BMR Shutting Down. Now What?

[jenadams]

Looks like opportunities are quickly being drying up and sites are shutting down.  BMR just announced they are closing.  What opportunities are others looking at now?

[David_H]

That's cool. So Google is finally taking some steps to remove spam and improve the experience for their users?

Does this mean that other link building networks are facing the same thing? As someone working on building up our company's sites - with good content and following the ideas I learn here, I see this as a really positive move.

[RankSurge]

Never understood how people think there is value in a link building network - Anytime you do this, you are leaving a link footprint for Google to find. (http://www.ranksurge.com/are-you-leaving-a-link-footprint-for-google.htm)

Link diversity is the key to earning sustainable rankings - not quick fix hits from a link network.

just my $.02

http://www.ranksurge.com/are-you-leaving-a-link-footprint-for-google.htm

[jeffreytrull1]

Jen,

Not be be a jerk here, but the entire SEOmoz site is devoted to SEO and building links that are more powerful and sustainable than sites like Build My Rank. There's tons of information and ideas!

I highly encourage you to take a look at the SEOmoz blog. You can even just start looking at the Link Building category for posts to get going: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4

[MattJanaway]

This is exactly the reason why you should not buy links... The risk of being caught out is too high... Yes, its a quick fix method of building links which in the short term will benefit but it could do some serious damage for the long term plans of the website.

In Google's ideal world, you should not have to rely on paid links to rank. Instead, you should have good, creative and relevant content. You should manually build good links; guest post articles on good websites, build up well written press releases, have a strong social network, add a news section to the site and keep it update. Etc etc... Links should follow.

In our world we know that  this is not always easy. For example, I am currently working on a website that makes plastic S hooks. BORING! No amount of content I write is going to be interesting. This is why you have to start thinking outside the box. Get links from customers, do interviews, blogs, news, build offline business relationships so you can build links that way. There is still lots that can be done without paying for links which might hurt you in the long run.

IMO I actually think this is a good move by Google - it actually makes the better and more creative SEO's reap the rewards for their work instead of companies with large budgets. As usual, this change (like most other Google algorithm changes) will only effect the people who put all their eggs in one basket, ie: the paid link basket. If only 2% of your incoming links are paid then this will barely effect you. If 95% of your incoming links are paid then you are screwed.

Obviously as always there are points to be made on both sides of the fence. For example, how can Google tell if you are buying links? It could be that you have a next door neighbour with a very genuine website and you get a link from his site in return for a pint of beer at your local pub - Google have no way of knowing this! However, if you aren't very careful with your footsteps and you openly sign up to places like BMR which clearly advertises paid links then at some point you will more than likely be found out.

[MattJanaway]

Exactly...

Buying links is often a lazy way out.

There are always alternative ways of building links and the manually built links always tend to be better than paid links anyway.

[coremediadesign]

From my experience the best links you can get and the visitors who are actually going to stay on your site is by having the content that attracts it naturally.

Publish articles of interest, tutorials etc. and you'll see that the time you've spent on link exchanging was actually the time you could spend on producing the content for your site, which will last longer and give you much better results than any paid or free link back obtained through the link exchange research.

[jenadams]

Every site in a competitive market buys links.  If you use an SEO firm, you are buying links.  If you donate to a charity in exchange for a link, you are still buying links. If you pay to be on a directory site, you are buying a link.

[MattJanaway]

In short, yes. But this is obviously not Google's concept behind "buying" links. If you read my comment above I explain about what Google cannot possibly class as a "purchased" link. Here is a snippet...

"For example, how can Google tell if you are buying links? It could be that you have a next door neighbour with a very genuine website and you get a link from his site in return for a pint of beer at your local pub - Google have no way of knowing this! However, if you aren't very careful with your footsteps and you openly sign up to places like BMR which clearly advertises paid links then at some point you will more than likely be found out."

You would be wise to understand that more often than not, the value of purchased links is nearly always less than the value of a manually built link based on good, unique and relevant content on a page which is from a trusted domain and has very few links on the page.

As always, the key here is accountability and covering your tracks. I'm not telling you not to buy links. Im saying you would be wise to put all your eggs in the "purchased links" basket. If you must purchase links then ensure they are of good quality and cant be traced... more importantly, make sure they only cover a smallpercentage of your overall link strategy.

Lastly, I just want to comment on your comment:

"Every site in a competitive market buys links"

Not true. I agree that most do, sure. I also think that most do not understand the dangers and pitfalls of buying links. They probably also think that the more links the better,., regardless of quality of link and the quality of the content on their site.

I used to own a multimillion pound-a-year eCommerce company until I sold it last year and I can honestly say that I had never once purchased a link for the site. We were position #1 in Google for over 300 keywords and the largest eCommerce company in Europe for our specific Niche. Just so you understand the competition, our main keyword which we ranked #1 for brings back the following when searched:

About 740,000,000 results (0.18 seconds)

[coremediadesign]

With reference to these three cases - certainly, but I wouldn't generalise it.

There are sites, which actually don't pay for links - and just to give you an example of one of my sites : www.ssdtutorials.com - I've never paid for links and I have quite a few sites linking to my portal - why? - because of the content.

That's just one of my sites - and believe me, you don't have to pay for links to get them - if people like what you do - they will link to you.

[Keszi]

@ JenAdams

I have to say that I am quite sorry that you didn't get the idea.

No offense on this one, but Matt and Jeffrey put down some nice ideas here. Buying links is not a solution. I must admit, there are payed links in our industry(unfortunately), BUT the questions would be why not invest in something unique instead of buying links?

And I said Unfortunately above because I think that there are niches which took advantage of these.

If we were in the '90s, getting 100 more links compared to your competitor could have got you #1, but today you have to build on value, you need to invest more on content and development. Semantic search will be awesome and links, in my belief, will count less.

Good work Big G. to having a public fight against payed links

BTW: I would give Double Thumbs up for Matt's answer. I quote:

"Not true. I agree that most do, sure. I also think that most do not understand the dangers and pitfalls of buying links. They probably also think that the more links the better,., regardless of quality of link and the quality of the content on their site."

This is worth printing out, pining on my wall.

[upick-162391]

I think you are all going off topic, if someone wants to keep going down the same path then let them. Anyways to answer your questions I've been looking at Link Authority and LinkVana.

I won't vouch for them as all these networks could be targeted next, but if you have seo clients who don't pay you top dollar then I would use these link building sites. At the end of the day you and they pay for what they get.

But yes I also agree with everyone else here about using these services, eventually they will be found and you will be caught out. I've been google slapped and panda slapped, its not pretty. So short term go with these sites until you find a better way.