The article marketing world was visibly shaken (ha ha!) on Sunday when Build My Rank emailed with the following:

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.