I started up my most recent link building test about a month ago so it seems like a good time to share my results thus far. I'm ranking the eight services I'm testing by how many external links are showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer. Each service had one submission which linked back to a specific web 2.0 page (which had no other back links built for it so I could get a "pure" result with this test.) #1 Free Traffic System - 15 #2 Unique Article Wizard - 14 #3 ISnare - 13 #4 Article Ranks - 10 #5 Article Marketing Automation - 4 #6 SENuke - 2 #7 Link Juicer - 2 (SENuke wins tie because LJ page isn't even indexed in Google.) #8 Article Slingshot - 0 (not indexed in Google either.) I'm most surprised by how well FTS is doing because I've been badmouthing it a bit around here because of the annoying time consuming way you have to choose and re-choose blogs, but I'm totally willing (and happy) to eat my words. If it builds links like this, then I'll deal with the annoying way the system is set up. I'm quite disappointed in AMA, it's a system that seems to be slowing down as far as it's effectiveness although I'm trying not to jump to too much of a conclusion just yet. You may notice the very low number from the very expensive SENuke... well this sort of link building (I did a web 2.0/article submission) isn't really what it's designed to do. I do think it's a powerful piece of software - you just have to figure out how to use it in the right way. Article Slingshot & Link Juicer are both in my dog house right now, and not just because of this test --- I don't seem to be getting much in the way of results with either of them in general. I may be cutting them both loose soon unless I see some signs of life. Unique Article Wizard, ISnare, & Article Ranks are all doing well just like I expect them to.
I agree that the FTS system sucks for input. That being said, the price is right and if it performs like that my time is well spent uploading articles. Are you planning to include anything about the relative quality of the links being created? Are all the FTS blogs PR 0 or n/a?
MarkAse - That's a good idea (about including info about the domains that are showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer.) I'll do that with my next update.
Zibblu- Thanks. Very informative posts which are always appreciated. I have wondered about the relative quality of link strength given by FTS in comparison to other services. I'm fairly new at article marketing, but I've never seen anything as scientific as your study. I definitely appreciate it.
Am I correct in saying here that the test youve done shows the quality of publisher base of each of those services? i.e there pr, se indexed etc etc. If I'm right then the Article Ranks will have a better future because its the only service that gives proper incentive to high quality publisher to publish the article. I only publish article from FTS, AMA and AR though and I must say the quality of FTS articles are better than the other two.
Thanks for this. i used to use link juicer but it's hell getting the sites indexed. And if never did much for me.
An Update (this time I'm including the PR of the domains that are showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer. Often a domain is counted multiple times by Site Explorer because there are links on multiple pages. But I'm only listing each domain once as far as what the homepage PR is for that domain. - means the domain isn't indexed by Google.) ISnare - 22 links from 20 domains (7, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -, -, -) FTS - 20 from 6 domains (1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0) UAW - 17 links from 13 domains (4, 4, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, -, -) ArticleRanks - 13 links form 7 domains (2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0) Link Juicer - 4 links from 3 domains (0, 0, -) SENUKE - 2 links from 2 domains (7, 6) AMA - 2 links from 2 domains (4, -) Article Slingshot - ZERO. Of course, these PageRanks are not from the page that's linking to my site (which at this point is going to either be not indexed or 0 because these are all new pages) but from the home domain. This should give some indication (although this isn't an entirely accurate way of looking at things as there are a lot of other variables to consider) of the quality of the links coming in. ISnare looks to be the big winner here. Especially when you consider that's really inexpensive if you're not doing a lot of article submissions (because you can pay per article submission rather than having a monthly fee.) AMA is the big loser to me because it's done so well in previous tests... I'm getting a bit concerned with the service because it seems to be faltering now (beyond just this test, I've noticed that my articles aren't going up on nearly as many sites as they used to.) SENuke is really a service that you use to get up a lot of pages on Web 2.0 sites (which have much higher pageranks in general) and then I think the get the most out of the service you need to link to those Web 2.0 pages. In this test I've just put the pages up and I haven't linked to them. I also want to note that both the Article Slingshot and Link Juicer target landers are still not indexed. I'm pretty sure both of these services are a waste of time (not just from this test, but from some other testing as well.)
I have nice results with FTS as well. can you tell me how do you track the pages that give you links? in FTS I use trackback since I send the links to my blogs, not all posts are 'recognized' anyway. I collect them then bookmark all of those pages/posts to improve the 'juice'.
I use Yahoo Site Explorer. For these tests I make "pure" landing pages that no have any other incoming links so that I can tell all of the links that come in are coming in from whatever it is I'm testing. This is a good idea and something I've started experimenting with a bit.
Even if the PR is not on the page the article is, I believe it gives a greater chance of being indexed because googlebots visit higher PR site more. I just dont like the blog chooser at FTS because you dont really know those blogs other than just their categories. It even harder to choose blogs than writing the article. But it does give you a greater freedom I suppose
I hate the blog chooser thing on FTS too. And I particularly hate the whole "re-chooser" thing. But I'll deal with that annoyance if the results are pretty good, and they do seem to be.
Thanks for the information so far. Do you have another update for us as another month has gone by. I have heard that these link building machines tend to grow as time goes by. Also, can you tell us what niche/topic the test was done on? I am thinking some categories may not be as well equipped as others. Thanks again, Greg
Wow very interesting results I have never bothered to take a look at FTS however maybe I should keep an open mind.
Update of current external links showing up in Yahoo Site Explorer & PageRank showing up in Google. ISnare - 19 links, PageRank 0. FTS - 16 links, PageRank 0. The Link Juicer - 15 links, Not Indexed. ArticleRanks - 13 links, PageRank 0. UAW - 8 links, PageRank 2. AMA - 6 links, PageRank 0. SENUKE - 2 links, PageRank 0. Article Slingshot - 0 links, Not Indexed. I stopped using SENUKE although I think it could be an effective tool I just found that I don't really have the time or the patience to use it. I also stopped using The Link Juicer because the links it created seem to be of very little value. I am no longer using Article Slingshot because it didn't seem to be effective at all. I am still actively using all of the other services and I would recommend you use them as well. This will probably be my final update on this test as I think I'm going to link to these landers with additional articles (to get some good SERPS - that's what it's all about!) To the person who asked my niche for this test: music related.
I've used Article slingshot recently and I'm getting hundreds of links showing up from a variety of domains in Yahoo site explorer. I don't find many of them get indexed by G, but some do, and I've got links showing up in my webmaster tools link report from AS sites. Has anyone else used them recently?