, and how you can use it to build your web site’s link popularity.

Advanced Link Manager

Advanced Link Manager

When I stumbled across the web site for this piece of software, it looked too good to be true.  There are some pretty big claims on the web site about the capabilities, feature and benefits. The web site itself is modern, stylish and very professional, so it’s a very easy decision to download the trial version and give it a go.

If that wasn’t enough to convince me to try it, then the full list of features and comparison charts showing the features available in each of the three versions (Standard, Professional, Enterprise) was more than enough to do so.

Download

The download file for this link manager is quite a large one (around 68MB) but came down smoothly and quickly.  There were no noticeable pauses or slowness which might be attributable to a slow server. No problems in this area at all.

Installation

Similarly, installation was a painless experience. I chose a Typical install and found myself having to answer minimal questions to get underway. No issues with the installation process at all. So far, so good, and painless too …

Having installed successfully, it was time to check out the look and feel, the usability and features of what so far had been a very good experience.

Doing the job …

I have to admit to being a little overwhelmed when I first started up Advanced Link Manager, but my fears were soon put to rest when I was taken straight into the “Getting Started” tutorial.  I was impressed with the Help provided and by the simple, easy to use interface, and it was obvious that it is more than just a link manager.

Although there are many tabs to get to grips with, everything is explained if you first make your way through the help sections provided.

Even the standard edition of Advanced Link Manager (Can we call is ALM for short ?) is packed with features.  Let’s go by the numbers from our list of tasks above and see whether ALM can help …

1) Find links back to your site and enter them into a spreadsheet or database

The standard version does this for you.  In fact, it’s one of the first things that you should do when you set up a project for the first time. Choose the search engines that you want to check for backlinks and ‘go’. ALM will search for backlinks and record them in its internal database.

2) Evaluate the quality of the site linking to you

ALM has a built-in tool (Analyze Domain Quality) to analyze the quality of domains. Simply enter the domain name to be checked and the tool looks up the Page Rank, link count average, and various statistics from Compete.com.
You will need the Enterprise edition to use this feature.

3) Find relevant sites that you want to exchange links with

The “Find Link Partners” wizard helps you find web sites based on your desired keywords and advanced search results from the search engines you choose to include.
You will need the Enterprise edition to use this feature.

4) Ensure that those sites are high quality and that they really are relevant to your site

The “Find Link Partners” wizard tells you the Rank of the pages found which may be beneficial to get links back to your site.
You will need the Enterprise edition to use this feature.

5) Find a contact email address for the owner of the site you want to link with

ALM extracts this information for you automatically from the WHOIS information for the domain name.

6)Email the owner of the site

ALM has a built in email client and you can set up template

7) Record the URL, contact details, and the date you tried to contact them

ALM stores this all for you automatically.

8 ) Keep a record of the email you actually sent them so that you can refer to it later

ALM stores a history of the messages that you send, so you can easily refer back to them.

9) Wait for a reply from the owner of the other site

You’ll have to do this one on your own

10) Manually create a link to their site when you get affirmative replies

ALM contains a wizard which allows you to generate link pages based on your custom templates, for all the sites you have exchanged links with.

11) Periodically verify that their link to your site still exists

Once again, ALM can do this automatically for all of the links that are recorded as pointing back at your site.  It will go through each one and check that it really is linking to your site.

12) Repeat for every single link you want to create to your site

With a tool like Advanced Link Manager, keeping track of all of your links is easy and it offers so much more.

Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking

I was pleasantly surprised (I didn’t read the download information fully ) to find that what I had downloaded, was actually a bundled installation package containing both Advanced Link Manager and Advanced Web Ranking. So, I actually already had Advanced Web Ranking installed and crying out to be tried out after I finished looking at Advanced Link Manager.

Doing the job …

So … you have gone to all the trouble of performing your on-page optimization.  You have used Advanced Link Manager to get inbound links to your web site (ie off page optimization).

What does it all add up to ?

How do you know that all your hard work is paying off and increasing your search engine ranking ?

That’s where Advanced Web Ranking comes in. You need a tool to actually measure and track your success, and you do not want to have to do the search manually for all of your relevant keywords across all search engines.

Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) will do this all for you.  Simply create a new project, enter the websites you are wanting to evaluate, the keywords you want to check on, and the search engines to check.  Then … GO !!!

AWR performs all the search engine queries for you (just as if a human was doing it) and reports on the results.

It tracks your results over time and allows you to view your information in chart form or report format.  AWR also includes a Keyword Research Tool.  It’s a must have to check your website ranking !!!

Our View …

Advanced Link Manager is a top rate piece of software. We give it a 9.5 out of 10.

Advanced Web Ranking is one of the most useful pieces of software most webmasters could ever come across.
It also gets a 9.5 out of 10 from us and a high recommendation to download and try it out for yourself.