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Build My Rank and Backlinking Profiles

Build My Rank really has been a business changer for me.  Well not by itself obviously – in fact if you don’t have a plan to start of with then – you don’t need this post you need the Keyword Academy instead!

Back about a month ago I signed up  to BuildMyRank: review and  rankings were on my mind, then I was pretty excited about it. Well now I am ecstatic about it! Why? I’m seeing rankings jump and jump significantly and with them income. Will the rankings hold? Who knows – but meanwhile I’ll take the money thanks.

Have I a got detailed results to prove this? Nope – these were sites that I was previously supporting using Postrunner –  so maybe  I could have waited a month and seen the results jumping on the Postrunner submissions- I don’t know – frankly it takes a lot of time to document that type of detail and I don’t have duplicate sites: same niche, same age similar content etc to do  proper split testing. Instead  I swapped my writer over from writing for Postrunner to BMR and sat back to see what happened.

What I do know is that BMR plus my writer is hands-off outsourcing for me – and Postunner plus writer wasn’t. That’s worth not just about an hour a day of my time, its more than that because it means that suddenly there are about 17 sites I don’t have to think about more than once a month – I can focus on other stuff.  Important stuff like this:

Rottnest Island, Western Australia

Oh OK and growing my business as well …

A few days ago several people posted about a minor PR update and a Google dance in their rankings. I knew that nothing dramatic had happened to mine as my Adsense was tracking nicely to an all time record – but on the 1st I ran all my sites for rankings again in Market Samurai – I was up, almost across the board, sometimes dramatically so, sometimes just a little. Now these are all sites which have fairly similar characteristics:

  • they are mainly niche sites – less than 30 pages indexed generally;
  • the youngest are 7 months old, most are over a year;
  • most are WordPress, some aren’t (I see no difference between html sites and blogs in the rankings);

But I also took an old site – hadn’t been updated for nearly 2 years. I wrote a new page focused on a new keyword – used Impact Page Builder to optimize the on-page SEO – posted 10 back links to the new page from BMR over a week – its now ranking in the 20s for a moderately competitive term.Pretty darn impressed with that.

Do I Need Backlinks At  All?

Some will say not – some successful webmasters say they never build backlinks. They argue that you might as well spend your time building your own site rather than adding it to other people’s site. Most of those webmasters don’t make any money – so I tend to discount them  – after all this ain’t a hobby! Some of them do a lot of real-world promotion – or have even got at book to their name. I discount them – that is not a business model for me.

But some of them make money , good money, better than I do.  What do they have that I don’t? Without exception they have websites which are 10 or more years old – that age thing you can’t fake! And the site has been up that whole time, even if it started off long before WordPress and is now a blog – it doesn’t matter – Google doesn’t care about your technology – but it REALLY cares that the site has been about the same general topic for 10 years.

Which tends to mean that the sites involved – are passion sites – the person started them in 1999 because they LOVED the topic – not because they could make money from it. The clever ones make money now.  And they have backlinks, lots of backlinks,  natural, organic backlinks because they are market leaders in their niche and other people link to them – and yes every one of the sites I know about in this category are SOCIAL sites too.

If you have one of those sites – you don’t need me and congratulations. Do I really, really, really wish I’d started my passion site about independent travel in 1999 – oh yes I do!  But I didn’t and you – gentle reader – probably didn’t either. So  for the rest of us – well we need to game the system basically … you need to manipulate your backlinks. You need to build them, you need to pay someone else to do it for you.

Lis’s Views on Backlink Profiles

  • If the site is new – its more important to get authority links than it is to get bulk links. You need to get some “real” links from sites which are recognized as authority in the niche (not just PR). Some Postrunner sites will work for this – as will blogs which accept guest posts in your niche – if its a social niche that is.
  • Different niches work differently for backlinks – travel bloggers, and frugal living bloggers comment on each other’s sites ALL the time.  Niches about embarrassing personal problems and serious debt – not so much.  I suspect that Google has a “normal backlink profile” for some niches – deviate too far from it – and you will be sand boxed for a while. You will come back after a while (or any competitor could take out any site at anytime).
  • I have ranked and kept a site in position #1 with only crappy backlinks and no new content – for 2 years – its hard to stuff this up but some approaches will see results faster than others. I’ve NEVER seen a site deindexed because of bad backlinks – certainly have seen sites sent to position 500 purgatory though!
  • If your sites are in a niche which is “social” then its probably worth having some twitter and Facebook love going on around it – after all it looks normal …
  • Getting the SEO right and siloing your site so that it doesn’t have unrelated links on the page – really does seem to be significant

Lis’s Views on Backlink Services

  • All backlinking services are gaming the system: Postrunner  and EzineArticles included.
  • Gaming the system works – to a greater or lesser extent.
  • Backlink services work better with a more established site – that old thing of site age is still something you can’t fake – if you want a genuine short-cut in this game – buy an aged site in the niche you want.
  • Backlinks to backlinks also works – I think this is the major weakness of Postrunner – but you can help yourself with this with things like backlinking services to keep your links indexed.
  • Until you are making about $500/month from your sites I don’t really think you can justify paying for additional backlink services – and if your sites are less than one year old you are also probably  risking your money as well.
  • There is a risk involved with using any service –  sometimes they do die a slow death – which may be terminal if the owners don’t do something about it (basically Google discounts the sites being used over time) – don’t ever signup for a service for longer than a month. On the flip side you really need to commit to 2 or 3 months to really evaluate a service so that is the amount of money you are risking.
  • Doing ANY backlinking is never a waste – at the moment BuildMyRank seems to work exceptionally well – that may drop back to just averagely well – the point is if  I am using it to build at least 10 links a day to my sites I will outrank you if you are still worrying about whether you should backlink at all.

Sorry I went on a bit – the bottom line is – this game isn’t that hard -and it doesn’t change that much over the years – and the best info you will ever get is building your own sites and EXPERIMENTING – then you will really find out what does and does not work.

I’ve just enrolled in  a new backlink scheme too – but I probably won’t have any results before the end of the year on this one – so I’m not prepared to name it here – but it does have absolutely EVIL affiliate program so contact me if you want the link LOL – we can do a deal!

So are you building baclinks? Using  what if any services? Using your own  backlink sites only? Or do you only publish on your own site?

33 replies on “Build My Rank and Backlinking Profiles”

Hi Lis!
Thanks as always for linking to my stuff.
I think that people love to get tied up in the whole content debate and forget just how important links really are.
I am always looking for new sources of unique IP addy links, and build my rank looks like a nice addition!
thanks for the update as always!
(how is that for a “stock” comment?)
😉
of course, you know how much I love the pics you post… crystal blue water!!! love that!
AL

Yeah well put your digit where the Aff Link is my friend – seriously recommend it and you will like how they keep the links indexed …

Yeah I get regularly accused of photoshopping the WA photos – but I am not that good with Photoshop – it really is that colour! Feel free to subscribe to the indendent travel blog – more pretty pics coming up there!

Hey Lis,

Great post! I’m glad to see you’re hitting on the same lesson I’ve been trying to hammer home at my blog recently: just get started and keep getting backlinks. If a person keeps working, keeps writing, and keeps getting backlinks then they will succeed. Like you said, no matter what changes, it’s all details because the main game stays the same. The people who keep working instead of worrying about the little things are the ones who succeed wildly.

Hi Lis, quick comment, the age problem of a website can be leveraged, at least a tiny bit, by registering it for longer. If you have a passion site that is a couple of years old and you extend its registration for five or even ten years instead of only one, you send a signal to Google that that site is in it for the long haul. It will not make a huge difference, but every little helps. Just my two adcents., SY

Thats a good point SY and something I am starting to do with my longer term “keepers”

Grr, I’d almost finished writing a long comment, and accidentally lost it.

The short version – I’m one of those who wants to focus on building up my own main site (a passion site, but not an old one). I hate link building, but know it works. So I’m compromising – I spend about 80% of my time working on my site, and 20% getting links, particularly to one specific page that should make a decent income if I can get it ranking well. I’m basically reversing the TKA time management formula, not because I think I know better than them, but because I’m stubborn and just have to trust my gut & experiment with doing things my own way!

Hey Lis,

Thanks for keeping us up do date on BMR, I hope to try it soon. Have you tried Amplify to help index backlinks? Do you think it is a waste of time?

@Sonny – sorry for the late reply – I personally haven’t used amplify – my understanding is that its a a bookmarking site right? In which it could well be useful and know some others in TKA use and like it.

Never gets old seeing positive comments guys and gals! Now if we could just rid of the whiners complaining about their posts being rejected too often because they are… well just too crappy.

I’ve had my 10 backlinks from BuildMyRank for a while and I keep building backlinks to them cause they work so well! If I had the $59 a month I would do BMR again. I’ve never found it hard to link to my postrunner links using Google Webmaster Tools(I did the free trial for that too).

Right now it is raining with a snow mix and your picture of the beach made me totally jealous!

I still haven’t joined BMR as PR and article directories are enough for me right now, but a month or two down the line, who knows? For the Fall Frenzy I am going with the 80% backlinks to the 20% site content and seeing how that turns out. Oh, and I’m really hoping that people are going to spend lots and lots of money this Christmas and they do it from my sites! 🙂

Actually the pic makes me a little sad too cause it was taken albout a year ago – and were swimming that day in 30C in Perth -lovely – here in NZ -well its not raining (yet) but its sure not beach weather!

Hey Lissie,

Remarkably, using backlinking services is something I’ve only started doing over the past two months. Previously I wrote some articles and swapped some links here and there but there’s never been a concerted effort made or money invested.

Now I see the value (I always did except my main sites generally rank well becuase they’re old) and I’m putting a push on this in a big way. The problem is that I know nothing about it!

I started off with Linkvana and am still using them. I’m also adding links through Postrunner through an outsourcing service called Niche Tracker. Now I’m about to sign up for BMR.

What do you think of Linkvana? At a monthly fee of $147, is it a waste? They get links up a lot faster than Postrunner but I’m not sure if it’s worth it, especially since I pay extra for each article to outsource the writing.

Do you think it’s smart to maybe use all three and come at it from all sides? I’m willing to spend the money on outsourcing and link building, I just want to figure out what the best approach is as I don’t want to throw my money away.

Thanks!
Kirsty

Kirsty I am mixing it up too – I think that’s a really good idea particularly for an old site which has consistent links (as I know yours have). Linkvana I used briefly in the past but went off them – I wasn’t very impressed. BMR is awesome – though I think Terry maybe onto something with going for slightly longer articles – I told my outsourcer to write 200 wrords but he often does 220-250 – and that may be a magic number re indexing and counting.

Hi Liz,

Gotta say I’m rather taken with BMR myself and its making waves happen in my very, very tough niche already and its only been 2 weeks.

Being me, I’m banging out 250 word articles for a link and not the prescribed 150. I believe 250 is the magic number… I can still bang out 4-5 of them in an hour so 3 hours of solid link building a day for a dozen or so links is ok for me and its scary how fast they build up for my personal network.

And not one single BMR link goes to my main money site in any niche. One such site has already scooted up a few places on the first page of that heavy-traffic-delight KW I like to work…yum yum $$$! Now how did I do that? 😉

I have not tried BMR or any services yet, just trying to build link and articles myself, it sure takes long and seems time consuming at the time. But I wish to add more as I do more and make some money doing things I am working hard on. Thanks Lis.

I have been using BuildMyrank for about two months. It’s well worth it. Unfortunately can’t say how much it helped me as I got my website sandboxed after extensive link blasts with almost the same anchor text.

Build My Rank is definitely one of the best link networks on web right now. In fact, if you stuck a gun to my head and asked me which backlink network is the “IT” of the moment, Build My Rank gets my vote and a half.

You may have seen Pcunix being very vocal on the HubPages forums about backlinking not being necessary – he can’t accept that his experience (starting his site many years ago about a passion) isn’t relevant to today’s newbies.

Next time I see him make the same statement, I must remember to link to this page – you set the argument out perfectly!

I have already signed up for the trial and am loving the interface of BMR. You have convinced me to jump into their monthly plan. I wish I would have got in early though so I could have had unlimited domains. Question though, i know you can “archive” a domain so you can add other one in. Can you take it out of archive and make it active again?

I believe so – but I am not dead sure as I have unlimited domains myself – just email their support with your question – I’ve found them very responsive

Hi Lis,

Last summer I decided to stop reading blogs and concentrate all my time on building posts and links. It has worked great, income has tripled. The problem is, I missed your Build My Rank review and so I am two months behind.

I can guarnatee you I am putting your blog back up at the top of my Reader list and will take a look at every post you make.

After all, if it weren’t for you and your guarantee for The Keyword Academy I would probably be in some scam like Site Buid It. LOL

Can’t thank you enough for all the great information you provide.

Agrande – how cool to see you back – I was hoping that you were working not quiting! Actually your timing is not too bad – BMR have just reopened after being closed for a couple of months – unfortunately they did put the price up! I’ve just got back from 2 months travel so I will be spamming your in-box with 10’s of posts here a day (NOT!) Anyway nice to see an old-timer again!

I used Linkvana in the past and like others have said, I was unimpressed, actually downright disappointed. I’ve been hearing so many good things about Build My Rank and I ran into your post here tonight while wandering the web, and I know its a few months old, but I decided to click through and look at Build My Rank again … for the billionth time… and I signed up for the free trial offer. Looking forward to giving it a whirl. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the service – and those beautiful blue water pics!

Hi Lissie,

I’ve just spent the last two months trawling the sewers of link-building and I have to say, I’m highly unimpressed! I looked at Linxboss, TrafficKaboom and a few others and was appalled at the quality of the blogs – or rather splogs – where they post your content. I see plenty of people saying “but it works” – but I can’t see those garbage sites lasting for the long haul, and as the sites are de-indexed, you lose your links.

I actually saw one happy user claiming that “all links fade over time” – and I can imagine that if he’s relying purely on such services, that’s his experience. So he goes on paying big monthly fees to get more and more short-lived links, and thinks he’s doing well!

I did do the free trial at BMR and have come to the conclusion it’s worth heading back there. In fact, I’m wondering whether to abandon plans to write articles at other rev-share sites for links – it’s a lot more work than BMR!

Quality is still hard for Google to understand – its highly subjective – so unless sights are balant they aren’t catching them. Maybe nothing will work in the long-haul – I don’t know – but I do know that my sites with backlinks built with both postrunner (part of the keyword acadmey) and BMR have kept their rankings during the recent “pandamonium” – what I am avoiding are sites like hubpages – I think shared rev sites have had their day – at least the non-niche ones.

Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t saying BMR sites aren’t quality. They’re head and shoulders above the stuff on most of the other paid link-building services. I haven’t looked at Postrunner: I think I prefer something which is pay-as-you-go rather than a monthly fee, because I’m so sporadic about getting my a$$ into gear!

I wish I would have started my website sooner too. Older sights have a tight grip on page 1 rankings. I read your other post about BuildMyRank and checked out their site. It looks pretty good! I like how they offer to write 150 words for $2.50. That”s a great price. If I pay for any kind of SEO help, I’ll go to them. Thanks!

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