Frequently Asked Questions Home > Support > FAQ: Partners

General

1. Can I check if my partner keeps the link to my site?
2. Can I search for partners that link to my competitors?
3. Can I send a message to several recipients at once?
4. Can I send follow-ups to my first message?
5. Can I use different e-mail accounts in the Partners tool?
6. Can I view the replies to my e-mail requests in Web CEO?
7. Do you recommend limiting the number of keywords to search for?
8. How can I decide whether the site is good to exchange links with?
9. How can I exclude a website from the automatic correspondence cycle?
10. How can I personalize my requests to improve the feedback on them?
11. How can I remove the sites I'm not interested in from the list?
12. How can I select a site for personal correspondence?
13. How can I set up the program to search for more or fewer potential partners?
14. When checking partners` agreements, what do "Problems" and "Unknown" states mean?
15. Where does the program get the e-mail addresses of the potential partners from?

Q: Can I check if my partner keeps the link to my site?

A: Yes, you can do that. To check whether your partner's page linked to your web site is in the major SEs index, do the following:

I. Open the Partners tool and go to the '3. Partners' tab.

II. Click 'Manage partners list' to configure the profile:

1. On the 'Manage partner domains' tab, add the URL(s) of the partner's site(s).

2. On the 'Configure partnership terms' tab, define the conditions to be checked:

- Select the site and click 'Add Agreement' to set up a new agreement or 'Configure' to edit the existing agreement.

- Define the conditions to check on all the three tabs.

Note: on the '3. Track page changes' tab, you can select Google, Yahoo, Ask.com or Yandex using the 'Referring page should be present in search engine index of:' option.

III. Press 'OK' to save the profile.

You can run the report for all the sites in your profile, or for a part of them. To select several sites, highlight them using the SHIFT key + arrow up/down or CTRL/SHIFT key + left mouse.

Then click the 'Review status' button if you want to run the report for all your agreements. If you want to check several agreements only, click the small black arrow next to this button and choose 'Review selected agreements'.

After the report is completed, you can use the system of filters to view the results in the most convenient way.

Q: Can I search for partners that link to my competitors?

A: Yes, the current program version allows you searching for sites linking to your competitors, since such sites might become your linking partners as well.

To run the search by competition:

1. Open Partners and click 'Configure' (if you haven't used the tool for the selected project) or Profile > Edit Profile (if you've already worked with this project in Partners).

2. On the '1. Search mode' tab, check the 'Search for sites linking to your competitors' option.

3. On the '4. Add competition' tab, specify your competitors: you can import the list from a text file, clipboard or another tool.

4. Click 'OK'.

When the scanning is over and the list of sites is retrieved, you can apply the filters to view all the results or the definite reports for each searching mode: just select 'All sites', 'Search by competitors' or 'Search by keywords' at the top left of the program window.

Q: Can I send a message to several recipients at once?

A: Yes, the 'Automatic correspondence' option lets you send messages to a group of recipients. Do the following:

1. On the '1. Search for partners' tab, checkmark the sites you would like to send a non-personal partnership request to, right-click in the table and select 'Move checked to 'Auto correspondence' on the popup menu.

2. Go to the '2. Manage correspondence' tab (you will be asked to configure the mail sending profile). Here you define the return address(es), the message templates you would like to use, and set up the rules for detecting the e-mail addresses of the potential partners.

3. When you are done, press 'OK' to be taken to main screen, and then 'Send bulk'.

Note: take care to specify your SMTP server address and port in order to email messages successfully.

Q: Can I send follow-ups to my first message?

A: This option is available under the 'Automatic correspondence' section. After you've moved the sites there, go to the '2. Manage correspondence' tab and configure the mail sending profile:

- On the 'Email settings' tab, specify the email account to be used. If you haven't set up an email account yet, you can do it: File > Settings > General > Connections > Mail transfer.

- On the 'Templates' tab, create or import templates for the automatic cycle. You can use the default Web CEO templates, create your own ones (press the 'Add' button for this) or import the templates from another project.

- On the 'Automatic Correspondence Cycle', select templates for the first message and follow-ups and specify the period of time to wait before sending follow-ups. Also, you can choose how many messages can be sent per minute.

- On the 'Email Search Rules' tab, set up rules for detecting the potential partners' e-mail addresses.

After you are done, press 'OK' to be taken to the main screen, then 'Send bulk' for automatic correspondence.

Q: Can I use different e-mail accounts in the Partners tool?

A: Yes, you can create several e-mail accounts and use them for partners campaigns.

To do this, select 'Settings' on the 'File' menu, click 'General' tab, then 'Mail transfer'.

Press the 'Add' button and fill the required fields. Make sure that all the data entered and the connection type are defined correctly. You can look for the necessary information in your regular e-mail client or consult your mail service provider about the server authentication procedure they use. If you use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, you can also import its e-mail accounts into Web CEO.

Note: you should only use paid Yahoo! e-mail accounts in Web CEO, because free Yahoo! accounts only allow you sending email messages via the website, thus they cannot be used elsewhere.

When the account is set up, you can check its activity: press the 'Test this e-mail account' button and Web CEO will perform a connection test.

Q: Can I view the replies to my e-mail requests in Web CEO?

A: No, the thing is Web CEO is not designed to replace a full-featured email client, so it does not receive the response messages. You should run the application or log on to the web service you usually use to receive emails.

Q: Do you recommend limiting the number of keywords to search for?

A: It's up to you what keywords to add, but we do not recommend using the keywords that relate to different themes. The more scattered the keywords are, the less relevant suggestions you will get.

We also recommend that you should leave the default options on the 'Scan rules' tab (i.e. 'Average scan depth' and 'Average filtering') intact.

Q: How can I decide whether the site is good to exchange links with?

A: The Partners tool provides you the site score, PageRank, Title, Meta tags and many other parameters which can help you take a decision. The program requests search engines that you've selected for the keywords that you've added while configuring the profile.

Then it analyzes the retrieved results pages. The more times the site is found for the given keywords, the better its score is. You can't change the formula for the score; however we did our best to make it up so that it can help you sift out the best sites.

The program also provides you with the important information such as the sites' Title, Meta Description and Keywords. They can give you a better understanding of sites' profiles.

If the above-mentioned parameters are not prominent enough, you can request additional information about the site. Double-click on the site line (or right-click it and select 'Site details') to have the program request Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, the numbers of indexed pages and backlinks found on major search engines, presence in the major directory listings at the 'Additional parameters' tab.

At the second 'Site preview' tab you can look at that web site. The third 'Contact details' tab provides you such information as site owner, his address, email address and phone number if this info is found on Alexa. Besides, you can edit these data.

Q: How can I exclude a website from the automatic correspondence cycle?

A: If the site owner has agreed to become your partner, you can move the site manually to the 'Partners' category. Go to the '1.Search for partners' tab, choose the site, right-click on it (or click the 'Manage sites' button at the left-bottom corner of the window) and select 'Move checked sites to 'Partners'.

Also, you can set the tool to move the site to 'Trash' if no reply was received. This option is available for the 'Automatic correspondence' section:

1. Go to the '2. Manage correspondence' tab > Automatic correspondence > click the 'Email preferences' button.

2. Choose the 'Automatic Correspondence Cycle' tab. Check the option of moving the sites to 'Trash' if you receive no response to the last email of the cycle.

Q: How can I personalize my requests to improve the feedback on them?

A: The more personal your messages, the better feedback you can expect. You would hardly dispute this assertion, so create your own templates or improve the standard ones to stand a better chance of achieving your goal.

To do this, go to the second 'Templates' tab of the profile manager - you'll see the list of the available templates:

- point to the template name and click 'Edit' to make changes,
- click 'Add' to create a new template.

Note: You can insert variables in the template body to introduce yourself, name your and your partner's site, etc. Click 'Insert variable' and select one. Also, the current Web CEO version supports the HTML format for templates, so you can use its advantages.

Q: How can I remove the sites I'm not interested in from the list?

A: If you do not consider a site to be appropriate for links exchange, you can delete it permanently from the list in the following way:

1. On the '1. Search for partners' tab, choose the website(s) you are not interested in from the list and put the checkmarks.

2. Click the 'Manage sites' button in the right bottom corner of the window.

3. Select 'Delete checked sites'.

Q: How can I select a site for personal correspondence?

A: In order to select sites for personal correspondence, take the following steps:

1. Check the sites on the '1. Search for partners' tab.

2. Right-click in the table and select 'Move checked to Personal Correspondence' on the popup menu. To view them on this tab again, you should select 'Personal correspondence' from the drop-down menu of the tab.

Then go to the 'Manage correspondence' tab and configure the mail sending profile: just follow the profile manager steps.

After you are done, press 'OK' to be taken to main screen, then 'Send manually' for personal correspondence.

Q: How can I set up the program to search for more or fewer potential partners?

A: To change the default settings for the number of sites to be requested, you should:

1. Click on the Profile button located on the toolbar above the report.

2. On the profile dropdown list, select 'Edit Profile'.

3. Go to the 'Scan rules' tab.

4. Adjust the 'Search engine scan depth' value from minimum to maximum. The default 'Average scan depth' option allows you to get a considerable amount of results. If you select the 'Minimal scan depth' option, only most relevant results will stay on the list.

5. Adjust the 'Partner site filtering' value from maximum to minimum to have the program remove less relevant sites based on their score. If you don't reset the default 'Average site filtering' option, the program will remove fewer sites than it would remove with the 'Maximum site filtering' option selected.

Q: When checking partners` agreements, what do "Problems" and "Unknown" states mean?

A: These two filters were developed to differentiate between two situations:

- The 'Problems' status is used when the results for the definite agreement are retrieved successfully, but some conditions don't meet the requirements set.

- The 'Unknown' status is used when due to some technical cause it is not possible to retrieve the results for the definite agreement.

You can view the breakdown for each case by going to the 'Detailed' tab and checking the 'Show in detail' option.

Q: Where does the program get the e-mail addresses of the potential partners from?

A: The program can use four different mechanisms to get the e-mail addresses of recipients. You can select one or more of them:

1. Open Partners > 'Manage correspondence' tab.

2. Click 'Email preferences' in the top right-hand corner above the report (on any of the subtabs).

3. Go to the 'Email Search Rules' tab and check one or more of the following options:

- 'Use 'Alexa Contact Info' to have the program search Alexa.com for the site's e-mail address.

- 'Use 'Whois' data' to have the program use the 'Whois Lookup' or similar domain registration service.

- 'Scan potential partner website' to have the program search contact pages of the site.

- 'Use predefined e-mail addresses' to have the program create the e-mail addresses based on the site domain and the common user names such as 'info', 'webmaster', 'admin', etc. We recommend leaving this option selected. You can also edit the list of those words in case no emails were found.

- 'Exact email address search' – if you select this option, the program will look only for those addresses where the second part coincides with the partner's domain name. This prevents the Partner Finder from picking up addresses which might have nothing in common with the partner's contact details.