If you are at all in the SEO niche, I am convinced that you have heard of Google’s Panda latest move.

If not, here’s a quick rundown:
BuildMyRank, a well known blog network, released a statement that Google had deindexed a good portion of the blogs on their network. How exactly this happened is not known and frankly, it does not matter. All good things come to an end sooner or later.

SEONitro, a blog network I used to be part of, released a similar statement last week saying that a good number of their blogs too had been deindexed.

Some deindexing happens and every network owner will tell you that it is to be expected – but this last move by Google Panda left some serious damage. In other words, this hard of a hit was NOT expected by anyone.

I had been using LinkVana since January 1st of this year (I was asked to review it and as such decided to try it out for 4 months).

I can’t say I used it as much as I perhaps should have, but either way, I was starting to see drastic improvements in rankings for the sites I did use LinkVana on.

Then this Google Panda news hit the net and I decided to wait and see if LinkVana would get hit as well.

No news came!

Long story short, I started doing random spotchecks on the backlinks I got through their network and yes, some of the blogs my backlinks were on, were indeed deindexed. The majority however – to my surprise – were still indexed.

I started doing some research on forums and other users shared similar results. So I figured the only thing left to do was to contact the folks at LinkVana and see how things were looking from their end.

They confirmed that some sites had been deindexed, but compared to some other blog networks, the damage to their network was “minimal.”

Curious why that might be, I was assured “we do things different from all other blog networks aroun”. Comforting for now, but how will they fare in the long run? We will wait and see I guess.

As for myself: I will continue using them until the end of this month. Do they still give me results and do I think it’s worth the money? Yes. No doubt about it!

Having said that, the whole private blog network scene has become to risky for me and it’s time (for me at least) to move on to greener pastures.

Here’s the thing: It does not matter how high-end a blog network is, if it is shared with hundreds of other marketers to promote hundreds of websites with, it can not ever appear “natural”.

Which is just one of the reasons I originally started creating my own blog networks using free blogs. Yes, there you stand the chance of your blog getting deleted by the networks owners but get this: they actually want their users to establish authentic (real) blogs on their network so if you do that, your risk of getting deleted almost does not exist.

In other words: if you stay within their terms of use and you create a REAL blog, chances of them deleting your blog are VERY slim. And even if they did, it’s not a big deal simply because it did not cost you anything anyways.

I know they are a LOT of work (which is why I outsourced them), but truth is: they work.

FACT: I reverse engineered the backlinks on one of my sites last night and it turns out that the majority of my POWER links (as in – links that give my site the most ranking power) came from sites in my free blog networks that I had created 6 months ago. Crazy right? I know!

Some of those free blogs now had a PR of 4 – even though I never actually built many backlinks to them other than the ones I usually do (as explained in my free blog network guide).

The guide never was a big hit when it came out simply because it told the reader to do some work (as in: setting up free blogs and making some real posts, etc).

A common argument: “Why do all the hard work when you can just pay a little money and use a private blog network like BMR, SEONitro, or even LinkVana?”

Well… today I think we know why. Because when all the private networks get deindexed, you will still have your very own FREE private blog network you can fall back on.

So a long story very short: after this month, if I will start using private paid-for blog networks again, it will be to boost the linkjuice on my free blog networks. That way I have a bit of a filter when hell breaks loose – and my money sites won’t be affected as a result.

My money sites are becoming more and more valuable to me and as such I become more and more hesitant in using anything that could potentially harm the long term success of the sites. I’d hate to have to start everything from scratch again – so better do things right the first time!

These are just my five cents on the matter. Any thoughts?

I recently managed to rank a page of mine at #1 in Google for a phrase with 339,000,000 results.

It initially broke into the top ten at #4 after about four days, purely on the basis of on-page SEO, and over the next 3 weeks moved up to capture the top position.  I did do a series of 20 Linkvana posts in the interim, but I can’t tell if that is affecting the rankings – since they don’t show up yet in my tools.

It has stayed at #1 for a couple of weeks now, so I think that with a bit more backlinking I might be able to get it to hold.

Now, I admit that it is pretty fun to have a site ranked at #1, but the fact is that the ranking means little.  Though the term returns a ton of pages, and it is relatively buyer friendly, the exact match searches are virtually nonexistent.  Great page + no traffic = no $$$.

While this page has very little money making potential, I think that the ranking still has value for a couple of reasons.  The first is in showing that I can actually rank a site -  it serves as a proof of sort.  No matter how often you are told that something is possible, it never seems real until you do it yourself.

Sure it’s an easy site to rank, but that’s not the point.

Another plus is just that it serves to give me a bit of a lift – as I said, it’s just kinda cool.  You need a win now and again to counter the many disappointments you can run into when you attempt to make money online.

What prompted me to write this post is that I just ran across another sales page using something like this as proof. There was a screen capture of a page one ranking for a keyword with a couple of hundred million competing pages.  I checked the term with the Google keyword tool, and while it is not as worthless as mine, it is certainly not a highly searched term.

I am not knocking the product in this case, or the marketer.  I hear good things about both.  I am just using this as an example of why we need to be careful when we see proof like this on a sales page.

I’m not getting up on a soap box here either.  Who knows, I might do the same thing myself some day (I try pretty hard to never say never).  But when it comes down to it, it is a sales tactic.  And as such it is important to guard against giving it undo credence.

With any proof, even social proof, you need to understand three things. You don’t know what it is, you don’t know what it means, and you don’t know if it’s true. Remember the phrase – “These results are not typical.”

It is common for any sales copy to  point out the winners – why would they do anything else?  If you used your copy to tell people how hard this stuff really is, you wouldn’t make many sales.

In order to counter that I find it useful to find spots in the copy that ring small alarms.  It helps to keep me from drinking the kool-aid, if you know what I mean, and I have drunk plenty of kool-aid.

If you just keep in mind that the “proof” offered on a sale page might or might not mean anything,  maybe you can hang on to some of your money.  It comes in handy when you finally get to the point where you know enough to use it well.

One of the greatest myths in the SEO world is that backlinks to a site are only relevant if they come from other sites in the same niche. In other words, if I were promoting a “dog training” site, backlinks from non-dog related websites would be useless.

Not much could be further from the truth however.

I got an interesting email from Angela Edwards yesterday (you probably know her from her famous high PR backlink packs… I believe she was the first to ever sell them) and with her permission I am going to post a portion of that email below.

She hit the nail RIGHT on it’s head. After reading through it I know you too will agree!

“You’ve probably heard from various sources that the best backlinks you can get for your website are “relevant” backlinks. However, has the person who told you that actually shown you hard evidence that can be duplicated by anyone that this is true?

Relevance or “theme-related” backlinks:
This is another myth that gets passed around a lot. Sure, it’s good to have relevant links and Google recommends it, but links that are not “relevant” also count. Have you ever seriously looked at the backlinks that a Major Authority site has? Many of them would not be considered “relevant”, and there are hundreds of different types of blogs listed, usually.

The Drudge Report was put on the “map” the day he broke the news that President Clinton was having an…er, indiscretion with a young intern named Monica Lewinsky. THOUSANDS (maybe even HUNDREDS of thousands) of sites linked to him that day. Many of them were not in his “niche”.

About two years ago I challenged my Physical Therapist (I have an old ankle injury) that I could get him on Page One of Google for his keywords. He was at the bottom of Page 6. I did his links one night and then went to
bed. The next day I got up and checked and he was NUMBER ONE in Google for ALL his keywords. Not one of the sites I added his link to was “relevant” for Physical Therapy or even Health and Wellness. Yet they still worked that well that fast. And his site is STILL in the number one position; more than two years later.

You often see “Yellow Page” sites linking to major businesses. Now, you and I, being humans, can understand why a site like that might link to a business’ website, but do you really think a Search Engine’s algorithm can make that determination? What if there was a “community portal” site that linked to all the businesses in the area? What about directories? What “niche” are they in? Search Engines do not and cannot determine whether all the sites linking to other sites “make sense” (relevant) or not.

The search engines would have to know what is “relevant” and that will take a LOT of human interaction. A site for parents might link to a veterinarian’s website because the site has a warning about a certain flea medication being poisonous to children, Yellow Pages websites might link to businesses in the area, the Fire Department’s website might link to the PUD (Electric Company) because of a warning about electrical sparks, the Food Bank might link to the local High School because of a huge food drive the kids did…see what I mean? To determine “relevance” would take CONSTANT human interaction on all the TRILLION webpages on the Internet. Many Web 2.0 sites’ only “relevance” to anybody is the ‘community factor’ that they provide. Theme-wise, many of those sites aren’t “relevant” to most niches.

I’m number two out of 315 million sites for the keyword “Angela”. If the backlinks that got me there HAD to be “Angela-related”, how do you think I would find enough Angela-backlinks to get me to the top for a word THAT competitive? It would be a daunting task, if it were even possible, I can assure you of that.

If you leave out great sites because they are not “relevant” to your niche, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. I’d use them all.

When folks tell you things about backlinks that are supposedly “gospel truth”, ask them to show you evidence that YOU can duplicate. If they can’t show you this evidence, then don’t necessarily believe what they say until you check it out for yourself.”

I too tested the theory and fact is, the SEO advantage always came from the authority behind the site that my backlink was on, never because the site was niche related. Does that make sense?

With that though I should point out the obvious: a backlink does not have a whole lot of value unless it is your keyword linking back to your site.

In short: you get more value from placing keyword hyperlinked backlinks on authority sites than niche related sites.

Have you done any testing in this regard? If so, what results did you get?

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback below!

While going for a walk early morning, I kept on thinking to myself: how can I give value to my subscribers without them having to pay for it?

I finally thought of something and when I mentioned it to my wife, she said “that is a brilliant idea!”

I did not have my video camera along so I made my wife video tape me using my iPhone. The video is a little shaky and I guess she was a little too far away so the sound is not the best either but either way, I think I managed to explain what this offer is all about!

How would you like to get approximately 750 free backlinks to your website?

I have never offered anything like this before and have no intentions of offering this anytime soon again, so if you would like to get free backlinks from me, why not take me up on this once in a lifetime offer?

Here is how it works:
On your blog, write a blog post (it does not have to be long) where you write about SEO or any other marketing topic, and then have a link in the blog post that points back to this blog (http://www.empiremarketing.ca).

Once done, fill out the following form with your information and make sure you include in the “other details” box the link to the blog post you made.  Once we review and confirm that all the details are in place, you will be notified via email with all the tracking details etc.

Does that sound fair?

UPDATE: This promotion is no longer available as of January 1st, 2012. Thank you to all who applied!

If you are looking for keywords to hyperlink back to this blog, use some of the following: SEO Services, Cheap Backlinks, Profile Backlinks, xRumer Services

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact myself or my staff using the contact page and we will get back to you ASAP!

To YOUR Success,

Konrad

The most powerful backlinks that I can think of right now are “in content backlinks“. If given a choice, I will always choose in content backlinks over profile backlinks or other stand-alone backlinks simply because of the trust search engines give in content backlinks.

If you are wondering what I mean with in-content backlinks, let me explain: an in-content backlinks is a keyword hyperlinking to a site in a piece of online published content. Does that make sense?

Basically… if I were to talk about your site right now in this blog post and hyperlink a word and make it link to your site… it would be an in-content backlink.

Like I said before, they are a lot more powerful than any other kind of backlink but they are also a lot harder to get. One of the main reasons I build a TON of profile backlinks to all of my sites is just because I can build thousands of good links in the time it would take me to build 5 in content backlinks.

Also… I find that search engines like to see a variety of different types of backlinks to a site. If only social bookmarking sites were to talk about your site, Google might find it a little questionable. If – on the other hand – blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites, etc, talk about your site on a continues basis, search engines realize that there is a certain “buzz” around your site and as a result they will rank you higher.

Anyways… getting back on topic: there are many different ways to getting in-content backlinks. You can purchase blog posts on other high ranking blogs or you can also submit your content to article directories. Some people have had great success with article directories… but I myself can’t say article directories were ever really worth my time. Then again – maybe I just did not do enough of it.

What I have had great success with is with a program called SEO LinkVine. I don’t find their network to be as powerful as it used to be (I was one of the first ones in) but it still does wonders. It has allowed me to get literally tens of thousands of in content backlinks in a rather short period of time but again, it took a lot of effort.

In fact, I hired someone in the Philippines and outsourced the work to them (you can read more on outsourcing on my free “how to outsource to the Philippines” post). I haven’t added any new content to SEOLinkvine but am still continuing to get backlinks everyday from the 400+ articles I had submitted. It’s pretty cool and over time it becomes a link-juice force to be reckoned with.

In a future post I will go in to exactly how I had my Virtual Assistant add content to SEO linkvine and I will also share my results from other similar networks but all in all: I can not recommend SEO LinkVine enough IF you actively add content to their network.

In other words: You better make a commitment to adding at least 2 – 5 articles to their network each week… otherwise it is not worth the money in my opinion. Success in the SEO world does not just happen – you MAKE it happen!

Take a peak at SEO LinkVine and decide if it is something for you. Brad Callen (the founder) has very detailed training videos inside the members area and it really is not hard to master his monster system.