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-- Creating in Sydney, Australia, since 1976 -

Links Directory Management Software Compared

Check out the Reciprocal Manager Links Management Software here.

One of the best ways to improve your credibility with the Search Engines is to have a good number of outside websites which link in to yours. This shows that other webmasters out there have decided your site is worthwhile... something their visitors would appreciate too.

So you'll get some traffic directly from those links, but you'll also raise your profile with the Search Engines and internet Directories - provided you have good quality links which fit in with the theme of your own website. That means more traffic for you and more visitors. And having more visitors is better for your business.

But searching for link partners takes time. You have to find the sites, look them over, contact the webmasters (who often hide their emails to avoid being Spammed). You need to open a dialog with them. Then you must edit your html pages to add sites and modify existing listings.

One site is a lot of work, just managing the links. But multiple sites are quickly impossible. Who did you email and when? Have they replied? Have you added their link yet, and what wording do they expect you to use? And what about links that might have been created to your site that no longer work. How do you check those too?

As you can see, it quickly becomes far too much work to do on your own unless you have help.

The best help is from link directory software like that reviewed on this page. Even if you had a human assistant, you'd still want to use one of these programs because they make your Links Management work so much easier. Once you've done it the better, automated way, you will kick yourself for ever having done the work by hand.

Review & Compare: Arelis, LinkMachine and Reciprocal Manager

Features

Arelis

Link
Machine

Reciprocal
Manager

Links
Manager (Service)

Finds potential link exchange partner sites for you
Yes
Yes
Yes
No

Sends custom emails to potential link partners
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Generates customized link pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Checks that partner sites still link back to you
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Searches each websites for a contact email address
Yes
Yes
Yes
No

Installs itself on the server for you
N/A
Yes
No
No

PC Based Yes
No
No
N/A

Server Based No
Yes
Yes
N/A

Server Operating System
Any
Unix, Linux, Windows all OK
Unix or Linux OK, but not Windows
N/A

Other Server Requirements
N/A
PHP 4 or above PHP 4.2.2 and MySQL 3.23 or above N/A

Updates to link pages go online immediately
No. You FTP them
Yes
Yes
Yes

Exchange links instantly with other webmasters
No. You email them.
Yes
No
No

Money-Back guarantee
30 Days
30 Days
90 Days
N/A

The last column on the right in this table shows the Links Manager service - it's not a program you buy, it is a service you could pay for monthly. And it's expensive. It has been included here just so you can see how buying a Links Management program can save you money as well as saving you heaps of unneccesary work.

LinkMachine

LinkMachine is easy to set up, and is cheap enough when you start. You can try it for free (with some features disabled), and when you pay to upgrade, the initial license handles up to three websites (domains).

It installs itself on each domain after you have created a directory for it on your web server, copied a single install file there (and changed permissions of that file - and in that directory - to allow files to be executed as programs there.) Don't worry, it's easier to do than it is to describe it to you. And if you have doubts, ask your Web Hosting technicians to help you.

Your LinkMachine install script then links your server to the LinkMachine web site and downloads everything it needs from there. So you always get the latest version.

And LinkMachine has a pre-programmed set of sample Categories for you. You can select the lot, delete them all, add your own or whatever works for you.

You then tell LinkMachine to search for other LinkMachine powered websites, and it compared your Categories with other people's selected Categories and comes back with matches for you. Very slick!

You can also hunt for websites by Keyword. So if you sell calculators, you can search for 'calculators' and see what comes back. And if a site you find is also running LinkMachine, both programs 'talk' to one another and exchange details for you. A fantastic time saver.

LinkMachine automatically searches for a contact e-mail address on sites you'd like to contact.

It will even find the sites that link to your competitors' sites (or any other sites) and invite them to exchange links with you.

You can have the LinkMachine accept other LinkMachine sites automatically (the easiest option) or you can review each site first. Every day or so you can sign into your LinksMachine directory and view the number of sites that have applied to link to you. You can also view the number of links to you which have dropped out - which makes it time to send them a quick email reminder.

The LinkMachine server also displays the stats on your other LinksMachine domains, and you can toggle easily from one to the next. But you have to log in to each one.
LinkMachine's customer service is better than excellent. When I had a query or a suggested improvement, I emailed them and I always got a quick and helpful response from Michael Ferrier. This is a very big plus, because good customer service is hard to find nowadays.

The downside to LinkMachine for me was the price. I have a dozen domains at the moment but only a couple are making money. It would have been costly for me to use LinkMachine on them all, so I got a refund because I was still within the 30-day trial period.

They refunded my money immediately, and all my LinkMachine accounts went dead at the same time. (They all work through the company's website.)

But that was okay. I had already purchased Reciprocal Manager.

Get your free trial download of LinkMachine Link Management Software.

Reciprocal Manager

Reciprocal Manager is the bargain on price. $67.00 all up and nothing more to pay, ever. But you have to be prepared to quite a bit more work.

For example, Reciprocal Manager uses proper databases on your website servers. A very professional way of doing things. It requires you to have at least one MySQL database set up on your web host. All your domains can link to the one database, or they can each have their own MySQL database.

I set up initually with one database shared between my different domains, but my web hosting company had problems with it. The links scripts kept freezing, and I had error messages saying the MySQL had run out of space, or connections. After this went on for a week I changed web hosts. And this time I set up separate MySQL databases, one per domain.

Reciprocal Manager has run flawlessly since then. (Touch wood!)

Things I like:

In the Admin area there's an Email History section which lets you keep track of who got what email and when they got it. Brilliant!

There's a Mailing List feature so I can keep in touch with all your reciprocal link partners. I can choose to email all my link partners, or only those link partners in a particular Category. (Categories are different for each website or domain you set up.

My Martial Arts website, http://www.gedanate.com, has Categories which include Aikido, Judo, Self Defense etc). And I can email just the Judo sites, or maybe the Karate sites, for example.)

Setting up the Categories in Reciprocal Manager is a pain, because it has to be done from scratch for every single domain, according to the subject matter of your website. So my Camping domain http://www.all-camping-supplies.com has categories such as Outdoors, Camping, RV and so on.

Reciprocal Manager has an Import function built into it, and it claims to be able to import from LinksManager (sic). Do they mean LinkMachine or LinksManager (the pay by the month service)?.

Now this was confusing, because there's LinkManager software (no 'S' in the name) which I had been using, and Reciprocal Manager couldn't import those LM backup files files. I tried.

I also tried importing links from HTML files (pages) as well from my old LinkManager directories. It mostly worked, but had some annoying glitches I had to edit later... Field contents that didn't match, for example. But it was better than nothing. The bad thing was I didn't get those webmasters' emails in the transfer. They're lost, and I'll need to tell those guys their links have been moved.

I checked Reciprocal Manager's website, but none of the FAQs or support pages covered my problem. So I emailed them, but I have yet to receive a reply, and it's been 10 days. So Reciprocal Manager's customer service isn't the greatest.

I have emailed them three times now and never received a reply yet, apart from the immediate auto-responder emails which promise to get back to me in two working days - if a reply is necessary.

I guess Kevin L. Ocasio and his team don't think a reply is necessary, even though my last email stated I was reviewing the software and would be publishing the results on my website!

Conclusion: A lot of work, but the only one if lack of money is your number-one priority. You are allowed to use Reciprocal Manager on all the websites that you own.

Check out the Reciprocal Manager Links Management Software here.

Arelis

I haven't bought this yet, but I have downloaded a trial version and I'll be playing with it, as far as the limitations will let me. When I've tried a few things with it, I will update this page and let you know how it went.

Arelis is PC based, which isn't a bad thing. It just means all communication with other websites gets done through emails, rather than server-to-server. what's wrong with that?

I had a quick play with Arelis last night and was very impressed by it's 'look and feel' which is absolutely First Class.

For example, when hunting for email addresses on websites you wish to exchange links with, Arelis not only checks the website, it also looks up the registered owner of the site as well. Now that's thorough! So it's going to find you more webmasters you can email, and that means more successful link exchanges.

You open a separate account in Arelis for each website (domain) and run the lot from one place, which makes very good sense to me. The Links pages are then compiled on your PC and can be uploaded to the domain servers immediately afterwards, using any FTP program.

Arelis basically costs $100 each domain for the first three domains (websites). But once you've upgraded and paid that $299.95, the software will handle any number of domains. And what's more, their licensing allows you to offer a Linking service to any number of other websites, whether you own them or not. This you can use it to offer a professional service to other businesses.

Get your free trial download of Arelis Link Management Software.

Buying
Costs

Arelis

LinkMachine

Reciprocal
Manager

Links Manager
(Yearly Charge)

1 site
$99.95
$69.95
$67.00 unlimited
$239.40

2 sites
$199.90
$69.95 no extra
$478.80

3 sites
$299.95 unlimited
$69.95 no extra $718.20

4 sites
no extra
$79.95
no extra $957.60

5 sites
no extra
$89.95
no extra To be fair to Links Manager, they do offer some discount on a sliding scale once you have three website accounts or more.
Three to five accounts are 5% off, which makes the monthly charge $18.95 per month for each website you want to link.

10 sites
no extra
$139.95
no extra

20 sites
no extra
$239.95
no extra

50 sites
no extra
$539.95
no extra

100 sites
no extra
$1,039.95
no extra

200 sites
no extra
$2,039.95
no extra