ArticleRanks Review
This is my ArticleRanks Review, written before ArticleRanks 2.0 was launched. I was an early adopter and tester of this service, and it remains (late in 2011 as I write this) one of my favorite places to syndicate for link-building.
For a tutorial on how to use the new model, read my ArticleRanks 2.0 User’s Guide. It’s how I use the service and covers some pretty frequently asked questions and key tips to using it.
Edit: May 29, 2012: I am not currently using ArticleRanks or any submitter of links. The Penguin Update has mauled my traffic, and I’m analyzing why, but since Google officially called this their “webspam” update on first launch, I highly suspect my link-building efforts. Continuing with the original review…proceed at your own risk.
Until I have evidence to the contrary that these submitters are “safe,” I cannot recommend using spun content and link-building methods like submitters. Please listen to my interview with Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder for more information.
The three reasons I’m covering ArticleRanks are:
1) They work. Edit: Yes. Post-Panda update: they work like nobody’s business.
2) They got me to #1 along with other tools.
3) As of October 31 of 2010, their prices increase from the low $39 a month to $89 a month for the full-fledged and “2.0″ version (which includes spun updates to Facebook and Twitter, building social bookmarks to your submissions, and adding your articles to social sites – I compare all 3 versions below).
Of course I wrote this before the price changed, but here it is over a year later and ArticleRanks remains one of the top players.
Edit: They have different options, the “Pro” version is $89 a month and it’s worth it IMHO, remaining one of the best blog posting networks I’ve used, or you can pay as you go or even use a free account, the middle-ground is $39 a month, below I lay them all out.
Futher note: This review was originally written before BuildMyRank and Article Marketing Robot were released, I now recommend these services/tools from first place to last: BuildMyRank (my review), ArticleRanks and Article Marketing Robot (review).
Consider this a great time to get locked into a small monthly to one of the best services out there – and I’m not exaggerating.
So why do I recommend you strongly consider ArticleRanks?
ArticleRanks is an article marketing syndication network, user-owned blogs that publish content that you create. The purpose is to generate both traffic and backlinks to your website, but only on blogs that are opted into the network.
Unlike Unique Article Wizard – which I used to use and recommend – ArticleRanks does not currently syndicate your content to any article directories.
OK, so you have the overall picture – this service will syndicate you articles, but what sets it apart from the competition? How much does it cost? Does ArticleRanks work?
My, you’re full of questions!
To put it simply, there are two aspects to this service:
Content Syndication, Content Reception.
To put it simply – you can send your written articles to the network and get up to 3 backlinks to your website(s) and/or 1 link to a video, or you can receive free content on whatever topic you choose.
Content Syndication
The first is that AR will allow you to syndicate your spun articles through it’s network, making sure your content lands on relevant blogs that are looking for unique content.
The benefit for SEO purposes is that you will generate backlinks that are likely to be relevant, powerful (since they are in the “content” and not in the resource section, these links are weighed as more relevant and carry more ‘link juice’), and will result in upward trending of your website in the SERPs (I know because I use them on every site I own).
Content Reception
Members have the opportunity and incentive to opt in and add their sites to the network, to receive free content. This is not a unique aspect to the service, as there are other such networks out there doing this sort of thing, more on that in the competitive analysis section below.
The benefit is that you can opt to receive content either via email or onto a website (using FTP, or whatever API needed to get the content onto your site, it’s very user friendly) – and grow your web properties while not needing to lift a finger or break a nail…
In both cases, either having unique content added to your blog or syndicating your content to get more backlinks, you will find that both are solid for your SEO.
ArticleRanks Review
The end result will be that your website does climb in search engine ranking, and there’s a good reason for this. Google and other search engines will count the link popularity of your websites, or Squidoo lenses (or other web properties like articles, etc.). This is one means by which they determine your overall ranking in the organic listing.
Backlinks count as votes. More links, more votes. More votes, better ranking.
OK, by now you might be thinking, “Yee-haw. Or, not…I already use UAW, or Article Marketing Robot…”
True enough – and for the record, I also (used to) use UAW and happily.
Currently I use AMR and that has no monthly fee – so what does ArticleRanks provide that Article Marketing Robot doesn’t?
ArticleRanks self-indexes very, very well, building automatic backlinks to your syndicated articles.
Unlike many other services, the links are self-indexing to a large degree with no further effort.
With AMR you need to do this yourself, though it helps if you use something like the Indexing Tool or Pingback Optimizer – like I do. Even then, having an automatic system or service build these links for you is what sets stellar services like ArticleRanks and BuildMyRank apart.
If you already use AMR or another such service or tool, for what it’s worth – I’d recommend you use as many as you can afford to so long as they syndicate your links to different places (BMR, AMR and ArticleRanks is a killer combo, for example, and currently my setup).
For those link-building on a budget, you need to know:
ArticleRanks Has 3 Payment Options
ArticleRanks allows you to have three payment options.
Free/Credit-Based
Basically you get submission credits for every site you add to receive content in the network. But the catch is that they must be on diverse C-Class IP addresses.
This is a great reason that this system rocks: C-Class diversification.
The drawback: your quantity of submissions will be limited depending on the number of websites you can add.
Then there is the pay-per-submission feature, now part of the free service: you can submit free if you have credits, or buy credits. There is a $10 minimum but this is a great way to get links and to pay as you go.
It’s a bit confusing since you buy credits and every credit is $2, a submission is 2 credits or $4 – but if you don’t do lots of article marketing, do the math to see what plan is best for you (and remember you can earn credits by donating a blog to the network, so long as it’s on a different C-Class IP than others you have donated).
Starter Acct: $39.99/Monthly
This is the all-out, submit as you like, $39.99/month plan.
They are completely worth it, too. So says my well-ranking websites (Mwa-ha-ha-hahahaa!). They will not only submit articles and auto-drip them out (which I LOVE: it’s entirely randomized), but they also build social bookmarks to your submissions and submit them to social websites – thus increasing their ‘link juice’ and overall ranking power.
Something people don’t understand is that unless a link is indexed, it won’t matter at all for your rankings: Google doesn’t “see it.”
To make them “count,” they need to be in Google’s index – hence tools like PingBack Optimizer are hot commodities for article marketing and link-building in general (that’s the one I use: it automatically submits up to 20 pingbacks as RSS feeds to RSS directories).
Limitations: you are only allowed 1 top level category, and have to pay for another if you want to submit to multiple categories – which is GREAT news.The reason it’s great news is that it prevents category spamming, which people do to abuse a system like this, thinking they can get more links that way.
Really, it de-values a syndication service, since the blog owners wind up getting mis-placed articles on their niche blogs. It also de-values the power of the link, since you lose the advantage of getting a relevant link.
This is great for your SEO, though flagrant category spammers hate it (it’s one of the quality features making ArticleRanks one of the best).
Also you can only have 10 live domains to submit backlinks for.This is OK for someone like me with a small network, and who can only submit so much anyway – but if you run a campaign for a lot of clients or a big network, and you outsource your spun content writing…
Well, you want the Pro version instead. But to re-cap:
- Can submit for up to 10 live domains to build your links to.
- Can submit to 1 top level category (if you want to submit an article to multiple categories, it costs a little extra per submission, I recommend not to spam, and love this feature actually: quality control).
- ArticleRanks will submit your syndicated articles to social sites.
- ArticleRanks submits bookmarks pointing at your articles (links to your links in other words: making it self-indexing largely).
ArticleRanks Pro: $89.99/month
Finally is the new “ArticleRanks 2.0″ plan, that’s what I call it. They call it their “Pro” plan – new for 2011.
Basically they do all the above in the $39/mo plan and then some:
- Submit syndicated articles to social sites…
- Submit bookmarks to syndicated articles in system…
Plus the following:
- Allows 3 top level categories vs 1…
- Submit for unlimited domains, vs only 10 live domains…
- Submit spun status updates to Twitter and Facebook…
- Priority submissions over other plans.
This is why AR Rocks
AR allows you to forget about the resource box.
All links are in the content of the articles submitted, and as far as SEO is concerned, currently this is prime real estate compared to a blog roll link or resource box in traditional article marketing.
Is that a good thing? Oh, Mama cita, yes it is, both for ranking and convenience.
Makes things go much faster submitting, compared to other services like UAW (which I’m not dogging, for the record, more on that in a second).
High C-Class Diversity = MOAR Link Juice
Because of the diversity of C-Class IPs in the network, the diversification of your links will be the greatest in this network. Mind you, there are other networks that will focus on this (it is a HUGE selling point and advantage), but this fact alone is definitely strong for your SEO and “juiciness” of your one-way links.
Quality and Anti-Spam Assurances.
Essentially, you can only select ONE category to submit to – unless you buy credits to submit to more (or for those submitting for the Pro version, they get 3 categories).
This is GREAT NEWS for everyone, since it means: RELEVANT links to your site, and if you want to receive articles for free content, these articles will tend to be more on-topic, as I mentioned above.
Compared with SEOLinkVine (which I STRONGLY urge you to save your money and STAY AWAY from – it’s useless from my experiments and inspired this SEOLinkVine Sucks post), ArticleRanks is supreme – and there are very few networks with this level of quality control.
In fact, one of the newer article networks today is bragging they don’t have these strict guidelines. They have fewer quality controls in place, they’re “less picky.”
Listen up: that’s not a selling point or advantage for the user, it’s bass-ackwards for SEO. That’s my 2 cents on most link networks with fewer quality controls: save your money, seriously, and go with AR or BMR instead.
Built-in Spinner, Built-in Drip Feed and Scheduler
I recommend either The Best Spinner or Magic Article Rewriter for spinners, but only because they are the most efficient to use – if you don’t own a spinner, it’s all good – AR has an on-board one.
Automatically Bookmarks Your Links (Paid Monthly Memberships Only)
If you’ve been building websites and promoting them, then you know one of the weaknesses is that the links will only “count” for your website ranking IF those links are indexed – at least, that seems to be the case.
Mind you, I’m not Google or Bing – so I could be wrong on that (with the changing algorithms, I’m sure not going to say, “this is 100% true forever” but it sure seems to be the prevailing wisdom and experience shows this).
So to have a system that will automatically, randomly bookmark your articles to get them indexed – oh baby! That’s great news. The ONLY other systems that I know of that do something similar are The Link Juicer and ezArticleLink, I’ve only used The Link Juicer but can’t say how great it helped.
I’ve yet to actually use ezArticleLink but it’s something I’ve been wanting to try for a while, only mention it because it builds links to your links.
BuildMyRank also does this (they say they build about 50 or so links to every article submitted at BMR) – and I can definitely say it works for their links.
The benefit of ArticleRanks’ system: you will not need to waste time “juicing” or indexing your articles.
These are self-indexing backlinks that definitely have pushed my web content to the top of the SERPs in every single case so far.
Two tools that work to automatically index your article-building links from AR and similar services (the only 2 I’ve used) are the Indexing Tool and Pingback Optimizer. Both are auto-pilot, I just upgraded to Pingback Optimizer since it automatically creates and sumbits an RSS feed of your pingbacks from your backlinks: building links to your links.
But both work, and are easy to use WordPress plugins.
The drip-feed is already pre-set and randomized – which is great.
No more worrying about scheduling or running a desktop software in the background – AR sends out your articles in a slow drip, and if you load more than one, then you can stagger submissions. Set and forget.
This service works like gangbusters.
Syndicate Affiliate Links
Unlike all other services I’ve ever used or own, with ArticleRanks, you can add your affiliate link in and you can have up to 3 in-content links to whatever you like. So let me say that again:
Yes, you can put in an affiliate link to whatever you are promoting – and there are up to 3 links in the articles.
There is a fourth link – and you can use it for your YouTube video (or other video) – so this is really a powerful submission tool!
Personal use of using ArticleRanks resulted in my first #1 spots in Google – and I personally use a number of submitters, but have to say that AR was really a great addition that put me on top.
This works even after Google Panda – so try ArticleRanks 2.0 out:
Return to the main blog here. Read about my Duct Tape SEO book here, for WordPress SEO. Or, read my story here.
Tempted. What size articles do we have to write? Not too large I hope?
Convince me for a commission ;)
Dave – I don’t think I could sell you on it – reason being you’re using BMR.
However, since you asked…
1) 400 words.
2) 3 in-content links.
3) No resource boxes needed.
4) Multiple backlinks – and direct affiliate links allowed – from more syndication (60-105 blogs).
5) Stagger submissions.
6) 1 link to a YouTube video (I haven’t used this function, and not sure if you can use other video sites – but nice to know it’s there).
7) Diverse IP addresses and varying PR, not just low PR sites.
My first few runs I was surprised – they had already submitted within hours, and the links were indexed. With the latest addition of socially bookmarking the links, it’s even better (but I think it may have driven the cost up, too).
That’s it! Not going to try harder than that other than to say it was responsible for several successful campaigns – they have a pretty good quality control going on there, and the links tend to wind up on relevant blogs simply because of the way they don’t allow you to spam categories without paying for it.
AND it washes your dishes. (Did I mention they will give you a free XBoxAtari2600PlayStation5NintendoWii?)
At your income level – do you really, really need another tool, Dave? I think you are what they call “a made man.”
Hey I only use 2 tools. BS and BMR. Oh, bugger, and TKA, MAR, MAS, BP, but the problem is I use up all the available sites on them quickly and need new resources.
The 400 words gets me though. It takes so long to spin that long but I may give it a go to see what results I can get. This is what I try to get through to people when I talk about tools. Just try it and see. If you don’t like it then cancel the subscription. Lots of people are put off paying for anything but most of the tools are reasonable if only for a month to get links from somewhere new.
Will use your link later in the week James, every little helps for us grinders.
Did I tell you it comes with the Millennium Falcon?
So how does this compare to The Link Juicer. I currently use The Link Juicer and BMR so not sure if this is something I really need to add or not.
Well the differences would be:
1) Pricing – ArticleRanks (until Halloween) is only $39 a month.
2) Word count – AR requires 400 words minimum, but you get 3 links + 1 for a video, and you can add direct affiliate links. If one link at least goes to your affiliate landing page (meaning: your review on your site) and one to the offer directly, you can close much better than just direct affiliate links (I made a mistake just adding an affiliate link without a proper landing page link in the article, didn’t work but got a ton of hops).
3) Distribution with TLJ is just to social sites (correct me if I’m wrong), but AR goes to actual blogs *and* social sites.
4) Not to say anything disparaging about TLJ – I’ve only used it a month on the free trial – I’ve seen upward movement in every case with AR, and in short order. That’s not to “try to sell you” rather than simply – it works surprisingly well for me.
Having said all that, though: if you use BMR and TLJ and you’re satisfied, Mike – stick with it! You don’t have to change anything if your status quo results are just fine.
If I was in your shoes, though, I would be tempted to drop one of those more expensive services and then use AR for a month – if you don’t like it, go back to the status quo.
I sure wouldn’t say that you need to add another for the price that you’re already paying. Hope that helps – and the only incentive I can offer someone in your shoes is the price savings. You’ll lose no efficacy (I’m 80% sure of that – I’ve not used BMR but know that you’ll get more quantity of backlinks for your efforts in AR than BMR just from the way it’s set up – the benefit of BMR would be: lower word count, possibly higher PR properties, and you can outsource it – although I’m sure you can outsource AR if you gave your PW to an outsourced worker….actually, you’d have to ask Musa that at AR).
Otherwise, if you’re happy where you’re at and don’t mind the price difference, then there’s no need to change. Hope that helps, Mike. (Hopefully my cheap skate side didn’t come off too strong!)
Thanks James. I actually cancelled The Link Juicer when the next payment comes do. It does post to blogs as well, but I cancelled because I didn’t see it doing a whole lot for my sites. Build My Rank does have high page rank sites, but I notice once your post falls off the front page, the page rank is not really there. Always looking to improve.
Looking at Article Marketing Robot as well.
TLJ seems to take time to work, past the initial 30 day trial anyway. But now you brought up AMR -
The results I got with AMR were pretty amazing, to tell the truth – I won’t get into that here, it’s under my:
Recommended Tools > (I have two reviews on AMR)…
Anyway, it’s definitely effective, and no longer a monthly – just a one-time payment.
For that reason, and for the reason that it really was effective (is), I’m all about AMR for sure! Anyway, with ArticleRanks, my “Article Bomb” post was really the first time I saw their potential, and have been using them regularly since.
I thought they were silly for offering social site posting and automatically bookmarking your articles at first without asking for more money – but they were testing the waters I think. I haven’t had one experience with them yet that indicates they’ve lost their efficacy.
Are you publishing 20 or more articles a month? If not, it seems like the credit system is a better option. I know you lose out on the bookmarks, but I’m not sure I’d do 20+ articles per month.
Do bears *** in the woods?
Um…yeah! I do. (That is to say: I do send 20+ articles out a month and change, I use my backlinking resources for clients and myself.)
Would I pay for it if I didn’t use my networks for clients? I would to lock in the price. There will come the day where I outsource the articles and just submit them via AR, and I don’t want to pay more than $39 a month if I can get away from it.
But if you’re not doing that – then yeah, the $2 credits are the way to go, for sure. So long as you don’t plan to ramp it up.
By the way, if you aren’t sending out that many articles a month, might I ask what it is that you are doing with backlinks? Just curious – I know it’s not for everyone, and if you’re spamming forums then that makes sense to me (not advocating it, for the record).
I know how competitive SEO and SEM is, so I couldn’t imagine taking anything less than an aggressive approach to business. Otherwise, your competition sure won’t mind out doing you.
But this all assumes that you use articles as a staple – I do. What, Tim, do you do for backlinks if not article marketing? (Always willing to learn.)
I have UAW, Post Runner, LinxBoss, AMR, plus post 25 unique articles to Ezine each month. I might go with the monthly plan soon anyway, but it’s a toss up right now.
Then I’d think you’d be either: A) Set, or B) the perfect candidate – but I’d only do it if you wanted to invest the time to spin for AR. No matter what spinner you use it’s easy enough to save one in the JetSpinner format, and another to be exported in the AR format. Nonetheless – if I were you, I’m not sure I’d bother buying another.
Bought some credits to give it a go. Hopefully you get a commission from that. Will see what happens.
Dude you’re a champ, really. Thanks for that, Dave – and tell me how you like the results, would ya? I want to know how they stack up against your other tools.
Hey James,
I have a few questions-I have been looking into a back linking service for about a month now, and I am really not interested in UAW anymore!
-How is the AR spinner. I used Jet-spinner years ago (it has probably changed now) but it was horrible-I could have re-written the articles faster myself. I really do not want to commit to TBS yet, down the road, yes, but not now. I do love that spinner.
Out of curiosity do you submit runs for 1 site simultaneously or just one at a time?
I think the AR spinner is loads better than the Jet Spinner’s – I wanted to be thrown into a volcano after using it when my copy of TBS went down.
If you don’t have a spinner like MAR (it’s $47 or so) then I’d give an article a shot using the AR spinner, see if you like it (using the $2 submission if you want – or just use the $39 monthly and be sure to send 20+ articles out over the next month, every article can link 3 sites. This way you can lock down the $39 a month before it increases ~ OR just do the $2 submissions, there’s a $10 minimum. The only issue with that is that if you wanted to lock down the monthly rate, you’ve made your first month $49.)
Alright, after saying all that: I don’t know how fast you spin, I was able to spin an article manually in 30 minutes (500 words).
I think it would be just as fast to spin manually, the only advantage I’d see using the built-in spinner is that you have no chance of messing up the syntax.
The syntax is fairly easy, once you get the hang of it.
Here’s an example:
{James loves cheddar cheese in his belly button, to save it for later when it’s a gooey snack.~Some freaks really get their grub on by melting cheese in shallow body orifices.~Some people are just wrong, have you heard what Jimbo does with cheddar cheese?}
That would be a sentence spin – notice the tilde vs. the pipe: ~ not |
Then the next step would be to go to the phrase and word level:
{James [loves|stores|keeps|puts] [cheddar|grated|sharp cheddar] cheese [in|into|inside] his [belly button|various body cavities|ear], to [save|keep|have|enjoy] it [for later|in about 30 minutes|in a while|after midnight] when it’s a [gooey|creepy|weird|delicious|nice little|melted] snack.~Some [freak|peep|folk]s really get their [grub on|jollies|adrenaline pumping] by [melting|ripening|placing] cheese in [shallow|their|random] body [orifices|crevices].~Some people [are just wrong|are odd|are geniuses|are unique|hail from Mars], have you [heard|seen|observed] what [Jimbo|your neighbor|this idiot|that circus freak] does with [cheddar cheese|his Laughing Cow wedges|Neufchatel|jack cheese]?}
The reason I stopped doing things this way is that I didn’t have an ergonomic keyboard and suffered some nerve damage, or some kind of RSI.
(Repetitive Stress Injury – I think?)
Hey James, I’ll try to go through your aff. link for it (I am already logged in, but will log out, click on your link and then login and pay with your cookie, hope it works!)
Have a question though. I saw the video and re. the part of how many to submit (where in the video the guy put in 5). What does that exactly mean, is it like 5 postings per day like for UAW? How many are you doing per article per day?
Marika
Marika -
Thanks for that, I haven’t checked my AR aff sales yet but I do appreciate it (no worries, though – whoever has your cookie will appreciate it!).
Actually I leave that part blank re: the 5 – it’s to limit the # of posts per day.
Unlike UAW, which gives you more control over submit rates, AR does it for you – they drip feed and randomly, too – which I like.
I’ve never seen the dance with AR that you mentioned with UAW (probably because the article submit rates are too high?) – and that’s not a selling point, it’s just been my experience.
I’ve only seen a max of around 6-7 submissions in a day – and you’ll see your first submission within hours more often than not (but it is randomized, so one will see 5 submissions, another 3, etc.).
Thanks for that! I’m so miffed, I have one site (one of my biggest earners actually) where the main keyword is still in position 1 but all my other keywords (which I keep tab on with MS) have nicely disappeared from top 100 (I hate it when I see in MS that green or red plus sign instead of a nice ranking number) . I’m seriously scared to use UAW anymore. I know these keywords will come back (the others did too) but I’m losing money in the meantime!
Btw, haven’t purchased it yet as I sent a support ticket on something else before I upgrade and I also asked them as a second point regarding aff. commissions when I’m already registered as to how that works. I haven’t got a reply yet, guess coz it’s still Sunday.
Marika
No worries about the affiliate commission on my end, just worry about getting your backlinks going. In the meantime, while you wait – I’d write/spin the articles using the AMA/MAN format.
Or the setting in TBS:
Level 1 = { ~ }
Level 2= [ | ]
I can’t remember if I mentioned that already (I say the same thing over and over like I’m going senile).
Ah thanks for that. I have TB so I’ll use the ~ style instead of the regular one for spinning. Argh why does every place use different spyntaxes???
Yeah, really! I just don’t want you to have the same headache I did when I first started using them. Carrie helped with that, she showed me a quicker way to do it with MAR (but TBS does it really fast if you save an ArticleRanks setting in the spin syntax area).
This is by far, one of the best reviews for ArticleRanks I’ve read. I like seeing real people post real info about these types of things. Granted you posted this a few years ago, but still…great job. Thanks.