Not Recommended
Here’s a list of link building services that I recommend against joining or are pending review.
- 1waylinks - too much effort to put your articles on junk sites whose poor spidering means that whatever links you DO get will soon becoming non-indexed
- 10LinksADay, read the 10 links a day review
- 3WayLinks (use NeuroLinker instead or Automated Link building)
- Article Marketer – takes long time and your articles get put on junk sites
- Backlink Solutions – the network isn’t getting stuff indexed anymore, sites in their net posting 20-50X/day.
- BadAssRSS - a monthly fee for manual RSS submissions? What a joke, read this post here instead
- Blog Blueprint – the network isn’t getting stuff indexed for very long even though they rotate in new sites, sites in their net posting 20-50X/day.
- FrontLine Autolinks – read the Frontline Autolinks review
- Google Annihilation (use NeuroLinker instead or Automated Link building)
- ISnare – not for links, just traffic
- LinkVana – Too Expensive, better networks out there doing same job for a lot less
- Link Racer- tested for 2 1/2 months no good results
- My Article Network – IP diversity flaw discussed at the beginning of this post
- My Link Club – sounds good but it’s an LFE network/WPMU network where 50% plus self-generated links are not found within 2 weeks, probably worse after a month
- MyWayLinks – been burned too many times by Leger’s stuff
- NextGenLinks – tried 3 times and never got it to work
- Traffic Bug – almost a scam but not quite… just miserably run
- The Link Juicer – indexing is poor, certain % of the entities created get deleted, too.
- SEO Link Vine – minimal syndication of articles for minimal effect, but full-priced service fee
- Web2Mayhem – this is a vastly over-priced service whose only inherently good value is the Syndicate Kahuna portion
- more to come unfortunately…
These non-recommendations are based on:
- testing done and a lack of results,
- from research done via other sites’ content and reviews,
- discussions with other knowledgeable webmasters who’ve used these services
- and feedback on forums…
1wayLinks - Hello No! Waste of F-ing Time, this is just a bunch of link-farm junk sites linking to you, only 1500 sites in their network, whereas My Article Network has 20,000 sites in their network that are NOT all junk sites with upside down link juice and for the same price (no brainer!)
MyWayLinks - 1wayLinks was so bad, and the quality of sites was so poor. that MyWayLinks had to be created. MyWayLinks is an attempt to create a better quality network of sites with PageRank, but there’s not that many sites in the network, and once again is overshadowed by the 20,000 blogs in My Article Network, and the ease in which someone could get 1100 backlinks from half-way decent sites with just one article with Unique Article Wizard.
NextGenLinks - I am not recommending against using this service, but I’ve yet to hear any good things about it from people I know who are using their services, but they’re Beta Testers so they don’t want to lose their Beta Tester discounted membership by coming out with forthright reviews.
Charles was nice enough to grant me a limited time membership and I will be testing it out soon and will write some reviews and case study results.
OneWaySEO- Been hearing a lot about his service lately since they’re commenting on blogs all the time, but they’re just another X-way linking service and with 3waylinks, NeuroLinker, and Automated Linkbuilding I think there’s already enough of those kinds of services around so I won’t be joining or testing and can only recommend you go with long-time services that have a lot of sites in their network.
3WayLinks- you lose all your links if you cancel so links are IM-permanent and you can only link to your main page urls. NeuroLinker offers you X-way links as well, with some permanent links added in via their article marketing program which is limited to their members’ s sites…
Google Annihilation - Research and forums show this launch was a bust and is now closed to public, even though more members using this service makes for better use of this type of X-way linking system.
Article Marketer - too slow is sending out articles and sends out dupe articles
ISnare - same as above, sends out dupe articles, results in very little quality credited backlinks and very little referral traffic (Article Marketing expert Fabian Tan told me this)
Types of link building services I advise against using:
Paying for blog reviews: costs too much to get this quality backlink, and it is better for you to leverage some article marketing syndication networks to do more for less…
Forum link building - if there are Dofollow links that allow for signature files to get indexed then great, most forums are on to this link building method… as evidenced by the stupid-ass comments some non-Native-English speakers make in some threads
Social bookmarking services - thousands of no-follow, little-value, highly-devalued links from the same site, please…. 
Blog commenting services – even on Dofollow blogs, might be good for the rare blogs that allow Dofollow and actually achieve Page Rank for their URLS… but the time and/or money spent for blog commenting doesn’t translate into as good of an ROI as other link building services do. Besides, many comments don’t get approved for a long time, especially if it was your first comment on that blog… WordPress default settings for Comments/discussion always holds the first commenter’s comment in moderation before auto-approving the next ones if that’s how the blog owner managed the Admin Panel settings…
Go Back To Recommended Link Building Services
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{ 53 comments }
Thanks for the info ,much appreciated and has saved me heaps of time testing myself,still undecided which way to go but one of your linking recommendations will be my first cab off the rank.
Regards
Graeme
Great site and many thanks for all the information. Amazing to find a real review site for these services, almost unique !!
Thanks Neil, “we” try
Hi, been surfing around on here for a couple of hours now – great info! I have just canceled a auto link building service I was using which cost $60 a month.- It was based on WP plugin downloads and was hardly advertised anywhere. It was fantastic for about 7 or 8 months but the downloads seem to have really slowed down and therefore the links have as well but not before I managed to get two sites to Nr 1 for their major keywords
Anyways – got $60 a month ish to spend on something new and have been looking at The Link Juicer.
I need a “fire and forget” solution really or something where I don´t need to put loads and loads of time into. Also want to be able to keep varying the anchors for synonyms, plurals etc.
You think The Link Juicer fits the bill? Do you have an aff. link for it that I can use?
Also just opened a free account at IMAutomatrr – cant knock free – right?
Hi Andy, thanks for stopping by….
1- What was name of the WP Plugin just curious…
2- The Link Juicer doesn’t get many of its self-generated links indexed, so if you DO get it you’ll have to do some work to get those indexed, or it’ll be a waste of time
If it’s for just one site, or even 3, I recommend you rent out some Linx Boss open spots, there are people selling them here and there
I think there were a couple of plugins he was using. It changed peoples comments names to my anchor text and inserted links and also sometimes just left a text link with anchor text at the bottom of a blog post if they had the plugins installed – very nifty!
Lunaticlinks is the website – German bloke called Thomas was advertising it over at Warrior Forum but the links have slowed down so much now that I think I can probably do better for the money – was great though!
I´ll go and have a look at Linx Boss now.
Have a look at Caroline Middlebrooks new project – all social bookmarking but automated, drip fed etc. Looks pretty good to me but its your area of expertise so I´d be interested in your opinion: http://www.imautomator.com/
Signed up for LinxBoss a couple of days ago and have done a bit of SEO work and given a slot to a friend of mine whose website ranks for nothing – he paid $100 for the one slot leaving me with for so the first months cost is just about covered. Had to re-write his front page to include his target phrases and will redo his images as they are all called “A,B,C” or “1,2,3″ and have no alt text at all.
His site is targeting a range of phrases of differing competitiveness most of them he doesnt even appear anywhere in the listings for.
My estate agents site already has plenty of traction although its quite new so hopefully this will push it from positions 7 or so on page 1 to the top 3.
Will see how it goes anyway. Also used your aff link and should be renewing for the next couple of months at least.
Thanks very much for the info and reviews – godsend in this world of IM bullshit!
Thanks for popping in Andy.
Please leave any feedback on your result son the Linx Boss posts on this site, if you don’t mind (good or bad, we’re transparent here!)
This is kinda ironic.
Your website is LinkVanaReviews but you don’t recommend LinkVana.
Is this the way people doing reviews now?
Yup, its kind of ironic, and rather short sighted on my end
But the title of this site is (as you say) Link Vana REVIEWS not Link Vana RECOMMENDATIONS…
Hey Daniel, First off I love your site. It’s become my mecca for all link building reviews. Thanks for posting all of your reviews and results here.
I did have a question about “blog commenting” that you mentioned above. I agree that it can be very tedious if you do this yourself, but what are your thoughts on outsourcing this? Some services guarantee at least 90% of the links will stick after 60 days and the expense is reasonable.
Yes, blog commenting is OK I guess, but it’s going to get tougher to get dofollow anchor text backlinks when more and more blog mods are aware that “Cheap San Francisco hotels” isn’t a real user’s name.
Most of the services out there now are using commenting demon, Scrapebox or various other tools to do the mass-commenting, but to asnwer your real question, yes it’s not a bad idea to outsource this if its real cheap
I wonder about the value of blog comments sometimes.
It seems to be a “one for the future” method as sticking a comment with followed anchor text on a new post means you have a backlink on a page with zero PR.
Finding posts with PR 2 and higher means there are probably already lots of other comments so any link juice is diluted – sometimes massively.
Isn´t there also something in Googles algorithm which devalues brand new links on old posts with PR to stop people gaming the system?
Answers to these questions and more would be much appreciated!
I haven’t done blog commenting in a long, long time so I’m no expert at it. The way I see it, services charge what the industry will support, so 2k approved comments/links for 50 bucks (example) must mean that the service isn’t delivering super valuable contextual links or it’s just an under-rated, under-valued link building method, like Xrumer blasts can be….
If someone has a blog commenting SERVICE they’d like me to review or use, please let me know here, in the comments section
Thanks,
Dan
P.S. For a while I was convinced that OBLS on a page DID matter, but I am rethinking that notion, as it may not make a whole lot of difference
Wow guys, thanks for the fast replies. The service I was looking at was http://www.ultraseosolutions.com/index.php/services/blog-commenting-auto or http://www.ultraseosolutions.com/index.php/services/dofollow-blog-commenting-service.
I would love to see a case study. I don’t have the time or patience to learn Scrapebox or to do that myself…too ADD!
I chatted with Andy, who was posting in these comments…. He gave me the url of the service he use din the past and we discussed doing a pure test on a domain. It’ll be about 2 weeks before the results are in.
Thanks,
Dan
Hi Dan!
Do you have already the results from the comments service test? Or did you post it as a standalone article?
Regards,
Waldemar
That’s awesome, Dan! Can’t wait to see the results. Would you mind emailing me the name of the service that Andy used in the past?
Thanks,
Matt
Here you go MAtthew…
http://www.jimkarterseo.com/
Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t use his own service to rank better for Do Follow Blog commenting term, for which he is ranked page 3.
I’ll let you know how it goes, but one thing I can tell you is…. you can use a tool like Scrapebox and do this yourself in a few minutes with a few clicks
I just put in an order for 220 Backlink Solutions posts at my outsourcer. Then, I heard that you no longer recommend BLS. I did a quick check of my posts for last month and sure enough, indexing was very poor, like 5-20%. With this indexing rate, ROI on links (even though powerful) is lowered significantly and makes BMR a much better deal.
Anyway, I was able to catch my outsourcer just in time to cancel that 220 post order for BLS, thanks to you Dan and your excellent blog. I am going to redeploy these to BMR post which have a much higher and tracked indexing rate.
I hope the guys at BLS are watching this blog, so they can clean up there act before they lose all their customers. Honest review blogs in this space are rare and Dan is definitely one of the good guys!
Thanks,
Will
Thanks Will, I’m spending 1200/month reviewing stuff, so it’s tough to update the past recommendations in a timely manner, glad this got to you in time
Hi Daniel
According to your recommendation I want to submit to Linx Boss , the problem is that I have only one site and Linx Boss refuse to submit only on URL . Do you have any other solution?
I need Automatic link building like lix Boss because my English is not good enough for article submitting and blog comments etc .
Please advice
Thanks
Shlomo
Shlomo,
I can split the cost with you. I only have 2 domains.
Please let me know if you are interested.
Thanks,
Gary
Hey Dan,
Wow, I gotta say I am super disappointed by the BLS and Blogblueprint being “unrecommended”. These were my bread & butter linkbuilders and now that they’re gone, I feel at a loss.
First, I’d like to ask how do you “track” their indexing as Will Roberts talked about above. I’d like to do this for myself and really see if the indexing has dropped to this 5%-20% level. Is there a fast way to check the indexing of the posts? If these services have gone down the tubes, I suppose I’ll cancel my account and move onto the other linkbuilding services you now recommend — namely linxboss and BMR.
I’d probably switch already, but i know that BLS and BlogBlueprint did work super well for my sites, which got HUGE boosts in rankings and are now top 5 for a number of high traffic search terms.
To just dump those services now (especially BLS with their waiting list), I’d feel….. awkward? scared? lost? It’s a hard feeling to described — Knowing that I HAD a great system for getting ranked high and now knowing that my system is, for lack of a better word, poo-poo.
Well, I think that sums up my question/comment. On a side note, Just want to say thanks for this site and everything you share with us — I’d still probably be pumping out just 3 articles a day and submitting them to 4 directories; it was the one and ONLY part of my SEO plan until i came across this site!
Thanks
-Sean
Hey Sean,
I did a total of 60 posts on BLS and was about to do 220 more when I found out about the indexing issues from Dan, just in time I might add. I did a exact phrase check in quotes of the articles in Google and only found 20% of them listed in the search and therefore indexed. My posts were spun post, so there were a couple common phrases that could be targeted by this check. However, if your posts are uniquely written, it will take you longer to check indexing because you will need to do this one post at a time.
So, out of the 60 posts, I got 12 links, which actually were very effective nonetheless at raising my rankings. So, if it raised my rankings, why would I still be complaining. It’s really about ROI compared to a service like BMR who not only is cheaper per month, but does a good job of getting posts indexed along with tracking it for you in their interface.
More about ROI. Last month, 60 outsourced spun posts for BLS cost me $45, plus the $97 monthly fee, thats a total of $2.37/link. If I only get 12 links, even if they are effective links, that raises the cost to $11.83/link. In comparison, 60 uniquely written outsourced posts for BMR cost me $85, plus the $59 monthly fee, thats a total of $2.40/link. This is an equivalent cost per link to BLS if indexing were not an issue, but unfortunately it is. Therefore, lack of indexing in BLS makes ROI much worse on a per link basis, in spite of the effectiveness of their links.
Bottom line: use BMR instead as recommended by Dan!
Woot, $85 for 60 unique written posts. That’s quite a good price. It will be good if you can shared with us your sources, or are they your personal outsourcers? I have ordered 25 posts at $2/ 150 words for BMR to write me the posts..
Thanks for the info Will.
This is why its going to be hard for me to check. They are NOT uniquely written, they’re spun. The “bad news” is that I did such a good job with the spinning and spin variations are so high that snippets come out at least 70% unique or better — i use The Best Spinner by the way.
Worse yet, I don’t keep the individual posts, I just keep the spun snippet text file. Once a post is submitted to BLS, they don’t give you any info about the post, so it almost seems impossible for me to check the indexing. I’m opening up some of the files now and I am going to randomly spin and then do the google quotes method, but that’s still shooting in the dark it seems.
I’d assume my best bet would be to do about 50 new snippets, pause all my current campaigns, and then track the indexing of those 50 and see what happens. I was hoping to perhaps figure this out before my next subscription date — The 28th!!! — but I guess i won’t be that lucky.
Like I said, I’d love to have the willpower to just up & cancel the dang thing like you guys recommend, but it’s been so good to me in the past, it feels like I can’t until i see the results (or lack thereof) with my own eyes.
HI Dan, This is my first time on your site and I am inpressed. Great information. I am new to online marketing and am getting ready this morning to pick up a automated blog system that just came out. It looks good but I am not sure. My question is this, I have been told you should not have a link building campaign or get link services unless you have the traffic to justify to google how you can have these new links.
Is this right ? does this mean I need to have a ppc campaign or pay for 50 000 visitors in 3 months like many offers I have seen ?
Can you please advise me on this ? I would really appreciate that and I will be sure to look here first when it comes time to purchase whatever I may be in need of.
Thanks in advance
Barry
Barry, that’s not correct at all. If anything just need site to be aged a little bit before sending hordes of backlinks to it, since not too many brand new sites get 1000k links in a day “naturally”
Hi Dan, I really wanted to thank you for a very fast response , your answer has taken some weight off my shoulders. Note to self, next time ask the questions first before I should start to worry lol. I just picked up autoblog samuiria, I am not affiliate so I am not selling it but I am interested to try it out and start earing some basic dollars if possible. I wanted to know if you have looked at the apex xgenseo ? I waas thinking that might be next on my list if you have seen it in the past any insights would be very helpful. I will be needing some niche based links soon so I will go through as many posts as I can to see if I can get a product or service through your site that makes sense. I am in canada and am looking for something that is mabey more targeted to my country if that makes any difference.
Thanks again for your help and the fastest response I have ever recieved even when I have payed for the answers lol
Barry
Someone I know who looked at XGENSEO said it was terrible (his words), and not comparable to SE Nuke.
Autoblog samurai eh? What next auto blog elite/kahuna/bot/submitter?
Dear Daniel
What would I do without YOU!
I found your site by accident. Thank goodness for accidents.
With all these services it makes my hair hurt.
Thank you for the reviews.
Mark
Mark, thanks for dropping in to say hello, and for the feedback.
Lots of services out there yes that is for sure! Looks like I got some job security in this niche, lol
Dan, great insights on this thread & site. I am surprised there aren’t more quality programs out there based upon the available of dollars ready to spend on such programs.
TJ, hard to find good reviews from actual users, too. A lot of people say things “work great” when all they’re impressed with really is that the captchas got solved automatically, or that their articles did, indeed get sent out and syndicated.
Hi Dan, what do you mean by this
“Backlink Solutions – the network isn’t getting stuff indexed anymore, sites in their net posting 20-50X/day.”
BLS is not effective in link building anymore? Recently all my queue articles listed in the project section has gone from 300 to 0. I’ve send the ticket to the support team and they told me there is no articles in queue. I am thinking switching to Linkvana since they proven to works by lots or users. What do you think Dan?
Jeremy
Jeremy, it means that the sites in BLS network are/were getting over run with posts and aren’t getting everything indexed for very long, so they’re no longer recommended. Same goes for LinkVana, too, not because LinkVana is a bad service, but merely way overpriced and Build My Rank has a better network for a lot less (price-wise)
I just cancelled my BLS membership today. I noticed too their high posting rate, but what was even more disappointing was the fact that a good number of the sites in their network aren’t even indexed. To which they replied:
“De-indexing is something that does happen unfortunately with these types of system… given the amount of activity – though i cannot say for sure for we have zero control of how the SE’s work with our sites.
When we do find sites that have been deindexed – they are removed and queued items are pushed elsewhere.
We do have a system that periodically checks the indexing of sites in the background and reports back to us as well. So we do our best to ensure that the sites contained are in good standing.”
Lame. Anyways, what a bust. Hey Daniel, have you tried articleproductions.com? Seemed to get a good review on warrior forum http://www.warriorforum.com/internet-marketing-product-reviews-ratings/28614-short-review-article-productions.html
Hey Luke, I tried ArticleProductions, didn’t like the set up, and stopped using it almost before I even tried.
BLS… if sites get de-indexed all they gotta do is get them re-indexed, then retire them so members don’t lose links, but hey, it’s not my service, so not up to me to make those decisions, unfortunate, really, was my favorite service for a long time
thanks for the info, I was on my trial $7 with 3waylinks and I just canceled that garbage service. They decline sites for weird reasons, provide crap support, and take too long in general to get sites accepted.
I thought this would be a great lazy way to get my mini sites ranking but it really isn’t since I have to continue paying to just keep the links. At the moment that I hit 50 sites and already have all the links I am now losing money. It is much easier to get a few credits with article ranks, put in a little bit of extra work and get 250 backlinks for one price that you can keep and these links will also continue to coming in daily and not at once so it works in a similar way but way better.
I thought about neurolinker for a bit but there is just something about subscription services that kill all your links at the end that isn’t kosher with me.
Hi Dan, what about FTS, Free Traffic System? What is your opinion on their blog network? I have subscribed to their paid service but didn’t really used it often and didn’t make any tracking too.
Free Traffic System That review sums up some things
Thanks.. Will take a look. Didn’t notice there’s a review on your blog..
Eric,
I would like to know too who you are using for $85/60 pricing. Assuming they can take on new business, I don’t want to infringe on the writer from you. Thanks.
Paul,
LOL.. I am not the one. I am replying to the guy on the post above me who says that he’s paying $85/60 pricing.. I am currently using BMR own writers, paying $2 for a 150 words snippet to post a link to their blogs. I have ordered 25 posts. I will be looking at other alternatives for the next month..
Hey Guys,
Here is how I get the slightly lower $81/60 pricing ($1.35/post). I actually misquoted previously a little higher by mistake.
This is not my own outsourcer, but a company that is available to the public. However, if you go to their site, their published pricing is $90/50 ($1.80/post), which is still better than $2/post using BMR in-house writers.
I will let you know how I got a further 25% discount on this pricing from them, if Dan gives me permission to post this information. It involves buying BMR from another affiliate, which may take commissions from Dan, if you bought from his link. Since this is Dan’s blog, I will not interfere with his means of making a living, without his permission of course.
Dan, if you would, please let me know how much information I am allowed to disclose regarding this company to your blog readers.
Here you go folks http://articlesontap.com/buy-build-my-rank-posts
Yep, that’s them. They will also automatically submit the post to your BMR account through a writer account that you setup for them. They have been a really great service provider for me, and have written quality posts that are delivered directly to my BMR account. Any problems with posts being accepted by BMR are rewritten, of course.
As of the Moment, BMR seems to be the best reviewed service for my budget. I’m going to cancel BLS this month and sign-up for BMR in the next few days.
The way I figure it, I was paying between $4 and $8 an article (1 PR0 Link) — with BMR I’ll be paying about $1.8 to $2 per PR1-PR6 link. For me, that makes WAY more sense. And when you factor in the part where they actually submit the posts to your account FOR YOU, that is a huge (and often overlooked) time saver.
My only worry, BMR is going to crash (aka, get super sucky) as soon as I join — Like BLS did for me. I always get in too late to these services and they get really bad before too long
-Sean
P.S. At Will Robert (Off Topic) . I sent you an email through evaluseek.com, Please get back to me (via email) if you get it.
Hi Daniel, I was wondering if you or anybody has seen the ontolo link building service. It seems very high end and very expensive. They seem to have the most comprehensive and unique link building tools and methods out of the software adn services I have seen.
Barry, it’s a links acqusition tool, more than a link building tool. It’s slow, it’s purely white-hat, the only thing automated about it is the prospecting part, whereby they’re prospecting and trying to acquire links form other webmasters by running DB queries that you set up, stuff like that. Pretty good tool for an SEO firm to have so they can have a staffer run this tool and then hire on-staff writer to provide those places with articles for backlinks, or just to handle the link exchanges once prospects say they’re interested in exchanging links or just linking to you.
Good concept, good tool, not my cup of tea, here’s a guest post I wrote on how to get backlinks from optimal targets, maybe this will help you understand that concept more, if you don’t already.
Thanks,
Dan
Thanks James