I’ve been knocked on my butt with a torn something-or-other in my knee, and I’m missing out on all the “fun” with latest algorithm updates, and the conversation and what-not…
So I will try to keep this brief, seeing as how I can’t concentrate for very long due to the pain/these pain meds.
I will reply to comments if/when my head ever get clear.
- Consistent link velocity seems key now, not just link volume, Thanks Jay from Backlink Banzai for this update, and knowledge gleaned form his testing.
- Unique Article Wizard, while not a huge ranking booster compared to some blog networks in the past, is still somewhat of a traffic generator and is still considered a good method for article distribution, link generation and minimal targeted traffic source.
- Backlink Banzai is good as it gets right now for quality content distribution
- Social signals are more and more important
- SEO Content Network has the ability to generate traffic, which is something I’m going to try and have us ALL focus on more, moving forward. Traffic is key, it’s what we’re all after, so I think I/we should focus more on traffic generation methods in the coming days…
- Finally, I’m starting something that’s sort of a master-mind club so we can all practice long-term solid SEO and don’t get caught with our “pants down” with any/each new algorithm updates.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Dan,
Thanks for constantly updating the link building services, as it’s great to know how they’re performing year in and year out.
I recently joined Backlink Banzai after reading your review, so I’ll see how it goes.
I was wondering if you have tried the guest blogging system from The Keyword Academy (TKA) called Postrunner? If so, what kind of results you got? Is it worth submitting loads of articles there, as the sites don’t really seem that strong?
Thanks
What! No mention of the BMR shut-down. Would welcome your thoughts on that.
A torn something-or-other? I think I had one of them once!
Not sure if this classes as off topic or not but It’s worth mentioning anyway. Google have been sending out “suspicious linking” notifications to webmasters registered with webmaster tools. The idea seems to be to scare people into admitting some sort of guilt and pinging what they’ve been using to gain links. General opinion at the moment tends to suggest ignoring the notices and carry on as you are, throwing your hands in the air only seems to cause problems for the individual and link service providers down the line.
Have you heard anything about this Dan?
Hey Daniel,
have you heard about BMR closing its doors and other blog networks being shut down by google? I think people should seriously revise their link building plans because all that money and hard work is going down the drain for many IMers.
Dan,
Just for a heads up. Tons of content/blog networks hit. Not sure how in the game with these networks you’ve been, but here is my note:
Here are the networks that are gone (80-90% or more de-indexed):
1. ELN (EliteLinkNetwork, run by Adam) is gone.
2. Linkvana (Elite/SEOLinkvine, too) (which wasn’t that great anyway) is gone.
3. BMR is gone.
4. I hear Blog Blueprint is gone.
5. High PR Society is gone.
6. SEO Nitro gone.
7. Backlink Buddy gone.
8. SEO Link Monster gone.
Note: 4 of the above, Elite-SEO Linkvine, Backlink Buddy, SEO link monster, and SEO nitro were built by the same person(s).
Now, I’m curious if the likes of others have stood.
I hear UAW is fine, ALN is still churning, other user-submitted Private PR sites are starting up still to combat content, link, pictures, theme, ip, etc footprints.
Interesting to see how the de-indexation has affected your top services? I know BMR is gone. How about LinxBoss?
Backlink Banzai? What is the de-indexation rate?
And the others (SCN, etc)?
Chris, though I don’t want to speak for Backlink Banzai but I believe they use article directories and generate spun articles linking back to your sites. They also send 1,000 comment & 1,000 profile links to each of the articles they publish for you. So I don’t believe they have to worry about being “de-indexed”. They also rotate to new sites each month so that they don’t leave a foot print.
With SCN, our main metric is Traffic. So we make changes to ensure that we keep sites with traffic that is passed on to our customers sites. And as Dan said “I’m going to try and have us ALL focus on more, moving forward.” Having said that we do care about the effect we have on our customers sites, so we have made many changes from when we started. No “reports” are given out. We turned off all pinging and trackbacks. Starting this weekend we will be writing/syndicating and publishing our own content to our sites. When a site gets de-indexed we have procedures in place to protect our customers, and we will add a new site to replace it. On top of that we will be adding 50-100 additional new sites each month. We have done many other things to protect our network, the typical things of unique c-class ip addresses for each site, but we have done things by using a dozen+ hosts around the world, we are on 19+ a class ip address, over 35 b-class etc. And unlike all the other content networks we are constantly testing new things out to ensure we generate traffic, but that our sites are safe. In the next few months, we are looking to add additional services to our customers, we are trying to add a service to generate back links to our customers 2.0 sites, we want to add social links as well to our All Star Package etc. We are looking at ensuring that our customers are able to follow best practices, and have the best possible results. We care about the success of our customers. Finally, we listen to suggestion of our customers, and if we can we try to implement the best ideas we are given. The problem with all 8 services you mentioned is they were “stuck” doing the same thing.
I hope this answers your questions Chris.
Sorry to hear you tore your something-or-other, but thanks for the update. The mastermind group sounds like a great idea, as no one person can keep track of all these constant updates and changes in the seo world. Looking into SEO content network as well.
Hey Dan,
Just wondering if you have any updated thoughts about LinxBoss. In previous posts, you’ve mentioned it works great for some sites, not so great for others. Is it still working well for those particular sites, after these algo updates? I was thinking of signing up just a few days ago, but I’ve got paranoia creeping in again.
Some folk might think this is a very good time to be under medication – but I hope you’re better real soon – and hope your sites haven’t been hit hard though any of this.
Well men,
Is key right now to try to get traffic from other sources also and master it , since the way we are right now google is the Master or Boss and the main reason we all looking to make a online business is to avoid the word “Boss”.
So diversity of traffic is the key to sleep well everyday
.
Daniel.. BMR is gone! You know that, right?
I´ve always gone for huge diversification on source of links, quality of links and most of all anchor text. I did the anchor text mix up from the very start – just seemed obvious to mimic what would naturally occur. It was nice to see this recommended in one of the services offered on here recently as I never know if I am on the right lines or not.,
I have stayed away completely from HPBL networks or packages of any kind – for reasons that are too complicated to try and explain I saw that as a non starter for long term SEO.
My few sites (all lead generation) have been completely unaffected by algorithm changes, haven’t noticed any drop offs whatsoever but this could also be down to my competition in general just being clueless
Very interested in your idea about the master mind club as I really need to catch up on whats new and whats working (time constraints limit this and this site is one of my primary sources of up to date info) so will go and check out that page now.
Oh and hope you´re feeling better soon . I have just got over 4 or 5 weeks of feeling crappy due to some frickin virus!
So any updates coming through on your Site Dan for any of these blog link networks you recommend? Reading through forums, Matt Cutts tweets and a few posts on Authoritive Seo Figures sites it would seem blog networks are dead, dying or soon to be…
I have heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So you are right, any blog network that continues to run the same old model will be dead, any blog network that adapts and makes changes will be able to survive.
Dan, I completely agree with your comment “I’m going to try and have us ALL focus on more, moving forward.” If people did SEO as away to generate “traffic” then they are actually benefiting their site. We need to be careful on how we do things, ie diversity in links, not using certain links to directly link to our site but to “buffer sites”, but if we are using these buffer sites to generate traffic to our “money sites” then we are actually doing what Google wants. I know that “DoFollow” links are ideal for “ranking”. But has anyone ever thought, if we did the same kind of link building we do now, to sites like article directories, high end web2.0, videos, and press releases but make them “NoFollow” could we generate “traffic” and then pass on “authority” even if we aren’t passing on “link juice”? I know many people only can think of “back links” and “indexed links” but maybe the mind set needs to change. Maybe we should actually use these “tools” to market and then allow some “natural” links from others, and also earn some credibility and authority with Google. Just some of my thought this morning.
SEO Content Network,
I agree. I’ve stopped thinking about running 10-20 or more sites at once and slamming with AMR, blog networks, etc etc etc. Rather start branding the niche sites. So, moving forward, they are 20+ page “niche authority sites” vs just “niche sites” or “autority sites”.
I’m a big fan of the branding that Pat Flynn has done through his smartpassiveincome.com website, products, and podcasts.
I’m essentially doing the same method as Pat has for 4-5 sites that I’m rolling out to be branded niche autority sites.
Of course in doing the above, I’m changing the focus on traffic to be more than just SEO, but through other referral means such as video, podcasting, social media etc.
I don’t think that services like UAW and Backlink Banzai will be affected, even in the future. The reason being is that they are not connected in any way and they don’t use each others authority to “pass juice”, like it’s usually done in networks.
The above mention services just have lists of loads of article directories, blogs and whatnot, where they submit content to, whether it’s spinned or original. Those sites aren’t part of a network and they’re not there to support each other – simply loads of independent sites, which just live on their own, so Google can’t have anything against them.
Dan,
I have heard BMR is shutting down!
With all the money and time put into that site by us, what would you recommend now, and what’s to say google won’t do the same to it either?
Mike
Mike,
I’d use AMR, UAW to start. I’d go and find some underground blog networks that aren’t as publicized. Obviously, I’m not going to divulge here as I’m on them and it wouldn’t be underground if I shared here as Dan’s site gets some good traffic.
What like to have a quick chat with you Chris!
Sure thing. If Dan is okay with it. I’m not here to steal his thunder, but only to add value. Dan was one of 3 people that helped me get to where I am now in SEO. He was instrumental in ’10 to my success.
My email is chriswyattseo@gmail.com
I am new to SEO and link building and want to promote my website and others. What would be recommended services (I am aware you can not just use one)? I am thinking of using Backlink Banzai and Backlink Booster to start. Anyone have any comments on this? Maybe ones that I should try or ones that I should stay away from? I was going to use BMR but apparently its being shut down or something. Any help would be appreciated.
With all the scare-mongering that’s going on with Google and Panda at the moment, it really is more important than ever to keep a level head…
Remember that Google are driven by profit, and they can massively increase that profit by pushing people away from SEO and on to the PPC model. At the moment, their massive witch-hunt – (codenamed Panda 3.3!) is doing that in volumes. We deal with large clients every day, and the increases in PPC budgets that are currently going on is a reliable indicator that Google’s tactic is working.
Google’s algorithm CANNOT handle the type of de-indexation and penalties they’re currently pushing through. They’ve had to take on huge numbers of staff to do the manual checks necessary to implement a lot of this. Therefore, it’s a lot of money and resource for them. And it also follows no pattern. You could have 100 sites that are all linked in the same way, and you’ll get problems on a small percentage of them, but not the others. This is another clear indicator of the ‘crap-shoot’ that Google are causing, because they do not have the resources to deal with everything via technology; it requires human intervention.
I have no idea how long this will last, but following the 80/20 rule, they’ll only need to keep this up for so long before they’ve achieved enough damage to not warrant the continued expenditure .
I’ve been personally seeing, (and have also been talking to many high-end technical SEO’s – working on large web-estates who are also seeing,) that a lot of people are coming through the ranking drops, penalties and notices. The ones that we’ve seen ‘beat’ it the quickest and most effectively, are the ones who didn’t skip a beat. They kept on building links, but massively diversified their link-profile. They also made some minor on-site tweaks and de-optimisation changes. And they just kept their heads down and got on with their business. Many of them have started to climb back up the rankings again, without ever contacting Google or jumping through their ridiculous circus hoops. If you read our recent post on dealing with penalties etc (located in the Members Area & FAQ’s) then you’ll get more information on this.
Public reaction often tends to be ‘react first, think second’. It’s the knee-jerk reaction to run and take cover. This should not be the case with online commerce at the moment. Face the facts that there is generally very little you can do to get back in Google’s ‘good graces’, and even trying will waste enormous energy. Get on with marketing; creating more distributed web-assets and building diverse links.
Because of the way Google is now using social signals and other ‘activity’ effects as part of their ranking factors, it is becoming increasingly important to move away from the concept of pure volume of links as the primary ranking mechanism. A steady drip-drip-drip of links and an established link-velocity are now fundamental to Google’s approach. We need constant link ‘love’ from a wide variety of sites to keep our site looking socially significant and active. And remember that ‘social activity’ isn’t just contained inside the major social networks. Social activity is any continual signal that keeps your site looking like it’s being discussed – and that it remains ‘relevant’ to people and therefore the Search Engines.
Google has gone on the war-path, and unless you want to try and face-them-off in an open battlefield where ALL the odds are stacked in their favour, you need to keep your head down, plan your moves strategically and carefully, and not react to every bullet that whizzes over your head…
…Because if you do, they’ll have succeeded in distracting you from what matters most; and that’s pushing ahead to your targets, and concentrating on navigating through this.
Sounds like everyone thinks that blog networks are going to be gone I do not believe that for one second first off its not like google did not know about blog networks they have always known and did nothing to stop it. Well I am sure they did something but there is no way they can shut down blog networks
Oneway links Jon Leger just reported in Jl forums today that 61 % of blogs in network are now deindexed.
We from our own tests would advise staying away from Linxboss we have seen massive penalities ten plus pages penalities and a wholesale deindexing of huge numbers of blogs…