Building relationships, even though only virtual ones, is not a simple matter - there are many things to consider. You should carefully pick whom to link to, make sure the link is relevant for your kind of business, approach the prospective partner with an irresistible offer, etc. And, it's not just one or two links you need to get to be competitive; it's hundreds, even thousands of them.

Link building takes time, and it's mostly monotonous work. You can speed thing up, however, if you use a good piece of link-building software. But there are still people who are reluctant to use link-building tools and prefer to do it the good old way - manually, because they believe that tools may land them in trouble. Such careful approach is laudable, even though a bit unpractical. Because, first, there are ways to use software and not get into any kind of trouble. And, second, it will allow you to get significant advantage over your competitors, because your link building will be over before you can say Jack Robinson.

This is what I did on my own website – just used a good link-building tool and very soon I got plenty of quality links that were just as good as the ones I could have gotten manually. Because it's all about how you use the tool, using it can lead to a disaster or be an excellent means to effective link building. So what is it that makes some website owners shun link-building software?

Some folks claim that, together with high-quality, premium links, software throws a lot of crap into your shopping cart. That is, that the sites it offers to link to have low PRs or are in some other way blemished. Well, software suggests websites that are relevant for your kind of business in the first place. It displays their PageRanks as well, and it takes only a minute to sort the suggested websites and pick out those with higher PRs. Besides, if you look for prospective partners manually, there is no way you can search by PR either, is there?

Some people say that software can get you linked to a link farm, even though it is virtually impossible. Links farms are, basically, groups of websites that are all linked to one another. Most of them offer zero-quality content, and often sell Viagra or porn. A "normal" SEO tool will never suggest you to link to a page like that, therefore there's nothing to fear. Besides, it amazes me that some people think link-building tools work like magic wands. You just pronounce the words "create backlinks", and links miraculously appear on your website without any supervision.

Now, some manual link building advocates also claim that quite often websites that software suggests are plain irrelevant. Well, this may happen if one searches by keywords with very general meaning. To avoid that one has to be more specific. But sometimes a small portion of irrelevant websites still sneaks through, even though you are specific. Well, first of all, it's usually a small portion only. And, second of all, it's you who makes the final decision after all. Chances are you will be able to spot irrelevant pages by their titles and exclude them from the list of suggested partners.

So, once a list of potential linking partners is ready, it's high time to contact those partners and ask them to put a link to you. Usually it's done by e-mail, and this is the most tedious part of link building. But the copy-paste job can be automated as well. Although, some people fear, lest the recipients should guess that the e-mails were sent by a machine and hit Delete button. Actually, e-mails sent out with the help of link-building tools are in most cases personalized. Most link-building software is able to look up the name of the webmaster, site and other information and fill it into an e-mail template to create a nice, personal message.

But what if other people are using the same program as you, and your most desired partner has already seen dozens identical e-mails? That's very easy to avoid. Before sending a whole bunch of link request e-mails, edit the template to make it slightly different. If you really like what it says, you can preserve the meaning and just say it in your own words.

Some people claim that hosts see link requests as SPAM, thus, your e-mail is likely to perish in the SPAM folder of your potential partner. But software tools are definitely aware of that. Most of them include spam analyzing features, so, before the e-mail is sent out, the tool scans its content to make sure it complies with spam-filtering software.

And, those who oppose the use of SEO software sometimes say that most links placed with the help of tools get deleted within days. Hmm... can't ANY link get removed within days? No matter how it was placed? I, personally, don't see the connection here. Besides, with the help of software it's very easy to quickly check if the links you've landed are still there or got removed by cheating partners who think they can fool you. That's one of the advantages of software: you can verify your links any time you want.

All in all, my point is this. You decide whether to use link building software or not. Most problems and fears arise from being unfamiliar with the way it works. If you find out what your link-building tool is able to do and use it the right way, it will no doubt be an excellent means of getting you great links much faster than if you do it manually. And what's really convenient is that software can store the details of your link-building activities. This way it's easy to remember whom you have already contacted in the past, what websites you have already blacklisted, if any. So, basically, there are ways to use software – and succeed.