BuildMyRank Review Part 1 First Impressions

Until recently, I have been working on content for my websites. But now I am in backlinking mode, and I am using the BuildMyRank service, which I had been avoiding like the plague.

It’s not as if I didn’t want to use BuildMyRank, it’s just I thought it was pretty stupid to do so.

Lemme ‘splain what I mean, and why I thought BMR was stupid to begin with.

Why I Thought BMR Was Stupid on Steroids

[M]y first impression when this whole service first became popular, was that I can accomplish the same thing simply by using EZineAritcles, or any number of free article directories.

I had/have access to various submitters (meaning I own them and sometimes will pay someone to use theirs, etc.), my favorite still being Article Marketing Robot.

At first, I thought everyone was jumping on the BMR bandwagon, and being taken for fool. I was on a mission to prove that BuildMyRank was a waste of money.

But who was I kidding?

The fact is that everyone approved of the service, and I couldn’t help but shake the feeling I was simply missing the boat.

What IS BuildMyRank?

Just in case you don’t know, BuildMyRank is a private blog network with various IP addresses and PageRank in the network. By paying the subscription, you get to post short snippets (150-300 words) and embed your link and anchor text in them.

It’s similar to an article directory submission service, only you’re posting to blogs which are privately owned – and nothing is spun: just the good stuff allowed.

It is completely unlike any article directory, or any articles spinning service that I have tried.

I was faced with a choice, and that was simply to try the service on my new websites – the worst case scenario being that I would gain some backlinks in the process of discovering how I loved or hated the service.

Since it seemed like the whole world was using the service but me, it was time I gave it a shot.

Sold on BuildMyRank

At first I had my toe in when I wrote my Testing BuildMyRank post – I was still on the free trial status. That didn’t last too long once I started building my backlinks…

You get 10 free links to try it out, I needed more pronto – so I upgraded.

The big selling point for me was that there was no spinning involved, and that there seemed to be a lot of high PR blogs in the network. Not only that, but these articles were pretty short, and it was time for a change of pace.

I have been spinning articles since I began online in 2009 – honestly I don’t mind it. Since I already was writing articles to promote my sites, using BMR just meant I’d be submitting first to the network before other linking opportunities (like web 2.0 sites we all use).

First Impressions of BuildMyRank

As you can see here on the screen shot below, the first step in getting started with BuildMyRank is to set up your projects.

At first I wasn’t sure what this meant, but simply put, it’s a way to organize your backlinking campaign into projects that makes sense. Every project can have as many websites in it as you need.

Maybe you have dog training sites, and cat owner sites. Set up a “pets” project, etc.

Just keep in mind that you can only have 5 active domains for $59 a month, or you can pay more if you need more.

What I learned was that you can actually rotate as many domains as you need to to get your linking done. To do this, you simply archive the domain(s) that you are no longer working on.

When you do that, their campaigns are queued and paused, ready to go again when you are.

For someone like myself, five domains a month is plenty. If you have a bigger network or if you outsource your writing, then you might need to pay a little extra to get more active domains.

Once you’ve set up your projects, you add in your domains, which categories they’re in, and you’re nearly ready to go.

At the bottom of the screen is an optional section used if you outsource your writing. Since I don’t do that, I won’t cover that.

First Results of BuildMyRank

I’m actually using the service to backlink a newer domain, one that doesn’t have any backlinks whatsoever.
At the end of this test I’ll be able to see how quickly BuildMyRank actually works, even though I’ll be using other backlinking methods as well.

But for right now what I’ve noticed is really pretty cool, and that is a higher PageRank backlink profile…just what the doctor ordered!

You can see below some of the backlinks I’ve built, took maybe an hour at most.

Would you be the longest was figuring out how to use windows seven speech recognition.

WTF?!

That sentence was supposed to read:

What took the longest, was figuring out how to use Windows7 speech recognition.

But that’s another story altogether…

Too Early To Tell, But Here’s What I Like

1. Ease of Use

Holy cow, this thing’s really easy use! I have no complaints on that end, it’s really self-explanatory. It’s a lot easier than trying to spin an article, but that is both good and bad. I’ll explain that below.

2. High PR Links

This is really the heart of BuildMyRank: as long as your links appear on the homepage, you should expect a rankings boost. If you understand how blogs work, then you should expect your links to disappear from the homepage after while as they’re archived.

That’s not really a big issue for me, since I plan to build links consistently over time. The fact that my links will appear on high PR, or well-established blogs, is good enough for me.

What I’ve read from several users is that you still have an upward momentum overall in ranking: so even when your links are archived, you still get the boost.

3. IP Diversity

I can’t prove this just yet, since my links have just been built, but just looking at the report, I’m going to assume that there is some IP diversity.

In other words: the links I’ve built are appearing on different IP addresses, which is something that matters a lot in terms of ranking (otherwise everyone could just own two websites: one to be linked to and one to link from, and you could rank just fine).

BMR’s IP diversity is something that other people have sworn by, and I trust my sources, but time will tell.

4. Spam and Quality Control

This is something that people complain about, and I don’t understand why. The fact is that BuildMyRank is built on quality, so good riddance to the spammers.

But this is something that you need to think about: every article and every blog you link to is going to need to be approved. This is one of the big selling points of competitors, like the new SEO Cobra.

BTW: If that is one of the big selling points of SEO Cobra, then I’m happy to report I won’t waste my money there.

Can you imagine the selling point: “We’re not picky – link to anything…And yes, you can have cruddy sites and we’ll link to them, too…”

Uh – yeah. Think I’ll hold off on that one, just sayin’.

Of course, that’s a business decision you need to make for yourself: how spammy you want to be.

The fact that BuildMyRank has such high standards, at least according to my peers, is a major selling point for me.

5. Killer Reporting

If you’re building links for yourself, or if you’re building links for a client, it pays to have reporting features. Even if you’re only in business for yourself, like me, it still pays dividends in motivation to see progress being made.

Here’s a screenshot of my own reporting (I cut out the URL’s and keywords of course), the columns read:

• Title
• Keywords (Anchor Text Used)
• Writer (You can Outsource This Easily)
• Created
• Scheduled (I choose “Random” but you can schedule)
• Published
• PR (of the Homepage where published)
• Indexed? (They check for you, which is cool)
• Actions (You can use a “find” feature and they look for a sentence of your post in Google, or delete it, or edit the post)

And here is a bar graph that shows you where your links were last built (by keyword, so you don’t keep hitting the same keywords indiscriminately).

My BMR Strategy

I’ll be using BMR in particular way, and once I have the kinks worked out I’ll be releasing a PDF strategy guide for those using BMR.

No, it won’t cost you a penny, so don’t worry about it, but it’ll be something that you can use for your own business if you want top rankings.

Listen to me: “if you want top rankings…” That’s more than a bit premature: I won’t be writing the guide until after testing on my own sites.

In other words, give me some time to test properly and streamline my processes – but I’ve no reason to think it’ll do anything but help improve link-building and make the most out of any efforts spent on BMR or similar services/approaches.

BMR Vs. Article Spinning: The Pro’s and Con’s

I can’t really compare the two just yet, but this goes back to the part where I was saying I hesitated for a while before getting this service.

For one thing, since I use The Best Spinner and Article Marketing Robot to build links from article directories, I’m adept at spinning. It’s familiar ground: I know what to expect…

But more importantly, it always seemed to me that using BMR or other services like it was a silly thing, a throwback to the Dark Ages online where you built one link at a time after you hopped off your horse-drawn carriage, and pumped your water by hand from the well…

Spinning made sure you got dozens or hundreds of links for your efforts – and AMR is great for that (yes still to this day).

But you didn’t get high PR links…

And normally you don’t get contextual links (i.e. backlinks built into the body copy of your article or post, like you do in a blog network membership) via article marketing.

So that’s a strength of BMR: yes, it’s a link at a time, but the links are contextual and they’re on blogs with some amount of age and PageRank to them (for the most part that’s what I’m seeing).

Since the articles themselves are short, writing a link at a time isn’t that big a deal given the quality of the links.

Indexing Links?

Though I am using BMR, I’m also used to using the Indexing Tool to get my links indexed – it’s fairly simple (more or less plug and play)…but is that even necessary with BuildMyRank?

Not necessarily according to them: but again this is something that is too early to tell at this point.

Personally I’m still using the Indexing Tool since it’s so hands-off and has worked on my other sites so well. Since I’m not only using BMR, I’ll need to index my links from other methods anyway.

I’ll have to resort to using Google Webmaster Tools to see if they “count” my backlinks (even though there’s no guarantee according to Google if a link shows up there in GWMT that it “counts” in your ranking)…at least if they show up, I can say they exist.

When you build links from article directories, though, you usually need to do some indexing work of sorts with RSS mixing, mashing and pinging – if not a bunch of other things to boot.

I don’t normally bother, to be honest – apart from using the Indexing Tool during campaigns (and they explain this whole “RSS” phenomenon really clearly if you’re wondering how it’s done).

This much I know: BMR claims they build “at least 50 backlinks” to every link you post to their network – so long as the link is approved (right now I have 100% approval so this should be no problem).

The result (or the promise anyway) is that the network makes link indexation hands-free as it can be.

That remains to be seen – I’ll be primarily watching my SERPs improvement or “Google Dance” as it were, it’s much too early to tell but I plan on weighing in again on this one with concluding remarks.

These Links are Permanent

Unlike some services (like 3WayLinks or other similar services), this network isn’t a “forced continuity” sham. If you try it and leave, you’ll still have your links you’ve built doing their thing.

Personally I thought that was classy to find out – it’s not link “rental.”

Have You Got Your Free 10 Links?

Give it a shot – just know you can’t import your links as a free trial customer (I was impatient and upgraded), but once you see those links and where their system places them (in my case I had a PR4 link, some PR2′s and PR1′s in the free trial)…I’m sure you’ll at least get a feel for how it all works.

Check it out (yes it’s my affiliate link):

Any Questions About BMR?

I’m still new to this service but if you have any questions I can answer, fire away. Right now I’m hooked and will be for the long-haul so long as this experiment goes forward like I hope.

I’m looking at it like a big guest posting network of sorts, with short articles required (150 words for 1 link, 300 words for 2, I’m writing around 300-700, short for me).

Ask a question and hopefully I have an answer. Otherwise, I’d say check it out and make a decision