Listen folks, it ain’t dead. But it is changing. Of course it changes – this is the internet, people! We’re lucky is something remains the same for a month!

In today’s SEO climate (of change) and the increase of social media as a ranking factor and quality of content becoming more and more important, we should’t overlook the fact that BACKLINKS STILL MATTER.

Where Should I Get Backlinks From?

The most common question I’m asked then is, “Where should I get links from now?”

Many folks were suckling and the sweet teat of blog networks and seem to have completely lost any ability to get links on their own.

Fear not!

I’ve developed a resource that’ll get you started.

Where to Build Links attempts to answer that very question. You’ll find it under the “Resources” top menu here, or you can use the direct link here in case the site changes.

What this free service attempts to do is organize popular social media properties (and, with a caveat, article directories) in various ways so you can discover and analyze new link building opportunities.

Are These Kinds of Links Effective in the “New Order” of SEO?

Yes. But you’ve got to do it right. Most of the information shared ont he web is done via social media properties, so it’s totally natural and normal to have your URL’s shared there as well. However, you really need to watch your anchor text. In fact, don’t use your main keyword at all. Mix it up.  Over optimized anchor text was the major downfall of marketers in the Penguin update.

Balance in SEO

Keep in mind, while we used to be able to almost solely focus on backlinks, our SEO needs to now be more balanced. It’s no longer a matter of JUST backlinks. Now you have many other aspects to concern yourself with – quality and innovation, on-page SEO (more important today than pre-Penguin), social signals, authorship, to name just a few. Make sure you’re not spending all your time chasing the “backlinks dragon” and none on other key metrics.

Check out the Where to Build Links tool here.

The post Where To Build Links – Today appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

There are three steps to recover, and in this post, I’m going to show you how to do Step 1.

Before you can fix your site, before you know what changes need to be made, you first need to identify what algorithm update actually effected you. Here’s how:

Log in to Google Analytics. Choose “All Traffic” from the “Traffic Sources” menu in the sidebar. Also choose a date range during which you experienced your drop in traffic / rank. For this site, I was hit in late April, so I’m viewing traffic from April 1 – May 31. If you were hit recently, you might pick a date range like September 1 – today.

Click “google/ organic.” The page that loads will ONLY show you the traffic you were receiving from Google’s organic search, so it will make it extremley clear as to when you lost rankings and thus, when you were effected by an algorithm update:

In my graph, the biggest hit this site took was on April 27. You can see a dramatic dip in what was otherwise a fairly steady stream of traffic, and it’s wasn’t just a one-time blip on the radar either. It was complete loss going forward too.

This is what a u update that’s effected you negatively looks like.

Here’s another:

We can se this loss came at about September 28.

Once you’ve identified the date you were effected, you can check the Algorithm Update Timeline from SEOMoz and see if any of your losses correlate with specific Google updates.

For example, in my first graph the site experienced a loss on April 27. Looking at that Algorithm Update Timeline, you can see that was also the date that Penguin was released – so you can easily surmise that the loss in traffic was caused by Penguin.

The second site experienced it’s loss on September 28.

There were two updates pushed on out Spetember 27 – the Exact Match Domain update and a Panda update. How do you know which one you were effected by?

You weren’t effected by the EMD update if you aren’t using the keywords you want to rank for in your domain.

For me, this site was using the keywords I was targeting in the domain, so I can’t eliminate the EMD update yet.

So how do you know with 100% certainty? You don’t. But here’s what I’ve determined from looking at my sites:

The EMD update didn’t drop otherwise good sites from ranking positions to nowhere-to-be-found. It might bump sites down a few, even several notches, sure, because Google was no longer giving them a “boost” due to the keyword-rich domain. But the EMD update didn’t annihilate good sites – it bumped them.

But this site went from being in the teens for a number of keyword phrases, like this one, do being just GONE from the SERPS completely.

The site you’re seeing a drop in September 27 is, frankly, not a great site. Sure, the content is original, but it’s not bringing any value. It’s doesn’t have anything new or interesting to offer. It’s a think Adsense site where, technically, all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, but if we’re being honest, it’s a crap site.

This site wasn’t hurt by being an EMD (but a lot of webmasters are making themselves feel better by pointing fingers at that as a reason).

It was hurt because it sucks. It was hurt by the Panda update that rolled out the same day.

Knowing is Half The Battle?

How you approach the fix depends on what was broken in the first place – you’ve got to bring the right tools to the job!

The Penguin effected site would need to look at their backlink profile – see if they’ve relied too heavily on low-quality links and over optimized their anchor texts.

The Panda effected site would need to look at the quality of the content on the site itself. Make people happy with your content, solve a problem.

If you’ve experienced a loss, was it Panda or Penguin? Let’s see which wins in the comments!

The post How To Identify Algorithmic SEO Losses appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

Google rolled out an update on Friday for EMD’s (exact match domains). Matt Cutt’s (Google’s Head of Webspam) wrote:

“Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results.

“New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.”

If you’re using Authority Labs to track your rankings (here’s my write-up of how and why you might want to) you have new ranking data by now, and can get a picture of how you’ve ben effected by this update, if at all.

Here’s my findings:

Most of my “thin” affiliate sites w/ EMD’s are gonzo in this update.

Fortunately, they’re all older and we’ve seen the writing on the way for over 18 months, so it was obvious they’d be decimated at some point. Haven’t invested time/money into them for ages. An expected loss.

What *is* interesting is that these sites – which are all original content sites that have an EMD and few links thrown at them (maybe 10 backlinks total) also lost ranking for interior pages.

For example, the site EMD is bluewidgets.com and we ranked for “blue widgets”. The interior page bluewidgets.com/redwidgets/ also ranked for the KW “red widgets” – well, the “red widgets” rank is gone too.

So it’s almost seeming more like a PENALTY in some ways, as it’s effecting the WHOLE domain and not just the KW the EMD matches. You follow?

A new site that’s had no link building and no promotion, totally white hat, high quality site, dropped out of the SERP’s for it’s own domain name, which is a made-up, branded word. It would be like if gizmodo.com lost ranking for the made-up, branded word “Gizmodo.” Weird – and not an improvement to the user experience.

And again, another finger that almost points to PENALTY, not just devaluing of EMD’s.

I expect (minor) corrections to the algo because of inconsistencies like this.

A few older EMD sites I have survived (this iteration, anyway). One of them was a forum and one of them is a 5 page WP site – but they are the exception to the carnage.

We’ve been shouting from the rooftops about this for ages, but folks still want to (try to) take the easy route.

Is THIS the update where it sinks in?

You’re in the publishing business, not the SEO tricks business. Most folks don’t have the stomach for that kind of fluctuation.

What changes have you seen as a result of this EMD update?

Edited Oct. 3: Google confirmed on October 3rd that it also released a significant Panda algorithm update on September 27. This explains the confusion some had with sites losing rankings that were not EMD’s.

The post Google’s Exact Match Domain Update: Findings appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

It goes something like this, “Market Samurai said there was a lot of traffic for my keyword, but I’m ranked #2 in Google and I’m only seeing 2 or 3 visits per day.”

The problem here isn’t Market Samurai (or the keyword data from any source, for that matter). It’s that the ranking data the person is relying on is fundamentally broken. And it’s happening all too often.

This 12 minute video explains, and shows you how to ACCURATELY check your Google rankings every day:

If you’d like to take advantage of the Authority Labs 30 day free trial, click here. If you decide to remain a member like me, don’t forget to use coupon code new502012 to get 50% off for your first 6 months.

The post How to ACCURATELY Check Your Google Rankings appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

Your backlinks need backlinks too! Whaaa?

Seriously!

Any links that you create should have a second layer of low-level backlinks built to them. It’ll help those backlinks get indexed and help them have more authority in Google’s eyes.

Here’s a 14 minute video on how to get backlinks for NEW links you’re building and OLD links you’ve already built.

In this video:

• Majestic SEO
• Backlinks Indexer
• Scrapebox Link Checker

Panda, Penguin and Other-Animal-Google-Names-An-Update-After Update

As Google devalues more and more low-quality links (whether from “bad neighborhoods” or just sites Google doesn’t trust), those links you DO have become even more important.

That is, you have to make the one’s you’ve got count!

Using a service like BacklinksIndexer is so important to ENSURE that your backlinks are indexed, found, that they count in the eyes of Google.

What’s more, Backlinks Indexer is the PERFECT way to get the all-important anchor text variation that’ll save your site from an over-optimization penalty. If you’ve been intentionally link building it’s likely you’ve got too many links using the same anchor text – the anchor text you were trying to optimize for. Solve this by adding the URL’s from your site to BackLinksIndexer. It’ll go out and happy get links for your URL’s, and because the sources of those links are so varied the anchor text will vary as well.

Because the links that BackLinks Indexer gets are from Web 2.0 sites, social bookmarking sites, micro blog sites, content aggregator sites and RSS aggregators, you’ll also be getting a massive mix of hosts, IP addresses, trypes of sites, etc. linking to you, which is crucial for link mixology. And being Web 2.0, social type sites you won’t see a penalty from Google for them linking to you. They’re safe neighborhoods.

Backlinks Indexer is a key tool for all these reasons. Get your 5 day triel here and give it a whirl!

The post 2 Simple Ways to Get Backlinks For Your Backlinks + Panda / Penguin Update appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

I hate fear mongering, and right now, the “FEAR FEAR FEAR” mantra is being shouted screamed from the rooftops and too many folks are buying into it unawares. Add to that mess a lot of smug jerks who claim to have it all figured out (“I told you so…”) but are just as misinformed and we’ve got a DEFCON Level 9  pile of confusion, self-aggrandizing and B.S. stew.

It’s sickening.

But what’s the fuss?

Link building. SEO. Sustainability. Scary words like “banned” and “deindexed.”

What Happened With Blog Networks?

You know what a blog network is, yes? I’ve written about them here and here and here, for starters. You pay a monthly fee (with most of them) and in return may post your articles with links (presumably back to your site) to the network of sites they control. The networks vary WIDLEY in quality, price, etc.

They are considered black hat – or at least grey hat – by most. Keep in mind that any link building is considered “black hat” by Google. If you built a Squidoo page with the intention of linking back to your site, that’s “black hat” in Google’s eyes.

The bottom line is that some of these blog networks have been “found out” by Google (kudos to Build My Rank for manning up right away and admitting it) and Google has, in turn, deindexed the sites the blog networks own. That means that those blogs – which people have been posting articles with links on – can no longer be found in Google’s search results. And since they aren’t in Google’s index, any links from them no longer “count” for backlinking purposes.

Many folks are seeing a drop in rankings for their sites that relied on a “found out” blog network for backlinks.

And many folks have been getting or have already gotten warnings in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts for “unnatural link building.” Some folks claim their sites have been deindexed after this Webmaster Tools warning.

I have my own VERY STRONG opinions on all of this. And I’ll share them at the end of this article.

But what’s more interesting than what I think? What the blog networks themselves think!

Blog Networks Go on Record

I wrote to 6 blog networks and asked if they’d like to participate in this post by answering a few questions, setting the record straight, as it were. Two wanted in. Three didn’t reply and the last one cited too short a deadline. I first want to thank Linkvana and Article Marketing Automation for replying – a lot of folks in the “blog network” world are hiding under a rock right now and hoping no one notices them.

Neither of these networks have been “hit” by this latest change. I think their open participation in this discussion speaks volumes about the integrity of Linkvana and Article Marketing Automation’s ethics, their product, and their networks.

First, can you tell me a little about what Linkvana / AMA is and your role with the company?

Dave @ Linkvana: Hi Michelle – Sure, I run the day to day operations of Linkvana. I decide on the direction of Linkvana, what initiatives we want to tackle, and how to best position our sites for success in the future.

Linkvana is a linkbuilding hub where a client can get access to many different forms of backlinks in order to boost their rankings in the search engines. The cool part about Linkvana is that you choose your anchor text and the number of links you want – we make it easy to build very high quality links that get noticed by the search engines and really propel your rankings instead of building thousands of low quality links.

Daniel @ AMA: Marc [Lindsay] and I started AMA back in 2008, it was started as the (as far as I’m aware) first community driven blog network (when blog network wasn’t a dirty word) but as the “genre” has been more defined, it’s become less like the “typical” blog network (aka Build My Rank), and more akin to a semi automated guest posting system.

Talk to me about what kind of marketer benefits most from using Linkvana / AMA? Who’s your ideal client and why?

Dave @ Linkvana: We have some of the top SEO agencies in the world at LV, we have clients with a single ecommerce site, we have big names and people that are new to SEO. The marketer that benefits the most from Linkvana is someone that is able to make linkbuilding a priority and will use the system. We have an integration team at LV, so knowing SEO is not the number one thing in order to get benefit. The most important things are that you’re committed to build links, SEO as a growth strategy for your business, and you’ve got a site that does a decent job at converting traffic into some goal. You need more than just high rankings to make money on the internet, which is ultimately the end goal of 98% of our clients. We help with the high rankings part, but the ideal client is someone that has a converting sales funnel and wants to drive more diverse traffic to that funnel.

Daniel @ AMA: Our ideal client that understands AMA is someone who understands SEO, understands link building (diversity, velocity and quality) and most importantly, doesn’t spam (many people understand SEO but just don’t give a crap).

You may have seen Matt Cutt’s response to Dan Theis re: blog networks. How is Linkvana/ AMA preparing for – or have you already prepared for – this kind of search engine scrutiny?

Dave @ Linkvana: I think Linkvana is more or less the longest running [Michelle's edit: launched in 2007], and I am pretty proud of that.

Regardless of what many people think, de-indexing is not a new thing. Google’s team is always going to do their job the best they can, and they have some of the smartest people out there. Everyone knows that. Take Traffic Equalizer for example. There were people making millions of dollars a year in Adsense and affiliate offers wiped out overnight – I believe that was 04 or 05. Google is going to change. It’s a privately run company who is trying to do it’s best to serve accurate results – it’s revenue depends on the accuracy of it’s results.

LV is prepared for the changes to come because we take a more holistic approach. We don’t rely solely on high page rank sites, and we don’t believe that’s what linkbuilding is all about. It’s a portion of your ranking, no doubt – but a marketer should not rely on one network of sites alone for their rankings.

Daniel @ AMA:  Ultimately, if Google wants to take something down, they’ll take something down. They have people infinitely smarter than I am, I’m sure as hell no wonder boy genius

With that said, private networks (where the sites in the network are owned by one person) of any kind are dead, or will shortly be dead. What people don’t seem to remember, is that Google sees all, nothing is hidden, no matter the layers of “protection” people try to put in place. Never forget that.

The thing about that tweet, and ALN (and from that seomoz.org and the post that it surfaced from – for anyone interested feel free to look into it) – the core of it (and this is just speculation since Google is as Google does), is that one site had 5k odd links from the ALN network. And guess what. It was a (excuse the language) piece of $%@! site.

Would everyone have screamed so hard if it was Allstate.com or Nationwide.com? Nope, you would never have heard of it. The fact is, that site should have ranked for 24 hours maximum, and then periodically “retested” to see if it was worthy of the user.

Google needs to place MUCH more emphasis on the sites performance once it ranks, not the links they used to get there. The moment they do that, is the moment links become an irrelevant part of history that spammers can never use to manipulate, because if spammers built quality sites, they wouldn’t be spammers (I can’t see a spammer going out of his way to take the time to build an Allstate.com but hey you never know).

We all know Build My Rank’s network was deindexed, as they announced on their blog. How does Linkvana / AMA stand out or differentiate from Build My Rank and other services out there?

Dave @ Linkvana: BMR and LV have always done things differently. BMR was a great service from what I hear, and obviously they made a large impact on the market. We have several shared customers. I’d like to think that Linkvana is much more white hat than many of the other services.

Linkvana has some automation, but it seems like a lot of marketers are looking for a silver bullet… a service that the end user does nothing at all and moves their site to the top of google. That’s just not natural any way you cut it. It’s short lived. At Linkvana we’ve never given into what we feel are short lived strategies. Because of that, we can’t please every marketer out there. We can’t show them the URLS, and spin all their content, etc… Linkvana provides an effective service to it’s customers. It’s not flashy all the time, but we stay on top of SEO, we understand what moves a site to the top, and we make decisions based on what is in the best interest for our clients long term, not from a marketing perspective. Not everyone can say that.

Daniel @ AMA: The main distinction is this, in BMR the sites in there have one purpose, to generate backlinks back to the sites being promoted. Regardless of content quality, whether it’s good or bad, there is no incentive to NOT link to that site, because its primary purpose is to build links.

AMA is a self regulated social/community body. If a site owner doesn’t like the content, or the site it links to, they can reject it (and many do). Site owners can have full control over the content.

So for the users that submit rubbish, they either submit that rubbish and get it rejected by the site owner, and if it’s really bad, the site owner can flag them, in which case we review their account and give them a warning or kick them out (and if they rejoin and do it again ban their email/details, if they do it again, we ban their PayPal, etc. etc.). The better alternative, is that the user improves, they realize that they can’t just keep pushing crap, so they get better, write better content, build better sites and grow.

Should someone who’s used any kind of blog network – yours, Build My Rank, another – be worried?

Dave @ Linkvana: No. If that was the case, we could get our competition banned pretty quick. Just sign up for a linking service as your competition, and send links to their site and ban them… No, that’s not the way it works.

Here’s how it does work. Say you’ve put 1,000 links out to a bunch of sites. Say they were all on article sites that Google used to love, and now they don’t. So in Feb of 2012, you’ve got 1,000 links and you are sitting at the top of Google (because Google valued those links in Feb of 2012) for all the keywords you want. Now in March of 2012, Google decides they don’t like article sites anymore. Half your links get de-indexed and the other half get de-valued. Your site drops to number 30 in the rankings. Now, that is not a penalty. That’s a change in the way Google values links. They don’t value the particular linking method that you were using as much anymore, therefore your site doesn’t rank at the top anymore. It’s not that they are penalizing you or your site… it’s just that they are not valuing the methods that you’ve used to build links anymore.

Daniel @ AMA: Absolutely! But it goes for any type of link building. Link building is about diversity. Google will always be chasing spammers (as they should), which means Google will always be devaluing certain link types, and revaluing others (until they day they go all AI on us at which point link building won’t matter a hoot). If you’ve only built blog network links, or worse, only one type of blog network link, you’ll live a short life.

What’s the best way to use Linkvana / AMA in this current SEO climate?

Dave @ Linkvana: That’s a really big question, but basically you have to vary your anchor text and link to internal pages on your site. This is going to look natural and help your site the most in the long term. If you have a page on blue widgets (www.yourdomain.com/blue-widgets.html) – link about 40% of your links to the homepage (www.yourdomain.com) and the rest of the links to deep pages with the anchor text “blue widgets”, “widgets that are blue”, “blue widgets 2012″, “best blue widgets”, etc… This is natural and good. What is not natural is Google seeing 97% of your links pointing to your homepage with one keyword.

Daniel @ AMA: As with any type of link building. Do it properly. Do it within the realms of my blog post here [link forthcoming...]. Don’t spam. Do the right thing by the user on the site you’re promoting. Don’t give me cause to kick you in the nuts

Michelle’s Take on Blog Networks and the Future of Linkbuilding

Like Dave pointed out, deindexing isn’t a new thing… but Ed wins “Most Creative” for the Game of Thrones references in his post on Google’s history of “Slaps” and deindexing. There will always be change in search – I think that’s what makes it so interesting to some of us crazies.

But, there’s this thing called common sense that seems to be thrown out the window as soon as people look at SEO. If something works, they tend to do it x1000. But it doesn’t always work 1000x better when you do it 1000x more! You might not remember, but there was a time people would put 50 keywords in their meta keyword tag. “If 3-5 keywords worked well, 50 is better!” was the thinking. It seems silly in retrospect, but everything looks silly in retrospect (think chain wallets).

My dad used to say, “Everything in moderation.”

And that includes link building.

Daniel mentioned diversity as far as building links from multiple sources, not just blog networks as well as the velocity and quality of links and Dave mentioned the importance of varying anchor text and where your links are pointing to (not just the homepage). All things you MUST be doing.

I just wrote, as I published some link building test results on Monday, “Keep in mind also that you should never, ever put all your link building eggs in one basket. Use more than one method (i.e. article marketing plus social profiles) and more than one service. That’s just smart link building and smart SEO!”

It’s when you start depending on only one thing that you become vulnerable. Just because social links are “natural” doesn’t mean you’re safe if ALL your links are social links.

That’s why I wrote this post on Link Mixology as far back as 2009 (this isn’t new folks!)  emphasizing the importance of  including social media, blog comments, press releases and, yes, article syndication in your backlink profile. That’s why I offer 30 Minute Backlinks – to help you diversify your link sources.

Anyone who’s looking down their nose at folks who use a blog network better stop living in a glass house – all link building is black hat, according to Google TOS. Beware the hypocrites who tell you “X” is wrong but their “Y” is good.

Spencer at Nicher Pursuits and Paul Forcey at The Newbie Helper also bring a little bit of levity to the situation.

Be moderate. Don’t be the guy who x1000′s everything. Be thoughtful. Use your common sense. Keep calm and vary your backlinks, no matter where they come from.

Yes, we’ve known for a while there were massive changes in search happening. Panda was only one small indicator. I did a video in February of LAST YEAR on what to look at going forward in SEO. Now’s a good time to re-watch and start implementing:

Special thanks to Dave at Linkvana and Daniel at Article Marketing Automation for being a part of this discussion. You guys are the real deal!

The post Is This The End of Link Building? Blog Networks Speak Out! appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

Build My Rank, a very well known private blog network, was deindexed by Google on 3/19 and shut their doors effective 3/20!

Lots of people are scared and aren’t sure what this means going forward. What happens to the future of link building? What does it mean for the future of blog networks?

I’m working on a full analysis – with interviews. No worries, we’re on top of it!

I always say you MUST diversify your links and this just stands to prove it even more!

The post Build My Rank Deindexed – The Future of Link Building appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

I knew it would happen. It was only a matter of time.

Build My Rank – who I love – was toppled in this edition of the Link Building Deathmatch. But it wasn’t just them – this was a double homicide.

Don’t think Build My Rank won’t come back with guns a’ blazing though. They’ve even shut down their membership to new members to revamp their network! They are committed to bringing a quality product to market and are making adjustments to do just that… I expect big things from them when they re-open.

But for now, Build My Rank is closed. If you didn’t get in when they first won the Deathmatch, you’re out of luck.

So what do you use, out of all the link building services out there? Linxboss made an impressive debut to the Deathmatch, beating out BMR’s previously winning results (although the comparison wasn’t 100% equal – read the full report for details). But the nice thing about Linxboss is that you don’t have to do any writing, at all. Just input the URL’s you want links built to and – POOF! – you’ve got links coming your way.

However, I was approached just over 2 months ago by Linkvana – they asked me if I wanted a limited time trial account so I could check out their service and see if a Linkvana review was something I’d like to share with you guys. I sent them a link to the first Deathmatch post and asked them if they were willing to be one of the services profiled in a future Deathmatch and they said YES!

(I was VERY surprised they said yes – and I think it shows how confident they are in their product. It’s a risky move – what if they didn’t do well? But they were game.)

So, I did the following with 3 separate URL’s with no existing links pointing to them:

1. Submitted 1 UAW article (this spun article went to 167 sites)
2. Submitted 25 Build My Rank posts
3. Submitted 25 Linkvana posts

Where are we at today?

Link Building DEATHMATCH III - Results!

Which link building service produces the most backlinks?

You can see that Linkvana not only won, but KILLED it! They even murdered Linxboss’ previous results (at 57 & 39 backlinks).

Keep in mind, I did not use any of the Linkvana 2.0 features – Facebook & Twitter promotion, commenting tool, RSS Tool, Social Media Tool, Forum Profile Tool, Bookmarking Tools. All I used was their blog post submission.

Linkvana is seriously similar to Build My Rank (or maybe Build My Rank is similar to Linkvana…) in that you write short blog posts about your topic and add a link back to your site. Those posts go out to their network of partner blogs, are indexed, and get you a backlink. The content must be unique and can’t be spun.

Adding new posts to Linkvana

The super nice thing about Linkvana is that the posts only have to be 100 words (Build My Rank requires posts be 150 words). You can also outsource the posting to Linkvana – their writers will handle it for you, or, of course, get the writing done from a place like Fiverr or iWriter.

They do have a 5 day free trial so you can go check out the service yourself.

Based on these results, I’m pony’ing up my own dough (remember? they gave me a trial) to carry on using LinkVana.

I’m SERIOUSLY impressed with how Linkvana performed and am really looking forward to using some of the other services they offer, i.e. the “Liking” and other social promotion tools.

Where do we stand in total? Who are the all-time winners of the Link Building Deathmatch?

1. Linkvana (current all-time winner!)
2. Linxboss (nice because you don’t have to write articles)
3. Build My Rank (closed to new members, for now)
4. Unique Article Wizard (great for indexation with Article Builder. Read the boogie here).

Keep in mind also that you should never, ever put all your link building eggs in one basket. Use more than one method (i.e. article marketing plus social profiles) and more than one service (i.e. Linkvana plus Linxboss). That’s just smart link building and smart SEO!

The post Link Building DEATHMATCH: Double Homicide appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

Shite!

Build My Rank was the winner of the Link Building Deathmatch! WTF are we gonna do?!

The good news is that BMR is running and ready for current customers, so if you got in, you’re still in. The bad news is that if you’re not a BMR member, you can’t get in until they re-open. It’s a wise move to get on their waiting list if you’re not a customer already. Why? They wiped the floor with the competition in our last test!

The other good news is that just like I promised in the last Deathmatch, I’ve been testing other services and today I have the results of one of those tests for you.

Backlinking Strategy

I hate that I have to say this again and again, because I’d rather just get to the meat of the test, but some basics on backlinking strategy because if I don’t say it I’ll get some dumbass in the comments trying to turn this into his show by “warning” people of the “death” of something and freaking everyone out…

You should always get backlinks from multiple sources. Just because a certain service “wins” a Deathmatch post here doesn’t mean it’ll solve all your backlink problems. It also doesn’t mean you should abandon other solutions that are working for you.

What it means is that the winning service performed well in the test and should perform similarly for you with your sites.

So now that we’re all on the same page…

Mix up your backlinks. Use a few services. Get links from “regular” places like social media too. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But you already knew that, right?

The Deathmatch Contender

This round of the Link Building Deathmatch, I looked at Linxboss.

Linxboss is extremely different from the other services in that you don’t have to submit any articles. Hallelujah!

Not only do I hate writing articles, my virtual assistants hate it too! Can you blame them?! Writing redundant articles isn’t fun for anyone.

So what Linxboss does is give you 1,000 automatic links per month, spread across 5 sites. That means each site gets 200 links. (1,000 links / 5 sites = 200 links per site).

You can then spread those 200 links per domain amongst multiple pages within each domain. But, the number of links you get per month is finite. If you add 100 pages, you’ll only get 2 links per page. If you add 2 pages, you’ll get 100 links per page. It’s a good idea to not spread your links too thin, because if you do, you’ll not see huge results.

Of the pages you add for each domain, you, of course, get to choose your anchor texts. You can vary the anchor texts but, again, you don’t want to get cray-cray-crazy with it, otherwise you’ll be spreading the value of the links you’re getting pretty thin.

Remember that with Linxboss you don’t have to do any writing. You don’t have to submit any articles. No spinning. No pipes. No PLR crap.

At $147 per month, it’s more expensive than UAW or BMR (BMR is $59 for 5 domains), and of course, that cost comes with the wonderful, freeing fact that it’s truly set-it-and-forget-it, no writing or fiddling required. And that is a rare delight.

It took me about an hour to watch the training and get all 5 of my domains set up. Now that I understand the system, it takes just seconds to make a change should I need to.

Linxboss also has a ranking tracking feature where it checks the rank of the keywords you’ve added to the system and lets you know if you’re gaining or losing in Google. Nice to quickly check how your Linxboss campaigns are doing, but not a substitution for an actual rank tracking tool.

The Deathmatch Results

We started Linxboss on January 7 with 2 relatively new pages (2 months old)  on an established domain (3 years old). Neither of these pages had any links built to them or any links showing in Majestic or Open Site Explorer.

Page 1: 57 backlinks

Page 2: 39 backlinks

This blows the previous BMR results out of the water (which had 38 links after 2 months)!

And, I’ll keep harping on it because I’m like your girlfriend who just keeps repeating things until I think it’s sunk it – OMG! I didn’t have to write any articles!

Duh… I don’t *actually* write articles. My VA’s do. They don’t really like writing repetitive posts on the same topics over and over and over again either. So we’re all happy with Linxboss. Here’s a webinar on how I outsource if you need more info on getting your own VA’s. You should do it.

Keep in mind though that the results between BMR and Linxboss aren’t entirely comparable. When I ran the BMR tests, I submitted 20 articles to the service and got 38 links back in 2 months. With Linxboss, they submitted 100 links per page over approximately 4 weeks and I got 57 and 39 links back.

To be a true comparison, I’d have to submit 100 articles per page to BMR. But I don’t want to write 100 articles – and neither do you. And that’s a big part of what makes Linxboss so attractive.

Recommendations

First, get REAL about your link building.

Build My Rank performs, but you’ll need to actually take the time (or outsource) submitting articles to it. Same with Unique Article Wizard – you’ve got to produce your own content. If you’re not taking full advantage of these programs and really hammering them with article s(say, for comparison’s sake, 1000 per month) then you’re not getting as much value as you would get from Linxboss.

Value isn’t always about price.

I’m keeping Build My Rank, because it performs exceptionally well in it’s own right. And I’m using Linxboss, because I love, love, love getting links without working for it – and it appears to be outperforming BMR also. The UAW – Article Builder tango is still working it’s magic too.

Like I said in the beginning – a portion of what’s important for link building is diversity.

Linxboss allows you to introduce more diversity to your network without having to actually do more link building work. That’s a win for anybody!

Overall, who’s the winner of the Deathmatch to date? Linxboss. Get you some.

The post Link Building DEATHMATCH: Like a Boss appeared first on From Idea to Empire.

Maintaining and cultivating momentum is imperative in building your business.  And seemingly small movements can build momentum over time and lead to bigger opportunities in the future.

In today’s Reboot Your Blog assignment you’ll develop a process of small movements that will help your sites build rank and traffic over time.

DAY 24 OBJECTIVE

Create a link building process for new posts, pages and sites.

DAY 24 ASSIGNMENT

Low Quality Link Building

You know from your work yesterday that social bookmarking and other low quality links are easy to obtain, but won’t necessarily get your new posts ranked all on their own. It’s a good idea to add any new content you create to your automated backlinks-for-backlinks solution (whichever one you chose). It won’t hurt and you’ve got the system in place, so use it.

But assuming your new content is keyword optimized and something you want to see ranking and bringing in new traffic, you’ll have to do a bit more to encourage Google to put it at the tippy top of the SERPs.

Mid Quality Link Building

You can, of course, submit articles to article directories like Ezine Articles or build a Squidoo lens for every URL you want to promote. You have to spend either time or money.

But be honest with yourself here. I’ve been the biggest miser in the past regarding link building – I can write an article and put it on Squidoo, why on earth would I pay for a link building service? I could judge how well that was working for me by looking at the rankings of my sites. If I wasn’t at #1, then what I thought I would do either wasn’t enough, or I just wasn’t doing it.

You don’t want to skimp on your link building – that doesn’t mean fall for every offer that put your way, but it does mean to invest (either time or money) enough to get the results you’re looking for. If you don’t have the results you want yet, you’re not investing enough.

You’ve seen throughout Reboot Your Blog that I like to run tests – too see if something that’s being pushed as an answer does in fact work or to compare solutions and see what works best.

Link building is no different – I’ve run some tests (and continue to run them) covering which link building services are giving me the highest ROI.

I focus on article syndication services, as these kinds of systems are pretty easy to work with and generally get your link across a wide variety of sites and IP’s.

So when there’s a new article, blog post or page that you want to give a search engine boost (should be most of your posts, unless it’s just an announcement for current readers or something) you’ll want to use an article marketing or article syndication service to let the webernets know about it.

The winner of the tests so far has been Build My Rank, which provided 38 backlinks for only 20 short (150 word) articles submitted. Not bad!

Here’s a look at the competition as a whole:

Article Marketing DEATHMATCH - Results!

Which article marketing service produces the most backlinks over a 2 month period?

And if you’d like to read the whole wrap-up of the testing, here’s the original article and a follow up.

This is the BMR interface:

BuildMyRank also has a free trial where you get 10 free links (and as you can see, these are much higher quality links than you’ll find elsewhere) so you might as well take advantage of those and test it out on your own.

I’m currently testing more services – I don’t think I’ll ever stop testing – and as it stands, BMR wins hands down.

The catch with BMR – and most likely why it’s so successful – is that you have to submit unique content that’s not been published anywhere else and that has proper English spelling, grammar, etc. My account had actually been flagged because a writer on my team continued to submit low quality, spun content over and over (wasn’t what she was supposed to be doing… But that’s a story for another day, eh?!) – so they take the quality of their content and the integrity of their network very seriously.

A runner-up to BMR in my testing was Unique Article Wizard – and what’s nice about them is that you can use the service with spun content. They too check the content for readibility – you can’t just give them gibberish – but the content does not have to be unique to their network.

What we do at RevolutionTilt is pull “Super Spun” articles from Article Builder and then submit them to UAW. The only editing required is adding the Resource Box, which is where UAW gives us our link back. It’s typical for a UAW submission to go out to well over 100 sites.

Here’s the Article Builder Interface:

And the Unique Article Wizard Interface:

With this combo (Unique Article Wizard and Article Builder), it takes all of 10 minutes to send out a new set of articles.

Ideally, you’re combining backlink sources – some Web 2.0 properties, some social media sharing backlinks, some article marketing services, etc. I use both BMR and UAW on new content I want to rank.

If you can only afford one, go with BMR – based on my tests, it’s the best ROI.

Outsourcing

The ultimate? Hire someone to manage your link building for you!

I have an outsourcer who combs all of my sites for new content every week.  She then takes the URL’s to all that new content across all of my sites (this blog, other internet marketing stuff, niche sites, etc.) and builds link to it.  It costs me a few dollars a week and is totally hands off.

You would be surprised at how attainable outsourcing is – and I don’t just have my VA do link building. I’ve got a webinar with John Jonas that will explain – if you’ve ever thought outsourcing was beyond you, have a listen.

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The important part is that you select a method and stick to it, day in and day out for all the new content you create.

This kind of natural link building (in that deep links are built over time) is one of those small steps that build greater momentum over time, and you’ll thank yourself for implementing it as you see your backlinks count grow!

By the end of today’s Reboot Your Blog post, you’ll have:

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• Added your new posts to your backlinks-for-backlinks workflow
• Gotten honest about whether doing your own link building is effective
• Decided on a servie or process for building your links going forward
• Considered outsourcing your link building

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More up tomorrow!

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