Step 1 Installing the Application

To use this software, you must have the .NET Framework installed. Most Windows platforms have this, as it is included in the latest Microsoft updates. If you do not have it, you can download the update here: MSDC .NET Framework 1.1

You should receive the application in *.zip format. Simply unzip the compressed file to a location you are aware of. To unzip the file, you can use any unzipping software. You can download WinZip at Winzip.com. You should now be ready to run the software.

Double click "RankAdvantage.exe" to begin running the application.

Step 2 Configuring the Application

When you first open the program, you should see a message like the one below.

Click OK to configure the application. This step is important because it allows the program to know what address to use when sending emails to your link partners. (Note: to edit or update your configuration in the future, goto Settings > Configuration, on the application menu bar.) Your configuration should look something like this:

Step 3 Finding Link Partners, Spying on Competitors, Finding Blogs

Click the "Find Link Partners" button to bring up the prompt below.

Under the "Search Engine" drop down menu, you may select whicever search engine you would like the software to return results from. Next. enter a Keyword to search. In the screenshot above, I typed "baseball" to return links to websites relating to the subject of baseball.

In the box below where you entered your keywords, you can tell the software to skip the first X number of websites. Sometimes it is a good idea to skip the first 10 results or so, as those will be taken up by sites like Amazon.com or CNN.com who are less likely to exchange links with smaller sites. In the box under that, labeled "End At:", you can set how many results you would like the software to fetch. Usually 20 is a good number. Next, click "Find Now."

A list of websites will now appear. To see any of the websites in the preview window, simply right click the URL and select "Visit Site." You may also click the "Speeding Skateboarder" button as a short cut to do the same thing.

From this right click window, you can also send an email, view their link popularity/rank information, save the site's information to an XML file to load later (you may also do this by going to File >> Save Results, and then re-loading the file later by going to File >> Load Results), view the website in an actual browser, or delete the site from your list of results. On the top left side you will notice another window with the site's information repeated.

If you would like to simply export a readable copy of the link partners you have found, you may do so by choosing one of the following options:

As shown in the screenshot above, you may export the results as an Excel (*.xls), HTML (*.html), or Plain Text (*.txt) file.

The other buttons you see are shortcuts for saving/exporting.

The preview window (currently showing MLB.com) acts as a mini-Internet Explorer. The URL will be displayed in the address bar, or you can enter your own and click "Go." The buttons function just as you would expect, the green left arrow goes backwards, the green right arrow goes forward, the red X will stop loading the page when pressed, and the entwined arrows can be used to refresh a page.

You can also use the Find Link Partners button to spy on your competitor. First start off by clicking the Find Link Partners button to bring up the search prompt window. Next, click where it says "Find Link Partners" and a drop down menu will appear, select "Spy on a Competitor." By entering their url into the box labeled "Domain:", you can see what backlinks they already have and try to match or outdo them.

The third option when finding link partners is to search for Blogs. Simply type in a keyword relating to the subject matter of blogs you are looking for. For example, in the screenshot below we are looking for blogs related to baseball. This feature is useful because if you get a blog to link to you, your chances of getting indexed by Google are quite higher, since blogs are visited very often due to the nature of their constantly updated content. Although you can search for blogs, you can not email them through this software, as it is impossible to ascertain the email address of any given blog. You must visit the blog website and try to find the email yourself to make the best use of this feature.

Just like the other features, click "Find Now" and it will return a list of blogs relating to the keyword you entered.

Step 4 Emailing Link Partners

Rank Advantage allows users to create templates to use over and over again when emailing link partners. Although they are templates, you can still customize them so they are unique to each website owner you send an e-mail to. To create a template, goto Settings >> Define Template. A window should popup.

In this window, you can type in the subject line and body of your message. To personalize the email, you may use the trigger-words ([EMAIL], [PHONE], [ALEXARANK], [URL], [POPRANK], [ADDRESS]). When you use these words in the email, it will trigger the software to grab the actual email address, phone number, popularity rank, or URL of the website you are emailing. When you are done, click Save to save the template. You may click Load to load previous templates for editing.

Now that you have a template created, it is time to email the link partner. To do so, you may right click the website in the results window you wish to email, and select "Send Email," OR you can click the envelope button as shown below.

Now an email window will popup. All the information in the From: and To: box should be already
filled out for you if you entered your configuration properly. Now click "Select Template..." which is in the bottom right hand corner. Load the template you created earlier, and you will see that the subject line and message change appropriately. The only difference is that now the software has taken the trigger words you entered in and replaced them with the website owner's actual information. Below I have highlighted the email, URL, and link popularity trigger words that I used earlier which have now been replaced by the actual content.

If you would like to Add a file to your message, simply click the "Add..." button which is located below the Message box. To remove a file, click the remove button. It is not necessary to attach a file, but it may be useful if you are sending statistics about your website, a gift in good faith, or any other document you wish to enclose. Finally, click Send when you are ready to send the email.