I thought its about time I did a short (ish) review of one of the newer backlinking type products that I have been utilizing now for the past 4 weeks. Now, obviously the main aspect to backlinking type tools is whether they get the rankings or not. No point in spending hard earned on a tool that does not achieve rankings in SERP, regardless how easy to use it is, or how cheap the thing is.
(The image is of Analytics showing the search stats for the site I mentioned the other day, which up till a week ago was my best performer. But Google has had its way with it and many of the long tail kwds it was ranking for, well, its ranking no more. Frustrations!)
But please do keep in mind I have only been using this for 4 weeks so there is definite room for improvement in rankings given a bit more backlinking.
.
So let’s cut to the chase with regards this, and then I’ll also discuss in brief why I really like this particular set up.
I’m using my current employees to create a lot of these links for me, while I focus on other stuff, such as writing up more posts for this blog and communicating with folks via email – both about potential JV’s and about general SEO and what have you.
.
I’ll just take a broad and random assessment of some of the rankings I’m now seeing. SO here goes…
These are fairly easy to achieve rankings for on the whole, but nevertheless, the only tool I am using to get these rankings is indeed the one I am discussing right now. I have only included a few search volume stats which come from the new Google kwd search tool, which seems fairly accurate, and much, much more accurate than the old one. I can include the other search volumes too, but reason I have not as yet is that my broadband connection sucks so bad that its a slow process going back and forth. If anyone really wants those stats I’ll provide them. Let me know.
These particular web pages are all Christmas orientated stuff (the first set of keyword phrase from 1 through 5), so very seasonal. Oh and I’m using the Google AdWord keyword rank checker tool which I discussed in the previous post. Its not a tool for everyone, but I’m loving it. I’m assessing these rankings with the following settings on that tool:
Google domain: Google (not Google dot com) because I get higher search volumes to my sites by far from Google and not Google dot com.
Country: United States – and all regions within this country.
.
Domain ages are around 15 months for each of these…
keyword 1 with 11 backlinks using this tool – was 9th now 8th
keyword 2 with 15 backlinks using this tool – was 6th now 3rd (slightly tougher comp due to higher search volume and this is definitely getting more sales than it has ever before, even though we are not quite into the real hot sales period!)
keyword 3 with 9 backlinks using this tool – was 6th now 3rd
keyword 4 with 10 backlinks using this tool – was not in top 10 – now 3rd
keyword 5 with 19 backlinks “ – was 19th now 8th (up to 4th this afternoon) (this is a site on toy action figures and the domain age is about 6 months – no other backlinks as mentioned)
.
This site is focusing on a sport-based product which appears to be fairly evergreen, although I would have thought its much more spring, summer and autumnal. Domain age about 18 months.
Keyword 1 with 8 backlinks using this tool – was 11th now 7th with 1k global month search volume – exact
Keyword 2 with 8 backlinks “ – was 9th now up to 3rd with 1.6k global monthly search vol – exact
(funny cos I always thought there were far more searches for these two kwds)
Keyword 3 with 7 backlinks using this tool – was no place in top 100 and now 34th with 6.6k global search volume – exact
.
This site is based on a utility type of vehicle and the one keyword phrase I am trying to rank for is not hugely competitve, but not a push over by any means. Its a new domain – about a month old, and is a dot info domain too. No other backlinks to the site except via this tool I’m discussing.
Keyword 1 with 17 backlinks using this tool – was 29th now up to 8th. On AdSense and getting the occasional click, but this could be another dud for me with AdSense even though I did appropriate research. No worries as this product sells well on eBay. I always try to cover myself now if I am firstly going out for monetizing a site with AdSense because I’ve hit so many duds with AdSense previously and it seems that practice does not make perfect.
.
This site is fitness based and is my main JV. I am trying to rank for a couple of keyword phrases which have 14,800 global exact searches monthly and 5,400 global exacts monthly respectively – this is according to the new Google KWD tool, so reasonably accurate stats, I seem to think anyhow.
Keyword 1 with 15 backlinks using this tool – was no where and is now 19th.
Keyword 2 with 12 backlinks using this tool – was no where and is now 16th.
.
Not sure about you but this is pretty impressive stuff as far as I’m concerned. But you make up your own mind with the info I’ve provided here.
Okay, so what makes this tool special apart from its certainly getting me some decent rankings going on with only a handful of backlinks?
Well, its because of the following pointers:
1. the posts can be drip fed at various rates or simply put up immediately
2. in all I’ve got around 400 posts up and I believe that over 90% of them have been indexed in Google so far. How do I know? The system has a reporting feature. This is mighty impressive indexing rates!
3. much like Blog Blueprint, your posts are sent to high (ish) Google PR web pages, but unlike BB you can see the Goog PR that your web page is sitting on. Its not always your own page (the page where your blog post is placed) that has this ranking because many times that will be a brand new page. But the domain itself is reported to have this high PR, which in turn should help to provide some link juice to your own post and thus to your backlinks. All my posts are sitting on domains that range between Google PR1 and Google PR7. Most are on a PR2 with a good amount sitting on PR4s and PR5′s even. So I think there must be some serious link juice going on here. I like to think so anyhow.
4. I sense that this network is more closely monitored than that of Blog Blueprint. Now that has its pros of course – the content on the network is good to very good quality stuff and thus keeps the likes of Google happy, and thus will help gain your link more Goog PR juice, given time. However, no spun content is allowed on this network. Articles have to be a minimum of 150 words and you only get a single backlink per article. So this is a laborious system to use if you want to go hard with it. With BB, although it was a daily slog, you can use well spun content, which makes it quite a bit easier, but you may argue that the quality will suffer a bit by allowing spun content.
But if you are even an average speed typist, you can easily knock out 8, 10 or even more of these articles in an hour, providing you can keep your focus.
.
The dashboard and reporting with this tool is incredible actually. I’ve never seen the like of this before. Any posts that are not accepted are reported to you immediately, with general reasons given via email.
Price? $59 US per month, so very similarly priced to Blog Blueprint. Slightly cheaper if you live in the UK or have your bank accounts in the UK like I have. You don’t have to pay the dreaded value added tax thing! And that saves 10 bucks per month.
.
If you are intent on outsourcing at least some of the grunt work, this is a super way to go about it. All you need to do is set up your domains in the system and add in your chosen keyword text for backlinks. This way your writers can choose which domain they wish to write for, and also which links to add to the posts.
Any posts that are not good enough are reported back to you, so you pay for results. And you do not have to quality control either – its all done by the site owner (John) and his employees (if he has any). So basically this sytem is a set and forget if you do go in for outsourcing your writing. And to teach someone to use it is really easy. Even a numpty dumpty like me found it easy to work with from the very start – no fiddling with set up or with POP3′s or anything at all.
.
The name of the tool/ website: Build My Rank Yup, that is an affiliated link. Up to you if you wanna use it or not, of course 
So thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope you at least enjoyed the post even if you don’t want to invest in this tool, and my writing does make sense without rambling too much :-
Subscribe Now for Free and Get All Updates
delivered straight to your inbox
(I hate spam possibly even more than you do)
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
You convinced me Joseph, I just signed up through your link for a free trial, and if it works like I think it can, I could be a paying customer soon
Jamie Northrup recently posted..5 Social Bookmarking Sites for Blogging Blogs
Hi Jamie, yup, I’m fairly impressed with the results of this tool so far, as I was with Blog Blueprint when I was utilizing that, but this one has been going a little longer than BB – its been around since 2006 I think, and its providing better quality too, albeit that it is more laborious than BB due to the fact that you cannot use spun content. Some would argue that the lack of spun content on the system makes it far more qualitative.
Anyhow, even though none of the rankings I have reported are at a very high level with regards to achieving decent ranks, I’m also using it for some high level stuff too – in tandem with one or two other services. I can’t report back on those results obviously due to the fact that I am mixing up the backlinking. But I’m very happy with how things are going with it, albeit with the outsourcing of the short article writing its becoming fairly pricey. I do think its worth the price – both for the BMR and for outsourcing, after all – Christmas sales step up early next month so those sort of rankings I’m seeing in themselves should pay dividends.
Hope that all makes some sense Jamie – my brain has almost switched off
Too much work and not enough play.
Many thanks for signing up for the trial via the link in the post!
Regards
Joseph
Thanks again for sharing Joseph.
Were you using BMR for direct backlinks to you site or to your anchors? If it was for direct backlinks, do you think the best approach would be UAW backlinks for anchors and then BMR for direct site backlinks? Pounding out a bunch of short, all original, 150 word articles for BMR is personally a lot easier for me than spinning and correcting a bunch of 300-400 word articles for UAW.
I missed your previous post regarding Goog killing your longtails. Sorry to hear that. Was there a particular reason?
Hi Matt, direct to money site Matt – these links are too valuable and too much work to direct them elsewhere. Yup, sounds about right – if you wanna use UAW for your anchors and BMR for the money site then sure has to be a good thing. You can also use UAW for your money site, but I would suggest you leave those sort of links to the money site for a while, and build up links to the money site with the likes of BMR first.
So far, I’ve not had any sites sandbox using BMR, which is nice because I have had some sandbox using Blog Blueprint even though it was fairly gentle. I’m seeing a bit of dancing with some of my pages, but it tends to be fairly light dancing and nothing to worry about. To be expected of course.
Goog and my best performing site – yes, there was a reason. Even though the site is about 10 months old, I only had about 500 backlinks to it in all, which still makes it something of a candidate for being booted about by Google if I get a bit zealous with my backlinking. To be honest I;ve not done too much backlinking over the past few months and so some of my sites are a little bit raw, even though they are maturing. And so, when I cranked up the backlinking to this particular site in the hope that I had enough links to it already, Google decided otherwise and basically seem to be saying that I’ve been getting a bit too many links too fast so we don’t like it. I’m not saying its sandboxed, but I am saying that its dropped about 3 quarters of its previous traffic so that’s a lot of long tails to have disappeared off the radar – it was only ranking for long tails and no shorter keyword phrases. I get about 200 uniques to that site a day at the moment – I used to get around 700 to 800 per day.
Goog are getting really sensitive with regards to changes in backlinking and they are clamping down pretty fast on things, which makes it that much more tricky to get newer sites ranking well fairly soon.
Hope the job is working out okay Matt!
So if you where only able to use one of these products which would it be? Blog Blueprint or Build My Rank?
BMR!
Why?
Because the backlinks are better quality IMHO, and the rate of indexing of pages where backlinks can be found is much higher. The down-side being that its labour-intensive. However, I know a lot of folks who can crank out 10 or more of these short articles in an hour, so 10 links for average PR3 within an hour is seriously good going!
I appreciate that info and I will be back when I am ready to make the investment… which hopefully won’t be too long…
Hey Joseph,
I just bought a full subscription to BMR. Thanks for the tip. It is a really great tool and a fantastic value for the money provided you use it.
I’ll update you on my progress and ranking results. I’ve got ten links on standby so far.
-Matt
My pleasure CAS! One thing though – if you are going to focus your backlinking efforts on sites such as eBay aff sites, be prepared for quite a lot of dancing around in Goog SERP. Seems to me that with Goog’s algo changes, which are arguably still updating from back in May when you were really badly hit, or could actually be more recent updates, even if you are to do fairly mild backlinking you could either end up sandboxed or hit a really nasty dancing session.
I’ve still got a few sites lying in the box from months ago which were sent there to serve out their time from me merely pushing a few Blog Blueprint backlinks in their direction. And currently, after using BMR, I’m seeing quite a few of my eBay sites in particular, dancing really something terrible. Thus I do urge you to take care with whatever backlinking format you wish to use.
Interestingly, my AdSense sites (with AdSense as the lone monetization method) are not dancing like this at all. That’s merely an observation however, and I don’t have conclusive evidence as to what’s going on here.
Regards
Joseph
I really wish you the best with this Matt – I know you’re having to work that awful day job to afford such tools as BMR, but you are right – if you use it regularly then you will get the value out of it. Its a very powerful tool, so don’t be surprised to see Google dancing with your sites.
Cheers!
Jo
The doors to Build My Rank are now closed – at least temporarily. Due to its popularity, the owner/s are having to re-assess things and upgrade certain parts of the service.
If you got in on the trial but have not yet taken the full package, you can still do so – otherwise, sorry, but doors are closed.
hmm membership is closed at the moment at buildmyrank =[
As mentioned in my comment just above yours Matt. They closed doors on the 7th of this month to do some system upgrades etc. If you’d got in on the trial then you would be fine, but if not then you’re gonna have to wait things out till they re-open I’m afraid.
I like the sounds of BMR. Might give it a try when it reopens.
Joseph,
What would you suggest to build backlinks for a brand new website? I am not wanting to rush it and get sandboxed! haha
Would you suggest creating the anchor pages (hubpage, squidoo, ezinearticle, ect) then slowly use BMR as well but don’t send the links from BMR to the anchor pages?
Thanks!
Luke
Luke recently posted..Hello world!
Hi Luke, yes – BMR is a very good tool, providing you make good use of it.
Its a tough call to make – what is the best way to backlink to a new site keeping in mind the fear of sandboxing. The safest method would probably be the one you mentioned here – squids, ezinearticles etc. and also use something like BMR in tandem. If you can do this and keep at it, then this is a pretty safe method and will most probably get good results given some time.
You could also send links from BMR to anchors too, if you want to do that and are prepared for the drudge
If you are not too concerned about spending a bit of time in sandbox, then by all means just blast your new site with any and all types of links. As I mentioned in my blog post today, this is what I’ve been doing to a site that is a few weeks old and its ranking pretty nicely for a few terms and is not even doing much dancing. Of course I would prefer that this site does not sandbox, but even if it does I’ll keep hitting it with lots of links and it should come out faster by doing that. Its just another strategy is all.
Cheers!
Joseph
Sandboxing?
From my experience, blasting a site with crummy backlinks works great for about 90-120 days, but inevitably you will get sand boxed. What has been happening to me is that Google will index my new content, but not for search, meaning I can only find it by using “quotes”. My rankings don’t drop much though, instead everything just sort of plateaus including my traffic.
If you are really overly aggressive though, you can end up getting some or all of your pages completely de-indexed, so be careful! Anchors with a splattering of unique direct backlinks (such as BMR) are probably the safest bet.
To get out of the sandbox, I turn down or completely stop the backlinking campaign altogether. Gradually, the new content will start getting indexed for search again, but it can take months and I think the long term damage (such as the time it takes for newly published content to get indexed) can take even longer to completely repair. The focus then is to get only really good quality backlinks on PR ranked pages that are also hopefully in the same related field.
I’m currently trying BMR to see if I can build some quality links. Most of my posts have ended up on PR2 sites, on non-ranked pages. I’m still testing to see how these links perform for ranking, but so far, so good. The good news is that I don’t think they hurt or lead to any sandoxing which is more than I can say for most of the other services out there.
From my experience, the best resource for getting quality, ranked, PR links from a related site is by publishing well written articles on sites like Ezine. Occasionally, these articles get picked up by good sites and republished with links intact.
The downside now is the rampant plagiarism that has been going on. Some sites will republish our Ezine Articles but omit the author bio box links. Other sites though don’t even bother with plagiarizing Ezine and instead just shamelessly scrape the content from our sites directly. I’m not really sure if Google takes much notice as to who is first to publish in these cases, but honestly I don’t think they really care all that much about duplicate content since it happens all the time.
What it really boils down to is the quality of the links to your site. One link from a PR5 authority site a related field is probably worth more than 100 links from generic PR0-1 sites.
Hey Matt, thanks for providing info about your experience with sandboxing and what-not.
The thing I am doing with a number of my sites is mixing up the linking with all sorts and varities, so to be honest I don’t see why Googie should sandbox. Its perfectly natural type of backlinks, albeit perhaps a tad on the fast side. But hey, I’ve done this before and even though my sites tended to yoyo around a lot for a while, they eventually got real nice rankings. So far though there is no yoyo-ing and the rankings are sticking without much dancing either.
I just got one of my sites out of sandbox that was put there due to me using Blog Blueprint and doing some fairly gentle backlinks. Googie are getting to be very cruel in their old age. So how did I get it out (finally)? Blasted it with lots of variable links and voila – the thing pops out of the sand pit. But I can also understand that getting high quality links back to a sandboxed site should also work. No reason why it should not.
Yup, we’ve got quite a conversation going about this plagiarism stuff that’s occurring. Probably worse now than ever before since there are no doubt more folks trying to make money online now than ever before. My post today is about such a case where my article has the bio box swiped off. I’ve sent a warning to the site owner, so let’s see how that goes.
The problem comes with trying to focus on getting high PR backlinks – the vast majority of the time the PR from such links is so watered down that they are worth no more than that of say – a PR0 link would be. I imagine the only way to get around this is to actually pay for links, but not many of us can afford to do such a thing – not on a regular basis anyhow.
By the way Matt, thanks for your email. I’ll answer you properly in good time but for now – sorry to hear about your issues on your site. As you say – what a real pain!! If its any consolation, so far my own income from eBay is down almost 50% on last month, and AdSense is not much better. Hurting!
Re the new Google keyword tool stats in comparison to the old. Oh yes indeed – my Twilight site – in the previous tool the global exact search stats for “Twilight poster” were 60.5k a month. In the new tool they are around 3.5k a month!!! The latter is far more accurate! In fact, I’m seeing all the stats from the new Goog tool being fairly to very accurate for all my high ranking pages, so its really welcome news that finally we can work off some sensible stats instead of pure and utter rubbish that we were provided with before.
I’ll be in touch soon Matt – gotta get some sleep now.
Cheers!
Joseph
Hey Joseph,
The jury is still out on most of my BMR testing, but I’ve had some pretty good success with a local search term for my buddy’s security company. We posted five links for one keyword he has wanted as an experiment. Of the five, four have so far been indexed by Goog and one is still sitting in queue to get posted.
Before we started, he was ranked 40th for the term in question. Now he is 14th. Granted, it is not a super competitive search term or anything, but that is still pretty impressive given his previous rank and with only four BMR backlinks in total.
I’ve convinced him to write an additional five mini articles to see where it puts him. He’s pretty impressed so far.
-Matt
As you say Matt, its not gonna be a super competitive term that you managed to get those rankings for, but nevertheless, this does appear to be impressive stuff! 4 backlinks to jump up from 40th to 14th – yup, sounds like the way to go! The definitive proof of the pudding will be when you hit the top 10. Let us know how you get on then pls Matt. Thanks for sharing those results!
Cheers!
Joseph
Hi Joseph
Just wondering if you are still offering the $12 back each month if I susbscribe through your BMR link? Cheers
Orla
Orla Kelly recently posted..How Do I Know Who To Really Trust?
Yes, sure am Orla!
Joseph
{ 5 trackbacks }