If you run a blog and are involved in online marketing to any extent, I’m sure you’ve already been pitched a fair share of Internet marketing products that are supposed to make all aspects of your work much easier.

Many Internet marketing products  on offer promise that they can help you get more visitors to your website, generate tons of backlinks to your site for better rankings in search results, write more and/or better content, add tons followers to your twitter account and much more.

Sadly, the sales-pages for these products usually lack any kind of tangible information about what the product will actually do for you. It’s often more about how great your life will be once you hit the “order” button and less about what you’ll actually get. At least, that’s true for most sales-pages I’ve encountered.

Here’s an overview over the types of online marketing programs available and a summary of what they can do for you:

Article Syndication Software:
These programs are usually targeted at article marketers. What these programs do is log into lots of different online article directories and submit your article to each of them. This can be very useful for getting more exposure for your articles and also for gaining backlinks to your website.

A quality article distributor is definitely worth it if you you are a determined article marketer. To get the most out of it, make sure that the program features automatic registration to the article sites, automatic email verification and basic article spinning features.

Directory or Search Engine SubmissionTools:
Typically offered as a service or purchasable software. What this does is submit your website URL to lots of different search engines (often, they submit to hundreds or even thousands) and website directories (websites consisting of grouped links to other websites).

In my opinion, this type of service is rarely (if ever) worth it’s price. It’s not much use to you if your site is submitted to some obscure search engine in Lithuania and backlinks from website directories are practically worthless (with the exception of some high-authority ones like Yahoo and DMOZ).

Social Bookmarking Software:
This kind of software is used to distribute your websites to different social-bookmarking sites like Digg, Mister-Wong, Diigo, Mixx and many more. The software automates the task of signing up, logging in and submitting your bookmarks and can save a lot of time.

Social bookmarking software is generally good, but only if used correctly. If you use them as spamming tools to just blast the sites with low-quality links, you’ll quickly see your accounts banned. So, if you decide to buy a program like this, make sure there is some good guidance (documentation or video tutorials) offered along with the software.

Website Analysis Software:
Website analysis software programs come in many shapes and sizes. Usually, they allow you to examine any web page you want, in detail. For instance, they might show you how many inbound links a site has, where those backlinks are coming from, how many of it’s pages are indexed in Google and so on.

The point of all this is to allow you to evaluate your competitor’s strength before you move into a new market. You can find out in detail what a page has going for it and why it’s ranking well and with that information you can see what you need to do to outperform that page.

Analysis tools are extremely useful to an online marketer, in my opinion. I would not even consider into a new market without having spent some time analyzing my competition with such a program.

Keyword Research Software:
These are often similar to, or part of the same product as the analysis tools mentioned above. These tools aim to help you find the best possible keywords to go after with a new website or piece of content. You can get a quick overview of the number of searches, results and competing pages there are for any keyword you choose and filter the results according to your needs.
It isn’t mandatory to pay for a keyword research tool, since you can use the one offered by Google for free. However, a good tool can make research much simpler and so paying for it can be justified, if it’s good enough.

Other Automation Software:
You can buy automation tools for almost everything. From simple little scripts that automatically post tweets, every time you publish a new post to your blog to entire programs that run an entire blog for you and automatically upload content even adding links and images, there’s hardly an Internet marketing related job you couldn’t find an automation tool for.

Utilizing software like this, it is difficult to know beforehand if they are really any good. Keep in mind that the success-rate will never be 100% with such bots and that your results will always look automated, at least to some extent. For example, if you auto-tweet and never send tweets you actually write yourself, you can’t expect your twitter profile to be terribly popular.

Of course, there are a lot of nuances and overlaps among the various online marketing tools available and I can’t cover everything in this article. However, I hope this article helps you see past the hype and lofty promises on sales-pages.

To really be sure of whether a system is worth it and learn exactly how you can get the most out of it, it’s best if you find a trustworthy review and perhaps some helpful tutorials for every individual program.

If you run a blog and are involved in online marketing to any extent, I’m sure you’ve already been pitched a fair share of Internet marketing products that are supposed to make all aspects of your work much easier.

Many online marketing products  available promise that they can help you get more visitors to your website, build lots of backlinks for better rankings in Google search results, write more and/or better content, add thousands of followers to your twitter account and much more.

Sadly, the sales-pitches for these programs are often elusive about what exactly the software will do for you. It’s often more about how great your life will be once you hit the “order” button and less about what you’ll actually get. At least, that’s true for most sales-pages I’ve encountered.

Here’s an overview over the types of online marketing programs available and a summary of what they can do for you:

Article Submitters:
Article submitters are usually targeted at article marketers. What these programs do is log into lots of different online article directories and submit your article to each of them. This can be very useful for getting more exposure for your articles and also for gaining backlinks to your website.

Article submission software is definitely worth it if you write many articles. For maximum effect, check to see that the program includes automated registration to the article directories, automated email verification and basic article spinning features.

Directory or Search Engine SubmissionTools:
This is often offered either as a software package or as a service. What this does is submit your website URL to lots of different search engines (typically they claim to submit to thousands of them) and website directories (websites featuring nothing but grouped links to other websites).

In my experience, this type of service is almost never worth it’s price. It’s not much use to you if your website is submitted to some unknown search engine in Lithuania and links from online directories are relatively worthless (with the exception of the DMOZ and Yahoo directories).

Social Bookmarking Tools:
Automatic social bookmarking programs submit any websites you choose to lots of social-bookmarking sites like Digg, Mister-Wong, delicious, reddit and many others. The software signs up, logs in and submits your bookmarks on autopilot and can save a lot of time.

These programs are generally good, but only if you use them the right way. If you simply use them to spam all of your pages to as many sites as possible, you’ll quickly see your accounts shut down. So, if you decide to buy a program like this, make sure there are good instructions (documentation or video tutorials) offered along with the software.

Competition Analysis Software:
Website analysis programs come in many shapes and sizes. Usually, they allow you to examine any webpage you want, in detail. For instance, they might show you how many backlinks a website has, where those backlinks are coming from, how many of it’s pages are indexed in Google and so on.

The point of all this is to allow you to assess your competitor’s strength before you enter a new market. You can find out why a page is ranking well in the search results and in turn, learn what you would need to do in order to outrank that page with one of yours.

Competition analysis programs are extremely useful to an Internet marketer, in my opinion. I would not even consider into a new market without having spent some time analyzing my competition with such a program.

Keyword Research Tools:
These programs are often similar to, or part of the same product as the analytics tools mentioned above. These tools aim to help you find the best possible keywords to go after with a new website or article. You can get a quick overview of the number of searches, results and competing pages there are for any given keyword and sort the results according to your needs.
It isn’t absolutely necessary to pay for a keyword research tool, since you can use the one offered by Google for free. However, a good tool can make research a lot simpler and so paying for it can be worth it (if the tool is a good one.

Other Automation Software:
You can buy automation tools for practically everything. From simple little things that send a tweet out automatically, every time you write a new post on your blog to all-in-one systems that can (or at least claim that they can) practically build entire websites and campaigns for you, from scratch, including content creation and backlink building.

Using tools like these, it is hard to know in advance if they will be worth it. Remember that you will never get one hundred percent successful submissions and the results from using tools will always look somewhat “artificial”, no matter how good the software is. As an example, if you use a program for automating twitter-updates and never post tweets you actually composed yourself, don’t expect your twitter profile to be particularly popular.

Of course, there are many nuances and overlaps among the various online marketing tools available and I can’t describe them all in detail in just one article. However, I hope you can now see through the hype on sales-letters a bit more easily and get an idea of what’s behind it all.

To really be sure of if a product is worth it and learn exactly how you can make the best use of it, it’s best if you find a reliable review and perhaps some useful tutorials for every individual product.