About a month ago I decided to try a new link building tool called Linkvana, and I wrote about it on my blog.

Now, about 30 days later, I AM still impressed. I HAVE seen ranking improvements, spidering frequency HAS improved, and all can be traced directly related to our LinkVana use, in my opinion.

Once again, I’ll repeat that this is NOT not a “total” solution, but it’s a DAMN good piece of pie for $149 a month. It’s like having a little vote out there, with proper link text back to the page of your choice.

I’m STILL not impressed with the PR or quality of most of the blogs, but it’s WORKING. For slightly longer tail phrases, (three or more words), and for “less competitive” ones (even one and two words, but with LESS than 2 million competing results) it’s really helped more than I even thought it would.

CAN Linkvana be abused, and used for evil? Sure, I guess so, but they’ll just kick you out, so why would you bother?

After about 5 weeks, I’m happy, I’m keeping it, and frankly, I’m TOTALLY surprised that it’s not sold out. I think it’s just one of those poorly promoted new programs, and with only 300 members to fill total, none of the “email blast gurus” figure it’s worth promoting on an affiliate basis.

Also, I’m finding that the 3 to 5 minutes per link to write the posts ourselves is tiresome, so I’m using the outsourcing they offer more and more too. At $2 apiece, it’s almost too easy, and all I have to do is choose the link text and landing pages I want.

Finally, I’ll say AGAIN, that it is NOT a cure-all, that can be the one answer to your linking woes, but just like a couple of aspirin, it sure helps make the headache tolerable.

And I;ll say again that this is NOT an automated black hat sort of thing. It’s up to YOU to intelligently disperse your incoming links with GOOD traffic phrases, that DO appear on the page you’re linking to, (or in the title tag ). That’s going to matter a LOT, and you’re going to kick some serious a** if done right, but it’s NOT going to be effective for link bombing unrelated pages. Got it?

In my opinion, anyone that builds links for multiple sites can be VERY well served by spending just a little time in LinkVana daily, assuming they know what they’re doing, and spread the link love to their internal deeper pages. You might want to try it yourself, before it’s too late.

You know the drill by now… Searching the web for subject relevant blogs, then posting an intelligent comment that you hope will get you a counted backlink to your own domain or webpage of your choice.

It’s a tedious process, but one that’s been proven effective for building backlinks and traffic. However, it takes an awful lot of time to not only find those blogs in the first place, but then evaluate the domain and the post to see if it’s even worth the effort to comment. That’s where this software comes in. ( Direct link to download the software demo)

The inclusion of the rel= “nofollow” tag on blog comments to prevent spam has made this practice less popular, but there are a large number of sites blogs out there that have removed the no follow attribute from their comments, and have started what i guess is called the “DoFollow” community.

Once you find a blog in your subject matter that allows followed comments, you can only do yourself so much good (link-wise) by participating, because it’s better to get multiple links from multiple domains. Besides, if you spend all your time commenting on just a couple of blogs you’ll become more of a stalker than a commenter!

Recently I received an e-mail about a new piece of software designed to help identify and locate blogs on which to comment almost effortlessly, and at first I was skeptical, expecting the majority of results to come back to me with nothing but junk.

However, after using it almost daily for nearly 3 weeks, I’m not only finding some real gems out there, but I’M ALSO seeing it add to my inbound link count and improve the related search rankings.

The software is called Fast Blog Finder, and it’s really simple to use.  You just enter a keyword or phrase in quotes, and the software searches the web for all of the blogs out there that allow comments, providing you with a link t othe blog, the page rank of the domain, the page rank of the actual post, the number of outbound links on the page, and the type of links it allows, either green (DO follow) or pink (no follow).

Instant column sorting lets me do a quick search for a phrase, sort by type of link, and then instantly read and comment right inside the software, or in a web browser if I prefer.

Once a comment is submitted, the software automatically adds a note for future reference, so you can see that you’ve commented there before.

A typical search for a phrase may come up with several hundred blogs, a couple dozen posts that allow Dofollow commenting, and just a handful that have actual page rank on the post page. The amount of time it saves is almost immeasurable.

Obviously, the idiots out there will abuse this software and attempt to make pointless comments with nothing but keyword rich name links, forcing the blog owners to delete their comments as spam. DO NOT DO THAT!

But if you use your head, and leave a thoughtful and relevant comment, linking back to your site, your page, or your clients site, then there is no reason the blog owner will not approve the comment, and the backlink will be a good one.

When I first saw this software I was pretty impressed, and now that I’ve seen some actual ranking bumps and inbound links increase for brand-new domains, I’m even more impressed.

There’s a completely  free version of the software you can download here, and I would encourage you to give it a try, even though it only returns 50 results in the free version.  You will still likely come up with some DoFollowed links the you can create instantly and almost effortlessly.

Another great feature is the fact that once the report has been run, you can export the entire list into an Excel (.csv) spreadsheet, and pass it along to an employee to work on over a period of time.

That’s great, because you cannot run this software on multiple computers without an individual license for EACH user. That’s worth noting. If you have a stable of employees, and you want THEM to do the research, then you’re going to have to buy a version for each one of them.  However, at only $49 a pop, I can tell you that the time saved will be well worth the investment.

I’m spending less than 10 minutes each morning taking the time to post just one link for one of my own domains, but I’ve sent spread sheets and assigned the task to a couple of Search Commander associates, and I give this software a wholehearted thumbs up.

It’s totally white hat, totally useful, and I cannot imagine doing the job without this software any more. If you want to see how much time you can save, here are a couple of links… (and yes, of COURSE they’re affiliate links!)

Trial Version
Main Website

Please comment here with your thoughts…

There is no single magic bullet for search engine visibility. However, there is a process that acts as an entire arsenal of magic bullets, and those are structure, content and links.

• Search engine friendly structure and fundamentally sound SEO principals.
• Fresh content appropriately added on a regular basis commensurate to the level of your competitions activity.
• Inbound links from relevant sites with appropriate anchor text to targeted areas of your website appropriately balanced to the level of your competition.

Anything else that I can think of pretty much falls within those three bullets, and assuming you understand them all, I’ll proceed.

*Updated 12/31 – I’m sticking with the Linkvana test but I’m adding to the reader comment area below – Be sure to read them – Is Linkvana black hat, grey hat, white hat or what? I guess that’s going to be controversial, but I can assuredly say it “definitely aint squeaky clean”!

Structure
If you have a well optimized site structure, (like a properly configured WordPress site) that will take care of bullet number one, the structure..Content
Well-written content designed for the readers to provide some value is all it takes. Between your friends, your kids, your employees, ghostwriters, and even content spinners, that takes care of bullet two.

Links
When it comes to inbound links, you already understand that above all else you need quantity, but you also need diversity, and you need quantity.

Quality Link Building
Quality link building is a skill unto itself, and for competitive phrases there is simply no substitute.

This is not the place to get into great detail, but it shouldn’t be news to you that some links are better than others. The best quality inbound links are ones that are relevant to your business, ones that come from domains and pages that have Google page rank, and have limited numbers of outbound links.

I’d rather have an inbound link from a related PR3 page with only five other outbound links, than a link on a PR7 page with a couple of hundred other links. I wish I could tell you I had a solution to get the most authoritative and relevant websites on the web to link to you but I don’t, and anyone who tells you that is lying.

Inbound Link Diversity
To add to your diversity, Web directories and article directories can be worked to death. Additionally, your own participation in blogs and social media will bring you incredible value, and you’re only limited by your available time in the day.

Perhaps you’ve purchased links from foreign countries, or you’ve tried some of the link networks that require that a script get added to your site to slowly build links through other participants sites over time.These may still be fine for affiliate sites, but you can’t risk having an important domain dropped from the index, and simply change domain names on the fly if one gets caught violating Google’s terms of service.

To add your diversity, you also may have found networks of blogs both small and large, perhaps through someone you know, or even a commercial service that allow you to post content on their blogs which are on a wide array of C class IP addresses, choosing your own link text.

This has proven to be one of the most effective methods of gathering links in volume, but can still require a Herculean effort on your part (i.e. work), and eventually, you’ll exhaust the supply of available domains, and you’re left with nothing but those 10, 20 or even 50 domains to build links to your sites.

Even More Diversity
If you’re lazy, or you’ve been in the game for a while, then perhaps you’ve used, or at least you understand, about things like content scrapers and trackback and comment spam.

While both used to work, (and perhaps still do to a point), they can really leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, and definitely constitute a big black hat.

Inbound Link Quantity
Unlike trying to rank for “Las Vegas real estate”, many second and third tier phrases still really don’t need a whole lot of effort to dominate the search rankings.

If you’re selling “decorative blue locking widgets” and have a well optimized page for them, then just a few inbound text links can rocket you to the top of the search engines, and that’s where Linkvana comes in.

Here are the steps to using Linkvana:

• Add a new project
• Add your domain
• Choose your target URLs
• Choose your anchor text
• Make 100 word posts with those phrases
• You’re off to the races…

The Linkvana network will then add your articles (posts) with your backlink to trickle in daily over time. It’s as close as you can get to a “set it and forget it” system.

They insist on quality original content, and limit the number of posts yoy can make each day PER DOMAIN. However, there’s no limit to the number of domains, and that’s huge.

They do offer about 40 minutes of video training on the site, and I’ve watched it all, boiling it down to a 3 1/2 minute demonstration , which I started immediately after creating a new project in their system – Linkvana Demo Video.

After a couple of weeks, I’ll follow up with the results too, as I’ve begun testing with multiple domains that currently have no backlinks, and no ranking of any kind. Some of my first links just went live yesterday, so have not yet been discovered by the search engines.

The only “downside” that I’ve encountered so far is that since it’s a closed network, there is no way of knowing where your post and links are going to end up.

However, that same fact is what prevents this network from being easily discoverable, and ultimately penalized somehow. I just don’t see it happening. I suppose it’s technically possible that someone could research all the backlinks manually as they trickle in, and then be able to determine what blogs are participating in this network, but that seems to me to be an incredible amount of work for such a small number of users (300), and highly unlikely.

There’s a certain amount of trust involved on my part too, that the links will really happen as they claim. However, the names that are involved with this venture and those of participants are well known, and I’m comfortable giving it a try.

Again, let me stress that this is NOT going to be a complete substitute for true authoritative link building, and enable you to instantly rank for the highest competition phrases.

However, in my opinion (*ed. – see latest comments below), when added to your arsenal, Linkvana is definitely going to be a big gun to use for ranking many of your medium and longer tail phrases in a snap, assuming all of your other bullets are in place too.

They’re currently running a $50 off promotion, but I don’t know how long that will be good, and they claim that the cutoff for membership is 300 people. I was number 188.

If you decide to check it out, I hope you’ll use my (of course) affliate link and leave me some feedback about how it goes.

Good links are hard to come by, but if you throw enough against the wall, something always sticks.

By regularly submitting to web directories, making sure your blog is pinging news services, submitting your RSS feeds, submitting content to article directories, and even by linking to your own internal pages with good anchor text, you’re going to continue to grow those inbound links.

“Rented” links are another story, and Google’s position is that paid links are definitely bad. They are aggressively fighting to identify and devalue any inbound links that are determined to be paid, and they are penalizing sites that are selling the links.There’s no denying that it still works, because they can’t catch everything, but as time goes on, they’ll catch more and more. For now, there are still too many ways to “fly under the radar” and they can’t possibly catch them all, but if you’ve been buying your links, it’s time to consider a more long term strategy.

What Google can do, and what they ARE doing, is “penalizing” websites that are selling links without the nofollow tag, and they are penalizing them by lowering their green toolbar PageRank.

At this point, Google has not yet lowered these sites rankings, but in my opinion, this was sort of a warning shot across the bow to warn those selling links that they should stop, or that’s next.

I’ve personally paid for links for my own sites before, and some even on a monthly basis, because I believe they have value in the traffic they might bring. It’s a safe bet that if Google “catches” those sites selling links, then any value they have for my ranking will be removed, if it hasn’t been already.

In my opinion, Google can never penalize someone for buying links. Otherwise, an entire cottage industry would pop up buying links for your competition. Instead, what Google does is devalue an inbound link that they determine to be paid and put in place only for ranking purposes.

I believe that the way that they devalue the juice of an inbound link is not by devaluing the link itself, but by devaluing the overall PageRank of the site that is passing along the link to you – i.e. – that makes your link worth a bit less.

The bottom line is that without some sort of link building going on, you’re just not going to be pulling ahead of the competition, and you have to try everything within the Webmaster guidelines.

It’s also extremely important to build links to many different pages on your website, and with many different variations of anchor text too. There’s never a reason to focus all of your link building activity on a single web page, or with identical anchor text. When a site naturally acquires links, they come in all different flavors, to different areas of the site. The key to success is to appear “natural”, so be sure to diversify tour targets and your anchor text accordingly.

Linking to others, commenting (intelligently) on forums and blogs, writing great content of your own, and creating useful tools are only a few ways you can make links happen. Here are a few other link building ideas that might spur your imagination…