Private Blog Networks Backlinks: Warning!

I’ve been spending a great deal of time learning Internet Marketing in the past few months. I can tell you, there is so much to learn. If someone told you it is easy, then your BS detector is not working.

One of the most talked about topics is getting your online properties to rank high on Google.

You can guess why, right?

If you rank on the first page of Google for what you are offering (your keywords), it’s guarantee you’ll get traffic (prospective customers) to your website. If you are good enough to get the #1 spot, then you’re golden.

Pay advertisement only get about 1-5% click through rate, while naturally ranked (organic) results can get as much as 40%. So, this is why there so much focus on getting high organic ranking.

Because of this, many tools and services have been developed to try to gain the Google system. I’m not going to talk about the tools here, but I’m going to go over the services, mainly the private blog networks.

Now, I’m NOT recommending any of the services here.

What I want to do is give warning about these tactics some Internet Marketers and Network Marketers are using.

I know some will disagree with me, but whatever.

Google looks at many metrics to rank websites, and one of the main one is backlinks. Just like a popularity contest, the more links that are going to your website from other sites (inbound links or backlinks), means that more people are talking about you. So, in theory you should have a higher standing over others.

But not all backlinks are the same. Authority sites weigh more than others. Google use PageRank (1-10) to measure authority of a given site. The higher the PageRank, the more authoritative. Example: If CNN.com talks about you (links to your site), that has more weight than if a local newspaper links to you.

Most people will probably never get a site like CNN.com to link to their sites, so if people can’t get quality, they look for quantity to boost their site ranking, and this gave rise to popularity of private blog networks. These networks became more popular when Google recently released their Panda updates, which devalued a lot of sites people were using for backlinks.

So, what are private blog networks?

The networks I’m talking about here are web properties (mainly blogs) where people get backlinks from in order to rank higher on the search engine (mainly Google). Some of these networks have thousands of blogs and article directories.

It’s not uncommon for people to get over 1,000 backlinks in a day, or even in a few hour.

Just so you know, I have not using any private blog networks to get backlinks to my site. I’ve just discovered them recently. So, I can’t give you any results, but if you search around the web, there many people claiming great results.

The reason for this post is to give you my point of view. The reason why I’ve not tried these services is that, in my opinion, it can’t work in the long-term, and using this type of services can actually hurt you in the future.

Here’s why:

Most of these private blog networks have been spammed like crazy. This is how it works:

You submit articles to these blog networks, and within those articles you put your keyword(s) you’re trying to rank for, with links back to your site.
Now, one problem is that in order to make these articles appear unique, because Google hates duplicate contents, the main article are spun into hundreds of variations; it’s a automated process, because it’s impossible to submit unique articles to thousands of sites manually. That’s why it is spun with a spinning software. I have used a spinning software, and the spun articles rarely make sense. But since it’s grammatically OK, it can get pass the Google search engine (remember Google is a algorithm, not a actual human looking at websites).
So, the purpose of the spun articles is not to make it readable, but to fool the search engine to get backlinks.

Here are problems I see with this approach:

Eventually the sites on these private blog networks will get so spammy, it won’t be hard for the search engines to realize what’s going on.
Most of sites you’re submitting to have no relevance to your own site.
Google is constantly updating their algorithm, solely for the purpose of catching things like this. In recent updates Google have devalued links from these types of sites:
- Article directory links
- Forum profile links
- Web 2.0 links etc
Google is already cracking down on people who are trying to manipulate rankings with private blog networks and other spamming methods. Read this from the Warrior Forum. People are getting warnings from Google. There many cases popping up.
Think about it, how can a site get 1,000’s of backlinks in matter of days or hours. For authority sites like CNN is normal, but not a regular site.
Google is smarter than most people think.

I believe the days are number for these type services. So, be careful. Give it some thought before jumping in the bandwagon.

Here are some of the private blog networks out there, some paid some free (if you submit your own domain to the network), some are better than others:

Build My Rank
Link Authority
Linkvana
High PR Society
SEO Link Monster
Authority Link Network
Article Ranks
SEO Link Vine

If you think these services are the way to go, by all means, keep using them.

If there is money in it, you can guarantee there will be other tools and services that will be develop to try to gain the search engine. The trick, if you want to go that route, is to be one of the first to use them.

The best way to rank high on search engines, which will never fail, is to provide quality content that people value and will naturally share and link to. This, however, will take time.

Ok, I’m no expert SEO guy, so take this article for what it’s worth. There are many ways to rank on high on Google. As I find out more, I’ll post them here. Private blog networks may not be a safe way to rank in the future.

Ed Tong Private Blog Networks