Link building is perhaps the most time consuming part of the SEO process. The tools listed in this section have saved me no less than hundreds of hours of time in Link Building. Some are free and the others are paid ones, but i recommend them as they are worth the money.

 • Hub Finder – This is a FREE tool that looks for co occurring backlinks.

• Prog - A free Google PageRank display search tool.

• Rusty Brick’s link analysis tool - This works with the Google API and offers C block IP and anchor text reporting. Since it works with the Google API it is somewhat slow, but it is free.

• A FREE Class C IP checker tool checks for duplicate class C IP addresses from a list of domains. Links from sites which are on the same C block IP address may not carry as much weight as sites from different C block IP addresses. (http://www.ip-report.com/)

• PostTrades unique C block backlink checker. In the upper right corner of the PostTrades website is a tool which will tell you the number of unique C block IP addresses pointing links into your site. Tool works by looking that the IPs in the first 1000 backlinks in Yahoo!. If you have over 1000 backlinks then the tool may not provide accurate results. (http://www.posttrades.com/). This is a FREE tool.

 • Unique Linking Domain Checker – A FREE tool that returns links to all unique linking websites that link at your site.

• Unique C Block Backlinks Checker(FREE) – allows you to quickly survey how competitive a market is by seeing how many C blocks are linking at competing websites. (http://www.webuildpages.com/cclass/)

• Optilink link analysis software. Costing around $224, ptilink automates sorting competitotrs backlinks and displays the anchor text in links.

• SEO Elite – similar to Optilink, but also checks reciprocal link partners. Brad has been doing a good job of updating it and adding features to it. If you are torn between OptiLink and SEO Elite I would recommend buying SEO Elite, or trying them both and returning whichever one you do not like.

• PRWeb – free press releases. I often recommend purchasing one of their premium services though.

• Free: List of places to submit articles (http://www.seobook.com/archives/000099.shtml)

• Free: Server header check (http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi)

• Free: (Directories) http://www.wowdirectory.com will list your site free, http://www.directoryarchives.com is a directory of directories, and here is a free Excel sheet http://www.seobook.com/directorylist.xls for managing some of your directory submissions. I update the directories list frequently.

• Roboform saves your data and makes it easy to enter payment and site listing information. Useful for massive directory registration, though you still need to ensure you mix your linkage data. It may also be in your best interest to space out some of your registrations to show more natural appearing linkage growth.

• Free: Cooperative Ad Network … this essentially amounts to a huge link farm, but it is blended in with many sites that are well integrated into the web. Eventually it may somehow be filtered out or lessened in power, but currently it is rather powerful for MSN and Yahoo! (and to a lesser extent Google). I currently am not using this ad network on any of my permanent sites, but feel it is worth mentioning.

• $50 per month: LinkItForward is similar to the Coop Ad Network in that it uses the power of many sites to help them all. Instead of reciprocating links with LinkItForward you link to some domains and for doing that get credits where others will link to your domain. I currently am not using LinkItForward on any of my sites, but feel it is worth mentioning.

• $50 per month: LinkExplore helps you collect contact and linking details to trade links with people who have site details in the LinkExplore database. The LinkExplore database has over 10,000 entries and you can search by keyword and category. LinkExplore also allows you to collect data from the search engines similarly to how SEO Elite and OptiLink work. One of the benefits of LinkExplore over some of the other link analysis tools is that their database already has a number of people in it who are likely to want to trade links with similar related resources

• Arelis: link exchange software. It allows you to seek out link partners, their contact information, and email them. I would make sure I customized any email I sent out so as to avoid being accused of email spamming. Arelis also tracks your status with link exchange communications. Arelis also allows you to upload HTML pages with your link partners links on them, but I would not recommend using that feature on permanent sites, or ensure I removed any footprints left by software which is designed specifically for link exchanges. It lets you chose the base template to match your site, but you will want to make sure the coding matches up well also. When you exchange links it is a good idea to also link to related internal pages and quality resources that may not be linking back at your site.

• Zeus is a link exchange manager / directory software similar to Arelis. Both offer a free trial. I have not fully tested Zeus, but I would not put pages with link exchange software