Advanced Link Manager and Advanced Web Ranking Review

It’s time to ramp up my internet marketing efforts for a few of my sites. I enjoy working on a Mac, so, when I search for software, I seek out the best Mac friendly software I can find. I came across Advanced Link Manager and Advanced Web Ranking at the result of a satisfied user. These two programs are developted by Caphyon. I read up a little on Caphyon’s website, downloaded the software, and decided to give it a try. Below is my review of each product.

Highlights of Website Research
1. Mac Friendly software
2. Impressive resume of clients.
3. Nicely designed website

First Impressions:

• Trial version – Caphyon gives the software for 30 days full featured. This is enticing, especially when evaluating software that I’m considering putting my hard earned money towards.
• Installation – Loaded quick and easy
• Software Version – Version 7.2. Something about higher versions, gives me that ‘seasoned’ feeling. Like the software has had a chance to be developed a little more solid.
• What to do first – When you first open each program, you’ll find a well designed window that looks like there is alot to do. Can be a little intimidating. Which brings me to my final first impression…
• User Manual – There is a quick start guide waiting to greet you upon opening the program. There are 3 tutorials to choose from: Standard, Medium, and Advanced. I have loaded software before that has come with a dismal help file. That can leave me wondering where to click to get started and I find that a bit discouraging. This is not so with this software. There are plenty of options on where to find help.

ADVANCED LINK MANAGER

What is Advanced Link Manager? The product’s name says it all. This is a program that aims to help a person manage their links to and from a website. Successfully managing incoming links, otherwise known as link popularity can dramatically increase your website ranking.

Can anyone use this software? What is the technical level? Yes, anyone can use this software. There is a quick start tutorial as well as an assistant available at your fingertips. I’m a fairly technical person. I’m also a business person. Sometimes I spend time on doing ‘technical’ stuff. Other times I’m doing ‘business’ or ‘marketing’ stuff. My time is very valuable to me. I’m highly interested when I can assign someone or something to do things that allows me time to do other things. I can’t be all things to my business at all times. This is where Advanced Link Manager comes in for me. It’s a SEO tool that helps with my internet marketing efforts.

First Experience:

Step 1 – I followed the quick start tutorial. That part took me about a minute.
Step 2 – Clicked on ‘go’ (green arrow).
Step 3 – Software went out and gathered link info. Total time reported: 4 hrs, 58 mins.
Step 4 – Analyzed findings

Each tab you click on, the Context Help on the right window changes to the topics pertaining to the tab you clicked on. Nice feature.

If you ever find yourself stuck, not knowing where to go, the first button on the top left of navigation is the Assistant. Clicking the button pulls up a quick window with links to help you find where you’re want to go in the program.

Second Experience: I have a site that I am considering adding a new feature to, but it will also require an upgrade on the design. I was curious to see how many backlinks I have coming into this site so I ran a test using Advanced Link Manager. I punched in my domain name and clicked on the green arrow to start. I then went to do other work. 34 minutes later I had everything I wanted to know about my links (incoming and outgoing) at my fingertips, ready for analysis.

Just about everything you want to know about backlinks into your site is there. You can also find broken links and reciprocal links. This allows you to clean up your broken links that are going out of your site. It also lets you know who is keeping their links back to your site, making this program a very solid link manager.

Does it do what it says it will do? And how well? In two words – It does. Advanced Link Manager gives you ammo when you want to know where your backlinks are coming from. Also gives the ranking of those sites that are linking to you. With this information, you’ll be able to assess where you might want to focus on getting incoming links from based on their page ranks. Utilizing all the information it offers will help you get higher visibility in the search engines.

Which Version? Standard, Pro, or Enterprise?

If you want to take advantage of the LINK CAMPAIGN option or almost anything in the TOOLS section you’ll need the Enterprise version.

Here is what you’ll be missing in each if you don’t purchase the Enterprise Version:

LINK CAMPAIGNS Find Partner LInks: 4 Ways – By Keywords, Competition’s Backlinks, Keyword or Domain Search, Links by URLs or Local Files

TOOLS Website Crawler Webpage Analyzer Domain Quality Analysis Google Maps Webpages Importer

The version I evaluated was the Pro version. This version, over the Standard version, lets you generate and export reports. Ultimately I’ve decided on the Enterprise version because I wanted the Campaign and Tools options.

Overall Rating: 5/5

ADVANCED WEB RANKING (Pro Version)

So, you have your website up and now you’re wondering about traffic. In order for your site to survive, you need visitors. So, where does your website stand in terms of search engine ranking of the various search engines? On which page are you going to appear when somebody searches for the words you are trying to rank for?

This is where Advanced Web Ranking comes in. This program gives you the ability to know exactly where your website places on the pages of the search engines when people are searching for the keywords that pertain to your industry or interest. If you really want to know exactly where your site is in website ranking , this tool gives you this information with precise accuracy.

When you first open Advanced Web Ranking, you’ll find a helpful quick start guide to get you going.

Start by putting in your keywords to see where your site ranks. As you’re typing in the keywords, a list of suggested keywords that have been searched for pops up. You can use Google Suggest, Keywords, and Wordtracker for these suggested keywords. This comes in handy if you want to drill down for longer tails on your keywords. However, there is a separate keyword research tool available in the Enterprise version that helps with this a little better.

So, here’s how it works…
Step 1 – Set up your keywords
Step 2 – Plug in your website
Step 3 – Choose which email address you want the reports sent to
Step 4 – Start the ‘research’
Step 5 – Analyze your results and formulate a plan of action.

My First Experience:

I used 3 keywords to run my first test for one of my websites.

Total time to complete: 5 mins

The results showed me which page I am on and what position I am in with the search engines. This is helpful and shows where you need to make changes in some areas where you desire to be.

You can see exactly where your competitors are ranking on each search engine.

You can do a side by side comparison of your page vs. your competitor’s page to see how your keywords rank compared to your competitor.

Data is saved and stored for accumulative history comparison at a later date.

At anytime, there is a helpful assistant button on the upper left navigation toolbar. This opens a new smaller window with links to common areas of the software. I like using this assistant.

The assistant is broken into 4 Categories:
Websites
Check Rankings
View Evolutions in time
Overview
View Visibility
Edit Websites

Keywords
Check Rankings
View Evolutions in time
Overview
Import Google Suggest
Edit Keywords

Search Engines
Check Rankings
View Evolutions in time
Overview
Import Google Suggest
Submitter
Edit Search Engines

Tools
Update Project
Update Multiple projects
Manage Reports
Manage Filters
Generate Multiple reports

In addition, you can create scheduled tasks which can update projects, backup projects, and/or generate reports periodically.

You can monitor the competition by manually adding websites as well.

As a bonus, I would like to see AWR include the ability to track competitors Adwords. This would really help to give an extra advantage over our competition as we could monitor how well their advertising is going over time. This could help us predict which phrases are working and which might not. In this price range a competitor’s product does include this, however, this is not a deal breaker for me.

Keyword Research

There are some keyword research tools. The Keyword Suggest tool is available for Enterprise version only. The Keyword Research Tool (API) allows you to use your google api to research for adwords.

This software is extremely powerful. If you take your time seriously, this tool takes away tedious hours and puts information into your view almost instantly.

Overall Rating: 5/5

Final Impressions of both Advanced Link Manager and Advanced Web Ranking

Both of these programs together prove to be extremely helpful. They have given me the ability to analyze my sites in a more refined and more absolute way. They save me time from having to do the research myself. The information is all in one place, ready for me to analyze. I now know where I stand in the search engines and can improve my rankings over time using these programs.

Will these programs help my website get more visits? The answer is a positive yes, as long as you’re keywords are what people are searching for. These programs will help you to know those keywords. You will be able to use the information retrieved to execute a plan of action that will help you rank higher. Higher rankings = more visits.

While reviewing these programs I wanted to keep these things in mind…

Stability of Program – No crashes on either program after several uses.
Design of Program – It’s not Apple candy, but it definitely looks nice.
Ease of Use – Extremely intuitive. Help files everywhere. Flows well.
Responsiveness of Developer – Very fast response. Nice. Very helpful.
Beginner to Advance – Whoever you are, you’ll pick up on this program easily.
Reusability – Some products you will only use once. Or maybe once in great while. Then it’s over. With these products, you’ll find yourself coming back and using over and over again quite frequently. You’ll be able to use the constantly changing information to position yourself more powerfully in a market that can be fiercely competitive.

Overall – I look for the complete package when shopping for a product. This comes in the form of sales presentation, software functionality, and support options. Caphyon receives a 5 out of 5 stars here. Everything is well communicated to the buyer. The company took careful time in providing information to make using their software as pleasant as possible. Their support is responsive.

Advanced Web Ranking + Advanced Link Manager. Both Needed? With Advanced Web Ranking, you’ll find where your website ranks, how many pages deep, and which position on those pages. If you need to make improvements. You can make these changes with on page SEO as well as firing up Advanced Link Manager to help you work on getting Links back to your site.

Together they make great companions.

Is it worth the money? The best way I can answer this is to analyze your own Return on Investment. What we all really want to know is, will this software help us achieve the results we are looking for? If you’re looking to advance your web rankings in the search engines, I see much potential here. You can use this software to analyze where your web site is, formulate a plan based on the analysis, and when the plan is applied, you will see positive results.

Could you do this stuff manually? Sure. But how much is your time worth? This software is literally click-n-go and does all the tedious research work for you. This leaves you with the ability to do what you do best in the meantime.

Making the decision between Standard, Pro, or Enterprise is ultimately up to you. Some programs I can live without certain features. With these two products, however, I’m happier with the Enterprise versions.

If you find yourself wondering if you can get by with the lower versions, according to the developer’s website, you can always upgrade to the next version by paying the difference later.

At any rate, you can always download the 30 day trial and see for yourself how powerful this software really is.

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