Link-Building Software: Roundup Review

Take a look around at a few blogs and discussion forums about SEO and you'll quickly find many recommendations for some backlink building automation tool or another. It's clear that if you're looking to get websites ranked systematically, you should be using either software automation or outsourcing to help along the way. While many link-building tools have been discussed an recommended in great detail, individually, the question that remains is: how do they actually compare to each other? Out of all the options, which product is the best one to use? In this roundup review, that's the very question we shall aim to answer. Read on to see a complete comparison of Article Marketing Robot, Magic Submitter, Rank Builder 2.0, SEnuke X, SEOLinkRobot, SERPAssist and Sick Submitter.

Overview

Note that "Link Targets" (the number of sites the software can submit to, to get a backlink) should be treated as a ballpark guesstimate, because these numbers are subject to change. Also, no software will ever get a 100% success rate with the submissions. Finally, most of the tools let you add your own link targets, so the numbers are fluid anyway ("limited" means that only one type of link target, forum profiles or article directories in the case of ARM, can be custom-added).

Summaries

The following are brief summaries highlighting some of the unique features and characteristics of each of the tools in this roundup. I have written extensive reviews on each one of them (and also made separate videos for each one), so I won't go into too much detail. If you want to know more about any one of the tools, there's a link to the full review at the end of each summary.

Article Marketing Robot

Article Marketing Robot is actually the odd one out in this roundup. All of the other tools submit to various kinds of sites like social bookmarking sites, forums, free blogging sites, article directories etc. Article Marketing Robot, on the other hand, focuses fully on Article Submissions and nothing else. ARM is highly automated, pretty easy to use and can submit to massive amounts of sites. Granted, the success rates tend to be low, but even after you clean up the target list by dumping all of the sites where submissions failed, you're still left with a heck of a lot of links. Add to that the fact that you get in-content anchor-text links and it's clear that ARM is a serious contender. Plus, the second way in which it's the odd one out is that it's the only program to come with a one-off price. Very nice! More information: Article Marketing Robot Review

Magic Submitter

Magic Submitter is a real "everything-submitter", from articles to bookmarks to videos and press releases, if there's a way to get a backlink from a site, Magic Submitter can probably automate it. It comes with a lot of link targets right out the box and also lets you add your own custom lists of link targets. Some aspects of the user interface take a bit of getting used to, but once you've gotten the hang of it, Magic Submitter is pleasantand easy to work with. Automatic submissions to PDF sharing sites and statusnet-micro-blogs as well as automatic video submissions set Magic Submitter apart from most other tools and it's nice to have the option to get some links from these less-trodden paths. More information: Magic Submitter Review

Rank Builder 2.0

Rank Builder 2.0 means well, but can't quite keep up with the crowd. The product comes in the form of six separate programs that do various types of link building. You can add your own custom lists of forum profiles, but the other modules (web 2.0 sites, press releases, articles,...) aren't customizable. Rank Builder is unnecessarily complicated, stating with a convoluted sign-up process for the software and ending with the less-than-intuitive user interface which is slightly different for each of the six modules. While this product is not downright bad, it makes a bit of an unfinished impression and compared to the likes of Magic Submitter and SEnuke X, it's hard to find a good reason why you'd want to bother with Rank Builder 2.0. More information: Rank Builder 2.0 Review

SEnuke X

SEnuke was the grandaddy of all link-building software and accordingly, SEnuke X has some big shoes to fill. It does so rather adequately with a strong emphasis on ease of use and "hands-off-ness". The campaign-setup wizard and the simple diagram drawing tool for mapping out your backlink network make SEnuke X very easy and straight-forward to use. Unfortunately, the forum profile builder is the only component where you can add your own link targets and the diagram builder has a few limitations (not every type of submission can be linked to from all others), but the bottom line is still that SEnuke X can build a lot of links for you, with very little human intervention required and scheduling link campaigns over longer periods of time could not be any easier. The big downside to SEnuke X is the price: at $147/month, it's by far the most expensive software in this roundup. More information: SEnuke X Review

SEOLinkRobot

SEOLinkRobot is like a smaller brother to Magic Submitter or SEnuke: it has fewer features, isn't as highly automated or sophisticated, but at heart, it's the same kind of thing. Plus, it comes at a lower price than most tools represented here. SEOLinkRobot is a solid piece of software and one feature I particularly like about it is that it lets you build open link-wheels with web 2.0 properties as well as more advanced, interlinked mini-nets (including automatic bookmarking) very easily. The downfall of SEOLinkRobot is that it only submits to about 80 sites in total. That's just way too few link targets, compared to the competing products. More information: SEOLinkRobot Review

SERPAssist

Using SEnuke X it seems like nothing could possibly be even more "hands off" short of just outsourcing all of your link building to a service provider. SERPAssist proves this assumption wrong. With SERPAssist, the actual submission processes aren't even done from your local machine or through your Internet connection, instead all you do is define how you want your backlinks built, using a very nice diagramming tool. The resulting link-building tasks are then uploaded and done for you, in the cloud. Unfortunately, SERPAssist is severely limited in the amount of different types of links it can build as well as in the total number of sites it can submit to. Much like SEOLinkRobot, there's nothing wrong with the software itself, but it's just too "weak" because of a lack of link targets. DISCLAIMER: I assume that the situation with SERPAssist hasn't changed since I last used it (which is a few months ago). According to their official site, the number of links the software can build has actually shrunk since then and I am awaiting confirmation of this. More information: SERPAssist Review

Sick Submitter

Sick Submitter is a fairly complex and ultra-customizable link building tool that has a strong emphasis on automating profile links. Sick Submitter can be customized to do almost any kind of link building and in fact it needs to be customized by you, the user, since it does almost nothing in it's out-of-the-box state. With Sick Submitter, after you've gotten accustomed to use the tool, it will either cost you a lot of time (scraping your own link targets, building custom packets and custom submission templates) or a lot of money (buying pre-made link packets and submission templates provided by the user community). Given that you spend one or the other, Sick Submitter does turn into a very powerful link-builder, though. More information: Sick Submitter Review

Roundup Video 1

For my conclusion to all this and to see which of the products comes out on top, watch this video: [thrive_borderless type='custom_code'][/thrive_borderless]  

Roundup Video 2: What Really Matters

Here's a second video, to clarify some important points, talk about what really matters and also a tip on how to use backlink building software for the fastest and best results possible: [thrive_borderless type='custom_code'][/thrive_borderless]   Download Video 1 Download Video 2

Conclusion

Watch video one for the real conclusion, but just to have something in writing: SEnuke X is the best of the bunch in terms of automation and I recommend it. Magic Submitter is the best value for your money and I also recommend it. Pick one and start using it to get your stuff ranked! All the best, P.S.: I'd appreciate it if you would help spread the word by clicking on the "Like" button. :)