Why Have Angela's Links Become Less Effective?

[The Expert]

Back when I started using Angela's Backlinks in March/April they were able to break one of my new sites out of the Sandbox within 3 days. I was crazy happy to use them.

Since then though, I've found that these "Profile" style links have become less effective. I currently have a site that is optimized to the max that I setup in July. Competition is not too intense when compared to my previously successful sites. Up till yesterday I only used Profile links as my backlink method thinking that it would be helpful.

The site rose from startup on June 28th to hover between #47 & #60 on July 5th just using old packets of Angela's links.

After that I didn't just use Angela's links, but hundreds of others Profile links on hundreds of sites with Different IP addresses that I tracked down from footprints on sites from Angela's packets in an effort to get the site out of this rut. The site has NOT risen since then regardless of creating/pinging/bookmarking/RSSing over 400 profile links!

I use aggressive Bookmarking & RSS techniques to ensure that it's almost impossible for Google NOT to find the profile pages...but I'm not getting the same impact in a visible rise in ranking for my site.

Here's my theory as to why.

Back in the day, Angela's sites were a mix of Profile links and Blog/Article comments. She always directed people to create a forum post in order to get a link back to their profile page. The customers cried out saying they liked profiles links better and that they did NOT like to have to post in a forum or blog because their accounts would get banned as a spammer after the "Angela Rush" alerted site owners that something was up.

So she switched to lists that were exclusively Profile Links that were public and accessable by search engines, but did NOT require you to score a link to your profile from anywhere else on the site.

This enabled everyone's profiles to fly under the radar and dodge being banned, but it created two OTHER problems that are far more significant:

1) Indexing - creating a profile page with your backlink is like establishing an island far from the mainland with no bridges or ferry to crate a path to that particular island. Similarly, there is no path for the search engine spiders to follow in order to find your profile page and your profile link.

This was quickly solved by the IM community simply be creating a bunch of Bookmarks and/or RSS Feeds to create your own "paths" to the profile page separate from the website hosting the profile page. Now you could be assured the page would be found without anyone seeing your site ID come up anywhere on the site itself. You could get indexed without fear of having your profile reviewed and flagged by the community. SWEET!

2) Lack of Link Juice - the second, more significant, problem is that without any "paths" leading from the domain home page, there is no way for the link juice to flow from the "High PR" page to the subpages!

It was just assumed that every page on the site gets to inheret some of the "authority" of the High PR home page simply by being there, but now I think that's not the case. If there is no "path" to channel link juice from the home page to your profile page because you are creating no blog comment or actual forum post with an internal link back to your profile page, then I'm thinking these links lose their effectiveness because no link juice flows to your profile page, out through your profile link, and to your site to juice it up.

In conclusion, I think that Angela's customers got what they want (namely, 100% profile style links which require no blog commenting or forum posts) but we killed the effectiveness of the entire strategy because now ALL of the links are void of any link juice to our sites.

Please share some thoughts on this. Am I on target, or off base?

[mpruben]

This make a lot of sense. I often wondered why the instructions did not included making forum posts etc. Any isolated page (on any site) isn't going to get a lot of Google attention.

[Intrepreneur]

You make mistakes and climb over them.

But forgetting to get your backlinks indexed.. I just don't pity anyone that forgets to do something as important as that.

[jasonmorgan]

I think you are on target.

bottom line is people wanted an easy solution and the little bit of work that was involved in the beginning (actually leaving a forum post) was still too much work when what they really wanted was a list they could send off to a virtual assistant.

anyhoo...

I still do all of my backlinking myself, I post in the forums and I let my profiles mature before I add any links too them. Like you said, I have multiple roads from the main page leading to my profiles so I'm getting as much juice as I can squeeze out of a site. You can even get some PR for your profile page if you put some effort into it.

[desi4eva]

I have been thinking the same thing, we just need to stop being so lazy lol

[E-supreme]

Indexing your backlinks is paramount and this has proved very successful for me.

Many people just simply believe they can post a link on the profiles and it will be indexed...good thread!

[Preciseim]

Personally I avoid these backlinks as I think that there are much more more effective ways of getting them...

[kassaf]

I agree with most of your analysis BUT I think there is another significant factor for the amount of value of the profile links.

When there was a mix of types of links (blogs, forums...) then you received a link from a content page which is not "duplicate content" - that is good.

Why I mentioned "duplicate content" - because as far as I understand duplicate content, the same content in two or more pages on the same domain are considered duplicate. IMPORTANT: If you look at profile page, the vast majority of the crawlable words come from the template. Since usually, at least 90% of the profile content is similar to many other profiles on the same domain they are considered DUPLICATE CONTENTENT and therefor carry little to no value.

So taking out the blogs and forums from link building activity has its price.

[turbohips]

I have to disagree here fellas. I've only used the backlinks for about a month now and went from 200 up to around the top 20 for my keywords. Some of my keywords are still struggling but not nearly as they were before using the profile links. I have not posted one blog or forum post and it's working. I'm not on the first page yet but I'm guessing this is due to not having enough back links yet.

[Zeus66]

Indexing is why you need to use high PR forums. Most will post a link to new members for awhile on their homepage. If that page has spiders camped out on it because it's high PR, then your new profile with the backlinks will also get noticed in a hurry by the SE's. Don't mess with low PR forums unless you're prepared to do all the extras to get your profiles indexed (RSS, Ping, SB, etc.).

John