Link popularity and link analysis have been buzzwords in the search
engine marketing industry for the last year, maybe longer. With the
attention that search engine marketers have given to link popularity
and link analysis, some software companies are beginning to turn their
attention to developing software to help search engine marketers analyze
links and develop link popularity strategies.
Back in March 2002, I reviewed a couple of tools: RankMeter and RankSpy.
If you read that review, you'll remember that RankSpy created a list
of pages on your site that have been indexed by the program's supported
search engines, and a list of pages that contain links to your site.
In effect, RankSpy helps you identify pages on your site that have not
been indexed in the search engines so that you can submit them, and
it identifies external sites that link to your site. When I reviewed
this program back in March, I thought that RankSpy was a great tool
for initiating link analysis. It doesn't do the analysis for you, but
it makes gathering the raw data much easier and faster.
Now comes OptiLink
by Windrose Software. OptiLink takes RankSpy one step further. While
OptiLink does not gather information regarding pages from your site
that have been indexed, it does find pages on other sites that are indexed
in search engines that link to a specific page on your site. In addition
to identifying these pages, OptiLink provides you with some detailed
information about the pages that link to your page. Let's take a more
detailed look at OptiLink.
Set Up
Setting up OptiLink is extremely simple. From the Command tab, just
select the search engine for which you want to analyze links, select
the number of links to analyze and the page on your site that you want
to analyze.
Once you've entered these three pieces of information, click the Start
button to begin your analysis. The time for OptiLink to gather and analyze
data will vary depending upon the number of links found. You can follow
the analysis progress by viewing the Log tab.
Results
OptilLink has several results views "that show different aspects
of link reputation for your target page:" Summary, Compare, Domains,
Pages, Links and Missing Links. Each of the column headers in these
results can be clicked upon to resort the lists. This sorting option
is helpful for alphabetical and numerical sorts and spotting trends.
Summary
In the Summary results, you'll find your target page listed with the
IP address, as well as the search engine you chose, the number of links
reported by the selected search engine, the number of links you chose
to analyze, the number of links actually found and processed, the number
of links found from within your domain and other pertinent data.
Compare
The Compare results compare and contrast "three different measures
of your page: Topic, Reputation and Clique."
The text of a page tells you the topic of that page, which is determined
in the Word and Page columns. The higher the percentage for a given
word in the Page column, the more likely a search engine is to believe
that this is your topic. However, an extremely high percentage for any
given word can also trigger search engine spam filters, so be careful.
The Reputation of a page is measured by analyzing the link text used
to link to the target page. The Link Text column shows the percentage
of times that the particular word in the Word column is used in link
text on pages that point to your page. The higher the percentage for
your targeted keywords the better your link reputation is likely to
be.
The column labeled "Linking Page Title" measures Clique,
which can also be thought of as Community. A link to your page or site
from pages that have something in common with your page or site are
likely to be scored higher in the search engines.
Domains
The Domains tab shows all of the domains that have pages linking to
your page. It also reports the number of links found on each domain,
which may be all on one page or from several different pages. It also
shows the IP address for each domain. This is useful in identifying
virtual domains, which share an IP address, reside on the same server
and have the same C-class address block.
Pages
The Pages tab shows the actual pages on which a link to your site was
found. The Links In column shows the link popularity as reported by
the search engine. The Links Out column shows the number of links out
to other pages across the Internet. These two columns are important
because they can tell you which domains are Authorities (a large number
of links in) and Hubs (a large number of outgoing links).
Links
Every link to your page is shown in the Links tab. It shows the url
to the linking page, the title text of the linking page and the link
text used to link to your page. From the information presented in the
Links tab, the title reflects the topic of the linking page and the
link text reflects what the linked page is about, or its reputation.
Missing Links
This page lists any pages that OptiLink found that no longer exist,
which the search engines still have indexed.
Documentation
Even though OptiLink is extremely easy to use and understand, it has
a very thorough help section, referred to as "Reference" in
the help menu. OptiLink also has an online 5-Step Tutorial and FAQ page,
although there is currently no information available on the FAQ page.
Between the Help information and the online tutorial, you should be
able to find answers to all of your questions.
Putting It All Together
With all of the information that OptiLink provides, you can see just
how a search engine determines your link popularity. You can quickly
determine which sites you need to request a link text change. You can
easily determine which sites are authorities and hubs in your market
and attempt to get links from them and the sites that link to them.
You can also quickly and easily analyze your competition's link popularity
and then emulate their linking strategies.
Drawbacks
There are a couple of areas where OptiLink could improve. First, even
though the program is easy to set up, it would be nice to be able to
save your site profiles. Additionally, it may be beneficial to some
if the results could be saved, and/or imported into a spreadsheet for
use in additional statistical analysis. Finally, currently OptiLink
only supports four search engines: AltaVista, AOL, Google and Hotbot.
[Editor's Note: Remember that using software to
send automated queries to Google violates its terms
of service. While it is entirely up to you how to use this software,
we strongly suggest that you refrain from using this software to automatically
query Google's database. Using this software to query Google could result
in Google blocking your IP address or even banning your site.]
Support for more search engines would be welcome. Incidentally, the
5-Mimute Tour states that support for additional search engines to be
added at a later, undetermined date.
Pricing
OptiLink costs just $97 with a 90-day money back guarantee. In addition,
you also receive OptiLinks "6 Daily Tips" that will help get
started with OptiLink using real world examples. [Editor's Note: The
price for OptiLink was increased to $149 in September 2002. It's still
worth every penny.]
Conclusion
I found OptiLink to be an extremely easy program to set up and understand.
It provides a wealth of information about links to your site in minutes
that would ordinarily take you hours to compile on your own. With OptiLink
you can see all the data that a search engine uses to determine your
site's link popularity. With this information you can, analyze the linking
strategies of your competitors, and develop and implement a far better
link popularity strategy for yourself or your clients.
With all of the information that OptiLink provides, plus its low cost
and 90-day money back guarantee, you have absolutely nothing to lose
by giving OptiLink a try. Order
OptiLink today and start improving your link popularity and search
engine rankings!
Thank you to Leslie Rohde for supplying me with a fully functional
version of OptiLink to try out for this review.
***About Bill Gentry:
Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search
Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp
Designs since February 2000. Earning a Bachelor's of Science in Geology
and a Master's of Business Administration in addition to his employment
as an Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist for 10 years contributed
to his attention to detail.
Review may not be reprinted without permission of Look Sharp Designs.
To request permission for reprinting rights, please contact Look Sharp Designs.
