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#1 |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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It was late last August that I first signed up for LinkVana. Today, 10 months later I have just cancelled my subscription. I wanted to share my strategies for fellow and soon to be LinkVana users - what went right, what went wrong and why I inevitably cancelled.
Judging from my own affiliate statistics I would say that staying 10 months was about 9.25 months more then other people so I think I had a pretty good handle on the system. Now that I have no affiliation with the product I can more convincingly say to you that the product does work...when used correctly. The problem I saw with other people using and inevitably leaving LinkVana was that they didn't understand how search engines work or how to properly leverage the tools in front of them. The Good The easiest way I found to put LinkVana to good use, was by promoting user generated content sites the search engines already like. I would dig up low competition keywords, write and post an ezine article, then use LinkVana to bolster it up and I would be off to the races. I could do this with other article directories, squidoo pages, blogger, youtube etc. They already seem to have a leg up with the search engines and combined with LinkVana the results were really great in terms of rankings. I typically went after 50+ searches a day < 50,000 competing pages and targeted the social sites that were missing from the first page. (Ezine, squidoo, youtube) After a couple of months promoting with LinkVana I would have winning campaigns with the search engines and start to make some affiliate commissions. Why People Fail The people I saw using LinkVana (and who quickly left) were using it poorly for one of two reasons in my opinion. 1) They were going after ridiculously high volume and competition keywords like 'Acai Berry' or 'weight loss'. They didn't stand a chance and after three whole weeks of posting with no sign of their site moving past page 1000 they would leave. First off, I usually didn't see rankings moves for 5+ weeks on relatvely easy phrases. And regrettably, Google isn't willing to give you a big hug and kiss when a new site gets a couple dozen new links for those hyper competitive words. 2) The second reason for inevitable failure was because of operator deficincies in keyword research. They went after really long and out of place keyword phrases like, "I want to cook spaghetti with my eyes closed". LinkVana did its job but it can't turn coal into a diamond because being number one for a phrase with no searches is like coming first at whistling shows...nobody cares. Why I left: You are probably wondering why I would leave when I could sit there and build these somewhat profitably campaigns all day long. Well I moved on. I honestly got tired of kicking around for these low search keywords that would inevitably make me a couple sales every month but not what I wanted for the effort put in. Secondly, I had a mind set change with how I felt SEO should work. I decided to stop 'gaming' the search engines in favor of simply creating good quality content/products on my own sites and allow the search engines to do what they do best. Another reason was the way people use search engines. I have heard stats that as much as 40% of all searches are unique. My sites were getting hits from so many non typical searches spending the time and dollars to go after the select phrases in LinkVana lost their return and appeal. And finally, PPC for quick targeted traffic is just so much easier then SEO. I can test larger and bigger offers much more quickly. So to those wondering, yes LinkVana works. It does however take a few months for you to see results so be prepared to put down 450+ and time writing. You have to be realistic, it is not a magic bullet and it is not going to be right for everyone. |
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| The Following 10 Users Say Thank You to Michael Ashbourne For This Useful Post: |
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#2 |
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Veteran Copywriter
War Room Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago Il Western Suburbs
Posts: 660
Thanks: 231
Thanked 73 Times in 35 Posts
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Thanks Michael, thats really an excellent review.
I had looked at LinkVana before but was hearing alot of negative. Some, as you say, was probably marketers putting up a new site and trying to quickly rank organically for the word, "Insurance" or something. They no doubt figured it didn't work. :-) Since you say you've migrated to using PPC instead of seo, did you get any training in PPC and what kind of success have you been having there? _____ Bruce |
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#3 | |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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Quote:
My training comes exclusively from, in my opinion, the holy grail of Adwords books. The classic 'Complete Guide to Adwords' by Perry Marshall. An amazing deal from Amazon for what you get. I don't really know what all the other adwords ebooks floating around teach but I felt like this one gave me the fundamentals to running a really good campaign. It may not have the latest nifty tricks but for the underlying understanding of PCC, it is great. I am considering joining PPC-Coach to try and learn a few new strategies however. | |
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| The Following User Says Thank You to Michael Ashbourne For This Useful Post: |
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#4 |
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HyperActive Warrior
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 203
Thanks: 6
Thanked 8 Times in 3 Posts
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Thanks Michael! I agree PPC is awesome. I will definitely pass on getting LinkVana for now.
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#5 | |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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Quote:
I think a basic understanding of keyword research and SEO will go along way. Here is what I did to maximize every single one of my posts. Not very hard but I think having a plan helped. 1. Keyword appropriately used in title of post 2. Keyword phrase used at least twice usually three times naturally in the posts. I wanted to make sure they knew what I was writing about 3. Between 3 and 7 different target phrases so I wasn't getting all the links with the same text. 4. 50% of the links went to the home page, 50% of the links went to the appropriate tier two page. This makes it look more natural in my opinion. Obviously I couldn't do it with my ezine article promotions but use this for more standard content sites. ...I appreciate your kind words but I don't think using my positive review of the program to pitch your affiliate link is all to kind/wise/good. | |
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#6 |
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Senior Warrior Member
War Room Member
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Indiana, USA
Posts: 1,158
Thanks: 10
Thanked 43 Times in 24 Posts
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Good stuff Mike. Thanks for sharing that.
Brad |
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#7 |
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Active Warrior
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 51
Thanks: 3
Thanked 6 Times in 6 Posts
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thanks mic for sharing.
cheers |
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#8 |
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HyperActive Warrior
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: , , New Zealand.
Posts: 111
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
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Thanks Mike, I was just about to get Linkvana and probabaly still will. However, I am not 100% certain how it works.
If you write/get written a blurb with a link to your site that will post say every day does that one blurb get placed on a different site,thus creating a backlink, every day until you cancel the membership? So if you creat 10 blurbs posting daily you get 10 new links every day? |
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#9 |
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Advanced Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: , , .
Posts: 820
Thanks: 93
Thanked 32 Times in 28 Posts
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I have used Linkvana for 4 or 5 months for a very competitive niche - weight loss and recently cancelled my subscription as it is quite princely especially there are other cheaper SEOs
Some of my main keywords are ranked from 6 to 9 on google. However I am not sure it is due to Linkvana as I have used other methods such as backlinks, social bookmarking, RSS etc concurrently. However I do notice ranking on 6 to 9 on google does not bring much traffic. I need to be on top 5 and now I now considering PPC and other cheaper SEO alternatives. |
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#10 | |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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Quote:
It takes a lot of time/money if you want it to work out. If 150 a month scares you then I wouldn't bother with it. It will cost you a lot more providing it with the posts in either your time or your money. | |
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#11 | |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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Quote:
One problem I see often is people checking Google for their own site and seeing it at the top but not getting any traffic. Unfortunately, your site may not actually be there. I don't know exactly how it works but I know when I click on my own sites they usually show up higher for my own searches. The best way to test your search rankings I found, was to use a firefox plugin called rankings check that gives you your 'true' rankings. | |
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#12 |
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HyperActive Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: , , .
Posts: 296
Thanks: 4
Thanked 18 Times in 14 Posts
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Actually, Linkvana posts are not as much work as you might think. Yes, they have to be 100 words, and yes, they have to be unique, but the content really does not matter, as long as the post makes sense. Why? Because you're really not getting clickthroughs, unless you target a phrase that is extremely low competition
I have more than 1,000 posts in Linkvana, and I have only gotten traffic from a couple |
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#13 | |
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HyperActive Warrior
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: , , .
Posts: 163
Thanks: 0
Thanked 4 Times in 3 Posts
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Quote:
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#14 | |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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Quote:
That significantly reduces the quality of the link at a time when Google tends to care less about quantity and more about quality. My posts only ended up staying on the home page of the sites a half day before more posts pilled in. I think a far better strategy for those looking to build their own high quality links with a network like this, is to build their own community of sites around it. This way you control every aspect of the site ensuring those sites are as optimized as possible to pass on the most power to the link. If you put the 150/month to building your own network, I think you will find even better results for yourself. | |
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#15 |
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Up, Up, and Away
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 206
Thanks: 17
Thanked 17 Times in 7 Posts
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Just thought I would add this in as it is my 'everything I know article':
I have never come across a better converting affiliate program than LinkVana. I had over 20% conversion rate from hops to sales. And that was just throwing up my link on a couple sites I own on a whim. With that said, 90% of the people stayed one month and 98% < 3 months. I added this because I think its amazing how well it managed to convert for a $150/month product. People really want backlinks....alot haha. |
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#16 |
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Active Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: , , Singapore.
Posts: 64
Thanks: 11
Thanked 26 Times in 6 Posts
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Hi Michael,
Thanks for sharing and yes, I do agree with you that about 40% searches are unique and search engines does not have enough data for that. Cheers |
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#17 |
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Jaspreet Singh
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 32
Thanks: 0
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
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I had never heard of linkvana before but simply judging from their website and service they offer I don't think it will work.
It's not them, I just think high PR and getting links from high PR websites in this way will do your website any good in the long term or short term. |
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#18 |
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HyperActive Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 486
Thanks: 13
Thanked 36 Times in 21 Posts
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Thanks for the post. This really helps people like me who are considering Linkvana.
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#19 |
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Warrior Member
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 2
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
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Thanks Michael for sharing. I used LinkVana for a few months myself. Worked ok. A little expensive considering what you're getting, however I spent a lot of money "trying things". I'm starting to think of internet marketing like hot rodding. You're always looking for a new piece of equipment to make your car go faster!
Thanks for the post. Jay |
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#20 |
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HyperActive Warrior
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 142
Thanks: 0
Thanked 34 Times in 9 Posts
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I personally think SEO is the way to go. Its so much more passive if you build it correctly.
Obviously going after low tier keywords your going to get burnt out, because the traffic is not their for consistency. Also what were you using to monetize your traffic, you forgot to explain your monetization. Have you thought that possibly you were monetizing incorrectly, so your results were less? Also 10months= $1470 in Linkvana.. Did you create a training course and outsource the work? Anyways PPC is great don't get me wrong. I have been through ppc-coach.com and its fairly newbie stuff. Your going to want to hit MSN/Yahoo and google content network hard. Make sure if you use review sites, to stick the affiliate links on them using a domain with a .php script. Google slapped hard last week with those review sites. Also if your going to go into a niche, be ready to spending $1k-$2k in testing to find decent amount of numbers to scale up.. Right now with SEO I am spending $600 monthly for a outsource team, and slowly expanding it, I provide all the training, niches, domains etc. They do all the rest. Just my 2cents. |
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#21 |
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Warrior Member
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 28
Thanks: 6
Thanked 7 Times in 2 Posts
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Thanks for sharing all this Michael.
I seem to have arrived at the same point you did about "gaming the search engines" and going to SEO. Finding that our own backlink efforts done manually by our outcource team are not only more effective, manual link building efforts stick around. |
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#22 |
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HyperActive Warrior
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: , , .
Posts: 296
Thanks: 4
Thanked 18 Times in 14 Posts
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Recently, I decided I was going to cancel Linkvana after more than a year, primarily because I am focusing less on SEO these days and more on getting immediate traffic. But I figured I would get my money's worth and start submitted more Linkvana posts this month
Yesterday, I wrote a Linkvana post for a website I have done hardly any promotion for in months. Today, I made a sale from it, my first since January. I also have another site that had not gotten hardly any sales recently, and I have made two sales with it recently. Is this because of Linkvana? No idea, but it seems like more than a coincidence |
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#23 |
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Active Warrior
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Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 42
Thanks: 4
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
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I have heard that linkvana blogs are loaded with articles, thereby causing more of a link deficit. So, I am not sure if Sree's sales relate to Linkvana or something else.
Can an existing linkvana member vouch for the quality of blogs? They claim all of them are PR2-PR4. Is that really so? |
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#24 | |
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Active Warrior
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 70
Thanks: 4
Thanked 8 Times in 5 Posts
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Quote:
However, they do occasionally seem to get slapped. I had one of my posts show up on a PR2 blog, and I did a "site:" search for it in Google about a week later just wondering how many posts they had on average per site, and it turned out the blog had been de-indexed and had it's PR grayed out. At this point, I've been seeing good results with Linkvana, and supposedly they rotate you into higher PR blogs the longer you stay with them, but I've only been with them a couple of months now so I'll have to see how often their sites get booted from Google. | |
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#25 | |
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Active Warrior
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Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 42
Thanks: 4
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
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If they have PR2 or better blogs then their quality is definitely better than MAN at the least. And I have seen blogs getting booted off MAN frequently and penalized as well. Looks like LV is better from the standpoint of blog networks when you compare against MAN.
Thanks for your clarification Quote:
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#26 |
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HyperActive Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Gettysburg PA
Posts: 128
Thanks: 31
Thanked 6 Times in 6 Posts
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You all over pay so much for links........ swear I am stunned no one mentions a better value by far............
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#27 |
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Warrior Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 4
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
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Wow!!! I really do not know about this!! Thanks for every post...
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#28 |
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Warrior Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 17
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
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Thanks for sharing Michael...very informative!
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#29 |
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Senior Warrior Member
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia.
Posts: 3,029
Thanks: 97
Thanked 315 Times in 148 Posts
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#30 |
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Active Warrior
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 36
Thanks: 0
Thanked 4 Times in 4 Posts
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i`ve been using LinkVana for some time but found lately that it`s not working as well as before.
Additionally, I really think this is not how we should b playing to get the high positions. Sooner or later, it will stop working this way. |
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#31 |
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SEO Test Is Now ON!
War Room Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 543
Thanks: 56
Thanked 32 Times in 25 Posts
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I just found 2 blogs from the LinkVana network that have some of my posts on them.
One of them is a Page Rank ZERO and the other one is GREYBARRED. I eMailed them about the GREYBARRED one and they said they'd delete it and apologized. Several days later it still hasn't been removed from the LinkVana network of blogs yet. This makes me wonder just how many other GREYBARRED sites they currently are hosting. |
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#32 |
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Advanced Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 594
Thanks: 35
Thanked 40 Times in 31 Posts
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When you leave Linkvana....don't you lose all your links?
I believe I read that somewhere. If that is the case, that is a good reason not to use them. |
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#33 |
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Nothing to See Here...
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: UK
Posts: 60
Thanks: 9
Thanked 7 Times in 4 Posts
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#34 |
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HyperActive Warrior
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: , , .
Posts: 296
Thanks: 4
Thanked 18 Times in 14 Posts
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You do NOT lose your links if you leave Linkvana. You are thinking of 3WayLinks
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#35 |
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SEO Test Is Now ON!
War Room Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 543
Thanks: 56
Thanked 32 Times in 25 Posts
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#36 |
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SEO Test Is Now ON!
War Room Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 543
Thanks: 56
Thanked 32 Times in 25 Posts
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#37 |
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Senior Warrior Member
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Ohio, USA.
Posts: 5,195
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Thanked 41 Times in 34 Posts
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I'd confirm with Dave Kelly himself, as his site does not say that. Seriously, hadn't heard that one, but maybe it's for trial periods or something. Our account has been long term, so don't know on that. |
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#38 |
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SEO Test Is Now ON!
War Room Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 543
Thanks: 56
Thanked 32 Times in 25 Posts
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#39 |
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Senior Warrior Member
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Ohio, USA.
Posts: 5,195
Blog Entries: 36
Thanks: 104
Thanked 41 Times in 34 Posts
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OK, I emailed Dave over this weekend, and he replied back with the following info along with permissions for me to post it here: "Not the case at all. links are never removed. I have no idea where they got the 2 months thing as it is 100% false," Dave (Kelly). "...we keep your links live when you cancel. our system has no way of automatically removing links. So we'd have to log into the actual site and remove the posts manually. Not going to happen. " So there you have it. Go Linkvana, you rock And Dave, a BIG thanks for clearing that up and so fast, on a Sunday yet, and granting permission to post your reply. You're an awesome Warrior.
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Need help? 100+ Ways / Support / Subscribe / Buy Me Rootbeer/ Warrior4Hire Specials!
- Get customized help w/ IM, PLR, blogging, press releases, article writing, distribution, VRE, links, Linkvana special & more...Affordable Programs! Give us a try: VA Options Top Tasks: 2009 |
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#40 |
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HyperActive Warrior
War Room Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: SoCal / New York
Posts: 178
Thanks: 4
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
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Linkvana is an excellent, excellent tool. I'm surprised you guys are giving up on it. They also provide excellent and friendly customer service. I've been with them since late 2007.
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