A lot of people these days use software like senuke or magic submitter to create single pages on free blog networks (wordpress.com blog.com blogger.com etc) but i never found these to be useful done in this way.
Not only do you have to put extra effort into getting these indexed but a lot of times they get deleted because they are obviously spam. WordPress does a great job at this, they are also my most powerful web 2.0 blog when done properly… After a month or so my articles always get indexed very quickly and my 1 year old wordpress.com blog has a Pr2 now which shows that they can become some good sources of backlinks over time :).
Sooo how do i use these services? First off, this is something i rarely do, i did it three times right now for competitive keywords (meaning 3 networks for a few related keywords in different niches) because i feel its a waste of time for 90%+ of keywords i target and it also takes many months to get these backlinks ready.
If you are on your first website, you might want to give creating web 2.0s a shot, they can work but do not put too much time here for weak keywords! These are a good long term bonus to keywords that ideally at least have 5-10k+ searches amonth, or are great buyer keywords that are well targeted for your affiliate site. meaning you can go way lower… Obviously if you are selling a product that 50% of your visitors buy than something like 1000 searches is amazing for you.
Basically the idea is to build a blog network. Some would call it a link wheel and build their little one page network over a few minutes using automated programs but i interlink my network over many months (one of them is four months old with only a few links between them and none to my website for now). Basically what i do is over a week i will probably create 5 free blogs and put an article on them. Often, i put a unique article on these because when i hire writers i try a lot of them out in various topics so the one that i do not feel are quality enough for my main websites i post on these networks because they are readable and unique. The other advantage is i can re-use these articles a few weeks later to get backlinks from ezine articles and other article directories to link back to these new blogs for initial backlinks and hopefully get them all indexed.
A few weeks later i will probably post another article, preferably unique again so i can reuse them for backlinks but this one might be spinned or at the very least be an article from elsewhere with a few sentences of introduction added. On my free blogs i usually start interlinking them on my second or third article. If i am building a website network with paid domains etc on different ip address (this is way more advanced but I have been building one over the past 5 months) than i would wait much longer, probably 5 posts and also 6 months.
Eventually i link them from in text links but i am considering site wide links in the future because i have seen a competitor for my website ranking for great keywords using sitewide links off many blogger accounts. I think he is dumb in that they are all linked by the same adsense account but after many months they all seem alive but thats a risk i do not take. Either way, ill probably try sitewide links done this way in the future but i saw some ranking changes using in text links.
Also, if you are using other domains a few security precautions I take is:
1) They do not have adsense accounts
2) They have private registration at the domain registrar (you got it free for one year with every new domain at namecheap.com)
3) You can use spin/copied content if you want to but I think unique content will give you better results and it will make for some easy backlinks from article directories like ezine articles.
This is a more advanced subject than other backlinking methods on this website. Probably not something most should worry about if you are not currently not making a “lot” of money (it takes a lot of time management skills, at least for me since I do a lot of this manually). I like to try out different things so that’s one of the things I have in mind over the past few months. I’ve seen success with my free blog networks and 4 month old “content cluster” websites. I bought a few aged domains with PR over the past months that I’ll probably use for some keywords as a test soon.
BTW, if you buy aged domains you want to have private registration on them ASAP! I had some go to PR0 a few weeks later. however, they gained back most of their PR (but not all) with the latest Google update… Anyway, the ones with private registration lost nothing so it seems like a better idea to get it :).
So in conclusion, instead of doing like all the senuke or magic submitter newbs who blast hundreds of web 2.0 blogs and wonder why they do not get indexed or see much ranking improvements, focus on a few long term blogs ( some would call this a content cluster). I would not put time into this if you are making under $50/day but if you are targeting hard keywords to rank for this is probably another strategy you can try.
Great post alex.
Wow, really useful article. Thank you! 🙂
By the way, could I get your e-mail? I wanna ask some questions about my decided niche, competition, link strategy. I don’t want that someone would see my niche. (It’s sounds funny, but…). 😀
Ya, send it using the contact form, it redirects to my one of my gmails. Don’t expect me to give you a massive breakdown on your niche and stuff but I can maybe share some quick insights if I see any…
You said: “I would not put time into this if you are making under $50/day”
What would you recommend to people who is making less than this?
btw thanks i really like your blog
To just do my normal backlinking strategy, this is a really expensive way to get backlinks compared to submitting articles to directories/blog networks. It also takes a lot of management to figure out the seperate hosting, how you will build PR for all your websites, if you are buying aged domains how much you are willing to spend then transferring them to a new host etc. Your time is better spent making money, once you’re at $50+ a day at least while you are trying to figure this out and apply it, you’re already making money meanwhile and will probably have a good idea of what you want to do with this.
Hopefully noone thinks this is like my “secret” backlinking strategy, doing article mkt is what helped me get to where I’m at today (like I said, my own network does not even link to any of my sites making money currently), it’s just important to always have an open mind which is why I wrote this post and for those already making money on this website between this post and my example of a blog network post they probably have a good idea of how to do it.
I heard that Google can see through Private Registration and that Private Registration is like hiding something from Google.
Of how many domains does your network consist? Is this network on various topics/niches that will link to any of your websites in th future?
I think you might be trying too hard. There are blog networks that supply you with rewritten articles on different topics (same networks that you mentioned in one of earlier posts) so there is no reason to spend much time on creating content for your network.
Google cannot see from private registration, I saw a statement from them or ICAN or something to that effect. Either way, I had private registration on all of my domains before even thinking about this network in my first month of doing IM just to hide my personal contact information from the world, I’m pretty sure the majority of people use it simply to hide their own information from other people, not google.
The created content for my networks is from employees who I tested from Odesk but that I eventually did not hire. Since I already paid them for the content and will not put it on my main websites I use it for those networks.
Have you tried BuildMyRank yet? i’m really loving it…
Ya, it works well but instead of BMR I feel stuff like AR/UAW work for less effort. I still have BMR but I barely use it… I was thinking it might not be as effective as it used to be but then I did 5 150 word submissions for a keyword 2 weeks ago and I saw that page go from 80+ to like 30. Far from first page but this is a medium competition keyword with 20k+ searches and it does show that BMR has some weight. What I usually do is submit the unique article to BMR and then spin it for the other networks a few days later, really good leverage out of these articles :).
I should do a similar test with postrunner… I haven’t used it in months and mostly use niche refinery.
Alex should i use Private Registration on my main niche AdSense websites? If yes, then in case i want to sell website, how do i prove that i am the owner and how to do domain transfer?
Well if it already does not have private registration theirs not that much point in adding it yet but I either way I doubt it would change much if you sell the website.
Do you use software for build backlink network???
No all manually so far.
Really useful . With your permission and with giving backlink to this page i would like to translate it to my own language for local users.
Sure go ahead, it’s all free info but I appreciate a link back :).
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the great post. I’ve been using this strategy in a very limited way and seeing some promising early results.
I have a question though. In creating link networks, should you create a few new email (gmail/yahoo etc) addresses and then link blogs (i.e. blogger blogs) to them so that Google doesn’t penalize you?
I don’t bother with that but yes if google wanted they could potentially follow my blogger accounts to adsense I suppose but I’ve seen plenty of people do it without any penalties.
Hi Alex,
Great blog and great post – 2 quick questions:
1) can you tell us if you also spin on the sentence level for each of the three versions submitted into UAW?
2) do you ping your backlinks or submit them through an RSS submitter?
1) I usually only word spin
2) No, I feel those are a waste of time. I’ll have a post soon on the backlinking indexing methods I use. Waiting another day or two to have the final results where I compared a few different ways.
Great post thanks. I think that as the google algorithm evolves (and more panda like updates pop up) we’ll see senuke and other things become more and more obsolete and your methods of blogs with unique content becoming more valuable.
Thanks for the great information, I am thinking of starting up my own blog network adding fresh and unique content like you suggested and then linking them to my money websites. I am thinking in the range of 200 blogs all with their own unique domains. overall this would create around 10,000 backlinks as the backlinks would be site-wide is this recommended or do you think G would slap you for this.
My theory is all backlinks are good because if you could get penalized by google for creating backlinks to your website then i could get any website deindexed.
I have left my private email in posting this comments it would be great if you could get back to me with your thoughts
Sent ya an email,
I agree that any backlink is good, the only times it becomes bad is when it’s too many backlinks from low quality sites in a short amount of time. I think 200 is killing it, I have been building less and I feel it’s a decent amount of work to maintain them and build backlinks to them too before I actually use them. However if you have a team that’s much easier, I only have one full time VA.
Hi Alex – I know this is an old topic, but I had a question.
Are you linking to these outside blogs only from each other and ezine?
Also, I wasn’t clear on if you are posting the same unique article to each blog, or if you are doing 5 different articles for the 5 different blogs each week.
I don’t think I’ll be attempting this anytime soon, but I am curious on the whole diy backlink-network idea.
Thanks!
I do not use unique articles on those blogs, it would be too expensive/time consuming. I would spin one article and then post spun copies to each of them. I also used my usual tools to do links to them over time, AMR, BMD and some networks.