*July 27th UPDATE* Week 22: The Great SEO Link Building Service Experiment of 2011

[ElectronPlumber]

Hello Warriors! Long time lurker here on the forums, and I've finally decided to do my part to increase everyone's rankings and earnings!

First off, let me be honest here. I dislike link building. I dislike it so much that I rarely do any.

I have multiple sites on various topics where I just write content and I enjoy it. I'd rather write content for hours than troll the internet to get other sites to link to me or wade through manual article submissions. I post links to my content to a handful of social networking sites and generally leave it at that. About 10-15% of my posts find their way onto the first page of Google for the keyword I target in the article.

However, I've noticed lately that it doesn't take much SEO juice to kick one of my contented targeted keywords up the rankings from page 5 to page 1.

Everyone has their opinion on which link building technique works best. Some people swear by article marketing, some swear by directory submissions, some live by forum profile links, some spam blog comments.

Everyone has their opinion, but no one seems to be presenting any hard facts to back up their opinion. I'm a facts kind of guy.

Which of these options is best? Can a link building service actually work to drive a site up the rankings for a fairly competitive keyword? Are article submissions better than optimized content farms? Are they better than profile link blasts?

I'm too nervous to try this on any of my current sites. I'm a white hat good content site builder. I've never had a site deindexed or deranked by Google in the 2.5 years I've been doing this and I don't want to kill my current income stream.

So I'm starting a bunch of new sites, throwing on my Grey Hat and running The Great Link Building Service Experiment to check out which link building services work the best.

Not having the time or inclination to do a ton of manual link building, I am going to focus on testing different link building services.

To start I scoured the web for opinions on the best link building services.
And what did I find? A sea of people and companies all pushing their own link building services. They were all different prices for different numbers of links. Some have their own content networks, some create forum profiles or posts, some article marketing, some spam blog content. But they all have the same problem, it's impossible to tell if they work from the sales page or reviews. Some seem to do far more for $47 a month than those who charge or sell software for $197 a month.

All the reviews I could find online are untrustworthy junk by affiliate marketers trying to get you to click. Heck, I have no problem buying something through an affiliate link, but the affiliate damn well better earn their commission by actually telling me something useful about the service that I couldn't find anywhere else.

So I'm putting my money where my mouth is to provide YOU, Fellow Warrior, with the data you need.

Which Is The Best Link Building Service?

Here is exactly what I'm doing:

1. Register 5 very similar domains for a specific keyword on the same day. I've already done this step. I've kept them as close to the keywords as possible. For example, bestseoexperiment.org, bestseoexperiment.com, bestseoexperiment.net, best-seoexperiment.org, and best-seoexperiement.com. NOTE, those aren't the domains, I'm picking a product keyword with medium competition that at least makes the investment in SEO services worthwhile.
2. Install Wordpress on 5 different shared hosting accounts - This way all five domains will be on distinct IP address. Also completed!
3. Create main page content. I will create and manually spin a home page article for each site. I will try very hard to keep similar length, similar keyword density and similar SEO value (number of h2 and h3 tags with the same keywords targeted, each good sized at 800-900 words, etc). Also completed!
4. I will submit each of the 5 sites to a couple social media sites and RSS feed sites using different profiles. This is simply to get Google and Yahoo to find them before the link building starts. I'm doing this step today.
5. Buy a subscription to the five candidate link building services listed below. I'll point each subscription at one of the sites. I'll try to keep the linking natural by mixing up my submissions as much as allowed on the service (50% main keyword targeted, 35% related keyword targeted, 5% URL targeted, 5% "Click Here" targeted).
6. Create new content. I'll create new similar content subpages on each site and point the next month's link building service 50% at the home page and 50% at one of those new pages for related keywords to get some deep link love.
7. Track the results! On at least a weekly basis I'll track the Yahoo reported number of links, the keyword positions and search engine traffic for each site and make pretty charts and graphs. At the end I'll do a overall backlink value analysis on each site

Again, the goal here is to keep the sites and content similar enough for a good test, but unique enough to avoid any duplicate content penalties.

BuildMyRank vs LinkAloha vs Unique Article Wizard vs 1WayLinks vs Good Old Fashioned SEO Elbow Grease

Here are the five services in the running. I chose these based on cost and opinions around the web as the best bang for the buck with minimal effort.

BuildMyRank
1waylinks
LinkAloha
Unique Article Wizard
My SEO Elbow Grease

I have more details on each of these services and why I chose them on my site (check my sig below) and which services I decided to pass over.

I plan on running this experiment for at least six months so as to give each service a chance to shine. I will post updates throughout.

Depending on how this goes, I've got many more of these hard data experiments up my sleeve that I'll be sharing over the coming months.

If anyone has a very compelling argument why I should test a different service other than the five above, make your case fast. I'm signing up for all these starting early next week.

Questions, comments and advice always welcome!

UPDATE Week 2/3: Seeing some rankings!
UPDATE Week 4: Moving Up Fast
UPDATE Week 4.5: More Data Per Request
UPDATE Week 5/6: BMR Hits Page 1
UPDATE Week 7: UAW Finally Kicks In
UPDATE Week 8/9: The Ignoring
UPDATE Week 10/11/12: The Ignoring Ends
UPDATE Week 13/14/15: Sandboxed And Back Again
UPDATE Week 16/17/18/19/20/21/22: Five Months In

If you find this experiment useful, please click the THANKS Button right below --------------VVVVV

[jfhamil]

Great - this is an awesome experiment. I will be checking in frequently to see how it is going. Thanks! Jean

[mozesteven]

Thank you ElectronPlumber - I always stay tune to this great experiment. I will even read every step you post here.

Regards,
Mozesteven

[luckymom78]

Not very many voters I voted, it will be interesting to see how it turns out

[chrisadams008]

Nice tips. I hope this is effective so that it can also help us. Thank you for sharing.

[ameerulislam10]

Originally Posted by ElectronPlumber

I plan on running this experiment for at least six months so as to give each service a chance to shine. I will post updates throughout.


Depending on how this goes, I've got many more of these hard data experiments up my sleeve that I'll be sharing over the coming months.


If anyone has a very compelling argument why I should test a different service other than the five above, make your case fast. I'm signing up for all these starting early next week.


Questions, comments and advice always welcome!


Stay tuned!

Looks like we are heading to a great case study. Please make sure you update your progress on this particular thread. I'm subscribing to this thread and want to be part of your experiment. Thanks

[stuartpanter]

hi, are there any updates on this project in the pipeline,
thanks

[Mike Grant]

The only one worth a damn on that list anymore is BMR.

[pmg2712]

I am lurking for the same!!!
Article directories with fresh articles is the best way, google loves it!
It is a slow going process though.

[ElectronPlumber]

Update: Week 1
This is going to be a LONG experiment, as everyone tends to agree on one thing about link building, most of the time you don't see the results for weeks or months. I'm figuring that if a service doesn't show any significant rankings in six months, then it's pretty worthless. It's going to cost me about $300 per service to find out though, but I figure you guys are worth it right?

All five sites are up and running. Here is the exact setup:

All sites are Wordpress 3.0.4 with the Thesis theme.
All have 800-900 word articles on them, each hand written by me, three sections with title, h2 and h3 tags containing the main keywords.
All three have an About, Contact, and Privacy Policy, and Sitemap page.
No Adsense or links out yet. Only well targeted content about the niche.

Site 1: Godaddy Shared Hosting Account #1
Site 2: Godaddy Shared Hosting Account #2
Site 3: Hostgator Shared Hosting Account #1
Site 4: Hostgator Shared Hosting Account #2
Site 5: Godaddy 4g Shared Hosting Account #1

No sites are ranking for any keywords.

Week 1 Plan:
1) Create 5 new Mixx, Reddit and StumbleUpon accounts, link each site. This is to give each site a semi equal link footing to start with and make Google and Yahoo take notice of each site semi-naturally.
2) Purchase and setup the four services listed above, one per site.

More updates as they happen!

[dejoliet31]

WOW! This is a wonderful case study that will shed factual light on a subject that has long been based on opinion. Though the final results require patience, I will be one of those greatly anticipating the data that will surely come.

Congrats on committing the time and resources to conduct this experiment.

[AbsolutJake82]

Impressive....I will be interested to see the results!

[Riatsala]

Thanks for doing this. I'll be watching with interest...

[authoritylinkbuilder]

Bookmarked

[faysal969]

Thank you very much for your nice and informative article.

It will help a wide range of people.

[jonnyhardbaked]

Wonderful! this will help me in writing an article

[mozesteven]

Unique Article Wizard is my choice as we are not only put links everywhere but we also have to provide good articles to the network.

Any update?

Regards,
Mozesteven

[ElectronPlumber]

UPDATE: Week 2/3
Ok, the summary: All sites are up, all sites are getting link love from their respective service, some rankings are starting to show up but nothing worth getting excited about yet.

I want to give each service a couple of weeks to even out before giving out any real numbers. I signed up for some at the start of last week and others near the end of the week and that might be affecting the data so far.

On a scale of 1-10 for difficulty, with 10 being most difficult, I'd put my three word keyword at a 4 and the two word version at a 6. For reference, I would rate the keyword "insurance" a 10 on this scale, "car insurance" a 9, "car insurance quotes" an 8, down to "children's toy car insurance policy" a 0.

If I can rank my three word keyword on the first page of Google with one of these services, I figure it's WELL worth the $50 a month.

For your number crunchers, the three word has:
1000 Exact Searches Per Month
26,000 SEOTC (All in Title Competition)
27,000 SEOUC (All in URL Competition)
1,300,000 SEOC (Any mention on a page Competition)

The two word has:
10,000 Exact Searches Per Month
495,000 SEOTC (All in Title Competition)
365,000 SEOUC (All in URL Competition)
2,600,000 SEOC (Any mention on a page Competition)

Some interesting points so far...

Google Preferred Indexing The .Com Version!
The only .com version in the experiment had all pages indexed in Google before any links were created, even my placeholder pages that just had "Coming Soon!" on them! The two .org's and two .net's still aren't fully indexed by Google for all 10 pages I put in the sitemap, even with some backlinking. Could just be a coincidence, but I think it's telling enough to take a second look in a follow up experiment.

Google Doesn't Care About My Keyword Stuffed Domain
All five domains in the experiment are exact keyword stuffed, and yet none of them are in the top 1000 for that keyword for a broad search on Google! Some are barely in the top 500 exact phrase search for Google! Most are showing up in the 10-150 range for an exact phrase search on the phrase in Yahoo and Bing though.

Yahoo And Bing Did Care About My Keyword Stuffed Domain
In fact, three of my domains are in the top 20 for an exact phrase search (in quotes) on Bing, one is even at position 9! Still barely in the top 150 for that as a broad search (the kind everyone actually does) but it's a good start for a 3 week old domain.

-------------
Week 2/3 Conclusions
Again, take this info with a grain of salt. This is only 5 domains and certainly not a statistically significant sample size at ALL. Coincidences may be at work here in these first few weeks. I expect any coincidences to even out in a few months of using these link building services.

So far after less than a week live, two of the services are making a decent sized standout on Yahoo and Bing ranking in the top 100, but I'm not going to tell you which yet. They are the 1st and 3rd services I started using, and were started about 5 days apart.

Stay Tuned!

[Jusiam]

Looks interesting! Bookmarked the thread.

[I Still Got It]

Interesting thread, I will certainly be following your adventure. I have been testing BMR for about 6 weeks, the service is great but you have to keep adding fresh articles daily as your links are soon pushed off the PR page.
I have been building my own network of PR 2 - 5 sites and im trying various little experiments on them (ie article links v blogroll links etc)

[aa411853]

Originally Posted by I Still Got It

Interesting thread, I will certainly be following your adventure. I have been testing BMR for about 6 weeks, the service is great but you have to keep adding fresh articles daily as your links are soon pushed off the PR page.
I have been building my own network of PR 2 - 5 sites and im trying various little experiments on them (ie article links v blogroll links etc)

Do you have evidence that the post falling off the front page actually effects your SERPs? I've got sites of my own that are on page 1 for competitive terms for which I've done hardly any link building, BMR or other, in months (so there are no homepage links) and the SERPs are very steady.

If you were trying to build page rank sure you want the link right on the homepage, but that's not the purpose of BMR of course.

[I Still Got It]

Originally Posted by aa411853

Do you have evidence that the post falling off the front page actually effects your SERPs? I've got sites of my own that are on page 1 for competitive terms for which I've done hardly any link building, BMR or other, in months (so there are no homepage links) and the SERPs are very steady.

If you were trying to build page rank sure you want the link right on the homepage, but that's not the purpose of BMR of course.

Not criticizing BMR at all, I find it an excellent service but my niche is rather competitive so I think it helps to be constantly building links.

My main competitors link profile shows many blogroll links across a wide range of blogs(all with minimal content) It seems to work for him, so this is what Im looking to add to my other methods ie - BMR, Blog posts, Directories and old fashioned link requests.

[Digitel]

I am so impressed and it is very interesting to see the results.

[bummed.out]

Wow! Thank you for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate you offering to share your findings for something this comprehensive.

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by I Still Got It

Not criticizing BMR at all, I find it an excellent service but my niche is rather competitive so I think it helps to be constantly building links.

My main competitors link profile shows many blogroll links across a wide range of blogs(all with minimal content) It seems to work for him, so this is what Im looking to add to my other methods ie - BMR, Blog posts, Directories and old fashioned link requests.

Any bump you get from being on the front page on a BMR site is very temporary, since most articles don't stay on there for more than 12 hours. I think it does REALLY help in getting them indexed though.

While I am not doing it in this experiment, pretty much everyone who says they are very successful with a link building content network like BMR or 1WayLinks has also done work building backlinks to the articles, either directly or by heavily backlinking an RSS feed that contains all their article links. Might keep that in my pocket as a follow up experiment.

So far the only service I'm trying that doesn't provide an exact list of the links is Unique Article Wizard. They provide a list of sites your article is submitted to, but it's been about 50/50 on those actually existing or not. BMR, 1WayLinks and LinkAloha all provide a nice list of links to the articles or profiles published.

[ElectronPlumber]

Week 4 Update

Alright, now we're talking. Some major movement during week 4! Note that this is week 4 since registering the sites and week 3 of using each service.

Finally started to rank with Google this week.

The score for my main 3 word keyword:
The site using BuildMyRank is at the top of Page 2 of Google!
The site using 1WayLinks is on Page 4 of Google.
The site using LinkAloha is on Page 5 of Google.
The site using UniqueArticleWizard is on Page 16 of Google
The site using my own homegrown SEO is not in the first 20 pages.

Check my site (in my sig) for more detailed results.

Also the top three sites are starting to get a trickle of search traffic for some long tail keywords, only 5-10 visitors a day, but still nice to see. I might put some Adsense on there next week just for kicks.

It'll be interesting to see if any sandboxing kicks in on any of these in the coming weeks or if they keep climbing.

Feel free to hit me with questions if anyone wants more details about how I've setup these sites.

[ryanjm]

This doesn't surprise me w/BMR. It is very good at getting a site to page 2 or 3 quickly. But I will be very very surprised if it continues to move up from where it's at now.

[niplag]

It would be interesting to know if the site ranking at page 2 of Google was a .com

[thetruth23]

Nice thread!

Could you give us more details in how you're utilising each service?

BMR: how many posts per day are being submitted? Are they all short posts or are you doing longer articles too?
LinkAloha: how many links are you drip feeding per day?
Etc for the other services...

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by ryanjm

This doesn't surprise me w/BMR. It is very good at getting a site to page 2 or 3 quickly. But I will be very very surprised if it continues to move up from where it's at now.

It doesn't suprise me, either.

I am a massive fan of BMR and it is my bulk backlink builder of choice. It will get a keyword to page 1 pretty quickly if you are a little selective with your keyword choice.

It always gives me a reasonable boost for established and more competitive keywords too.

[JScoppa]

Love the thread and the updates. I will be sure to follow this one!

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by niplag

It would be interesting to know if the site ranking at page 2 of Google was a .com

Nope niplag! The BMR site that is on Page 2 is actually one of the .org's. The 1WayLinks site has jumped up today to join it on Page 2, that one is a .net. The LinkAloha site is .com and that's moved up to Page 3.

Originally Posted by thetruth23

Nice thread!

Could you give us more details in how you're utilising each service?

BMR: how many posts per day are being submitted? Are they all short posts or are you doing longer articles too?
LinkAloha: how many links are you drip feeding per day?
Etc for the other services...

Here are updated numbers for today. Note that I post this data and more on my site each week (Google "Electron Plumber") if you want to see more details. Actually climbed a bit from when I wrote these up on Sunday.

The BuildMyRank Site is a .org

• Google Rank: 11
• Pages Indexed: 8
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 12

I have only created 16 links on BMR so far, only short posts just over the 150 word limit. I did one shot of 8 to start, another shot of 8 early last week. No dripping here, since there were so few. I'm working on another 8 pack right now to hopefully drive me to Page 1. Why 8 at a time? That seems to be the number of articles I can write in one sitting without my head exploding.
--------------------------------------

1WayLinksSite is a .net

• Google Rank: 14 (just hit 14 today!)
• Pages Indexed:8
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 144

So far I have used 360 article submissions total on BMR. Only one long article fairly well spun with two links. I varied the link text via spinning a bit here to make it look slightly more natural. Dripped at a rate of around 20 a day.

--------------------------------------

Link Aloha Site is a .com

• Google Rank: 34
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 15

So far 440 links created by LinkAloha, dripped at around 20 a day. I started this one 4 days earlier than the 1WayLinks subscription, thus the number difference.

--------------------------------------

UniqueArticleWizard Site (.org)

• Google Rank: 170 (actually dropped from 147 since Sunday)
• Pages Indexed: 7
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 15

UAW reports that article was submitted to 263 "article directories", which seems to be 13 article directories and 250 random low quality autoblogs. I have no idea how many were actually accepted and published but I've found about 40 that were and 40 that hit 404 pages before I got bored clicking links in the list.

Compared to the other three above, I'm really not impressed at all with UniqueArticleWizard unfortunately. There is too much work manually spinning three 300 word article versions and too much uncertainty that they won't be published to justify a higher cost for lower results.

There is a good chance I'm going to kick UniqueArticleWizard to the curb early. I'd be far better off doubling my LinkAloha subscription and paying for some written articles on BMR with that $67 or switching to another service for the duration.

Anyone have a favorite service that I should consider switching to? Article Marketing Robot or LinkVana or SEOLinkVine maybe?

[garben2011]

Originally Posted by JScoppa

Love the thread and the updates. I will be sure to follow this one!

Cool stuff!

I really enjoy a good case study. Keep thinking I'll do one myself one day soon.

Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out. Anytime we can gain some real intelligence from an in the trenches test like yours it's a good thing!

[niplag]

Looking forward to the next update!

[MarksWineClub]

I use BMR (well I have for around a month now) and was intrigued when you said people build links to those posts.

Do you mind sharing any more info there? What type of links etc? If I make a 200 profile run from sick submitter, would that be helpful? More?

[alco]

What's the chance Google may 'out' these services and why is UAW doing so badly? It seems to be the one that is most talked about from Reading various IM forums.

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by alco

What's the chance Google may 'out' these services and why is UAW doing so badly? It seems to be the one that is most talked about from Reading various IM forums.

Alco, I think most of these services are setup in a way that Google would be unable to "out" them completely. If they haven't done so by now, it's unlikely they will in the near future. The sites your links get on do not interlink to each other, so even if Google discovers one they won't find the others. That doesn't mean they can't notice your site having an unnatural link profile that only consists of keyword stuffed text and manually burying your site. The sites in this experiment are certainly at risk for that, but it's worth it to see the value of each of these services in a vacuum so to speak.

I don't think UniqueArticleWizard is doing that badly, just that it's doing really badly compared to the other three.

I posted an article on my site evaluating exactly why I think UniqueArticleWizard isn't succeeding like the others. It's way too long to copy here. Go check it out if you want more details.

Originally Posted by MarksWineClub

I use BMR (well I have for around a month now) and was intrigued when you said people build links to those posts.

Do you mind sharing any more info there? What type of links etc? If I make a 200 profile run from sick submitter, would that be helpful? More?

Well Mark, BMR does backlinking to your articles automatically. So it might be less useful to add to it. If you decide to go with one of the other services like 1waylinks or LinkAloha you might want to do some backlinking to those pages to help boost them. I will likely go back in a few months and backlink my articles to give them a boost, but I don't want to cloud the results of this experiment while it's still in progress.

[MarksWineClub]

Interesting stuff as always. Thanks for the response and insight.

I think everyone is going to really enjoy tracking the progress over time.

Thanks again

[perfect]

Thank for your time and this great work you are dong right now.

[Boricua]

I've tried all of them!

BuildMyRank.com and the similar one, LinkVana.com are networks to provide link juice, actual power to your domain authority mainly on the eyes of Google.

Networks like UniqueArticleWizard, Isnare, ContentCrooner, SubmitYourArticle are the ones quite enough of us focus (and should) for getitng traffic from articles - not link juice!

ArticleRanks, MyArticleNetwork, SeoLinkVine and the similar are great networks, however! Reality, they bring the traffic over time, over the trans-course of several months as their system keeps accepting the articles.

Winner in my books for link juice? BuildMyRank for link juice! Quite a few happy campers using my services that are already reporting PR 4 links and its quite obvious when you see the actual report on their graphic, so they're fantastic.

Winner in my books for traffic? UniqueArticleWizard! It would had been isnare, but they take weeks, and I mean WEEKS to actually approve/submit if you have 100's of articles in their queue.

[ElectronPlumber]

Week 5/6 Update

Week 5/6 seems to have separated the wheat from the chaff so to speak.
A little late with this update, but since I had already posted a week 4 and a half update here, I figured I'd wait a little bit longer.

The quick summary: One site is now on Page 1 of Google! One site near the top of Page 2, another on Page 3. Two sites aren’t anywhere to be found in the first 20 pages of Google. I had my first Adsense revenue appear this week as well.

So far I'm getting darn good results from three of the services and actually saw my first revenue! I added some Adsense blocks to one of the sites last week and started getting some clicks.

I'm really encouraged by the success here, seeing as how I have some more lucrative keywords I'd like to go after. Time will tell if these results continue, as well as what happens after I shut off the link building faucet at the end of this.

The BuildMyRank Site: Google Rank 9
The LinkAloha Site: Google Rank 13
The 1WayLinks Site: Google Rank 36
The UniqueArticleWizard Site: Google Rank 200+
The My Own SEO Site: Google Rank 200+

More detailed numbers in the full update on my site.

This update is actually late because I've spent the last week starting a couple more unrelated sites to take advantage of the fact that you can use BuildMyRank to post up to 10 articles a day per site for up to five sites on their basic plan. No point in paying for it just to use for one site right?

I know that my own SEO site is sucking wind because I've been completely blowing it off and putting my time other places. Hell, I told you guys right up front that I hated link building, probably too much to think I could overcome that.

Anyone paying monthly for UniqueArticleWizard may want to seriously reconsider. The links from it aren't doing ANYTHING for my site in terms of Google Rank, and I haven't seen a single click from any natural traffic from those 200+ articles that UAW distributed. My opinion is that UAW is $67 a month down the toilet.

I've learned so much from this first experiment that I'm thinking of starting a second one in April to settle the duplicate content argument once and for all. More updates to come.

Questions and comments always welcome!

[rr1455]

Great job.... What has your cost been so far? Have you tried any way to get $$$ back?
Keep up the great work...
Roger

[nunugenius]

buildmyrank is great, but in additional you must pay more for writers

[thetruth23]

Nice! That's pretty cool. I second Roger's question...how much so far has been spent on each service so we can have an idea of ROI?

Also, what are you using to track rankings?

[App Developers]

Excellent case study! I will have to bookmark and read up on the updates!!

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by nunugenius

buildmyrank is great, but in additional you must pay more for writers

Well, not if you write your own articles which is what I've been doing. You could certainly break the bank here buying 150 word articles at $2.50.

If you wanted to max out the 10 article a day limit per site for 5 sites at $2.50 an article buying them from BMR, that's $3750 a month! it would be far less expensive to hire a couple offshore content writers in the Philippines for $350 a month each.

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by thetruth23

Nice! That's pretty cool. I second Roger's question...how much so far has been spent on each service so we can have an idea of ROI?

Also, what are you using to track rankings?

For rank tracking I'm using Market Samurai with some manual visual verification.

Originally Posted by rr1455

Great job.... What has your cost been so far? Have you tried any way to get $$$ back?
Keep up the great work...
Roger

Note that I purposefully DID NOT optimize this experiment for making revenue up front. Heck, only one of the sites has Adsense on it yet. I purposefully picked a keyword niche that was harder than I would usually go for in order to have a better spread of competition for the sites to rank against. The keyword goes for about $1 a click in Adsense, which is also lower than I would usually go for. BUT it's a niche I know a great deal about and that made it much easier to write 5 copies of the site and all the resulting articles to go with it for this experiment.

For a total, I'm probably around $400 in the hole total right now for all 5 sites.

I'll have to add up the cost on each site and keep a running total. 1WayLinks has a nice $7 first month special trial that helped lower the initial cost on that one. The rest were $50 or $60 each, plus around a $8 yearly domain registration. I won't count hosting since I'm piggybacking on hosting I'm already paying for.

I'll add Adsense to all 5 sites this week, then add a "Revenue Generated" figure to each site in upcoming weekly reports.

[Ian Varnava]

I think The Link Juicer should be worthy of this experiment. I've seen some decent results with it on lower competition niches.

[ElectronPlumber]

Originally Posted by Ian Varnava

I think The Link Juicer should be worthy of this experiment. I've seen some decent results with it on lower competition niches.

So many backlink services out there, so little time!

I'd never even heard of The Link Juicer before. Looks a little bit like OnlyWire with the social media focus but on steriods with the nested backlinks and automatic account creation. Those were the two things that kept me from paying Onlywire.

While it might make the results for Site #4 more questionable in the long run, I could ditch UAW and switch over to The Link Juicer for that site just to stir the pot so to speak. That site is so far in the depths here that if The Link Juicer can bring it back to life, it would be very meaningful.

Honestly, I personally don't have high hopes here for it competing with the current top three services. Everyone argues about what works for SEO and what doesn't, but after you read and experiment enough you can get a good sense for what to expect. And one thing most people can agree on is that 10 links from unique IPs give more weight than 100 repeat links from 1 IP. Since The Link Juicer seems to only create links from ~40 Social Media sites, having 1500 links a month from those 40 sites likely won't accomplish more than 40 links will.

However, I'm VERY interested in using it as a link booster for all the links the other services have created. I was looking at both Backlink Energizer and OnlyWire for this and really wasn't interested in making tons of my own accounts.

Ian (or anyone else familiar with The Link Juicer), how easy would it be to point those 1500 backlinks a month at a list of say 500 different pages? Do you need to enter them all in manually or would it take a list?

[garben2011]

Originally Posted by ElectronPlumber

I'd never even heard of The Link Juicer before. Looks a little bit like OnlyWire with the social media focus but on steriods with the nested backlinks and automatic account creation. Those were the two things that kept me from paying Onlywire.

Since The Link Juicer seems to only create links from ~40 Social Media sites, having 1500 links a month from those 40 sites likely won't accomplish more than 40 links will.

However, I'm VERY interested in using it as a link booster for all the links the other services have created. I was looking at both Backlink Energizer and OnlyWire for this and really wasn't interested in making tons of my own accounts.

Just wanted to mention I have a subscription to TLJ. It actually does more than what you are thinking. Each project you set up (depending on how much work you want to do) can (1) publishes your content (articles) on a variety of blogs (which makes it all seem a lot like auto-blogs to me), (2) Turn your articles into a sort of mini e-book and submits them to dozens of software directories and (3) automatically builds social bookmark backlinks to your articles to help them get indexed. I might have missed something but those are the three big benefits I saw in it.

As a pure backlink building tool... it seems to do a decent job. I got in-context links (coming from within my articles) and many of those links were indexed as well as the social bookmarks pointing to those links (maybe they build a layer of links to the SBs as well - I'm not sure). Add in the extra benefit of the links coming from your ebook software (they become executables) being distributed to the software sites and TLJ seemed to offer more for the money than the other services I checked out.

I wasn't thrilled with it because I simply didn't care for my articles being included on some of the sites in their network so I am canceling my subscription. But that is just because I am more interested in a high-quality content distribution network something like where I would handpick sites to submit to... only it is automated as much as possible. I'm a quality over quantity nut so don't really care for any of these mass link building methods but wanted to give it a test so I could speak from experience instead of speculation. I think the majority of the sites in any of these BL networks probably rarely see any human visitors and so to me they are a waste of time and money.

Just my view on it. Like I said, as a pure BL builder it probably does a very good job indeed so if you are only interested in building links for the robots then it is worth checking into.