If you’ve spent any time on this site, you’ll know I talk a lot about link building and my experiences with it. Link building is one of those necessary Internet marketing evils, and for the most part, it’s a big pain in the a**.

Sure, there are all sorts of tools that will automate the link building process (think SE Nuke or EdwinSoft’s Ultimate Demon) and these are fine for getting a base of low quality links. However, obtaining quality in-pointing links is a tedious, hands-on process, that often doesn’t bear fruit.

Webmasters of quality sites guard their links jealously, and won’t hand them out to any webmaster who comes calling, and certainly not one of a low quality website that can’t provide something in return.

Prior to the Panda update, I had a pretty relaxed attitude towards link building; a few blog comments here and there, some directory submissions, link exchanges with relevant sites, a handful of videos posted with their links pointing to the most appropriate pages, and so on.

Mostly I just focused on creating the sort of great content that garners links on its own.

That doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.

Today, in a post-Panda world, it seems to me that a much more aggressive link building strategy needs to be considered – which is why I’ve written so much about link building on this blog.

One of the strategies I’ve always considered but never put into practice is the Web 2.0 strategy; creating high quality material on Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, Tumblr, Weebly, etc, and then linking those sites either directly to your “money” site, or to each other in a complex link wheel, and then to your money site.

That’s after you build some links to those pages as well, of course.

And, since Web 2.0 sites have a ton of authority with the Search Engines (SEs), the links gained from pages hosted on them can have considerable weight – especially if those pages you created have received links of their own.

I’m not sure I buy into the “linkwheel” strategy: it is manipulative (as far as the SEs are concerned) and too easy to reverse engineer. In other words, to me it looks more deceptive than a straight link. There’s no reason to my mind why a SE would ignore a direct link from any Web 2.0 property to your web site, unless, of course, you have a zillion of them and your page is of extremely low quality. That’s a dead giveaway.

I’ve seen some webmasters argue it makes sense to link your Web 2.0 sites together to further build the authority of the sites in your Web 2.0 network, thus transferring greater “link juice” to your own site in the process. Who knows whether this works or not for sure?

One of the reasons I never bothered with this strategy is that is seemed like a LOT of work. I won’t post crappy content under my name, which means I’d have to create them all myself, and with my regular content creation duties and the sheer number of web 2.0 sites worth considering, I’d never be able to get it all done.

Obviously then – considering the title of this post – this is something I’ve reconsidered. I’m thinking that I should develop quality material on the top 5-10 Web 2.0 sites. Build them, let them “sit” for a month or so, and then add a link or two to my money sites.

Yesterday, for instance, I created my first Squidoo lens – it’s on the subject of body building supplements, and today I created a second one on job training (for my new job training and certification site). It was a fairly painless process, although I imagine it will become less fun each and every time I create a Web 2.0 page.

Since I’ve seriously been considering hiring a virtual assistant this year, this seems like a perfect task to outsource.

In the meantime, stay tuned for updates and results on the Web 2.0 experiment. I’m curious to see how it turns out.

Build My Rank. TrafficKaboom. SEOLink Vine. Unique Article Wizard. Article Ranks. Blog Blueprint.

I could go on, but you get the point. These are all link building networks – large networks of sites and blogs owned by marketers for the express purpose of link building.

Here’s how they work…

You sign up for the service of your choice.

You pay a fee, usually a regular monthly subscription which ranges in cost from around $50 per month and up.

This gives you access to the network.

Now you can post articles, blog posts, and sometimes, short 150 word “snippets” to the network, and include a link back to your site. The specifics of how many posts you can make per day, or how many different sites you can add to the network varies greatly depending on the service to which you subscribe.

For instance, with Build My Rank (which I wrote about some time ago after trying the free trial of the service), you are allowed to add 5 sites to the network, and make an unlimited number of posts. Each post must be a minimum of 150 words, and can contain one link back to your site. All posts must be unique and well written – no spun material is allowed.

On the surface, belonging to a quality network – which can contain sites with a PR (Page Rank) ranging from 0 to 6 (again it varies from service to service) – seems to make pretty good sense. Why bother hunting down blogs to solicit guest articles or make posts on when, for a small monthly fee, you get direct access to tons of such sites that will post your articles without question?

Well, here’s where we get to the part where I tell you what the gurus are not telling you about using blog networks for link building…

There are two main things…

First…

Belonging to a link building network is not something that you can expect Google to reward you for, should they identify the network. At best, the links you have obtained are worthless, and at worst, your site receives some sort of ranking penalty or is dropped from the index.

Additionally, when you subscribe to any network, you are at the mercy of the owners; if they are diligent in policing it, maintaining its quality and scanning the sort of sites they allow in, it’s possible your links may have value for the foreseeable future. If they don’t, well… you may as well flush your money down the toilet.

Second…

To realistically expect results from any blog network, you’re going to have to submit a ton of content to it.

If you’re subscribed to one of the better ones that doesn’t allow spun or inferior content, that means you are going to have to write it all yourself, or outsource it – and that can be expensive. In my opinion then, unless you’re a serious, full time marketer with a VA (virtual assistant) in the Philippines, or you’re targeting extremely esoteric long tail keywords, you are simply not going to be able to create enough content on your own to make subscribing a worthwhile venture.

If you don’t believe me, sign up for the free trial of Build My Rank (which I review here) and create the posts required for your 10 free links. Not as easy as you thought it was, huh? Now imagine having to write 2-5 of these posts every day for a couple of months (yes, really; SEO is a long term affair!).

If you still want to subscribe to a blog network after this little experiment, at least you’re doing so with your eyes wide open.

And that means I’ve done my job.

I must admit, I investigated the Build My Rank (BMR) network with some caution. Had a trusted friend not raged about the service and its effectiveness, I probably never would have checked into it. However, curiousity got the best of me, and over I went.

As you are no doubt aware, in-pointing links continue to be a huge factor in obtaining decent search engine rankings, and accordingly, traffic. In the olden days (and by “olden”, I mean 5 or 6 years ago) you could put up a web site, and – provided you had done some keyword research and targeted the appropriate words and phrases – start receiving traffic almost immediately. I find that no longer seems to be the case. You simply must have links- and lots of them – if you expect to see traffic.

Build My Rank is, of course, a link building system; it’s a large network of authority sites (with Google PRs ranging from 1-6, according to the advertising) which you can gain access to for a very reasonable monthly fee.

For $59/month, you can set up profiles for 5 web sites (a subdomain counts as a separate web site) and obtain an unlimited amount of links for any URL within those 5 domains.

Here’s how it works…

Once you have accessed the BMR system by signing up for the free trial, you create short, 150-word “posts” which contain a link to whatever URL on whatever site you happen to be promoting.

The posts then enter a queue until a staff member reviews them for quality. Should they pass muster, they are then posted to their network. Once they are posted, you can login to the dashboard, and check the PR of the sites your links are posted on, and whether or not those links have been indexed by the search engines (the exact URLs of the links are not revealed, to protect the integrity of the network. Decent link tracking software should identify them, however).

I signed up for the 10 links / 15 day free trial to be able to discuss the system more thoroughly. You can take a look at my dashboard below (click for a larger image). You’ll notice I blacked out all my keywords for security reasons…

You can see that my free links break down as follows…

• 2 PR4
• 2 PR3
• 1 PR2
• 3 PR1

… with two remaining in the queue.

And quite frankly, that’s really all there is to Build My Rank. It is absolutely drop-dead simple.

The question is… will it boost your rankings, and should you use it?

Let’s answer the second question first…

“Should you use it?”

This is largely a personal question – dependent on how risk averse you are, and how comfortable you are with breaking Google’s rules, and living with the consequences, should you get caught.

Because Build My Rank is very definitely a “grey hat” strategy; by using it you’re engaged in active manipulation of Google’s ranking algorithym, and Google doesn’t like that one bit.

However, one could argue that the acquisition of any in-pointing links is a grey hat strategy, since that too is designed to manipulate the ranking results, by making it appear as though your web site is an authority in your niche. Is using Build My Rank all that different? Different than searching out high PR blogs to post comments on or write guest articles on, for instance? Posting to dozens of directories? Setting up profiles on numerous high authority forums?

I’m not convinced that it is.

Additionally, Google isn’t exactly making it easy for webmasters who play “100% by the rules” to generate a living online (witness the thousands upon thousands of webmasters who saw their businesses evaporate overnight with the Farmer / Panda update).

Regardless, the bottom line is this; you are taking a risk by using BMR. In my opinion, you are unlikely to be obtain a ranking penalty if you get caught, because I’m believe that you can’t be penalized by the sites that link to you. Even if Google were to identify the entire BMR network, they would have no way to know whether…

1. Your site had obtained a “genuine” link, outside of the network activities.
2. You were an active participant in the network.
3. A competitor submitted your site in an effort to penalize you.

So at worst, the links you obtain become valueless, and the subsequent rankings and the accompanying traffic, disappear.

I would suggest that if you have a brand new site, you do NOT use it, because it may be easier for Google to spot a pattern of manipulation. If you have an older site with lots of back links already, it’s likely these links will appear to be part of a natural link profile.

OK, so let’s address the next question…

“Will it boost my rankings?”

Obviously, with my 10 link experiment, I cannot confirm or deny this. For what it’s worth, I do know people who swear by Build My Rank.

Having said that, I suspect BMR works just fine at moving your listing up the ranking queue, depending, of course, on how many links you create for the various sites and URLs you are promoting.

To see any real improvement in your ranking, you are really going to have to work at BMR. Getting a couple of links per month for anything but the most esoteric long tail keyword isn’t going to do anything for your rankings. You’re really going to have to make a commitment to writing these posts. And it’s not as easy as it sounds. I banged out 5 per day for 2 days for the 10 free links and that took an effort. You’ll pretty much have to do this every day for a minimum of 90 days (SEO is a long term venture) before you can realistically expect dramatic effects.

If you’re going to promote the full 5 domains and a couple of URLS per domain, you’re definitely going to have to outsource your posts. You can do this directly in BMR for a cost of $2.50 per post. That’s a reasonable price, but when you start doing the math, it soon becomes very expensive: image 1-3 posts per day, per URL, per domain? Even outsourcing 1 post per day per each of the 5 allowable URLs will cost you $375 per month!

If you are at all curious I suggest that you visit the web site, watch the promotional video, and sign up for the free trial. Get your 10 free links, see how the system works, and how comfortable you are with it. From what I can tell, the service delivers 100% on its claims.

Oh yes, before I forget; BMR is meticulous about the quality of their network, and will not allow spun content to be posted. All posts have to be 100% written by hand.

Before beginning this discussion, I have to confess a personal bias; I’ve never really found article marketing to be a particularly worthwhile strategy in the pursuit of useful backlinks – at least, not for my particular niche. But then again, it’s possible article marketing has never worked for me because I never really bought into it, and therefore never committed the appropriate resources to it.

A self-fulfilling prophecy if you like.

Nah.

Although not being a huge fan, I do occasionally revisit article marketing, often after reading a particularly compelling and authoritative article in favor of it.

However, in late spring 2011 in the aftermath of the infamous Google Panda/Farmer update, I’m even less convinced article marketing makes a lot of sense.

If you’re not familiar with the basics, let’s briefly cover them…

In order to promote your web site and garner back links, you write high-quality related articles and post them on article directory sites (there are zillions of these, but only a handful have any real value). Here, webmasters can browse the database of articles and hopefully choose to reprint your material on their own web sites.

Of course, each article contains an “author accreditation” section -  a small section at the end of the article that contains a link back to your web site (along with your name and possibly a descriptive sentence or two – this depends largely on the protocols set out by each directory). That’s where the bulk of the links come from.

In addition to the links garnered from webmasters who decide to republish your material, there are some who argue the link obtained from the article directory listing itself also offers value.

I’ve never really bought into this myself; it really doesn’t make any sense for any search engine (SE) to allot much value to an in-pointing link coming from article directory sites.

Why?

Well, let’s think back to the reason search engines started using in-pointing links as part of their ranking algorithyms in the first place. That’s right; search engines see a link as a “vote” for the credibility of the linked site. The value of that link is contingent on how established and credible the site doing the linking is. The greater and more authoritative the site, the more value the link provides.

The converse is also true.

So it doesn’t make sense that a link  be allotted much value when it’s created by the very person who has the most to gain from a boost in rankings – the webmaster of the “linked” site. It’s a very transparent conflict of interest, right?

Additionally, most article directories aren’t particularly credible; many are simple repositories of thousands upon thousands of articles in unrelated niches, and in some cases, have no editorial approval process to ensure a minimum level of quality.

In short, if anyone can post anything to an article directory (and that’s the case for many of them) the vast majority of material will be mediocre – at best. Allotting much link juice to such links would not effectively further the SEs mandate of delivering the best quality content to their visitors.

So if directory listings offer any link juice, they are of minimal value. In the past I’ve used submission services that targeted hundreds of article databases and have never seen any of the back links show up in Google (with the obvious exceptions of EzineArticles, GoArticles, and the other half-dozen or so major directories).

If there’s any potential link value here at all, it will be obtained from the sites that reproduce your articles and link back to your site via the resource box.

So the obvious questions are therefore; are people actually reprinting material from article directories and linking back to your own web site? And how much “link building value” do you get from writing unique, high-quality articles and  posting them to half a dozen of the most popular article directories?

Let’s address the first question…

Yes.  Some do. For instance, I can zip over to EzineArticles, cut and paste a chunk of text from one of my articles, pop it into Google and view a list of who’s featuring this article on their sites. So yes, it’s definitely happening.

What about the value of these links?

Well, I would argue that there aren’t too many top notch web sites that don’t create all their own content. How many of the leaders in your industry are sourcing their content from EzineArticles?

None of mine are.

While there are exceptions, most of the sites I see featuring my articles contain no unique content at all – they’re simply a hodge-podge of outsourced articles, RSS feed snippets and what not that offer no value of any sort to a visitor. Does an in-pointing link from a site like this carry much weight with Google, Bing, or anyone else?

I doubt it. And if it does, it won’t for long.

So where does that leave article marketing in the grand scheme of link building?

I’d say that depends on two things…

1. How quickly you can create a unique, high quality article? For me, an article might take anywhere from one to a couple of hours to complete, depending how much supportive research I have to do. If you can crank out a genuinely high quality article in your niche in 15 minutes,  your ROI (return on investment) for article marketing is going to be vastly higher than mine. In other words, it’s probably worth doing, since the amount of time invested in your article won’t make a significant difference in the quality of the sites that reproduce it. In other words… spending hours to get a handful of crummy links isn’t worthwhile. Spending 15 minutes, probably is.
2. How old is your site? For brand new sites with no established link popularity, article marketing is probably a worthwhile venture. While I doubt these links will propel you from the Google sandbox, I know that I would definitely consider writing a half-dozen articles or so and post them to the top half-dozen directories if I had a brand new site. For a well-established site (like UltimateFatBurner.com), article marketing doesn’t deliver much of a ROI.

As you have already guessed, I have abandoned article marketing for UltimateFatBurner.com. I have found that publishing most of my material to an RSS feed gets my material on more sites, and requires a heckuva lot less work.

But what about the advocates of this strategy? Those who swear by it?

While I’m not convinced this argument can still be made, post Google Farmer/Panda, but I could certainly see how it might have worked in the past for certain niches, if you had the resources to “throw” at it.

Suppose you purchased a couple of hundred PLR articles in your niche, hired a writer from Elance to rework them slightly, and then submitted them all (over a period of time, of course) to the various article directories. This would probably net you several thousand low quality links (the number being dependent on how popular your niche/topic is, of course).

And yes, in the old days at least, having a TON of links, regardless of quality, did help.

In other words, sheer link volume worked.

Not so sure it works anymore. And if it does, I doubt whether it will continue to do so in the long run.

Bottom line?

Article marketing will get some desperately needed in-pointing links for brand new sites. So article marketing should be on your radar for initial ventures, but it should be down-graded in priority once you’ve got a few articles submitted.

After that, the law of diminishing returns is likely to kick in.

But then again, maybe I’m wrong. What do you think? Chime in below and let me know.

Since we have been talking a lot about obtaining quality in-pointing links lately, it seems prudent to mention Ryan Deiss’ Authority Codes report. It’s a freebie  – a tantalizing tidbit Ryan gives away in exchange for an e-mail address so he can promote his various products to you.

In this case, however, it’s actually a pretty decent trade off.

The Authority Codes is a visually appealing, super-slick, 21-page PDF document that shows you how to use the SEO Quake FireFox plugin along with 12 customized search queries (these are the “authority codes” Ryan is talking about) that will help you find credible blogs where you can post a comment and obtain an in-pointing link.

What’s so “authoritative” about these potential links?

Well, in addition to searching opportunities within your typical “.com” extension, you’ll also be looking for “.gov”, “.edu”, and “.org” opportunities as well. The thinking goes like this…

A link from a “.gov”, “.edu”, and “.org” extension carries more weight from Google, as it is more likely to be credible. Ryan goes a little over the top (in my opinion anyway) on the whole “value” thing. He puts it this way…

“In fact, most experts agree that Google multiplies their value by as much as 5X over a regular page with the same PR.”

Unfortunately, this statement is completely unsupported or substantiated by anything remotely resembling evidence. I know of no expert who claims this – since Google and Google only knows the value of any in-pointing link, it would be foolish to do so – as there is simply no way to conclusively prove this assertion.

Not to diminish the value of any decent in-pointing link, but I recently argued that it makes absolutely ZERO sense for Google to arbitrarily assign a ton of value to a link just because it happens to sit on a certain extension (in the aforementioned article I provide an example of a post full of link spam residing on a .edu domain. Google has no doubt programmed its spider to search for spam flags, which I highly doubt are deactivated on these respected extensions).

I also take issue with Ryan’s Multiplier Chart, which is used to demonstrate the “fact” that a single link from a PR 5 web page is “worth” 555 links from PR 1 pages. Again I have to ask; where is this data coming from? Because once again, unless it comes from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines pages (and I assure you it does not),  it’s mere speculation.

There is nothing present in this document to substantiate any of the more “enthusiastic” assertions.

For the most part though, it’s a pretty solid document; common sense strategies on making value-added posts in addition to using the codes to unearth decent (and genuine) link-building opportunities.

Bottom line – download and use the Authority Codes.

It’s worthwhile.

One caveat…

Ryan is what I would call an “aggressive marketer.” Now, I realize he has GIVEN me something valuable with the Authority Codes and in return, I am willing to check out his marketing messages.

Occasionally.

Not every freakin’ day.

I unsubscribed from his list within a week. The good news is that he completely honors unsubscribe requests and I have never received another e-mail from him. My recommendation therefore is this – check out the Authority Codes and see what else Ryan has to offer. If you get tired of being marketed to, unsubscribe.

After all, that’s what I did.

Just a quick note to let you know I’m playing with two link building tools right now; Brad Callen’s SEO Elite and the “Link Assistant” software, brought to us by the makers of SEO PowerSuite. Reviews of both to follow shortly (I hope).

Right now, I’m enjoying tinkering a bit.

Stay tuned!

If you’re a webmaster interested in obtaining in-pointing links for your web site, you’ve probably heard of the value offered by “.edu”, “.gov” and “.org” links.

The thinking goes like this…

… The “.edu” domains are usually maintained by academic institutions that have a lot of credibility, and therefore garner instant respect with Google. The “.org” domains, maintained by respected organizations and associations, receive the same.

Therefore, obtaining an in-pointing link from such a domain offers much more impact than from a simple “.com” or “.net” domain (“.gov” links, or links from government sites, are also seen as credible and highly valuable). That’s the argument being made by various marketers anyhow – certainly the ones trying to sell you the software that locates the “.gov”, “.edu”, or “.org” links.

But are these links really all they are cracked up to be?

I spent a morning doing some searches for “.edu” blogs targeted to my UltimateFatBurner.com site in an attempt to find some genuine link building opportunities. What I found wasn’t too confidence-inspiring. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, no less (this is not an isolated example, by the way).

This page, which has a Google Page Rank of 2, contains a short post about Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Wasa crackers. Since it’s a blog, people are offered the ability to post their comments. And post their comments they did; I gave up counting after 50 – there’s at least 100 comments here. And almost NONE of them are relevant to the topic at hand - all blatant promotional material with links to various weight loss gadgets, diets and supplements.

Now believe it or not, this is a moderated blog. Yep, someone had to approve each one of these spammy posts (incidentally, the same moderator obviously didn’t see my on-topic comment as being particularly flattering towards Oprah, and rejected it).

Now frankly, I don’t care what the gurus say…

Google is not going to arbitrarily assign a lot of weight to a link from an “.edu.” page simply because it resides on an “.edu” page.

It simply doesn’t make any sense.

First…

I’m not a programmer or a techie, but I can think of a dozen ways to program a spider to flag link spam, regardless of the domain of origin. It would be programming child’s play to identify the responses to the above posts as self serving link spam, and down-grade their importance accordingly.

Do you really think Google has programmed its spider to ignore blatant spam “flags” as soon as it visits a “.edu”, “.gov”, or “.org” domain?

Regardless of whether or not domains hosted on these extensions tend to deliver greater value on a whole than their “.com” and “.net” counterparts,  it doesn’t make sense to believe so.

Secondly…

In the face of the example above (again, not an isolated example) you simply cannot argue that all domains with the .edu, .org, and .gov extension always post high quality material. Obviously, they do not (there’s nothing wrong with the post itself, of course, but 99% of the comments should not have seen the light of day). And if that’s the case, it’s tough to argue that Google arbitrarily assigns a ton of link credibility to any and all links from these domain extensions.

Bottom line?

You can bet your bottom dollar Google is well aware that marketers are trying to capitalize on the authority of these “respected domains” and has tweaked their algorithyms to adjust for it.

To argue this is both counter-intuitive, and reflective of an ulterior motive (i.e., the selling or promotion of a product that locates such links).

At the end of the day, I have a tough time seeing how a post on this particular blog would provide any link value to any web site.  And if it does, you can bet it won’t do so for long.

Of course, genuine, quality links will still count. As they always have. From any domain extension.

But as far as obtaining a handful of .edu, .gov. or .org links as the solution to your link-building woes, forget about it. Worthwhile ones are going to be really tough to get, since you will need to contribute something of exceptional quality for the moderator to approve your comment.

And the easy ones?

Google will effortlessly identify them as link spam, and penalize them accordingly.

In the end, I have this advice…

If a link is incredibly easy to obtain, it’s usually worth very little. Webmasters and moderators of quality resources (regardless of the domain extension) know what they have, and are not going to jeopardize their site’s integrity and credibility by posting off-topic comments with spammy links.

Link building is hard, tedious work. There’s no way around it. There’s just no easy way to obtain worthwhile, high-authority in-pointing links.

I rest my case.

It’s an appealing thought…

Build hundreds, even thousands of targeted backlinks to your web site in minutes by using software that “searches out” blogs targeted to your niche, and automatically submits your comments (and your link). Some of these software services claim to be able to randomize your material, thus submitting numerous, but all entirely viable versions of your comments to the various resources.

Riiiiiiight.

If you think this is a viable way of building links, let me provide you with a real life example. As you know, I run a successful online business in the sports/weight loss supplement niche (with UltimateFatBurner.com & Real-Customer-Comments.com). Both of these sites make use of the WordPress platform to some extent – as a content management system, and to leverage the power of visitor comments to build fresh and relevant content. And yes, we have a honest-to-goodness blog which is updated daily.

So not only am I a passionate internet marketer, the fact that I manage several successful web sites allows me to comment on certain promotional strategies from a different perspective – from the other side of the coin, so to speak. In other words, not only do I get to investigate automated comment software, I see the end results directly.

And it ain’t pretty.

This morning, whilst perusing the previous evening’s comments, I came across a real gem. It was submitted by some genius named “Sam” in an obvious (but ridiculous) attempt to build links to the “Master Cleanse Diet” web site (the post in question thoroughly debunks the entire detox/cleanse fad that’s “in vogue” at the moment).

Of course, Sam himself (herself?) did not actually write this, but instead is using some automated software service which is scraping text from already approved and posted comments and serving them up in garbled mess. Here’s the comment…

“LOL – surface, flatbottom if it did “work” (at both aim) before, it sounds rattling much equal the lard crept stake on again. If that’s the containerful, such a programme is no fitter than your characteristic, “yo-yo” diet syndrome. What’s there to crow virtually?

I’ll response my own converse here: it has nada to do with the results. It has everything to do with making sure everyone knows how “disciplined” he is.”

Uh-huh. Can you tell me what that means exactly? Yeah, me neither.

If you check the post it “scraped”, you can see the resemblance, but you’ll notice the difference – Elissa’s comment makes sense in the context it is offered. This, on the other hand is garbled crap. The software has pulled some material from the post, and then apparently, inserted some randomized text to do what, exactly? Fool the moderator?

Which really makes me question why people invest in this stuff. Consider…

• How many really good, quality blogs do you know of that are not moderated? Uh-huh. And how many moderators are going to allow a post like the aforementioned to go live?
• If blog/comment posting software is only useful for posting links on “un-moderated” blogs, how much value are such links likely to deliver, anyway?

The reason why software like this sells is the same reason fat burners and weight loss supplements sell. They both offer a quick, easy, and appealing solution to a task people perceive to be tedious. In this case, the software automates the link building process. For the weight loss supplements, they promise to eliminate the hard work and smart decisions that lie at the foundation of any successful weight loss programs.

In either case, there is NO easy solution. Obtaining quality links that will actually help the link reputation of your web site is a “hands on” process. I’ve written about the value of posting quality material on theme-related web sites and blogs. It’s a worthwhile endeavor to be sure, it just ain’t a quick one.

And while there might exist “scraping” and “comment posting” software that actually compiles bits and pieces of approved posts into something that better resembles the King’s English, there’s one thing I can guarantee you…

Such a post will never, EVER see the light of day on any blog of value. The question then becomes…

What’s the point at all?

A short while back, I talked about how posting comments on quality, related blogs can be a great link building strategy if implemented properly (regardless of the “no follow” status of any blog).

Naturally, the most obvious next element of this discussion is…

How do I find superior quality, theme-related blogs?

Actually, you really don’t need to find that many great blogs.

If you can find one or two, chances are the webmasters of those sites have done a lot of your legwork for you; just check their blogrolls to see who they link to. True quality sites will only link to other sites of equal quality. If you can find just one great blog and check out the sites it links to, and the sites those sites link to, chances are you’ll have found all the blogs you’ll ever need.

So let’s get to work unearthing that first blog “gem” shall we? Here’s some strategies you can implement…

1) Perform searches at popular directories: Perform keyword searches at blog directories like…

• Best of The Web Blogs
• BlogCatalog
• Blogarama
• Technorati
• Yahoo!’s Blog Directory (many have these have paid a $299 listing fee, which qualifies them as having met a certain standard of quality).
• Bloggapedia

2) Use software applications: Yep, there are software applications that will do the hard digging for you. I’ve used the full version of Paul Forcey’s Comment Hut (you can download a free trial version here!). It’s a pretty cool tool, but I can’t say I’d buy it again, especially since Neil Shearing’s Real Link Finder is very similar and is available for free.

3) Perform niche related keyword searches at Google: Try searching for your top niche related keywords and try adding “+ WordPress” or “+ type pad” or even “+ blog” to your search.

4) Use Google Blog Search: Who knew? Google has a blog search tool, too!

4) Check your log files: External linking to quality resources is an important part of the “blogosphere.” It may be that your site is being linked to by a prospective partner without your knowledge.

5) Check with your affiliate partners: Many successful marketers and retailers maintain a blog. It may be that there are several good ones published by marketers within your niche.

6) Check your competitors and well-known authorities within your niche: Do they have a blog? Who are they linking to?

7) Use Bloglines: Bloglines is an aggregator of syndicated feeds. Since most blogs publish an RSS feed automatically, it’s a good place to go searching for quality resources.

Once you’ve compiled a list of quality blogs, be sure to add each one’s feed to your RSS software so you can be updated of new posts (I recommend the free FeedReader). Next, follow the guidelines outlined in this article to make sure you craft great quality, related posts that are sure to be approved by each site’s moderators.

Take your time… depending on your niche, it may take a little digging to find an exceptional blog or two, but once you do, it’s clear sailing. Good luck!

Sigh.

Here I am, talking about link building again. It seems like every second article is about link building in one  form or another. Nevertheless, link building is a vital element of SEO, especially for relatively new sites. So it has to be talked about (if you’re familiar with my articles, perhaps you’ve already read my “linking fundamentals” article. If not, you’ll probably want to review it now).

To recap my “take” on link building; the most important element of any successful campaign is to begin with a web site of exceptional quality and sufficient depth of material. If you don’t have this, you need to take a link building chill pill.

If you’ve got this in place, you’re ready to investigate strategies to build up your in-pointing links.

One of the most common methods to do this is to submit your site to various well known directories. Some good examples include…

• The Yahoo Directory
• DMOZ
• Best Of The Web
• JoeAnt
• Gimpsy
• Business.com
• GoGuides
• WowDirectory
• Librarian’s Internet Index

… and many, many, MANY more. Of course, many of these services charge a fee to have your site listed in them (Yahoo!, of course, wants $299… per year – which puts it out of reach of most small business owners. And, other than the link it provides, I’m not sure it provides much “bang for the buck” in the means of referred traffic). Nevertheless, submitting to a handful of the better, smaller services will see you chewing through several hundred dollars very quickly. And, in many cases, you’ll need to resubmit your site in a year.

That’s why a listing service I stumbled upon whilst spending some time over at SearchEngineWatch.com looked so appealing. DirectoryMaximizer is a directory submission service that hand-submits your site to over 1200 “SEO friendly” directories (a complete list of directories is available on the DM web site) for an extremely reasonable price. Granted, many of these directories are new and don’t have much in the way of PageRank.

At the same time, your link is a permanent one, so it’s not a bid deal if your link sits for a while as the directory “matures.”

Initially, I thought it all looked a bit too good to be true, but I couldn’t find any real reason to believe the service wasn’t as credible as it claimed. So I figured… what the heck! My Real-Customer-Comments.com web site needs some in-pointing links, as does my girlfriend Marilyn’s SBI! site, Flowers-By-Marilyn.com.

So I signed up for Directory Maximizer’s service, and opted to have each site submitted to 100 directories per month for a year (you can have your site submitted to all the directories at once; not something I’d suggest, as it may raise a “red flag” with the SEs. You want your link building to appear natural).

Flowers-By-Marilyn.com was submitted at the end of February ’09, and Real-Customer-Comments.com was submitted at the beginning of March ’09.

Now, approaching the middle of July ’09, how do I feel about the Directory Maximizer service? What sort of results have I seen?

That’s a difficult question, especially when it pertains to the Real-Customer-Comments.com domain. Since I’ve started using DM with this site, I’ve also sent out a press release and built numerous new pages (each one gets a link from the accompanying review on UltimateFatBurner.com, so there’s plenty of link value there, too). So it’s impossible to attribute any benefits directly to the links obtained by the Directory Maximizer service.

Nevertheless, traffic has increased (approx 20%), and using Google’s Webmaster’s tools, I can confirm that many of the DM-submitted directories are contributing to this site’s in-pointing links. So using Directory Maximizer’s service has certainly not been detrimental.

Assessing DM’s value on the Flowers-By-Marilyn web site is perhaps a little easier, since Marilyn’s been busy and has added very little content to her site in the last few months. While traffic has remained consistent, we’re finally seeing a little shade of green on Google’s PageRank (PR) tool (we’ve attained the coveted PR rank of “1″). While I’m not convinced PR is all its cracked up to be, an increasing PR score is certainly not a bad thing.

All in all, the Directory Maximizer experience has been a good one. The interface is simple yet intuitive, and it’s a breeze to use. I can’t comment on the quality of the support because I haven’t needed to use it. It’s affordable too, which makes it worth the experiment; I think I pay something like $16 per month per site for the next batch of 100 submissions.

For webmasters of new sites, especially those desperate for some in-pointing links and mindful of a small budget, the Directory Maximizer service may be just the thing for you.