GSA Search Engine Ranker Review
GSA Search Engine Ranker Review
However, getting those backlinks and getting enough of them can be a tedious task that requires consistent work for months at a time. On top of all the content and articles required to build lots of links, you need to spend time finding websites where you can post your links to.
In an attempt to cut down on all this work, multiple companies have come out with automatic submission software, such as MoneyRobot and RankerX, that takes care of posting your content and links for you.
One of these products is called GSA Search Engine Ranker and since it has come out it has caused quite a stir in the world of SEO. It comes from a German company known as GSA which traditionally develops software in various fields such as bioinformatics and database development.
Since it has come out in mid-2012, it has garnered many enthusiastic users. It essentially lets its users build backlinks on complete autopilot to any website or webpage they want. All users have to do is upload the content they want to be posted, set the various options for the anchor text, adjust the scheduling options and let it run.
But one of the main reasons it has become so popular is its low price point; it costs only 99$ for a lifetime license that includes almost daily updates. If you compare that to the other backlink-building programs out there, Search Engine Ranker seems like the bargain of a lifetime.
However, if it ultimately doesn’t help websites to rank (especially post Penguin and Panda) it would be worthless at any price.
This is a very complex piece of software with countless options and features and going into detail on each one of them would take way too many pages. For that reason, I wrote this review to cover the central features of the program that help make your link-building campaigns effective. This is my comprehensive GSA Search Engine Ranker review.
Main features
The central feature of GSA Search Engine Ranker (GSA SER) is its ability to post links to a wide variety of platforms. You can tell it to post links to the following types of website platforms:
- Article directories
- Blog comments
- Directory listings
- Document sharing websites
- Forum profiles
- Guestbook comments
- Image comments
- Microblogs
- Pingbacks
- Social bookmarks
- Social network profiles
- Trackbacks
- Videos
- Web 2.0 properties
It totals well over 100 different types of platforms to which it can post backlinks and that number is growing continuously.
Built-in scraper
The most distinguishing specification is without a doubt its ability to find these sites for you. Most backlinking programs require you to build lists of URLs to which you want it to post your content and links. While this program also lets you upload your own lists of sites, it also has the ability to search the internet for websites that it can post your links to.
It performs these searches based on the keywords that you specify (increased relevance) and automatically builds links to them. This is also great because it makes your campaign unique and doesn’t leave a footprint. Other kinds of link-building programs had built-in site lists that many people used exclusively. Since each campaign will contain different keywords for GSA SER to use, no campaign will contain all the same links.
Using spun content
Just like when using any type of backlinking software, using spun content is an absolute must. To help you out with this, GSA SER has a built-in API which can be used with article building services like Jon Leger’s Article Builder, Wicked Article Creator, and XR Content. It of course lets you upload your own content as well.
You can also use spun content (it’s even recommended) in most of the other fields. This means that you can spin anchor text, article descriptions, about sections, blog comments, titles, etc.
Anchor text variety
In order to build backlinks that look as natural as possible, it’s very important to vary the anchor text a lot and not use your exact match keyword too much. GSA Search Engine Ranker makes this really easy. There are 4 fields that are related to your anchor text:
- Primary keywords as anchor text
- Secondary keywords as anchor text
- Generic Anchor as anchor text
- Domain as anchor text
There are also options that let you control the ratio of what anchor text to use. So for example, you could tell the software to use your primary keyword 15% of the time, your secondary ones 30%, generic anchor text 25%, and your domain 30%. Really, you can set whatever ratio of anchor text that you want.
Scheduling options
Nowadays, getting too many links too fast looks unnatural in the eyes of Google and this is especially true for newly registered domains. GSA SER has many features that allow you to set the rate at which your backlinks get built. Do you want to create one link a day? You can do that. Do you want to create 100 links a day? You can also do that.
What’s also interesting is that you can combine the different features to build a high variety of links over time. It wouldn’t look natural if the only links you get in the first month of your websites’ existence come from 1000 articles. With this program, you can set what kinds of links you want to be built and at what rate to build them.
So for example, you can gradually build a combination of articles, web 2.0 profiles, videos, and social bookmarks all at the same time just by setting up your projects accordingly.
Building tiered links
Another great feature it has is the ability to build links that point to other links the program has already built. Say you set up a GSA project that built you many articles and web 2.0 properties. All you need to do is select the project to which you want the new links to be built. That way you can set up an additional project to build social bookmarks, forum profiles, and social network profiles to those same articles and web 2.0s.
You can also do as many levels of this as you wish and use whatever type of links and platform that you want. This is a very powerful tactic to give more power to the links that point directly to your site which in turn helps your rankings.
Detailed link reports
With just a few clicks, the software easily lets you generate detailed reports. It lets you know how many links have been built within a certain project, the source of those links, the type of engine used, the pagerank of the domain they were posted to, the page they point to, the anchor text used, etc. This is not only great for users building their own sites but it is also fantastic for those who use it on their clients’ websites.
What advantages does GSA Search Engine Ranker have over similar products?
The market for backlink building software is quite competitive and many other products out there also do a good job. Programs like SEnuke Xcr, Ultimate Demon, Zennoposter, Article Kevo and even services like Backlink Banzai all have ultimately similar offerings; automated backlink building.
So what makes GSA SER stand out? Outside of its much lower price (99$), the main thing that sets it apart from its competition is the fact that it finds linking opportunities for you based on your keywords in addition to being able to use site lists.
Most other programs use static site lists and linking patterns that many users end up abusing. Since no GSA user will ever upload the exact same list of keywords into their projects, there will never be an obvious linking pattern that will emerge. This eliminates any possibility of a footprint across multiple users.
Another thing that GSA does better than its competition is the actual posting of the links. The quality of the coding that runs the software is second to none and allows it to have a much higher success rate than any other software solution.
Updates also come at a ridiculous rate (and I mean that in a good way). It’s no joke when I say that there is a new update almost each and every day of the week that generally makes the software run more efficiently or add more platforms for additional linking opportunities. And there’s no manual updating either. All that is required is quite literally two mouse clicks from the user and the software does the rest.
Are there any downsides?
There are a few issues with the program though that might hinder its user experience. They aren’t deal breakers in any way but they stop SER from being a complete solution.
The first thing that is a bit of an issue is the fact that the success rate on web 2.0 properties is quite low. The most links I’ve ever gotten in such a project are under 20 and most of the time I can’t get it over 10. Compare that with the success rate of article directories and it’s strange to think that it can’t do better. However, considering that you can get your article posted to hundreds of web 2.0 properties for 5$ on a site like Fiverr and all of a sudden it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
Another downside is that you really need a captcha-solving service to run this software effectively. If you go for a service like 2captcha you’ll quickly realize that the costs run up pretty fast. Most users opt for an additional piece of software (0Captcha) that only asks for a one-time investment to cut back on captcha solving costs.
Finally, in terms of a guide, manual, or tutorials, there really isn’t much. There are a few videos that show you the basics of setting up a campaign but they really don’t cover all the options and settings that the software offers.
There is also a pdf manual that you can access with the program but it isn’t exactly user-friendly. It’s written in an almost scientific tone with long and complicated sentences. It’s good though for figuring out more advanced strategies like using macros for example (you can actually do some pretty cool things with those) but it poorly covers the basics.
What can make the product not work to its full potential?
Since it has become available for purchase, many users have had great success using this program. I personally use it on most of my sites simply because it works (how do you think I’ve ranked this site?). There are many testimonials and if you want to check them out I recommend heading over to the Warrior forum or Blackhatworld where there are huge threads on the subject and many customer opinions.
To get the most out of Search Engine Ranker, proxies are an absolute must. The program comes with an integrated proxy scraper to find public proxies to use. However, public proxies can be unreliable and slow se buying for your own private proxies is highly recommended. This adds to the overall cost of running the program. On the other hand, all backlink-building programs run better with proxies so it’s not an issue that’s exclusive to GSA’s offering. I highly recommend Proxy-Hub as they offer the cheapest and most stable proxy service I've ever used. Honestly, Proxies can get quite expensive but you get all you need and more with their service.
Also, if you run it on your own computer, you’ll quickly realize that it uses up a lot of bandwidth. For that reason, many users opt to run in on a virtual private server (VPS). These range between 10 to 100 dollars a month.
You also need to be familiar with SEO best practices to get the most results from this program. If you don’t use high-quality readable spun content and if you don’t add enough variety to your anchor text, no backlinking software in the world will be able to help your rankings. Learning what makes an effective link-building campaign is a must before using any type of automated link-building solution.
An example of this would be taking advantage of the fact that you have complete control over the content that gets submitted. This means that you can insert contextual links into the body of the content (very powerful links). If the website that your content gets submitted to doesn’t accept this, the program will automatically remove the contextual hyperlink and instead place it where appropriate.
Many users also opt to purchase the GSA SEO Indexer to index all the links that SER builds. This can definitely give your campaigns an extra boost and for the 20$ that it costs, it’s a good idea to use it.
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