SEO Elite is the only program that ceased to please me even before I managed to set it up and try. Here is the story.

SEO and Keyword Elite had been bought before its trial edition became available. So the money was paid, the program install downloaded—but after entering my registration e-mail, I see:

I do as they say—try later and, as the message is here again, write to SEO Elite support. All this lasts for two months, because the support team promises to forward all my letters to Brad Callen himself, and then says:

“We feel really bad, but neither Brad nor the programmer have any other ideas for you to try over and above what I have given you. They both believe there is something in your computer, firewall, or virus program that is preventing you from connecting.”

What was the problem? I suspected from the very first letter and asked the support how this thing is connected to the Internet. It appears that SEO Elite cannot connect if a proxy is used. It can be changed in settings, but to do this you should start it up, which is impossible before verifying the license, which is impossible before you change this setting. A vicious circle. With nerves, mood, and time wasted, the problem was solved and this piece of software appeared before me in all its beauty.

After such a foreword it is not surprising that my review will be really biased. And not a review at all but

13 things I hate about SEO Elite

1. For a long time, SEO Elite site was nothing but pure marketing hype changing customers into zombies willing to buy the software.

2. The support team never answers specific questions and sometimes is even openly rude.

3. It seems Brad Callen is going to become a hero of Guinness book for the amount of spam he sends.

4. It is impossible to change settings of the project; you should create a new one to add or delete something.

5. It is impossible to run several tasks simultaneously.

6. Sometimes it is really impossible to say whether the program is working or not.

7. You cannot stop the running task; you can only pause it.

8. Reports can be exported only in .html and .csv formats.

9. By default, Google region USA and Yahoo region USA are checked in settings. There is no notification of this. And be sure that inaccurate information in SEO is as harmful as no information at all.

10. It is questionably secure to use SEO Elite at all—we all know that search engines do not like automated quires and this software poorly emulates human behavior. For example, when checking Yahoo in Project 1 (Analyze backlinks) and in Project 7 (Find possible authority Web sites), the search engine blocks link: command, saying: “This problem may be due to unusual network activity coming from your Internet Service Provider. We recommend that you report this problem to them.”

11. And I have heard about SEO Elite users (now ex-users, probably) whose hosting accounts were banned for using project 2 (Get links to your web site).

12. When you run project 1 (Analyze backlinks) and check several search engines, the same links, but found by these different search engines, will be counted. If there are a lot of links, you will get a real mess in the report.

13. One of the biggest authorities in the world of SEO – Aaron Wall – writes about SEO Elite in his SEO Elite Review - Not Recommended. And I have no reason not to trust such a recognized person.

« Give WebCEO a try and it will work for you