Link Building Networks Revealed

Working in a constantly evolving industry like search is exciting and over the years we’ve helped lots of clients achieving high ranking positions in search engines using ethical techniques to build long term link equity and brand visibility. As real time search, mobile and social media become increasingly important to the marketing mix, so does the need for research and testing to develop techniques that lead to successful online campaigns. We have our own R&D programme which over the years has helped us understand anything that will help the SEO process and equally anything that can do harm.

Link building is probably the single most important factor for SEO whilst being the most time consuming and laborious exercise if you are doing it right. You’ve probably heard of various link building networks that lead you to believe the process of link building can be automated and that purport to give you page one Google rankings, taking the pain out of the link building process.

As part of our R&D we created a number of websites in different sectors developed purely for the purpose of testing these services and thought we’d share the results with you. These tests were performed over a number of years starting in 2005 with the most recent ending mid 2009.

Digital Point Coop Ad Network – The original and the daddy

For those that don’t know, the network consists of donor sites (sites added by users who sign up to the service) that allow links to be placed in their footers. Donor sites are attributed a ‘weight’ based on the number of pages available for displaying ads and the volume of traffic they receive. The more pages and traffic you can provide to the network, the greater the weight of your account. Within that account you can create ads which are distributed across the network. Ads are essentially links with a small amount of surrounding text. The greater the weight of the account, the more of your ads (and hence links) will appear across the network. It’s not the sites with the ads on that benefit, but the sites that the ads are pointing to. Sometimes in particularly competitive sectors, sites attain millions of links using this method.

We tested this service on sites in the financial and car leasing sectors. Initially we saw some mediocre results which eventually dropped off but the peak was the beginning of 2006, reaching number 1 in Google UK for the term ‘credit card’. It remained there for around 3 months until an algorithm change saw the site disappear which is hardly surprising but an interesting exercise none the less.

Although testing finished years ago and the account is no longer active, and despite no other work to promote the site, over time, pages have crept back into the results with an impressive stability. One can only assume that any residual links that were placed into the network years ago now have a level of maturity which ultimately is still having a positive effect.

In the car leasing sector, which at the time saw few competitors doing any form of search marketing, it was slightly different. It didn’t take long to achieve a top 3 position and this was sustained for the life of the site, riding out the various algorithm updates of the time which seemed to have a dramatic impact on SERPs in general.

Despite the perceived benefit of the ad network there was, apparently, a more sinister side to it which eventually saw its owner and eBay in an ongoing court battle.

TNX

Unlike the Digital Point Ad Network which didn’t involve any direct purchasing of links, TNX allowed you to build tailored campaigns from specific sectors, purchasing links of varying quality. The quality was based on either the number of Yahoo backlinks pointing to the host site, the page rank of that site, or a combination of the two. It also allowed you to introduce links at a controlled rate (which didn’t work very well), charging a monthly fee to keep the links live. This was tested on a site in the retail sector targeting a number of phrases including ‘mp3 players’.

Although it made some headway in Google UK, most of the gains were in Yahoo UK achieving top 3 positions for most of the target phrases. It maintained the positions until an algo change dropped the site to page 2. We never really got to test this further because without realising that a monthly payment had been missed, all links were suspended and removed from the host sites. Bit of a give away to the search engines really and not much point in continuing after that!

Forum Link Building

A different system again which used a process of manual link building through forum posts and signature links. Another approach by another company making promises about good natural rankings had to be worth exploring. The service is packaged into 3 options with varying numbers of links, article and directory submissions for each package with guarantees for how long the links will remain in place.

This was tested on 2 sites, one in retail dealing with second hand laptops and the other in the SEO sector. Again, both saw some initial movement with mediocre results but they were short lived with no stability. Although links were being built, the quality was terrible with numerous ‘nofollow’ and dead pages listed in the reports.

This may have been touted as a ‘manual service’ but very little of what was promised was actually delivered with no discernable results were achieved. Search positions remained static as did traffic levels.

Conclusion

Now, there really was only ever going to be one conclusion here .

The reality is that no matter what claims these services make, whatever guarantees or proof they offer, our opinion is that they will add little to your business in the long term. You may see some short term gains (although that’s unlikely these days) but the chances are you’ll do just as much damage to your website as you will good.

The long and short of it is – don’t waste your time or money.

If you are serious about getting your website higher in Google then do things properly with an SEO campaign designed to work with your business.