This Backlink Banzai review is LONG overdue, but I finally figured out a way to test out a service in such a way as to make it prove itself as a hands-down quality service for a certain kind of website, and for certain kinds of keywords.
Brief update on some things, and some myths and stuff…
- Google hates MFAs ((Made For ads(ense) Sites)) and micro-niche mini-sites, right?
- Google is looking for continually updated content on sites in order to give them “love” right?
Well, not necessarily.
Here’s what I did for this Backlink Banzai review:
I went back to my old bad? habits of building micro-niche mini-sites, but this time, I focused on TRUE micro-niches.. meaning that the keywords were close to 1000 exact match and that exact match domains were available in .com, /net. or .org (we chose not to use the other domain extensions).
The fact that keyword volume is low and that EMDs were available indicates that competition is indeed sort of low…
So, I used this service to rank EMDs for low competition terms, and that’s Sooo not a big deal right?
Yes and no… because if Google hates these built for Adsense sites, and are cracking down on these MFAs, then it’s actually a bit of a struggle to get hated sites ranked, unless you employ proper link building techniques, tactics, strategies, whatever….
So, I bought 5 or 6 of these MFA sites from a forum, then the seller did the keyword research, suggested possible domain names, I chose them, registered them, and then they build the content and the sites for me and I FTP-ed them up to the domain.
Now sites are built and waiting for backlinks…
I built backlinks to the main pages of these sites and did for for about 1 month, with a lot of bouncing around in the SERPs.
I even employed this services’ suggestion to include anchor text in a certain percentage of the backlinks obtained and still didn’t see good results, or results that I’d expect as far as ranking a fairly low competition term.
Then month 2 started and the owner suggested that I built backlinks to all the urls on the site, not just the main domain url, and yes I should have known better, but I was lazy, busy, dumb (pick one)…
So month 2 starts, with me NOW building backlinks the right way, as far as building backlinks ot mini-sites are concerned…
And yesterday I saw a little bit of an Adsense earnings uptick and lo and behold, those sites are all ranking very nicely, some are #3, some are lower than that, but almost all of them are page 1.
The websites I used Backlink Banzai to build backlinks to, but aren’t page 1?
Those are the ones I didn’t deep link to, therefore it proves to me that I’m an idiot for ignoring the guidelines that Backlink Banzai set forth in users’ back offices suggesting they/we adopt certain linking strategies…
Even Google says in some of their suggested best practices that webmasters build backlinks to all urls on their sites, not just do what most people do, which is predominantly building backlinks to the home page.
Anyhow, this service is TOTALLY hands-off, hands-free, whatever you want to call it, and it works well
Not much more to say than that, really
Update, one more thing: You get 20 SLOTS with a regular account and each slot can target one url, but multiple kws, which is not how i used this, but probably should have. so, you can target in a set-and-forget manner 20 urls, with multiple keywords and search phrases being targeted per url, hope that’s clear, sorry for this important omission
Check it out Backlink Banzai here via aff link please
Thanks,
Dan
P.S. Update: I will be testing this service out for more competitive keywords, and will have a part 2 review on that in a few months or so. Get this service if you need hands-off, hands-free rankings for medium to long-tail terms. It MAY work for more competitive terms, and probably WILL, but my review, my Positive review is based merely on the keywords and stated competition levels
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This has probably already been asked/answered somewhere but there’s a lot of information to sort through to find it, so I am just going to ask it again…
If we cancel our membership at some point do we lose all our links, or do they stay up even after we are no longer a member?
http://www.backlinkbanzai.com/FAQs.php#CancelLinks
Hi Daniel
I am creating an authoritative site on the topic of dentistry.
At the moment, has written 70 articles on the quality of at least 800 words, 100% unique. Every day adds a few new articles.
What services do you recommend?
To raise the ranking of each article, I plan to use the following services: UAW, AMR, Backlink Banzai, ArticleRank and Bachklink Booster.
In the future I want to connect The Privat Network.
Earning Online with Adsense.
Site about 2 months.
Please tell me what services are best used for lifting articles in the ranking?
I have found a few articles indexed already and noticed they were completely non-relevant to my niche including the title of the articles.
Is this going to be a problem later as the algo looks for this type of occurrence?
Depends on how many of those links you have, if you have a few, no problem, if you have a ton, yes it will be a problem.
They are saying that links on relevant pages are valued a bit more post panada 3.3 than links on irrelevant pages. That has always been the case, but supposedly Google tweaked the algo a bit.
However, that doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly get a penalty for having links on too many irrelevant pages. If that were the case then I wouldn’t see so many people ranking with comment links on irrelevant pages. Also plenty of natural links come from irrelevant sites and pages.
Keep in mind that the real penalties have come from blog networks like BMR being de-indexed.
Also take note that some people here are selling competing services.
I didn’t want to but unfortunately had to cancel. I can’t take chances with having links in non related articles, I have to do everything I can to avoid possible future algo updates and ranking losses.
It might work now, but what about later…
Also, I simply couldn’t find a “contact us” anywhere on the site so that I can post my concerns.
This isn’t a negative report, it’s just that my sites are new, I built them after taking huge hits in Jan. 2012 on my old sites. I wanted the new sites to start off on right foot, links in unrelated content just isn’t the right foot in my book, even though it works(for now). I wanted to make that clear.
His e-mail address is at the bottom of each page on the site.
So what services do you plan on trying now?
I’m hearing that Social Links combined with a really good press release service is the best white hat way to get links.
Ask yourself this question. Is it normal for a website to only have links from completely related sites? It actually seems more normal to have a variety of links from all kinds of sites, some related and some not. And what is considered relevant anyways? Many topics can be related to one another on secondary levels which would be next to impossible for any search engine to determine. Ex: a vacuum cleaner site could talk about HEPA filtration. Would you think an asthma site is related? Some of the site visitors might but to some they would seem totally unrelated. People with asthma need to be aware of indoor allergens.
And this is the crux of the matter…
There’s this huge myth about LSI and content-relevancy. Google is not some all-knowing super quantum AI matrix; they’re incredibly fallible… which is why they’re doing so much manual work now.
Content-relevancy to a human-being seems like a simple thing; but as a mathematical and language-processing algorithm it’s monumentally time-consuming. How does a machine determine content-relevancy when so many completely non-related words can be thematically connected?
Penalties have been kicked off by many other factors, and they’re just using the universal ‘unnatural linking practices’ excuse as a cover-all for their scare-mongering. It’s the easiest and most ambiguous of all reasons to quote; and leaves you running in circles if you buy into it.
Please; don’t give up on your SEO just because Google are flexing their muscles. Most penalties that I’ve been monitoring have been quickly recovering with a diverse link-building campaign in place.
Good grief buddy…
Ever heard of ‘throwing the baby our with the bathwater’?
Do you HONESTLY think that going “whitehat” will protect you from Google? Have you seen how many completely whitehat sites have been completely frickin hammered recently?
So you’ve bought into the Google BS; and you’re running scared… Whatcha gonna do now? Limit yourself to one-off “authority articles” and press releases? Don’t you see that Google is doing all this to scare everyone out of SEO?
All i have to say is the way’s being cleared for people like me to get better rankings; because Google are scaring everyone off!
I’ve read pretty much this entire post, and it took me an hour to read all those comments! Plus I read the stuff posted on the Banzai site… Kudos Brother! Someone who actually understands real-world SEO and marketing!
Bring it on Google! You aint scaring me away!
I don’t necessarily think you have to do one-off press releases. Normal syndication linking back to the original article on your site is supposedly fine with Google.
Of course, that doesn’t stop them from devaluing those links in future.
These are all valid comments guys and it’s my bad for not finding the email.
Yes, some backlinks will come from non related sites, but the key word here is “some” and not a lot of them.
Guys, in the natural world, who sits there and writes about cell phones, then turns around and links to a site that is about 6 pack abs for example? Who does that in the natural world?
Let’s also remember that Google is known to outsource human reviewers sometimes to check out linking profiles and on page content for sites on the first page.
Look, you might be right, but I can’t be thinking about how hard it is for an algo to detect relevance and wondering if they figure out a way or not in a year, then have sites drop like flies again.
I’m in this for the very long haul, and doing my best to stay on top of content being posted for seo purposes.
Now, I’m paying more but getting a team writing less content per month, but each article is completely different and niche related.
I actually love Backlink Banzai, especially the cool backend (needs more reporting as already discussed above). But I’m playing this chess game thinking years ahead of what could happen.
Lol, you don’t have to love it. If you don’t trust it then tiered linking is an option as well.
Just remember, any link building for the purpose of manipulating the SERP’s is against Google’s TOS…Great that you have a team writing good content for back linking…but what if your competitor comes along and blasts your site with X-rummer crappy links?
I personally would never do that…you would have to prove you didn’t do it (good luck with Google giving a crap about you)..not the other way around..so you are back to square one…the fact is –
Google and especially Matt Cutts love nothing better than screwing with your minds of an SEO and Internet Marketer…I mean they could not have asked for a better outcome than releasing Panda 3.0 and then some of the recent updates…They are delivering exactly what Panda was intended to do – create paranoia and panic in the IM landscape…
Its clear they don’t like us (SEO and IM people) no matter what Matt tries to pretend…He is a master manipulator in my opinion. He acts so arrogant like many of the Google employees – look at us – we are so great and all knowing…piss off Matt..we are tired of the rhetoric….
Advice – go build the best site you can, especially if its something you are passionate about…Make it better than anyone else ranking on page 1 that would bring tears to your eyes…Then you will have a chance of getting what’s called natural links..Get some social love too in the process…
As far as back linking….diversify like Dan and Jay have recommended…I am just carrying on and doing what I need to do to rank …I’m also finding other traffic sources to aside for organic SEO…
Make it a great day
Viddi, though I understand and sympathize with your concerns, in the real world (or in a real blog), a blog owner can write about almost anything and hence link to any site.
For instance, a mom can talk about her kids on her blog, and then link to the carpet cleaners who she had clean up the mess her kids created with their crayons, etc. On the same post she can link to the latest book she bought from Amazon, the funny video she watched that day, and so on and so forth.
Relevance is a very, very tricky point and I, for one, do not believe that Google’s algorithm is in any way capable of telling a relevant link from an irrelevant one.
You may think years ahead, but remember that the rules of this “chess” game are dictated by Google and can change at a whim.
For me, the solution is to ignore G’s erratic decisions and go on BAU as long as stuff works. When stuff doesn’t work, there will be other stuff that works.
If you have really worthwhile sites that you don’t want to risk, I would suggest completely ignoring SEO and getting traffic from other sources so that you can be Google-proof. Just my 2 cents.
The tendency of blogs is to remain topically related though. Sometimes it is alright as long as the OBLs are low, and some of them are.
What I plan on doing is re-subscribing to BB when there are a handful of hand written tier 1s, then link to those. Then this would be a tremendous opportunity.
But for the main site, I want to see to it that links are of a higher quality.
Thanks for all the replies and insight. As always this blog is priceless.
Viddi
If you’re REALLY thinking long-term and you’re prepared to put in the work, then please make sure you’ve read:
http://www.backlinkbanzai.com/PostPanda33Protection.htm
Buffer sites and expanding your web-estate and sales-funnels is the ONLY way to protect yourself from Google’s ever-changing landscape. And this is most definitely Grey-Hat. It’s inherent by Google’s definition. The bottom line is, you need disposable and buffer assets that can be replaced quickly and in volume. If one gets lost, then you simply do a quick mod to the content and chuck it up on another 2.0 or whatever and then start backlinking that.
This way; you don’t play THEIR game… You play your own.
I’m in it for the long-haul, and have been for a decade. I haven’t lost a single site or ranking in all the Panda slaps. Because I create such a diverse link profile, I have incredibly stable link-velocities, and I use huge quantities of micro-sites as buffers and lead/sales-generators. Simply put: I’m so diverse, that I’m like a virus – it would be incredibly difficult for them to root out even 25-50% of my web estate. THIS is where ‘protection’ lies.
And you mention that blogs typically remain topic-related. You may well be right in the IM community. But I don’t think you’re looking at the bigger corporate web picture…
It’s easy to get blinkered inside the IM community and start seeing the entire web as a scaled-up version of the world we live in; but it’s not. We spend our lives looking at niches and areas of interest to us as SEO’s; which is actually a tiny proportion of the entire internet. And Google looks at it all as a whole.
If you ignore the IM community, as a smallish percentage of the entire web that Google tries to spider, then you’ll see that the vast majority of ‘real’ and business sites etc do NOT link out to their competitors or similar sectors. In fact, they generally only link to complimentary services which will NOT be directly or thematicallly linked to their service – certainly not in terms of keywords or SEO value. You don’t promote your own competition.
Good luck anyway Viddi… I have no hard feelings whatsoever about you leaving. It’s all just business. My only concern is that you don’t run away so quickly from Google’s scare-mongering that you run straight into a wall and hurt yourself another way.
Don’t allow Google to bend your thinking into their single ‘congealed’ philosophy of avoiding all the link-building that can be used to generate great IP diversity; just do it right!
Right again Jay….Google’s best weapon right now is their PR machine like Matt Cutts and their announcements on algo updates. This is what they love to do – mess and screw us up…don’t let them get the better of you or anyone else..like I always say – screw Google because they are doing it to you everyday they can….
Did you filter that Web 2.0 list? I noticed Wordpress.com was on there. They removed a lot of pages for self-promotion. I stopped using them because they would delete my pages after 1-3 months.
I’m wondering how many other sites in that list are doing the same thing.
No. Because they’re all useful in some way…
They’re all fine for ‘asset-quality’ 2.0′s – if you learn what they’re looking for. (Just search for other ones that have been around for a while to get ideas.)
WordPress.com can be quite fierce with deletion, but again it depends on the niche, your outbound linking and what you do with the blog. If it’s obviously a ‘links’ property, then many of them can be aggressive with deletion.
EDUBlogs, FC2, HubPages & MyTelegraph are all reputed to be quite aggressive too.
It DOES take time and effort working with 2.0′s. But for pure links-only 2.0′s we just use mass-building tools like ZennoPoster and our own API tools and treat them as ‘articles’ to all intents and purposes. And we create these by the thousands, so we don’t care if 1/3 of them get deleted.
Your own API Tools? I guess you don’t sell that one.
I see a lot of them have a pay option. I’m thinking about just paying for angelfire, Typepad etc.. I know typepad doesn’t delete anything if you’re a paying customer.
I would say though, that I’ve been trying since last November to get to a point where we can offer some free 2.0 & wiki links to current Banzai members; but with all the Panda shenanigans, it’s delayed things somewhat. We may also offer an upgrade to larger volumes of these, when we can get things a little more stable; and that’s always the sticking point. I need to know that we can consistently deliver before I offer it.
TypePad is great… We have a LOT of these and they don’t get deleted.
Thanks for the info. I’m only leaving temporarily to pay for some custom 2.0 tier 1s, then I’ll be back and use BB to link to them and the money site. BB gives 20 slots and really want to use them all but have to first create other web 2.0s first.
Link diversity-100% agreed, simply because that’s what happens in the real world.
Again, the only reason I left is because I entered a bit too early without having my tier 1 sites ready. So I’ll be back.
Thanks for being so ready to enter the community conversation, it helps a great deal to enforce confidence in us.
I’ve had my slots set up for a while, but if I make some changes to them how long until it’s reflected in the link building?
The very next morning… We pull live slot data every morning at 7am GMT for that days link-building.
How quick the links for one individual slot are pushed out obviously depends on what slots are being targeted that day though; as we semi-randomly select slots each morning – which are weighted to balance out evenly over the month.
Iv actually started using the service and it has helped me greatly with traffic. I was struggling badly when it came to linkbuilding and this service has helped me alot with gaining traffic. I can’t say that I see any backlinks because its still too soon tell but I can say that it allows me to focus more on my website instead of trying to increase traffic. Iv had my site for about a year I NEVER achieve the amount of traffic that I see now. Im just grateful for this site because if I had not found this I would still be struggling.I cant wait to see what my results will be months from now.Great service!
Hi BB, i want to create another account (2nd acc) but using same paypal. can i do that?
btw, i’m pretty happy with the results so far …
thanks backlink banzai …
Yes…
You can have multiple accounts under the same PayPal email.
Don’t forget you can ask questions like this by email to our support team (email is at the bottom of every page.)
Also: use Dan’s link so he gets the credit! Just click my ‘Backlink Banzai’ hyperlink name above.
It’s been over a month now since I signed up with BB and I’m looking through my backlink reports in Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. I am struggling to find more than a handful of links across the 15 or so different slots I had set up last month that I can attribute to the BB service. The ones that I do find tend to be from the same few sites. Does anyone know a more reliable way to confirm these links are being created?
I was actually thinking about that myself. I was wondering of a way where I could find information on the links that are being built because I would love to know where im at with links so far.
Same here, is there a way to get som insights where the links are and how many have benn build? Would be cool if you can include a counter or something behind each slot, so we know which urls gets how many links etc.
Mya, SEofiate…
what difference does it makes? If it doesn’t help rank you with 10 links or 10k links then don’t use the service.
The number of links generated per url isn’t as important as the method by which they’re generated
You could get a link list form a 100k blast with xrumer, and what good would that do you. Backlink Banzai builds links to your links and they don’t give lists of links so… if it works then great, stop worrying about lists… if it doesn’t work then cancel the service and move on.
Hi all. Well I signed up a month or so ago and have been tacking a look at some of the pingbacks from this service. While I am always keen to follow Daniels advice I really don’t know what to make of this service.
I will keep it going for a couple of months and appreciate that many of my sites are probably still in stormy seas as they are suffering some fallout from de indexation of the BMR sites. However I have not seen much of a ranking change so far,even on many web 2.0s that were not affected by BMR.
While I accept the view of random links which are not contextual to the post not being overly concerning, I am a little bit surprised at the state of some of the sites where the links have been appearing. No about or privacy policy pages, or where they do exist no content. Isn’t this just asking for a manual review to see these sites wiped out over time (as BMR) – although this is not exactly going to hide a footprint, isn’t this just good practice when setting up these sites?
As you say; stormy seas at the moment, which is affecting indexation. We’ve started pushing indexation a little bit again, as it has slowed with the recent changes, but we don’t want to over do it in the current climate. And pushing indexation can often affect things longer term.
In terms of some of the sites you’re seeing; remember, we’re not a private network. We use public sites that people have made available for article or content submissions. So we have no control over their about or privacy policy pages etc. I agree; they really should set these up correctly. But it isn’t necessary for our means; which is the dissemination of content and links.
We lose sites all the time, (about 100 per month) – and it’s that constant cycling and replacement of sites that protects us. Footprint doesn’t apply to us, as we don’t leave any kind of footprint, and the sites aren’t interconnected in any way; we just maintain our own database of them.
Many thanks for the response on here. Glad you agree also that sites really don’t help themselves, thought I realise you don’t have ownership over these sites. BTW I really like the concept of what you guys are doing and hope to see some good results (combined with other stuff I am doing) over the next couple of months!
Well this is an interesting Google update. Just wondering if Dan or Jay have any comment on what they are seeing in Google, starting last night. Many of my affiliate sites that used a lot of different linking techniques have been hammered pretty bad. Some of these sites are at least 4 years old and enjoyed top rankings across the board for years.
3 of my other sites are still ranking well. 2 are affiliate sites that I’ve done very little linking to, 1 of them is several years old. They both have top 3 rankings for most big keywords now. The other one is an adsense site, many years old, with very little linking done to it. I just put that one in Backlink Banzai this past month to try to push some of the interior pages up but it appears to not have been hit with this update.
Seems like links were the main target here? Hard to say though with the absolute garbage that is ranking at the top for some keywords. Gotta think they are still tweaking this.
I blogged about it:
http://jasonkendall.co.uk/google-does-it-again/129/
I wasn’t affected by it, but I know a lot of people who were.
I’m not really sure yet what factors have been used, but I can see that they’ve caused an awful lot of collateral damage to many good quality sites (yet again!) There doesn’t seem to be much of a theme with this one. Panda 3.3. was fairly clear-cut. But this seems so arbitrary, as there’s so much utter junk that is now ranking.
I think they must be looking at this and thinking they’ve got something wrong!
I have wondered about something and you actually mentioned it in your blog post:
“I don’t know what they’re playing at over at the big G right now; but everything they do just decreases the quality of the search results. But maybe that’s the plan; put up such stinking information that you have to click on the ads to find anything of value…”
I wondered if their goals are to increase ad revenue but I have to think if their search results suck so much (like they appear to do) they will lose people quickly and nobody will be left to click on ads. I have actually started using Bing more when I’m researching stuff as well because I get back pretty relevant results.
So I guess I’ll ride this out and hope my sites bounce back a bit. The sad thing was one of my sites that got hit was just starting to climb back thanks to your service. Just hit top 5 this week for a pretty big search term, one that I got hammered on when BMR went down.
lol, notice the example site that’s using and unrelated article about weight loss to link to pay day loan sites.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
The point they’re making is one of low-quality keyword-stuffed content that reads poorly and offers no value to the reader.
The example shows random keywords just dropped into the middle of sentences, without any regard. Obviously this would raise flags; as it generates nonsense to a manual reviewer.
They’re not saying that a page can’t have links that aren’t relevant to specific content; as that would penalise half the internet.
That sounds about right I guess. I’m just looking for some reassurance after this latest update. My sites have taken hits in the past and slowly made their way back, but for some reason I felt like this was something different.
Like my sites were gone for good this time.
Banklink Banzai sucks. I have been using their service for 3 months and am not finding 1 single back link on my sites from this effort. I used a few production sites and a few brand new sites. NOTHING ON EITHER. I contacted them about this a couple times and they assured me it takes time, they have been doing this for years and know what they are doing etc etc. Dont waste your money. Great price but zero results in my case.
Do you use wordpress? The reason I’m asking is I’m finding tons of trackbacks for my links. A couple sites were also moving up before the google update yesterday. I think it works as advertised.
i using joomla and wordpress. i haven’t seen much on either.
I was going to ask the same thing. I’m getting trackbacks on WP sites frequently. They normally come in batches but when checked they are active links back. I don’t know if there’s anything to trouble shoot in your case because the set up is kind of easy IMO, but thus far, I find it to be a favorable service compared to the others out there that cost a heck of a lot more. Maybe you’re results will vary.
I’ve spoken overtly about this quite a lot recently, and I know I mentioned it in my interview with Dan on MarketersRelief; but the bottom line is all of Google’s actions since last Autumn seem to be geared towards PPC growth…
In many ways I can see them thinking they can go the way of a business pages directory; with the adverts taking all the real space and just a cursory listing of ‘natural’ results. Never underestimate Google’s arrogance; we’ve seen many large companies do this and end up losing ground to a competitor.
Personally, I’d LOVE to see Google get slapped by Bing. Bing’s search results are FAR superior now to what Google provides, and their gradual growth is starting to reflect this. But everyone seems to have got locked onto Google. It’s our job as business people in IM to educate people into using Bing; as their ranking system is far more stable. I’d much rather be competing on Bing than on Google. And Microsoft have been slapped so many times by the authorities that I don’t think they’d go the way Google has.
Still; we have to deal with the here and now… And I know many of you have been starting to recover since the end of Feb, as we get lots of emails about it. So I know how hurt many of you must be feeling if you just got hit again.
But as business people who’ve made a decision to market on the internet, we have to pick ourselves up and keep getting back in the game. No one can doubt that Google are out to get anyone who does any kind of commercial SEO or link-building now. So no matter what route you take for SEO or ranking, nothing is ‘safe’ anymore.
But the biggest mistake anyone can make is to stop and give up. Keep link-building, keep adding content. Don’t cause huge swings in your link velocity which could trigger other effects.
And most of all; don’t assume that just standing very still and hoping you’ll be left alone will save you. I’ve seen so many completely white-hat sites get slapped recently that there’s no argument left for even trying to play by their rules.
Google has become the playground bully; so don’t just hand over your lunch money… Fight back.. and fight back intelligently. Build huge diversity… Use buffer sites… Expand your sales funnel… Use disposable ranking assets etc. I’ve talked about all these here, on Banzai and on my blog. And I’m far from being the only one saying this!
My best wishes to everyone here…
Hi,
I’ve been using this service for over a month now. The only way I know they are creating links is by receiving pingbacks from WP sites.
I have noticed that some of the sites are de-indexed in Google, which definitely is NOT A GOOD THING.
I will say that on moderately competitive terms I will see a temporary boost after receiving some pingbacks.
Question, what’s up with all the Artifical Intelligence SEO links that look like class=”ext-link” onclick=”this.target=’_blank’;” rel=”external nofollow” href=”mysite”>You Could try this out?
I’d say that at least 80% of the pingbacks I receive are these “Artificial Intelligence SEO” sites that appear to be made for the sole purpose of promoting Artificial SEO (headers, banners, etc.)
Well, I have been following this thread for some time now and am very impressed with BB’s seo advice on their blog. Have been waiting to build out a decent buffer set of high quality web 2.0s per their advice and am today signing up (thru yr aff link naturally). I will update y’all some time down the road. Keep up the link diversity! Tom
Hi, just to let you know I have canceled my monthly banzai subscription due to the latest google algo change. My websites majorly tanked, either because of crap backlinks or overoptimization (too many keyword focused posts). I will wait for the dust to settle after a week or so and try to improve my websites before I build links again. Not sure if this is the right thing to do but with my income going from $150-200 to $15-20 a day I have no choice but to reduce expenses.
Thanks for this site Daniel, it’s one of the few review sites that I feel I can trust.
I am signing up for BB using your aff link. It sounds like just what I’m looking for at the moment.
I’ve been on Backlink Banzai about 6 weeks now and haven’t seen much (any really) movement using the 20 spots for my 4 e-commerce websites, but I’m being patient and hopefully within a month we’ll see some progress.
To my dismay, just within the last week, 3 of my 4 sites have been hammered by Google – multiple keywords fell off the first page of G to page 5, 6 , 7 and beyond. In my quest to find if I was even still indexed on one of my sites, I did a literal search on G using my H1 tag. I did find my site, however I also found something that really irritated me.
I noticed that at least 2 supposed blog sites have copied, posted and created internal links within their site using my EXACT Meta Page Title, H1 tag and some page content. An example of an offending site page is: edited out … “Welcome to your Rustic Furniture and Country Furniture Store.” is my store’s home page title.
I checked out whois domain tools to find the registrar (anon of course) and also sent them an email requesting the remove the duplicate content, which I suspect I will receive no response to. Has anyone had a similar experience, and is there any recourse?
Another offending website is: edited out which also has my exact page title, H1 and some content.
Any suggestions are welcome.
I’ve just posted my Penguin analysis:
http://www.backlinkbanzai.com/GooglePenguinExamination.htm
Hi…do you have people using Backlink Banzai for offline clients (local businesses)? If so, what kind of results are you seeing post Penguin?
I’ve used it for some offline clients and it has worked amazingly well. The keywords were mostly long tailed, but extremely targeted and our client has been getting a lot of calls from it. I highly recommend it for offline. Its great too because you can get tons of keywords so your client can absolutely dominate.
@Peter So how many offline clients are you using it with if I may ask? Also, what’s the competition like for these geolocal terms to give me an idea of how doable it is?
I’ve been reading a lot lately how geolocal search is getting much more competitive, and I wouldn’t want to do anything (including BLB) to put my offline clients at risk.
Do you think you could offer something similar to this:
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/590834-brand-new-social-search-engine-optimization-service-2012-style-backlinks-money-back-guarantee-intro-prices-available.html
Using Press Releases, Wiki’s, article dashboard etc. etc.
They have this, it’s going to be as good as banzai, but for wikis only. About the WSO, it’s kind of hard to write 3 press releases a month for something that’s not that newsworthy, and not all inner urls on a site are Pr-worthy either. That doesn’t mean don’t do press releases, but do try to match up content to news worthy type of syndication
Yeah, I’ve had trouble doing press releases myself. That’s why I linked out to that thread. However, that guy only allows you to add 1 URL at a time which makes things difficult.
I’m going to check out his new service.
How have you sites held up in the recent updates? Did you continue ranking with BB after you wrote this post?
I’ve been using the service for just over a month and have mixed results so far. Some url’s have risen a few spots while others have fallen. Too early to really know how well BB will perform. I plan on giving it a few more months and evaluating everything at that time.
Been 2 months now a EVERY url has lost its rankings. No other link building done except BB. Bottom line…the service is crap and a complete waste of $130. I would not advise anyone to waste their money on this program, because that is exactly what you will be doing. I’m sure I’ll hear it from all the BB apologists but beyond a good sales page, this program is CRAP!!!
I am no apologist for Back link Banzai, but it is obvious that you aren’t using the back links properly.
If your going to do “link building” you don’t just do 1 type of link, you do a mix of many types of links. You stated that “No other link building done except BB” that means you didn’t even do “White Hat” techniques. I am not saying that BB works, but all link building needs to happen with a “plethora” amount of different types of links.
The other thing is that even BB suggests that you use their service to point at your “authority” back links.
In my humble opinion I wouldn’t ever point any “un-natural” link at my site. I would only point it at my back links.
So the most valuable white hat authority accepted sites are:
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon
Google+
That is easy to do, if you have a blog, do a daily blog post and video. If you are using Word Press you can use a plugin to have that video and blog post published on your FaceBook Fan page, and retweeted on you Twitter account. You can also put your video on your Amazon page as well. And you can also put the url and video on the companies/websites Google+ account.
Then use any SEO service you use (SEOContentNetwork.com,wikiwhirlwind.com etc) you aren’t pointing the links at your own site, but rather you authority back links. If/When Google changes their algorithms your own site won’t be affected if any of these services are hit.
Hopefully that is some food for thought.
In my humble opinion I wouldn’t ever point any “un-natural” link at my site. I would only point it at my back links.
hindsight is 20/20
I’m no expert – but from reading what Jay has had to say here and on the BB site, I think he really knows his stuff (and Dan still recommends this service) – both of which give me more faith in it … but perhaps the reason for your ranking drop is not BB itself, but as you said – “no other link building done except BB.”
If you’ve been reading Dan’s advice and Jay’s advice (and just about everyone else’s advice in the IM/SEO world) diversity of links is now more important than ever – using only one type of links is a really big red flag to you-know-who.
When I first started using BB, I had done very little backlinking to the target site, and it gave it a really good (and fast) push up the serps. Then I added a variety of other link sources, and I’ve kept using them all, to maintain a steady velocity (and after the collapse of blog networks, it’s never wise to put all your backlinks in one basket, anyway).
I don’t consider myself a BB apologist – but with all these crazy algo updates, I think it’s a bit unfair to label this as a crap service, when your ranking woes could be caused by any number of other factors (including your own strategy).
It was a major selling point that this service submitted articles to a bunch of different platforms. So it wasn’t unreasonable at the time for someone to think that this was the only service they needed to use.
It also made sense to use it for your main site because of the naturalization feature. People needed to dilute their anchor text and this seemed like the best service to do that.
And yes Jay did mention that you should use this for Web 2.0s, but he didn’t discourage anybody from using it to build links to their main-site if that’s what they needed.
I do give Jay credit because he was sounding the alarm about link text diversity 3 or 4 months before Penguin hit so he does know what he’s talking about.
@Joe I’m also interested in this question. I cancelled my BB Account after the Recenbt Update 15 of my Sites got slapped by the Penguin. Also 1 Site been hit hard by Panda because of BMR Posts. Has anybody Recovered a BMR-Panda Slapped site??
“So, I bought 5 or 6 of these MFA sites from a forum, then the seller did the keyword research, suggested possible domain names, I chose them, registered them, and then they build the content and the sites for me and I FTP-ed them up to the domain.”
can you refer me to the link of this service provider ?
thanks in advance
It appears that the goal for Google is to “slowly” create not so reliable organic search results overtime, so that end users will count more on the Ads instead (as one of your contributors, James mentioned above). “reverse engineering” or “reverse psychology”….. if you want to call it that.
Here my 2 cents on BB:
Started using it on May 30th. Using 13 of the 20 slots on 3 different domains, which are 1.5year, 0.75 and 0.5 years old. Lots of keywords (low to medium competition) and urls. My favorite urls have 2 BB slots. 3-8 keywords per slot (not all money making keywords). 67% naturalization option, as recommended by BB.
Yes, all links go to my money sites (bad idea?)!
First month was frustrating. Nothing happened. Some sites still had their downward momentum from Penguin/Panda slap (de-indexing of blog network backlinks, and anchor text over-optimization). I really hesitated to give BB a try another month and burn another $67. Finally, after 1.5 months nearly all rankings increased. Seems like BB backlinks got indexed slowly, and thus, hopefully naturally.
The 0.5 and 0.75 year old sites experienced ranking drops round month 2. How frustrating again. Now, at month 2.5 of using BB, nearly all rankings have recovered, and many have their best rank position ever. My guess is, that many of those of the 1.5 year old site are soon getting on SERP 1, and the other will follow.
Besides BB I do a bit AMR article submission, very few web 2.0 on one site and a few social bookmarking. So, 80-90% of the last 2.5 months backlinks come from BB (bad idea no.2, huh? That’s how you start).
In sum, BB improved my rankings on many different keywords and domains. It takes time and patience and may involve some google dance (temporary rank drops), especially on newer sites. This is nothing of concern for experienced marketers. Many don’t even bother with SERP rankings in the first 6 months of a domain’s live.
Peculiarities: 2 of the domains are in German and have mainly non-English keywords. So, seems to work for this also.
I’ll try to remember to keep you updated.
I plan to use other linkbuilding services to mix it up and not to put all eggs in the BB basket. To save some money, I’ll pause my BB membership during this time.
My biggest concern here is, will links from last month of BB membership be actively indexed, or will the last month of BB be in vain, apart from links that Googy finds naturally??? As seen above, for BB linkbuilding to take effect it takes around 1.5 months. This may be the period ’till active link juicing/indexing is done by BB.
After all, don’t forget SEO ground work (on-page), and reasonable SEO besides BB. All of these in an up-to-date panda/penguin-proof manner. This of course can hamper conclusions about BB.
Konrad, thanks for the feedback and for sharing your results. BB takes time, people with patience and good on-page seo and content end up doing well with it a lot more often than not
Thanks,
Dan
Ye
Did me no favours this. Cancelled paypal sub mid month (that i’d paid for) and immediately the inbound links dropped, by over 10% even before my paid month was finished.
After much research and reading reviews of many satisfied customers, I subscribed to Backlink Banzai back in March of 2012 and utilized my 20 slots to build links to 4 e-commerce sites. At the time I had ranked #1 on Google for 2 years for my most important keyword and had page 1 ranking for dozens of other keywords for my main site, as well as page 1 ranking for a number of keywords for my other 3 sites……then came Penguin in April, 2012.
To this day, and after almost 8 months of BB link building as well as using Wiki Whirlwind, 3 of my sites are still no where to be found on Google for my pre-Penguin page 1 rankings. My main site dropped from #1 to #3 for my most important keyword after Penguin (granted, this is not so bad), and within the last week fell to #4. According to Majesticseo, all 4 of my sites now have LESS domains and external backlinks than they did in March!!! I’ve exchanged a number of emails with Scott at BB (who has been very attentive with thoughful responses) regarding the fact that none of my sites have improved in ranking or show any evidence of an 8-month link building campaign (at least according to Majesticseo) and he seems as baffled as I. I have an active social media campaign as well as engage in manual link building, but nothing seems to be working for my sites since Penguin. Has anyone else had similar experiences and have you found any resolution?
I also had ecommerce sites hit by penguin – which had previously ranked #1 for 18 months.
I started building more diverse links with anchor text variation to try to dilute the “over optimisation” – I also de-optimised the pages. This work had no effect. In parallel I built new, small sites and used them as feeder sites or “affiliate sites” to my main site. This saved me as I was able to rank the feeder sites in the top 5 quite quickly.
I then gave up with the original site and did a 301 to a new domain and cloned the site. Rankings started to come back but after 6 weeks dropped like a stone – presumably as the penalty passed across.
Removed the 301 and promoted the new site but with a controlled tiered linking strategy – I now have relatively few Tier I links but I control most of them and build up Tier 2,3 and 4 links to support Tier 1. This new site is now #2.
The approach I am using is described by the Backlink Banzai guy (can’t remember his name) . In the past I have used BB and WW – but as Tier 2 links to my Tier 1s. I am no longer using the service as I have found ways of automating this work which gives me more control – no issues with the service though and I am still using Ubertoolz which is a brilliant set of tools for generating content and links/anchors for your tiers.
Oh yes, and I should add that my feeder sites that were performing well were hit by the EMD update (they were EMDs) and am now working on recovering these.
The other thing to bear in mind is to look beyond Google for traffic – but that’s a long post on its own !
I’ve recently put together a series of videos to help understand link-building, anchor-profiles, and creating diversity post-penguin/panda…
These may help some of you better understand what’s happening, and how to deal with it:
http://www.ubertoolz.com/PostPandaPenguinLinkBuildingVideo1.php
Jay
I used to use BB but results are worthless even after 7 months of continues using. Tried everything. All the links got de-indexed and never got rankings.
It is good tool to use it as a combination with overall SEO but as a standalone tool is a waste of time.
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