I’ve done a lot of reviews of WordPress plugins over the years, but none that claimed to automatically build links. As backlinks become like gold, it’s no surprise that there are now all kinds of plugins coming out to try and help you automate the link building process.
SEO Booster Lite
SEO Booster Lite has almost no documentation, and the plugin author’s site only says:
This plugin detects posts/pages you have placed on page two on Google, and attempts to lift them from page two to page one by creating sitewide anchored links on your blog.
It does not make any mention as to “how” or “where” on your blog it does this. On the plugin author’s blog, one post is the first results from SEO Booster, but that’s the only example there is.
After 10 minutes of using it only this blog, it did log some searches, and I do like the fact that it actually tells me which page on google they came from.
I guess according to the plugin description, I won’t be able to see how or where it creates “sitewide anchored links” until it actually finds a page 2 google search result to work with. If that happens, I’ll post back here. In the meantime, if you’re interested you can download SEO Booster Lite here. The web site does mention a future “pro” version, but the next plugin was created by the same author – so who knows if he’ll have time to come out with this in the future or not.
Link Launder
Link Launder is an automated link building WP plugin that acts as a free “service”. Basically, all you do is install the plugin as a “set it and forget it” mechanism. It uploads information about your blog and your posts to the central server, and then gives you free one-way links on other blogs back to yours. In return, it places other blog links on yours on random posts and pages. Here are the only setup options:
You can see, besides your username and password, the only thing you have control over is the name of the div the links will be in. You have the option to change the random name so google can’t try and block all blogs containing a div with that name to penalize users of the service.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you won’t eventually be penalized by google or the search engines for using such a service if they somehow find out. You may never be found it – it’s just the risk you take if you decide to use a type of service like this. I think the plugin author has gone to great pains to try and make sure using this service will pretty much go undetected. In addition, the service is growing with 809 users and 204,000 indexed posts. This might be a good choice for one of your up and coming blog, to see how it works for you! I can’t give you any examples on this plugin just yet, as I’ve just installed it on one of my lesser blogs to try it out myself. You can download Link Launder here
Do you have any linkbuilding or SEO plugins that you use? Post them in the comments so we can all check them out!
Hi,
I use Ping Crawl.
Here is a description of what it does:
Every time you make a post on your blog it grabs similar posts from other blogs that allow pingbacks using the post tags. It then links to them at the bottom of the post as similar posts. It then executes the pingback on all the posts. You can specify how many posts to do per tag and that many will be done for each tag you use in your posts. Typically it has about an 80% successrate with each pingback and they are legit so the ones that fall into moderation tend to get approved. This creates quite a few deep links for each blog post you make and through time really helps with your link building. Especially for new blogs. By Josh Team and Eli.
Randy
Randys last blog post..Bed Comforter Sets Versus Blankets: Which is better?
Ping Crawl seem pretty good, but be careful with that. First of all the first version “injects” links from the author’s site – so be sure to get a later version. Here is the link to the original site, and here is the discussion about the injected links. I personally think if you’re going to use this plugin you might be better to use the forked (and updated) version with more settings and options called Link Curl – download it here.
Hhm, I’ve been wondering this weekend how I can seriouly boost my SERP rankings. So good timing for this. However these plugins sound like they’re on the border of blackhat SEO and even though I’m tempted as a newbie I don’t want to risk taking a big fall later. I’ve already done plenty of anchored links on my blog so I doubt Booster Lite will help me. But I would like to hear from more people using this. I guess I don’t like the fact that what some of the plugins do are kinda out of one’s control and supervision.
DTs Flash Drive Blogs last blog post..Writer Blocks
yes, these plugins are definitely considered “grey hat”. I would try them first on a lesser blog before installing them in one of my main earners…
I think I will await a follow up post on this one, JT. Maybe I might test them on a lesser site but to be honest, I prefer to build links myself, and in a way that I know where my links are coming from. I can see google taking offense!!
Thanks for sharing this info JT.
I’m off to download them right now and trial each one.
I’ll let you know how I find them 🙂
Linklaunder sounds kinda risky. I would imagine a person’s link on an inappropriate site would not look favorably in Google’s eyes.
Kennewick Joes last blog post..Colleen Lane: Cool And Composed
When I first saw your post title I thought these were going to be really dodgy plugins that auto-generated blog comments or something! Actually SEO Booster sounds kind of cool, although I agree with a previous commenter that I prefer to have tighter control over what’s going on on my blog.
Rod@British Lions Rugbys last blog post..British Lions to play under ELVs
Ideally, all the sites or plugins which brags to boost SERP or Backlink aren’t that good and will be penalized one day. No matter if you change the name of the #div it will still be detected by Google one day or another.
In my opinion the perfect backlink is one where you get links back to your site from the same domain (same sort of sites). If its a one way that’s even better. I don’t think anyone can automate this as this looks more manual to me. Do you think i am forgetting something here =;;
Katies last blog post..Learn The Language Of Nail Colors
Aren’t those automatic SEO tool kinda risky? I don’t know, I was always affraid that they make you and your website look like a bunch of spammers. And who’d want that?
Stancjes last blog post..Wrocław 04.06.2009: Mam do wynajęcia
I’d definitely be cautious with these plugins, as people will undoubtedly begin abusing them, causing Google to devalue the links. Just a thought.
Lumineers costs last blog post..Lumineers Cost Per Tooth
Hiya
I’m the author of the plugins, first of all, thank you for the review and thank you all for your comments, I will try to answer them, please forgive me if I miss a question or observation here or there 🙂
1. Greyhat? LinkLaunder definately is, I would not call it blackhat, since it does not do anything “illegal”, it simply automates the process of getting deep links from – hopefully – related blog posts. I am working on releasing a completely overhauled version of LinkLaunder, as it has been lying dormant for some time. I have been working hard on other plugins (see mywordpress.com, please 🙂 and I have learned a lot from that.
p.s. I want to generate a system that filters out any potential abusers of the system (spam blogs, etc).
SEO Booster is not greyhat. It’s whitehat. It is in no way in violation with Googles guidelines (that I am aware of, please correct me if I’m wrong), again its simply a plugin that automates something that otherwise could have been done manually (who wants that these days?)
As far as manual control, I have added an ignore list to SEO Booster PRO (yes, there is a pay-version available), and plan to implement more features to automate that as much as possible, or at least streamline the process. The PRO version also has some really cool features like researching your EXACT location (not only which page on the SERP) on Google, export to .csv, etc. etc.
http://mywordpress.com/plugins/seo-booster-pro/ (pardon the link, its easier if you read it yourself).
Please forgive me if I turned into “sell”-mode just then, but I am actually quite proud of the stability and effectiveness (I have happy users and customers)
As for the comment about devaluating this kind of internal linking, I am sort of confused. Do you suggest that Google (or any other search engine) will actually penalize linking to internal pages of your own domain? Now, THAT would turn the SEO game upside down! Just a thought 🙂 (I’m not sarcastic, I’m actually smiling 🙂
.-= myWordPress.com´s last blog ..Have you visited DiggingIntoWordpress.com yet? =-.
wow one of excellent wordpress plug-in, some believe such tool harmful but all tool not same depends on us how we utilize tool like spammer or genuine blogger.
Great Post! I hadn’t heard of link launder, I’m going to check it out now.
Jenny
.-= Jenny´s last blog ..Will Wealthy Affiliate Platinum Cost More Then Wealthy Affiliate? =-.
thanks for sharing, i just use pingler.com
they are the best in my opinion.
and that link launderer looks alright, but might now always work
.-= heavydutytrucktirechanger´s last blog ..Heavy Duty Truck Tire Changer updated Tue Jul 21 2009 8:11 pm CDT =-.
Great plugins, but I hope everybody doesn’t abuse the use of them!! Nice read 🙂
LinkLaunder works like a champ. Yes Google will probably eventually come up with a slap but who cares. Take advantage while you can. The higher you rank now the more solid incoming links you will build that will ultimately be slap proof
Hey JT,
Nice post, I really like automated link building plugins and will be sure to check out the two mentioned above.
May try the Linklaunder one just to see what kind of quality their sites are, these kind of things are essentially link networks but it may just be these blog-based ones represent a notch up in terms of site quality and relevance. The net itself is a link network after all, so if we can get the quality right they could work.
.-= BostonSEO´s last blog ..1000 Backlinks in Just 4 Months – A Newbie’s link Building Experience =-.
Hi,
I was wondering if you have tried using any of these plugins and if they work?
yes I use them, and yes they work.
Thanks, nice share.Link Launder and SEO Booster is new for me. I will try.