Build My Rank ?

[CalgaryRealtor39]

What are your thoughts on using a service like Build My Rank for backlinks?

[dean1986]

let me tell all you guys from experience dont use BMR.

I started SEO on a website 9 months ago, I used plenty of variety and the rankings were good, I noticed that and page getting lots of BMR links got good results very fast, so I got greedy

I started to put more and more effort into BMR, as of January, I solely did BMR for the website.

On Feb 25th a good an email on google webmaster about taking part in a blog network to increase my page rank. As of this weekend my website is now page 50 and I was in the top 3 keywords for Gifts, gift ideas, christmas gifts, personlised gifts. Highly competitive keywords

[fun52dig]

Hey Allan, is paying ($299) to be listed in the Yahoo Business Directory considered a paid link by Google?

[philipbuuck]

Yeah, I think that was me.  I've since backed off of using BMR in my strategy.

[KeriMorgret]

Someone else mentioned BMR in a thread a few days back at http://www.seomoz.org/q/first-attempt-at-local-seo. I looked at BMR then and had this concern:

On their How It Works section of their site (http://www.buildmyrank.com/how-it-works) it says "We publish your article randomly on 1 of our high page rank, aged domains. You control how many articles are published daily for each of your domains." They only require 150 words for articles, so it seems you're looking at a ten sites with collections of random short articles.

[CalgaryRealtor39]

So in addition to blog posts, what other links can I try to obtain that will make Google happy and increase rank?

[AlanMosley]

Paid links can hurt you, if google knows you paid for them then your in trouble. dont risk it.

google is a multi billion dollar business and paid links is no joke to them, they hate them

[CalgaryRealtor39]

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate other points of view, you bring to light things that I haven't considered. I do alot of guest posting as well I find those links really valuable especially when I am lucky enough to be on high PR sites as a guest post.

[philipbuuck]

Google has said in the past that they won't penalize sites for links pointing to them, but will they ever change their mind?  What if they were to decide to somehow mark the sites that are pointed to by link farms?  Would I be penalized?  Would I be marked as a questionable webmaster?

My biggest issue with it lately is that it puts me in a bad mentality.  Rather than working on building up the content on my site and making it something special, I end up relying simply on link juice.  My quality suffers because I don't have to ask my peers to essentially review my site and find it nice enough to link to.  Currently I'm focusing exclusively on guest posts from other sites that are both relevant to my topic and are being cared for by their owners.  One of those links seems to get me the similar effect of many BMR links.

I'm paranoid about my site though, and these are issues you may not be worried about.  I'm trying to avoid link farms in my own SEO practices.

[SimonCullum]

This is a good answer by Philip. Such link building practices are risky, it's basically trying to manipulate the algorithms into giving inflated rankings (unethical in some people's minds). There is more value with ethical long term link building based upon deserved merit. So basically it's a calculated risk that needs to be decided upon, I would steer well clear, others wouldn't and don't. It's great that Crystal is asking for opinion and advice on here before making a decision, well done on that

[CalgaryRealtor39]

You have brought to light all of my concerns with it. But when Google knocks them out so to speak, and your site falls because of the DE-valued links is that really that bad because now you are probably back where you started?

[philipbuuck]

Hey Crystal,

I've used BMR in the past somewhat.  I have mixed feelings about it.  It will boost your rankings in the short term certainly, especially if you are using keyword specific anchor text for your links.

On the other hand, this seems like a pretty big red flag for Google - a site called Build My Rank.  Their sites all look the same, so I expect it wouldn't be too hard for Google to go through and knock them all out of commission if they wanted to.  Plus, considering all the Panda changes that have been happening lately, I don't know how effective links from them would be anymore, though that's just speculation.

My current thinking is that I wouldn't want to risk it, though like I said, I have used it before.