A lot of the BlackHat forums state that Xrumer is THE best link building tool ever/right now, but is it really?
Xrumer is a tool that can make/register member profiles on forums for you, start forum threads, and even send private messages to other members of those forums, all form a centralized location.
Most Xrumer users don’t use it as a private-messaging SPAM tool but merely as a registration/profile creator for eventual backlinks generation
2 costs associated with running an Xrumer box:
Buying Xrume r- $500.00
Dedicated server – Xrumer requires a lot of resources technically and only a dedicated server or VPS will be sufficient
Proxies - you need to run your campaigns behind proxies to present different source identities (IP addresses) so you’re protected, and not seen as a single entity creating all these profiles and registrations.
Cost?: about $250.00/month and that’s a conservative estimate
What’s Xrumer good for?
Most people will tell you that Xrumer should never be pointed towards a money site nor a main domain url, for fear that these mass generated links will leave a bad footprint or other tell-tale signs and lead to a de-indexing, sandboxing or other penalties from the search engines.
This simply isn’t true…
If your domain has some “age” to it and some backlinks to it already, you can definitely get some Xrumer blasts sent to these sites without fear of penalty.
I’ve tested this out of some domains and this has proven to be the case: aged domains 5 months or older will not get penalized for hordes of backlinks generated by Xrumer blasts
Xrumer blasts tests:
A little known fact about Xrumer blasting is that many of the links don’t stick, so it’s like building an SEO foundation for your sites on sand or quicksand. 10,000 Xrumer links may lead to 5,000 stable backlinks and it’s been my experience that more and more of these links get removed or discredited as more time passes.
Another little known fact ts that one of the major forum software platforms V Bulletin will be making all of its forum profiles NoFollow, which means that this is one platform VERSION (version 4) that will not get slammed so hard anymore by Xrumer blasters/users.
It’s safe to assume that other forum software platforms will follow suit, but this really doesn’t matter too much because there’s still 1000s of forums out there NOT running V bulletin and if they are, then they’re not ALL running the latest version with NoFollow attributes on the member profiles (where most Xrumer blasts deliver DoFollow backlinks)
TESTS:
I got 1000s of links to main domain urls for 3 different sites.
Results:
Site 1- ranked #3 for 3 word term, but not ranked well at all for the term I got all the anchor text links for
Site 2- improved from page 3 to page 2, then as the campaigns stopped, went back to page 4, then 3. As mentioned before in this post, a lot of your Xrumer-generated links will get indexed, and de-credited as evinced by the drop in the SERPs once the inbound linking activity stopped and more links fell off the (accredited) inbound link profile for that site
NOTE: I took this same URL and anchor text and popped it into EZArticleLink and threw some bonus links at it and now the site is page 1 for that keyphrase. Anchor text links amidst content, as opposed to anchor text links without surrounding text still proves to be the best types of links you can get.
Site 3- 1000s of links via Xrumer for competitive phrase, and I saw little-to-no improvement in the rankings due to these links so I abandoned the campaign. However, in this case I didn’t see much of a drop-off in the SERPs for that term once the Xrumer blasting campaigns stopped, which is probably due to the fact that I had other inbound linking activity going on for that url, too.
So what’s Xrumer good for?
Getting massive amounts of links to youe conttent pieces and entities linking to your main sites; ie. established sites like web 2.0 properties. These web 2.0 properties can withstand the onslaught of crappy links due to their long-lasting trust and authority in the search engine’s eyes.
Xrumer’s good for developing link juice for your main money sites by pushing links, and link juice…towards sites that link to you (like web 2.0 properties).
It’s been my experience that a service like Unique Article Wizard does a pretty good job of achieving similar results, but it’d be very time consuming to develop the same number of links with UAW as it would take with Xrumer
Digression Point/Rant: Myths about SEO, Link Building and Link Bait
Myth #1
You’ll hear the SEO and Link Building gurus all stating that “creating quality content leads to natural backlinks from people who appreciate your top-quality content and share it with other via editorial links on their websites”
- First of all, you always have to self-promote or self-generate backlinks to get your content noticed in the first place because if nobody sees your content, then there’ll not be anyone to notices it, and only a very small percentage of those will be “nice” enough to send a link to your content from their sites.
- Secondly, if/when you do get some natural backlinks, the desired anchor text is hardly used, and more often than not, you’re getting linked to by the title of your content pieces, not the main keyword for your article/post
Myth #2
You’ll also hear them stating that devising and publishing good link bait will get you some naturally given free backlinks from other sites. While this is true, since people like lists and engaging content, you gotta ask yourself these questions…
#1- Are you monetizing that link bait?
Kinda hard to when most link bait by its very nature is “top 10 lists” of favorite plugins, resources for people to check out etc…and these link bait pieces are generally items that send traffic away form your site and interrupt whatever traffic/sales funnel you’re trying to work at.
#2- Can good link bait be monetized well?
Yes, it will if you link to the money page for a link bait piece getting these natural links
#3 – Does a link bait piece help the rankings for your money pages?
Yes, it will if you link to the money page for a link bait piece getting these natural links
#4 – Do link bait urls getting lots of natural backlinks help your main site get ranked better for its keywords?
Nope
#5 – Does link bait help your other inner pages get higher ranked?
Not really, only the posts or pages in close proximity to the link bait urls getting all those non-anchor texted backlinks will receive some juice, but if your site is optimized properly for its on-page seo then your 2d and 3d level urls are linking to category pages, money pages, or home page anyways, so maybe there’s some benefit but your on-page optimization factors have to be real solid to glean SOME benefit from this.
#6- How much time does it take to create thought-provoking, reader-engaging link bait and can you do it on a consistent enough basis to make it worth your while?
But I digress… if you have any questions about Xrumer, Xrumer blasts or Xrumer blasting services feel free to comment
UPDATE: September 28, 2010
Profiles linking works great, for direct linking, for sending link juice towards satellite sites, for getting things indexed, for passing link juice down towards all the tiers in your linking machines, etc…. The best hands-free, no-tech-savviness-required service to use for this is Drip feed Blasts
Recommended Link building Services
Download Targeted Subscribers Wordpress Plugin Here
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Daniel, first let me say yours in one of the best on testing backlinkin’ services and talking seo on the web..
On the test did you use Door Way pages? In other words Authority web sites to hit with the xrumer blasts? From what i understand this works best.. never done it before, seems like a lot of work for these types of links if you do it yourself (all the set up).
Using a service from a pro that uses it is best for this, i guess unless
you want to hit a lot of pages..
The Viagra Keywords you can see in the serps getting hit with this type
of tactic. A lot of times you can see they use forums as the page to leave a link to a page for a pharma site to get a cut of the action. But the listing does’nt last too long… a pump and dump.. Maybe if it gets
enought traffic for the Key Word it might be fun to try.. can you share
the services if any you know that are good at this, (and real lol)
for doing xrumer linking?
Anyway, Thanks for all the sharing of your experiments.
Scott.
Hi Scott, thanks for stopping by….
I used a pro xrumer blaster to do these tests and I only hit main domain urls for destination links. I believe these blasts were done using forum profiles mainly.
I’ll send you an email soon with the name of the guy I used, nice guy
Scott, I CC-ed you on an email I sent to the guy I used for the Xrumer blasts
Hey Dan,
Have you ever used xrumer for pure profile link building? Everyone knows that profile backlinks are great to have in a varied link profile. In my experience they help a ton and almost get immediate results. Right now I’m using sick profile maker loaded up with a harvested list of different forums using scrapebox(thousands of them…). It’s a great little piece of software for just 20/month and way better than the brute force linking loophole B.S. limited to 100 sites a month lol…Anyway, I read a lot on the BH forums and guys usually are using the profile linking option rather than purely forum thread spam and sending the linkjuice to web 2.0 pages through to their money sites or other web 2.0 sites.
Also, can you review these services if you don’t mind: Link Racer and FrontLineAutolinks. I’ve only used linkracer a little and have had great results, but frontlineautolinks seems pretty much brand new(similar to BLS from the looks of it without the promoting the promoters stuff Gen X or whatever)…
Thanks a lot.
Hey DavidN,
Yes I used the forum member profile linking option. Sick Profile Maker is OK, I used it for about 3 months and it’s too damned slow for my liking, plus they make it such a hassle to incorporate the new updates each month. I must admit though, they’re building Sick Profile Maker into a poor man’s Xrumer at the rate they’re going.
One article syndicated to dozens of sites for backlinks has same effect as 3 month’s worth of sick profile maker linking.
LinkRacer, SubmitYourArticle, FrontLine and a few other services are on tap for reviews, right now I’m running out of ways/sites, and writers to test these service sout on, so I’ll need to build out some Adsense sites and hire more writers if I’m to keep my sanity and current sites ranking well (TMI?)
Hey, I kind of know what you mean. See, I just want to have access to all the linking services I can. I mean, there must come the point where you can’t just keep targetting the same keywords through the same backlink network.The idea of having too many backlinks from the same sources kind of haunts me….based on what I’ve read about redundant backlinks from the same ip or domains.
EZ articlelink sounds pretty good, except I don’t want to have to donate an “article directory backlink site”….. BTW, Have you ever tested syndication through prweb’s seo option. It may sound kind of oldhat, but I think(never tested mind you) that having your content submitted to thousands of trusted sites in PRWeb’s system would seem to have an enormous effect on your serps. Thanks for the great work though. This blog is the most thorough backlinking website I’ve ever come across.
BTW, is ezarticlelink part of your brainchild or are you thinking of creating your own backlink network at some point?
Anyway, thanks for the great content, but I must disagree about the sick profile maker point. I think that link velocity plays a major role in the way you acquire links(sure, the google bot takes a while to index all your links…) Which in part I think plays a major role in the reason most people don’t get the greatest results with the xrumer blast services. It’s all done in a matter of 1 hour or so. I have achieved much better results with profile linking building only around 100/day for about a month.
________________________________________
Hopefully you don’t mind the long comment, but it’s refreshing to discuss link building with someone who actually tests and uses these services rather than the rubbish on the seo forums.
So, Here is my question… Do you have any experience with 301 redirects for seo purposes? There is a lot of talk about buying up aged domains now with pr for basing a new site off of. My problem is with the domain transferring to a new owner that google would seem to take note. For example if you wanted to rank your page — ***wwwhealthdietsdotorg/howtoloseweightfast****
for the keyword how to lose weight fast…. you could just buy up howtoloseweightfastdotcom and do a 301 and point some anchor text at it for how to lose weight.
So, hopefully that makes some sense. Here is why I ask.
There is an ezine article on page one of google for the keyword reverse cell phone lookup
yeah it’s a huge niche.
Anyway, I saw this article on page one for this very competitive term just a week after it was published. I checked his backlinks and he only had a few from low quality sites. Just forum spam stuff.
But, even now months after this article title(reverse cell phone lookup services) is still at the top of page one and is a pr 6 with only 15 backlinks. I’m just thinking he has done 301′s with aged domains or something…It seems like he has some major seo tricks up his sleeve and it’s making that author a lot of coin. Just curious.
Thanks a lot Dan. I appreciate your thoughts very much.
Hi David, great thoughts and questions here, replies and answers are in bold
Hey, I kind of know what you mean. See, I just want to have access to all the linking services I can. I mean, there must come the point where you can’t just keep targetting the same keywords through the same backlink network.The idea of having too many backlinks from the same sources kind of haunts me….based on what I’ve read about redundant backlinks from the same ip or domains.
Right you are! Link velocity REALLY means the pace at which you get links AND AND the variety of links you get, so yeah, once you tap into a network too often and it’s not continually growing, then it becomes stale, and that’s My Article Network’s greatest failing, not the low quality sites in the network, but the fact that you end up getting most of your articles accepted by the first 50 sites anyways, anyhow old argument…
EZ articlelink sounds pretty good, except I don’t want to have to donate an “article directory backlink site”….. BTW, Have you ever tested syndication through prweb’s seo option. It may sound kind of oldhat, but I think(never tested mind you) that having your content submitted to thousands of trusted sites in PRWeb’s system would seem to have an enormous effect on your serps. Thanks for the great work though. This blog is the most thorough backlinking website I’ve ever come across.
Thanks for the feedback on this site. EZArticleLink actually build slinks to your article directory, therefore it’s actually a link juice builder for your site, and the intelrinking between these directories makes the articles work better for seo
BTW, is ezarticlelink part of your brainchild or are you thinking of creating your own backlink network at some point?
I gave Kenneth some ideas on how to get the directories and articles published on them indexed faster, but that’s the extent of my involvement with what EZArticleLink does, and unlike the guy at My Article Network, Kenneth listened to me and implemented my ideas and it made his service work much better after that.
Yes, I have my own link building service (all automated) and we’re slowly building bits and pieces of it as we get time. right now it’s just automated 3 way links and unlimited RSS submissions, all automated. We have an article creator, article submitter, and keyword tool being released in the next few months
Anyway, thanks for the great content, but I must disagree about the sick profile maker point. I think that link velocity plays a major role in the way you acquire links(sure, the google bot takes a while to index all your links…) Which in part I think plays a major role in the reason most people don’t get the greatest results with the xrumer blast services. It’s all done in a matter of 1 hour or so. I have achieved much better results with profile linking building only around 100/day for about a month.
I tried Sick Profile Maker on 5 sites for close to 3 months and the increase in SERPs was minimal, and these were for keywords-as-domain-name types of niches and the results weren’t great. As was aforementioned, link velocity really has to do with the variety of links you get combined with the pace at which you get them. I can live without forum profiles links for my overall inbound link profile and would still rather focus on sending and distributing one article to achieve better result sin much less time
________________________________________
Hopefully you don’t mind the long comment, but it’s refreshing to discuss link building with someone who actually tests and uses these services rather than the rubbish on the seo forums.
So, Here is my question… Do you have any experience with 301 redirects for seo purposes? There is a lot of talk about buying up aged domains now with pr for basing a new site off of. My problem is with the domain transferring to a new owner that google would seem to take note. For example if you wanted to rank your page — ***wwwhealthdietsdotorg/howtoloseweightfast****
for the keyword how to lose weight fast…. you could just buy up howtoloseweightfastdotcom and do a 301 and point some anchor text at it for how to lose weight.
I wouldn’t do it that way, 301 redirect. What I’d do instead is get that site/domain some links to build its PR and link juice then have it only give out one backlink, to the mothership site
So, hopefully that makes some sense. Here is why I ask.
There is an ezine article on page one of google for the keyword reverse cell phone lookup
yeah it’s a huge niche.
Anyway, I saw this article on page one for this very competitive term just a week after it was published. I checked his backlinks and he only had a few from low quality sites. Just forum spam stuff.
But, even now months after this article title(reverse cell phone lookup services) is still at the top of page one and is a pr 6 with only 15 backlinks. I’m just thinking he has done 301’s with aged domains or something…It seems like he has some major seo tricks up his sleeve and it’s making that author a lot of coin. Just curious.
Not sure what’s he done, but if you’ve analyzed the link profile on that EZA you should have your answer, right?
To compete with that EZA, view source page of the article url, see what tags were used in the article, write a similarly tagged article and get more backlinks or better to it. EZAs has a tendency to bounce around in the SERPs and I truly do believe that this long-standing ranking is merely something waiting to be picked off and maybe when you write a similar article you could be up there with that EZA as part of an indented listing.
If/when that happens, try getting a bunch of links to the comments portion of that article and see if both the comments url and the actual article url take up both spots as indented listings. This (linking to comments url) is something I’ve just started playing around with, so not sure how well it would work, if at all
Thanks a lot Dan. I appreciate your thoughts very much.
Daniel,
i own an xrumer service. your statements are right on the money. the costs that you stated are pretty close, although mine are a bit higher. part of that is because i am running multiple licenses and extra proxies, but also because to run xrumer requires that you use offshore hosting that allows heavy traffic.
i have to say that i agree with you also in regards to the fact that most services are randomly xrumer blasting to thousands of sites. a handful of quality origninal articles can have as much or more link juice simply by submitting them to a handfull of article sites.
one idea that you may have missed is what i call targeted mini blasts. instead of going for the cheapest xrumer blast that you can find i suggest finding an xrumer service that will prepare a list of forums targeted specifically for your niche. then you want a one or two month package where you do smaller blasts each week so that you have steady link growth over a one or two month period. this has yeilded fantastic results.
the other important fact is to not rely just on xrumer blasts. utilize all of the SEO methods that you can must and simply include an xrumer blast as part of your overall arsenal.
ps- i found you on twitter, you can find me there as well under “xrumerseo”
Thanks for the feedback Sarena. Those targeted mini-blasts sound interesting.
One thing I’ve noticed is that when the heavy duty inbound linking from xrumer blasts ceases…. the site that was getting those links starts to suffer because the velocity wasn’t maintained and it’s almos tlike being sandboxed; the only way to get out o fit is to continue getting backlinks
We have tried all these services and felt that linkvana got decent results and some of the articles we submitted to linkvana were actually getting read and producing traffic vs profile links.
If you are small scale, Xrumer can be hosted quite adequately from a dedicated PC at home.
I run 6-8 hours a night on my 12Mb boradband connection behind 20 private proxies on 4-6 threads maximum.
Creates a few thousand profiles or links per night. Xrumer’s ongoing cost is $10 a months and the proxies cost $30 a month – I use the proxies for all sorts of other stuff as well (watching baseball from the US is one)
Sure 1TB connection abd dedicated hosting on some Russian server will be quicker, and when the time comes I might go to that – but like LFE and some other tools, Xrumer runs perfectly well from a home PC.
One proviso. I would have a dedicated PC at home An old one with lots of ram is fine – raw processing power doesn’t seem to be that important, a 3 year old core duo PC is fine for me (£125 second hand + £35 for more ram.
Pure profile hits don’t stick well, but why would you just do that? Quite capable of posting comments as well to add credence to the profiles.
Not disagreeing with your review, just saying there is more to Xrumer than massive hosting costs and forum account creation.
Hello! I took the advice of my server & signed up for drip feed blasts, but after reading lots of forums…it appears there is a lot of strategy, & I think I’m in over my head!
My blog, The Budget Diet, is a diet for your wallet…not your waistline. I write money saving tips everyday, & I include a few affiliate ads. So, here are my questions (keep in mind I am not a techie)!
#1. Are keywords the best for anchor text?
#2. Would I be better off targeting a few of my more popular articles
or should I enter lots of url’s.
Thanks in advance for helping a newbie!