Is SEO Elite recommended?
Disclaimer: This is an honest review from a former SEO Elite user. I am not an affiliate of SEO Elite. What I am going to say is based on my experience. It is very different from all other SEO Elite reviews. This article is not meant to criticize Brad Callen and SEO Elite, just my thoughts on the software.
As many of you may already know, SEO Elite is search engine optimization software. Lots of bigwigs back it up. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with the experts’ recommendations. I bought the software hoping it might help my website rank. Sure I’m a sucker for internet marketing products, but I’ve spent my fair share of times using SEO Elite in my SEO efforts, only to find that it’s disappointing.
Let’s look at some of the key features of SEO Elite:
– Analyze backlinks in different search engines;
– Find and email a high Page Rank partner;
– Analyze Allintitle, Allintext and Allinanchor;
– Check if your link partners are still linking to you;
– Check if your site is ranked for specific keywords/key terms;
– Find out how many pages are indexed in the search engine;
Before buying SEO Elite, I did a lot of research on all the relevant tools like Arelis, Optilink, Webceo, Internet Business Promoter (IBP). SEO Elite was a nice piece of software that helps you find link partners and analyze your competitors. Now that the search engine has evolved so much, reciprocal linking is dead. Gone are the days where the more inbound links you have, the higher your ranking.
Matt Cutt (Google Engineer) commented on his blog: “The best links aren’t paid or traded after unexpected emails; the best links are earned and given by choice.”
Also, when you look at Google’s quality guidelines: “Do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.”
Both of these statements confirmed that low-quality links will hurt your rankings. Sure enough, quality links that share the same theme with their source can help you rank well in the search engine, but I doubt SEO Elite can help you do that because it doesn’t analyze co-citation data.
Another seemingly attractive feature of SEO Elite is finding and sending emails to a Page Rank partner. In my humble opinion this method has become obsolete. Google’s algorithm has evolved so much that Page Rank doesn’t seem to have much meaning. Rather, the quality of a website is determined by its age and the naturalness of the link profile. I have a PR5 content website that brings less than 50 visitors a day from the search engine because it does not have many quality incoming links. One of my partners has a PR4 website that attracts thousands of visitors daily because the site has some inbound links from authority websites. Go figure.
I have used SEO Elite to email potential link partners only to get into trouble. I used SEO Elite to find hundreds of potential link partners, then sent them link request emails through SEO Elite. Guess what, some of them kindly replied asking me not to spam them; one went so far as to file a complaint with my ISP. Some responded to my request, but when I take a second look at their website, I don’t feel like linking to them as their content doesn’t offer much value. You can still secure quality link partners with SEO Elite, but you need to be constantly tracking them, constantly monitoring their quality, and checking to see if they are still linking to you. This is a very time consuming task. The quality of your link partners is totally out of your control. I feel that time and efforts should be put into developing quality, unique content that will attract unsolicited inbound links.
Another problem with SEO Elite is the member forum. In the sales letter, Brad stated that there is an SEO Elite member forum. In fact, he doesn’t need to buy SEO Elite to register on the forum. I have no problem with that, but I feel like Brad shouldn’t say it’s a “members only” forum, the information is misleading.
As Aaron Wall (author of “SEO Book”) pointed out, there are few free tools that will get the SEO Elite job done, including Tattler, Backlink Analyzer, and Digital Point’s keyword tracking tool. He also recommends HubFinder for finding high-quality links.
Simply put, SEO Elite is not recommended.
Points to Ponder: In his sales letter, Brad stated that his weight loss website ranks in the top three for many competitive keywords such as “lose weight,” “weight loss,” and “weight loss tips.” As I checked on Google, his website doesn’t even appear on the first page for the keywords mentioned above. I think the claim on the sales page is misleading.
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