Doing SEO can be hard, especially with constant updates to the Google algorithm and a continually shifting tide of rankings. If you’re going at it alone it can seem overwhelming, as it seems the more you learn the more there is to learn. It makes sense to want to use tools and software to help reduce the need to perform mundane tasks, or to collect information that can help you get the edge on your competition, but is Link Assistant the answer?
Overview
Link Assistant is a suite of different SEO tools that each has its own unique function. You can use which ones you want, and leave alone the ones that don’t apply to what you’re trying to get done. You can also you all of them if you’re feeling extra ambitious. The suite includes Rank Tracker, Website Auditor, SEO Spyglass, and Link Assistant.
The Claim
The claim is that these software tools can help you with your ranking, help you spy on your competition, build safe links for your website, and see where you really rank in the search engines.
The Hype
The hype is that this is just a tool, so the real benefit is going to come from how well you use it. Two different people can look at the same information and one person will be able to form a business model and strategy out of it, and the other person will be left scratching their head wondering what the first step is. Be sure you have enough know-how to get the most out of these tools. You can always give it a shot for 30 days and see how useful it is for you, and then return it if you find out that it is not your cup of tea.
The Cost
For $250 you get all four software packages. That’s a one-time fee, and gets you future updates. That’s not a developers license, so it’s good if you’re only going to be using this for your own personal projects. If you want to be able to use this for clients as an SEO expert you need the Enterprise edition at $600.
The Commitment
Even though these tools shorten the amount of time it would take to get this sort of information on your own from several different sources, you still have to put the time in to sit in front of the data and make heads or tails out of it. Many webmasters get caught in paralysis of analysis, and this sort of software makes it deliciously fun to pore over all of the numbers and charts and graphs and feel like a criminal mastermind hatching their scheme in a lair. But you have to continually determine what the best use of your time is. You can spend some time getting some useful information with these tools and services, but make sure that the bulk of your time goes towards putting your plan into action so you can get results.
Evaluation
Almost every link building tool will leave a footprint that is pretty easy to spot and trace back to the source. This means that if Google gets the notion to punish people that have been building links with link assistant, they would just have to push a few buttons and all of the sites with these links would get de-indexed or bumped down in the rankings. The other tools, spying on your competition, checking your rank, and evaluating your site, are all helpful and don’t stand as big of a chance of jeopardizing your site as their link building software does.
Final Link Assistant Review
We recommend the 3 tools you can use to make sure that your site is properly optimized, and to check your true ranking in the search engines, and even to spy on your competition, but we are not recommending building links with the Link Assistant software, as it’s just too risky no matter how safe they claim it is. So overall Link Assistant is getting the Thumb Sideways, because their software works the way they say, but it just becomes a matter of how useful it will be to you and your business, and whether or not it will hurt your site or harm it.
Our Recommendation
Google has always had it in their Terms and Conditions that they don’t want you building artificial links. People still do it anyway, because of the short term effect it has on rankings. But you have to view your site as a long-term project and you don’t want to do anything that will put it in danger at a later date. By building links like this, they are not going to be high quality links from a site that really cares about your site and is give it a nod, they are just going to be mass produced links that are easy to spot as phony, and therefore putting you at risk.
Link-assistant is HORRIBLE. They have hidden fees!
You buy the software thinking it will be a one time fee. However after 6 months a lot of it stops working, you see messages like “algorithms out of date you need to pay to update”. This costs 70+$ per month just to keep the software updated.
Rank tracker becomes USELESS without this update. It won’t be able to scan any ranks, every scan will result in a failure. And you charge 250$ for this? What a scam.
There are other costs too. Cost to avoid Search engine’s captchas for example. I would NOT buy the software again if i knew about the hidden costs.
Thanks for this review. I just use link assistant’s auditor tool. Works well for me.
LinkAssistant no longer claims that the software should be used for link building. They stopped this practice several years ago. Vice versa, all their updates and new features are focused on cleaning up your backlinks profiles and they underline that it could be rather dangerous to use link submission and other stuff of this kind for link building. So your article is outdated, need to do a better research before writing this.
Google’s so full of it, with their webmaster help videos they say links don’t matter as much as it used to and that they have 200 plus other indicators to rank the websites, but at the end of the day it’s still the race to who has the most links. That’s the reason why you find so many spammy websites on top of the ranks still and yet somehow google is still considered the best search engine on the web. Oh well you gotta play the game to win it and that means keeping up with the current tech and using the latest link building techniques. As they say, you gotta spend money to make money.