Article Ranks looked good, and was highly recommended by people in the Warrior Forum War Room area so I tested this out for the last 30 days or so.
The test:
10 urls,medium to easy in range, competition-wise
- 5 exact match keyword domains
- 1 EzineArticles article url
- 2 blog posts inner urls
- 2 long tail keywords on niche sites
How many syndications/republications for these?
- 5 exact match keyword domains- 1 article for each got syndicated 70, 73, 73, 100, and 104 times
- EzineArticles article: 106
- 2 blog posts inner urls: 101, 89
- 2 long tail keywords on niche sites 75, 102
Rankings increases?
5 exact match keyword domains:
Site1: Went in at No. 12 for the exact keyword. Peaked at 9, now unranked. Presumably sandboxed or google dancing.
Site 2: Went in at 14, peaked at 9, now at 19
Site 3: Went in at 10, now at 44
Site 4: Went in at 17, quickly went to 9 and after a brief dip to 12, is back at 9
Site 5: Went in at 17, now 15
EzineArticles article :
no change, minimal Google dancing
2 blog posts inner urls:
1 was ranked #6 or 7 page 1 and is now #3
1 was ranked page 2, sometimes page 3, dancing in and out of page 1 and 2 now
2 long tail keywords on niche sites:
Were never ranking well in first place, not in first 15 pages, and not in first 10 pages now
About the test, history of the urls:
The 5 exact match keyword domains were autoblogs that were getting traffic and ranking the auto content pretty well for a long time prior to testing Article Ranks. While I don’t think that autoblogging sites are going to rank well in the long term, I do know that smashing the home page urls with drip-fed links will still produce effects.
The EzineArticles article had been published for 5 months or so and had existing backlinks to it already. There is another ezinearticles article outranking mine and it’s stopping me from “owning page 2 position” at very least. So there’s an obstacle here… kind of…gotta out rank a pre-existing better ranked article but articles on directories, press releases, hubs and lenses usually respond really well to minimal backlinking.
This was the most disappointing sign that Article Ranks wasn’t doing a good job, so far…
The 2 blog posts inner urls were published weeks and months ago, and url #1 has a rock solid #6 or 7 position on page 1, and had existing links pointing to it. It moved up as far as it could go, with reasonable expectations, and is ranked #3 now, outranked by 2 authority sites’ urls.
Blog post inner url #1 also had pre existing backlinks to it and sometimes made an appearance on page 1 but was usually on page 2 or 3 prior to using Article Ranks to get links to it. WHILE using AR this url made it to #5 on page 1 but is still dancing around form pages 1 to 2 and back.
The 2 long tail terms on niche adsense sites had zero backlinks to them prior to using AR and didn’t move an inch
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Dan,
What’s your verdict on the various link building services you tested so far? From the looks of it, I see that most of these other services just don’t seem to offer much at all based on your results.
Ezarticlelink looks somewhat a disappointment. I’m wondering how the Google update affect these link building services though.
So far, I still see BLS, UAW, Linkvana still the better linking services.
Btw, I think you should go do an update review on Linkvana, I heard Dave made more updates to it. It is suppose to be for the Google changes/updates, from what I read so far.
Hey looks like most of these services lately aren’t doing too well…. Reviewing several new ones now mylinkclub, linkaloha, nichepressplatinum, articleslingshot, submityourarticle, etc…
Linkvana kicked me out of their service because I dared ask for a refund after not getting login access for 3-4 days, so I’d have to jump through hoops to get back in, and would need a tester to write for me, too
Anecdotal evidence suggests that some of their links aren’t remaining indexed after 3-4 months but I never trust anecdotal evidence, just my own testing since most people don’t really know how to test or assess linking capacities for a service, nobody does pure split testing in their reviews, it seems nor do they take into account the “linking history” of their sites, and urls
Hi Daniel
I do not think it is fair to the service leaving reviews so early.. 30 days is in no way a strict time frame to go by.
You say there was 70+ published articles, this would at least take a month to produce these numbers as we have daily limits.
Therefore you then need time for Google to pick up these links and then even more time for the links to age slightly for Google to give full weight to them in the SERPs.
A lot of people have done these tests for AR and they have all come out successful compared to other services of the same nature. I believe the case being because more time was given by the reviewer.
Musa, I understand your point and I agree that 60 days is a bit better for doing a real review.
The syndication is there, that’s for sure…. and you’ll notice I left the review verdict for the reader to interpret and didn’t explicitly state that this service is a “don’t join”. I will update the review in another 30 days, however, with the syndication that’s already been done there should definitely have been more results by now since the links should be getting picked up in 3-5 days time, max.
If syndication continues and links accreditation is drip-fed in with some results to show, then AR would be recommended, since it’s a set and forget long term type of thing, but 30 days is more than enough time to have 70 syndicated articles do something positive for long tail terms which only need a few good links to get boosted in the SERPs.
Hi Daniel
Understandable too but I am sure that within 60-90 days you will see these increase in positions
Sounds good, promising… and looking forward to it.
Do you think 1 article syndicated to many places over time is enough to warrant expecting some results, even for long tail terms?
It depends how well spun the article is in my opinion.
If you spin the article lets say only 30% and you use multiple distribution avenues and overall get it distributed 400-500 times, then you are going to get Google being able to spot duplicates and devalue some of the links.
The more you spin an article the more fully unique published articles you will get and it would be impossible for Google to spot it.
A lot of people do not think about this and they try to spin articles just enough to get it accepted into the networks.
Thanks for the follow up, Dan. I am also wondering if you’ll see better results with AR after a month. Have you found UAW results more immediate?
BTW, is there a difference between link velocity and link momentum? I saw your post where you defined the former but I’m unclear on the latter.
I don’t think linking momentum is a term to be concerned about as its sorta related to velocity.
Momentum as far as rankings moving up is something worth watching, when you get rankings momentum apply more force/velcoity
Nowadays, there are too many article syndication.
I just do not know how to choose.
Daniel McGonagle, I think you can test more system.
thank you for your work.
This is an excellent and very informative blog.I would like to know more detail information about how the Google update affect these link building services.
I will keep to visit your blog in the next time.
Thank you for your post.
In reference to the articleranks.com blog network, what is the most number of blogs that one well spun article will be submitted to and is every article submitted to the same number of blogs?
Hey Jerry, since article are spun, the same article(s) won’t go out to all sites, I wouldn’t think.
Max # of sites has been about 200, with a minimum of 100 sites
for article ranks, how many links can i put in each article?
is article ranks better than ama, my article network, the link juicer, but not as good as unique article wizard and build my rank?
for article ranks, is it $39 a month for unlimited submissions with no additional charges?
I believe that’s dependent upon how many words your articles are.
Their pricing has me confused too, so I recommend you read their sales page carefully to get a better understanding
Hey you can put 3 links per article, obviously that can be spun unlimited times. There are 3 ways to use the system
- Earn credits by adding sites with PR into the system and giving us your login info for social sites
- Buy credits $2 per submission
- Upgrade to monthly and get unlimited submissions, also there are many more benefits to being a monthly member
I do not like to comment on other peoples systems, but if you are serious about rankings, then you should be using a handful of networks as they all have different sites in them
Musa get me on Skype please
how is the testing going with article ranks?
i want to submit my articles to another network and i wanted an alternative to unique article wizard since i already submitted my articles to them?
My updated Article Ranks review is coming out soon, here’s a snapshot.
URL 1- #4
URL #2 – 11, and #15 for popular product name ( link building program)
URL #3- #11
URL #4- 2 kws, 2 urls actually, #4 and nowhere to be found for other term.
All in all I’d say Article Ranks is ok. the in-depth review will try to explain just how powerful, or not it is and how best to use it, like Musa mentioned, you can earn credits by giving access to your sites for posting purposes, and social account logins for same
Articleranks should be OK but too many jobs as we’ve to make 10 spinnable for each phrase. Daniel, do you have a comparison between AR and other similar products?
Yesterday, I submitted to the AR with 100% acceptance rate. Today I see the published articles are 5. And I found just 1 article indexed by google. Using UAW, the speed of indexing process is little bit faster than AR.
Musa & Daniel, please your review. But, compare with SEOLinkVine I still vote AR. Apologize if wrong.
Mo., It takes a while for the syndication to begin, and spread just like with most services.
AR is better than SEO LV since AR has an algorith controlling how far and wide your syndication should go
quoted: “AR is better than SEO LV since AR has an algorith controlling how far and wide your syndication should go…”
I agree with this. I now have 3 articles on the AR. I will submit massive unique articles and spin more than 100%. My 1st articles has been distributed 24 times, 23 publish & 1 error since Sep18. I can found in Google 7, and I believe it will increase.
My #1 URL, that already had some backlinks … a few week later, at page 2 or 3 but now went up to #1 page 1 Google. So far, AR is very good for me. I can spin per phrase or per word using “~” …
Great result. Thank you, Mozes
I’ve joined ArticleRanks and I’ve tried submitting my social media sites, but it’s not working? Is this an option for paid accounts only? Is it just a glitch? I wonder if there are other parts of the system that present the same behaviour? Also, the support ticket has not been adressed for 3+ days.
Hi Dan. Maybe you can shed some light on my case. I submitted two articles to Article Ranks and when I checked my links using Site Explorer there were no new links appearing. Is it safe to assume that the links from the Article Ranks’ network were not counted?
I’ve been using other services like AMA before and new links from these always get counted. I’m wondering what’s going on with Article Ranks.
Hi Gwen
The problem is site explorer and Yahoo have become very slow at picking up anything.. Its also going to be discontinued in the near future
As we tell everyone the best thing to do is leave a unique piece of the article unspun then in a couple of months search for that in Google.. If the article is indexed you can guarantee the links are picked up.. The only problem here is it will leave a footprint on your articles. So they may not be seen as fully unique
Or use a third party crawler like majestic
I am a member of articleranks from around a year or so. I have had a positive experience with it due to which I continue to use the service.
Generally, I hit first or second page of Google for medium to low competition keywords after 5 or so article submissions to articleranks. I submit 5 articles and space the submissions around 10 days or so.
And I notice ranking improvements usually after a couple of months. But most of the time, the rankings remain stable for a long period.
So I usually don’t expect quick results with articleranks. I submit a few articles and wait for few weeks or couple of months. Then I submit a few more articles in order to maintain the high rankings.
And I don’t go after tough keywords with articleranks. You submitted 1 article each for the different sites. Try submitting a few more and wait for another 30 days to see if there is an improvement.
The reason why I still stay a member of articleranks is that I got in early when they launched the service. So I pay just $10 per month. For this price, I feel I am getting a lot of value for my money.
However if I had joined late and had to pay $40 or so then I don’t think I would have stayed a member for so many months as there are other services in that price range I can go after, namely AMA or even UAW (which is just a little bit more).
Hi Anwar
Have you used AMA etc before?
We actually now see ourselves as one of the strongest networks around. Have some powerful sites in the system, have stopped spam and have some of the highest published numbers.
But if you DO have budget you should be using every service possible, we have always said this.
In our opinion and a lot of our members ArticleRanks is still the best bang for your buck.
Hmm, been thinking about getting involved with Article Ranks, and I have been reading many reviews about it, and this one has helped color my opinion of it as well. Thanks.