Though I’ve only been a customer a short while with BuildMyRank, I’ve had some testing going on I wanted to report on since it’s pretty jaw-dropping for me. I was pretty skeptical, especially since it’s “just another” blog network, right? So I decided to test the 10 free links they give you to try it out.
I mean, how big a deal could those 10 links be? Note: I can’t guarantee your results will approximate mine, but personally I didn’t expect these results and tend to think others can see similar, if not identical, results.
Translation: I’m not promising my results in your tests – but for me this was a nice surprise.
My BuildMyRank Test
First what I did was laid out content and site architecture so my content was more likely to rank. I like a solid foundation so that’s where I started (following my Duct Tape SEO WordPress SEO plan).
I have a new site with around 20 pages or so of content, around half being reviews following my Commission Junction Profit Plan ideas.
Time wasn’t on my side, still isn’t – but I have enough ranking in the top positions (above the fold in Google) that I won’t “miss out” this Black Friday (so I’m hoping anyway!).
What I was doing was planning on hitting my pages in a systematic fashion.
I’d built about 20 pages of reviews to rank between two main websites in a related niche, and I’d just build links in a specific order…
My Mistake with BuildMyRank and Black Friday
I’d like to say this was scientific and intelligent on my part – but it was more anal-retentive than anything. What I did was pick popular products and some longshots based on hunches.
That wasn’t my mistake, though – BTW, what I mean is I reviewed “proven winners” and a number of “lucky horses” based on past performance – those are the longshots (no proven track record: they’re new products).
I made 2 mistakes (at least) with this experiment…Not to mention this isn’t the time of year for “experiments” in SEO, but that would make 3 mistakes, wouldn’t it?
Mistake 1: Link-Building the Path of Most Resistance First
My mistake was targeting the most difficult, most popular term first.
This isn’t the right way to prioritize link-building before a major shopping holiday: it’s backwards.Especially considering this page wound up landing at #257 in Google when I published it: I should’ve started with other pages in the top 10 already and moved on from there.
It’s a give and take, though: pages starting off in the back pages of Google are usually popular, competitive terms. Pages that start off high get less traffic…
An argument could be made that targeting the tougher term was better, but I like to go for a winning page first that converts. The tough terms can come later.
Still, I feel it was a mistake doing things this way: I should have used my Snow Ball SEO approach. What I mean is start off linking to those terms you know you can take first by virtue of being one of the first to review the product…
And yes: I realize this isn’t something I talk about a lot, but it’s a competitive advantage I aim for when I’m really aiming for the top.
I get a drop on my competitors by knowing what is going to sell (a hunch and mad research), then get there first.
The momentum of taking several top spots in Google is both profitable and an adrenalizing, motivating rush, pushing you on to your future wins when the going gets tougher.
Like I said: I didn’t do the Snow Ball SEO here, I did the hard term first (with my 10 free links no less).
Mistake 2: 1 Man Vs 20 Pages = Man Loses Every Time
This is a genuinely bad idea when you’re a 1-man show. Lame city:
I built 20 pages to rank and only had time to rank a few.
20 pages to rank is about 4 times more than I can handle on a tight schedule, and I “know better” thanks to the Amazonian Profit Plan (so you’d think, if you’ve read it: write 5 pages of content, then STOP and backlink/rank them).
It’s the same advice I gave in my own book, Duct Tape SEO, but feeling the pressure to write more content on my websites, I went long on content.
Problem: I don’t outsource.
I’m building my own links – and sure I could’ve spun a couple of articles with The Best Spinner and just hit up Article Marketing Robot and ArticleRanks like old times.
But I’m pretty methodical as it is.
Once I have a plan, I’ll stick to it. More on that as I get more results to report on, but part of my plan was to use BuildMyRank to test a few of my newer URLs.
I used a site that had some pretty competitive longtails – and yes: they’re longtails. But these are pretty competitive (for longtail keywords) and I’m entering the market late on the terms in question.
On one in particular that I hit using my 10 free links only from BuildMyRank:
I went from #257 with no external links, to #10 in less than a week.
The keyword has settled at #15 currently, but I wanted to see what those 10 free links would do.
I did no indexing, and actually didn’t have a ton of hope this URL would be a player for this holiday season (it’s one of those keywords that everyone in my niche ‘knows’ and targets, it’s a solid product and gets decent traffic).
My exact expression was something like:
Um, yeah – I’ll take that BMR subscription. :)
Actually I signed up before I saw any movement at all: I knew it would work, but was pretty sure this keyword was a lost cause for this much upward movement in such a short time: glad I was wrong.
Overall it took about 5 days, I only built links on BMR for an hour or two then had an onslaught of other things to do (like installing MaxCDN, which I’m running this blog on & some other sites, starting my web 2.0 link building, and helping my wife and kids fight through the stomach flu for the 4th or 5th time this year).
Use Those 10 Free Links
I used to think they were just a “hook” and not to expect anything much from them – then again I do a lot of market research first and choose my battles smart to begin with.
So if you’re smart, you can make those 10 links do some serious damage. If you haven’t yet tried out BuildMyRank, it’s a keeper for sure.
Happy Thanksgiving
Yes I’m American and realize Canadians have already had theirs, the U.K. never has Thanksgiving, and thus ends my knowledge of global culture.
But I’ll pretend we’re neighbors since I’m upstairs in my office/kids’ playroom in Idaho, and it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow: so Happy Thanksgiving anyway.
Not sure I’ll be posting tons through the holidays but I have a few things I’d like to address here and there, I’ll be busy with my link building regimen:
Web 2.0 Links
BuildMyRank
CommentLuv Premium
Oh, and yes: the usual treatment if you’ve already read my link building guide. Everything in time.
Right now it’s about time for me to get back to it. Or see what I can help my wife with. :)
[In the meantime, did you get your 10 free links yet? I think I'm the last person to get on board.]
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Grrr i keep delaying getting the links, but not anymore! Leave a comment – get the links, and there ends my schedule for the day.
Impressive ranking, and i believe you’ll get even higher in the following days.
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It’s pretty cool: on another longtail I used fewer links and took 1-9 in Google: but that one was an easier, lower competition KW.
Whenever that happens (taking 1-9 etc.) I know it’s only a matter of time before Google fixes it so I just have 1 or maybe 2 spots, but for today: I got the front page, baby. :)
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No you aren’t the last person! lol… I just started with my 10 free links and I am thinking I MIGHT have made a mistake with the keyword I’m targeting but we’ll see. It’s a high traffic one but I was position #40 when I looked and I thought that it was the best target. Problem is when I finally signed up and started writing articles, the very next day (before anything was published) my ranking fell to 129! So we’ll see what BMR does for this one. My computer was out of commission for nearly three weeks and so I was not checking rankings at that time, it could have been fluctuating the entire time and me not know it! But I’m thinking there’s gotta be some truth to all these people talking about BMR.
One review I read yesterday, which had been updated over the period of a year as the writer was using BMR, said his conclusion is that BMR is most excellent with the long-tail keywords in addition to a booster for the more competitive ones. I guess we’ll see! Your results are very encouraging to me, though. I’m just nearly at the point where I can justify a monthly expense if I end up with a similar result. It’s good that the top 10 competition for that keyword is really not all that well optimized :)
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I had the same thing happen. I mean my keyword bounced a lot.
Normally people talk about this because they’re watching too closely, checking ranking too much. I don’t tend to do that, I check every week or so, but its been so long since I’ve built links (between the book, my lists, my content…lots of things to write) and because of the holiday shopping craze – I decided to check more often.
BOUNCY SERPS is all I can say:
#257 > #93 > #275 > #12 > #277 > #10 > #15 > #11…settled at #11 actually. I’ve stopped link building to see where it would settle, after this post I checked and it’s been there for a couple of days. I forgot to mention it was from 8 links, not the full 10, but whatever.
I haven’t watched the rankings that closely in a while: I stopped doing that because I was getting depressed and it took about a week to 3 weeks to see them stabilize in times past with article submitters…so I’m pretty happy with the result!
Well I’ll give it a couple weeks after the trial period before I commit to doing anything but given what everyone is saying about BMR I am thinking it is probably something I’ll pay for in a few months time.
As of today I’m back up to 42, so I’m definitely bouncing around! This will be interesting to watch.
And I’ll be very curious to see what your BMR strategy looks like if you do post one :)
I keep thinking about this. I think I want to run a longer trial, maybe a 3 month trial on several pages and keywords, 200 posts or so, and see what it does to my income.
I’ve already made some sales on the short time I’ve been using it – traffic and income as well as SERPs benefit.
What you might want to do is find someone who will allow you to submit to their account (there are some with an unlimited account: they can post to as many domains as they want) for a fee.
Something to do before you actually buy – but did you check out the 10 free links yet? It’s beneficial even for just one page.
That’s a good idea… I don’t know anyone who has BMR well enough to ask but I bet I could find someone on fiverr or something that would let me pay per post. Unless you want me to pay you :)
I did sign up for the trial, doing it right now, but I am still a couple months away from being at a point where I can justify the cost. I’ll also need to outsource the writing for the most part though odesk writers seem to be pretty reasonable cost-wise… but my time is just so limited! I’m gonna have a newborn to take care of 2 weeks from today… so I won’t have much time or brainpower to do any content writing, methinks.
The decision to use BMR (or not) is giving me all kinds of grief. I hear all the good comments from people like yourself but my concern is that I have to continue building links to a page as the original articles fall of the blogs’ homepages.
I know I can test it out but who has the time these days :)
I would be interested to know if any of your rankings stick over the next month without building new BMR links to it…
That’s not a “worry” insofar as it’s a reality, John: the homepage links will be archived like a regular blog. You can pull those links using their search feature in BMR, as they’re indexed – then build links to them to ‘juice’ those links if you’d like.
Overall, the rankings will likely peak, then go down a little – but not nearly down to where they started. So I started at 257, at one point it hit 277 – then up to 11 where it’s been sitting for a few days – but if I don’t do anything doubtless it’ll go down a few spots. How much remains to be seen, but here’s an interesting thing:
Since I inner-link my posts, it’s brought up my other posts I’ve linked to. So building links to one post will affect my others’ rankings significantly.
Anyhow, I can’t run the experiment as you suggest on this property, because I’m in this for the money (not from BMR but from my website: I need my pages ranking). If/when I do run that experiment, I’ll post it here (and thanks for the idea).
BMR was listed at LinkVanaReviews.com as a test, though – and Dan there marked it as his #1 or #2 suggestion (his tests are really thorough).
I just re-read your comment and want to clarify: no you don’t need to keep building BMR links to a page to make it stick – but for the record I don’t recommend anyone only use ONE method for link building.
So in this case I’ll throw a dozen links or so to a page and use my other methods (social bookmarking, link baiting when possible, article leveraging, guest posts, even outsourced link packages).
But I do remember thinking the same thing: “Do I have to keep building BMR links for it to work? What happens when the links are archived?”
I had a number of people confirm that their rankings stick when BMR is part of a larger linking effort (which it should be: I’m not suggesting only use this service). Hope that clears it up, I didn’t want to suggest that “YES you need to keep building BMR links…”
You can build as many as you want then use other methods.
Looks like you achieved great results with the use of BMR. I’ve heard lots of positive reviews about this wonderful tool and looks so promising in building links for a particular site. I’m considering of checking it out and see how it goes.
Yeah, it’s a keeper. It’s like a guest posting system with short snippets of 150 – 300 words apiece.
Hey James,
I got in with BMR last week or so and I ma very happy with it.
I have seen a few movement in serps from a few keywords that I was already on the first page for. After using BMR for week r so, all those keywords that I had targeted have moved up in the serps a few spots. And you know its much harder to move up when you are in the first page than when you are in 500th page.
Now, I can’t obviously say for sure it was BMR, but I know it is.
Nice! I’ve been building my web 2.0 links and stopped with BMR at present…I have a method to stick to. Web 2 > BMR > Commenting > Articles > Spinning or something like that.
James,
Glad to see your results have jibbed with what mine were. I have actually been very impressed with this service. I have had a “if you build it they will come” attitude and not done enough backlinking, so I have been mightily impressed with BMR since I started using it.
In fact that is part of the reason I have not been around visiting much. I have been busy actually using BMR. I now have almost 500 of these links and I am starting to rank on all sorts of things on niche sites and even on some Squidoo lenses.
I love that it takes unique content. It may still be thin content, but it is unique so it is unlikely to trip up any future Nasty Google updates too.
IN fact, I think my commenting for the day may be done now… time to go and write a few more BMR posts and work on my niche site.
Yeah, that’s what I’m busy doing too (actually I have a few web 2′s to get done before my next BMR run, but it’s what I’m doing vs. blogging).
I’m rewriting snippets of my web 2 stuff for the BMR’s.
Hey James,
Ok, since the last time I commented here, the few targeted keywords I have been targeting keep going up the serps. It seems like this BMR thing is really working.
However, as I mentioned before, I do a lot of other linkbuilding as well, blog commenting, guest posting, forums, artcile marketing and all the rest. So, in my mind I still am doubting if the results are just from BMR or not.
So, to find out, I have started a new campaign. This is a brand new sites, 2 months old, with no backlinks what so ever. They keywords are huge, but competition is very low. I am going to build links for this site using only BMR and I’ll be sure to report back.
Now, if indeed BMR is really behind all that good news, I have a few theories that I think might explain.
1- BMR sites are mostly aged domains.
2- Your link is the only outgoing dofollow link (at least on most of their sites) from the page where your article is published. Not to mentions most of their internal links to pages, categories, etc are nofollow as well.
3- Since BMR sites are constantly publishing new articles, obviously indexing is faster, so your backlink results take effect much faster since they are being found faster.
I could be wrong, but these are the things that I think would play a rule in BMR links being so effective (if indeed they are).
Satrap I didn’t actually look into most of these things yet, so thanks for sharing.
They use aged domains and monitor them for performance and when they notice a domain isn’t indexing as well, they stop posting to it and buy another.
They know their SEO for sure – at least that’s what it seems so far, I’ve been really happy to see the results.
I also didn’t realize your blog is ranked #1 for “Make Money Online,” I should be asking you the questions. :)
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That was awesome results James!
10 posts to move from #257 to #10 within a week. It amazes me already :D I just want to know if you continue this review series about BMR or not. It’s really helpful!
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I will be for sure (continuing my reports I mean), recently have seen more PR3′s and PR4 links – and nearly 100% indexing all by itself.
I have some other ways I’m using them, too, saving myself some time.
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Hi, I was just wondering if you’ve ever tired using plr articles and rewriting them for bmr posts? Do you think that this would be faster and acceptable. its taking me ages to write them at the moment!
Also have you ever used plr for other links to sites and does it help or destroy the ranking. Ive always thought about this.
Have never used PLR for this but once and it almost got me kicked off EzineArticles. So I stopped. But I think it was the PLR source I used, it had been massively marketed (through James Jones of Micro Niche Finder). I do use Instant Article Wizard and rewrite those, but honestly I have little trouble writing my own. Don’t think it will hurt unless you don’t make it unique.
Sounds too good to be true but i’ll definitely try this out. I hope i’ll get the same results as you did. Thanks for sharing James!
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