Woohoo! I am 1/3rd of the way through this challenge!
Yesterday’s back link review post took up quite a bit of my morning. About 2 hours to write it up and Tuesday’s are my son’s early release days in which he gets out at noon. So I basically wrote my review post, picked him up from school, came home and cooked him lunch; the kid is addicted to egg burritos and he looks forward to Tuesday’s because he gets to have them for lunch, then I showered and did all my tasks for the authority site. I finished my day at 4:45pm which was just in the nick of time because my back could not take another minute in my office chair. For some reason last Tuesday I woke up with horrible back pain. I’ve never had this severe of back pain, even back labor was a walk in the park compared to this. All you moms know what I mean. Anyhow I have had this agonizing back pain for 8 days now. I couldn’t even go to the gym at all last week and I forced myself to work out Monday but it didn’t lessen the pain. I think the culprit might be my office chair. I got it on clearance from Office Depot 1 1/2 years ago and I think its just not as supportive anymore.
Checking Your True Back Links With SEO Spyglass
I have been using SEO Spyglass for a few months now, I actually have been using the free trial version with no problems. You are somewhat limited on some features but for the most part, it works just fine. Go ahead and download the free trial of SEO Spyglass and start trying it out today. I mainly got interested in it after reading Terry Kyle hoot and holler about how powerful this piece of software is for getting an edge on your competition. SEO Spyglass is like using YSE on steroids. I love SEO Spyglass because not only does it give you the true number of back links for a site, it also lists the PR of the domains you are getting back links from and whether or not they are do-follow links (which is great for evaluating which sites are passing along the best link juice). Another thing that is pretty cool is that it can evaluate the approx. link juice value that is being passed onto your sites. For my authority site domain, I can see that I am getting the most link juice from blog comments that are on PR 5 and PR 6 blogs and then the next best link juice is coming from blogs that are from BB.
Hot Blog Commenting Tip: For those of you interested in blog commenting and are having problems with locating high do-follow blogs just use SEO Spyglass and spy on your competition’s blog commenting back links. Just enter the website you want to spy on and let SEO Spyglass pull up all the dirt on the back links of your competitor.
To do so just enter your competitor’s URL to analyze and click “next” >
on the next screen make sure Yahoo’s search engine is the only one checked (Google will not accurately list all available back links so you get more accurate results with YSE) click “next” >on the step 3 screen make sure that you have checked “unlimited back links to find” and that you also have checked the box for “exclude duplicates” and click “next”. It will pull all available back links (free trial will not show all of them but will show about 60% of them) > click “finish” > click “yes” for back link factors (this is the deep analysis).
For the back link factors, go through and tick the boxes you are interested in and click “next”.
The analysis will take several minutes, depending on the size of back links and how many factors you want it to check. Just let it run its course.
Next we will want to sort the listed sites according to PR and then we will look down the top of this list and we will want to find any back link pages that are listed with a high PR and also have a “Yes” listed under the Links Back column. Skip the pages that show a “No Link Missing” or “No (nofollow). Even though there is some debate about whether or not you can still get link juice from no-follow blogs, I would just go after the confirmed do-follows.
If you click on the little box just to the right of the listed URL, your browser will open up to that page ready for you post your comment to.
With the paid version you could actually make a list of the URLs in order to outsource your blog commenting. If you just right click on the URL you will have the option to copy the back Link URL to your clipboard.
Another cool thing about taking a deeper look into the back link domains with SEo Spyglass is that I can see that BB’s blogs are aged very nicely. They are 4 year old blogs and the few BB posts that are on PR- blogs are 6 months old.
I also think its interesting how RSS feeds can get you back links without any effort. I just discovered with SEO Spyglass that I have a back link from my feed courtesy of Mahalo.com which is a 15 year old domain with a PR 6! Amazing stuff this RSS is, no?! Especially with all the autoblogs on the net that just scrape and scrape.
Another thing that is interesting about my authority site is that according to Google analytics, 20% of my visitors are returning. That’s a good sign. Some people must enjoy my site.
Getting back To Back Link Basics
Right now on John’s forum, it seems the hot topic popping up in numerous threads is quitting all of these back link programs and going back to the basics of article marketing that John outlined in his book. This isn’t news to many of you that follow my blog regularly as I have been speaking about this over the past several days.
Breaking away from all these programs is scary. they have become a crutch for me and I freak out at the mere thought of missing out on opportunities to get semi-automated back links or effortless back links. A good point was brought up in the forum that with all the money you spend on these back link systems, you could put that towards 300 word articles outsourced for article directory submissions. If I were to drop BB and SEOLV I would have $114 to spend on outsourcing articles. I would probably get about 50 articles with that. But I would get more bang for my buck if I submitted those first 50 to ezines and then turn around and spun them with TBS to submit to other article directories.
In John’s book update (he’s still working on) he mentioned something about listing more article directories he works with that he feels are most effective. So I am waiting to hear what John has to say about this.
Mini SEOLV update:
I’m seriously contemplating dropping this and asking for a refund. My very fist article submitted on 4/30/10 is still sitting at being published 21 times and those were published within the first few days of submitting it to the system. I have noticed for the past 2 weeks my article has sat at 21. which means either its not being sent to new blogs anymore or that the network has simply run out of blogs in which my article fits into the correct categories. Either way, its pretty alarming.
My second concern is I have 3 new articles all published 2 days ago (Monday) and of the 3 only 1 has been published. This is a red flag to me.
The only reason why I hesitate is because I promised I would give it a full 30 days run and I am using it as part of my article marketing for this challenge. 
I will probably stick it out for the full 30 days but if I do not see some article movement, I will be asking for a refund. The policy is a 56 day money back guarantee so I will have time to fully evaluate it after this challenge and request a refund at that time if I am still unhappy.
Yesterday’s adsense earnings: $36.08
Authority Site’s earnings: $1.50 (whew! Finally!) That was from 3 clicks too.
Highest xfactor earner: $3.05
RSS Feeds
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I have to ask Sara-how do you keep up with every thing? Basically, how do you stay organized with the different programs and sites?
When my back and shoulders start to bother me I go ahead and use a pillow. It helps to relieve the tension and it relaxes my back to where I can get back to work.
I am going to check out the SEO Spyglass that is cool you can make posts to it.
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..New Niche Site Goals =-.
Oh good idea. I just popped in a small pillow into my chair and its helping a little. I am too scared to see a chiropractor but my sister is giving me a hard time about it.
I keep my sites organized by using One Note. I made a post about how to keep micro niche sites organized with it when I first started my February challenge for xfactor site building.
As far as software goes, I just use whatever software is gonna help me with my purpose for the day. Right now the main software programs I rely heavily on are The Best Spinner and RSSbot.
When I am researching keywords I use Micro Niche Finder and The Ultimate Keyword Theme Extractor.
When I am focusing on back linking and not building up sites then I will rely on SEO Link Dominator and Book Marking Demon.
Have been reading your blog for quite a while now, and I just had to say thanks for all the work that you’ve put into the last posts, they have been very helpfull.
Thanks!
Hi Tim! Thanks for commenting and reading up on my efforts.
Just wondering if the sites your building are wordpress or static html? Does it make a difference?
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Plugins Are Your Friend And Checklists And Backups Too =-.
Hi Mike,
HTML has its benefits. I don’t think that HTML sites are going to be any more efficient SEO-wise as a blog because there are a few really good plug-ins for wordpress that capitalize on making the sites SEO optimized.
One advantage HTML sites have that I have experienced is no databse errors or plug-in errors to deal with. I have had several instances over the past 2 weeks in which my blogs (including noteworthytips.com) had a database error and was unreachable to visitors for about 30 minutes. That means I potentially lost some money in that 30 minutes on my xfactor sites that are built with wordpress. However, my HTML sites were still functioning beautifully.
I do suggest that if you plan on building out a site to make it an authority site, then you might want to consider making it a wordpress blog. Its just easier to work with new posts and you can do them from anywhere, like if you are on vacation and want to log into your wordpress blog to post, you can! No need to deal with an FTP client etc.
John still insists he does not use wordpress even for his mega health niche authority site. All the power to him, I just find that to be too time consuming.
What are your thoughts on the xfactor book? I was thinking of making the purchase. Is it worth it? Anything new in it that isn’t everywhere else?
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..I Must Be Really Good (Or Really Lucky) =-.
Well, you could read through John’s entire 30+ pages thread and see for yourself if there is anything new since I am not sure what you know or may not be aware of when it comes to how the strategy of micro niche sites works.
His template is very effective but now there are some other options on site layout and I have found that his template colors or sidebar is not what makes it good but rather where he suggests putting that large adsense block. That ad placement seems to be solid. You could also just purchase Clickbump’s wordpress theme which does all the work for you in regards to ad placement and making your wordpress site SEO optimized with extremely fast loading time.
I never followed the advice about product brand names for domain keywords and I never took his advice with how to write the content. I felt I wanted to have really good content on my site so I did my own way of writing content in a way I felt benefits my visitors.
but I do feel John’s outline of article marketing is solid and is extremely helpful too.
As far as the keyword research goes, John’s numbers are good but I found this way to work best for me.
I refunded SEOLinkvine after I submited 1 article and it never got published after 7 days or so.
I am also concerned about SEOLV. There is a good chance my type of articles will not fit the publishing blogs in the SEOLV system as well. I’m going to submit a few more and see what happens but at this point, I am a bit doubtful.
Plus, having to write articles in my niches so I can make contextual links within the articles is much harder for me. After few articles, I don’t want to write about “exotic tires” anymore, ever… I would rather write about whatever interests me at the given moment and use the resource box as John suggests.
.-= Rube´s last blog ..Water Conditioning Systems – Differ From Water Softeners =-.
@ Sara – I have been in SEOLV since the first 100 users were picked up, I ran it for several of my projects upon first release. To date, the most submissions I have for any one articles is 56. The interesting part is, most of the articles have been submitted to 200+ users for approval, so either the users are just unresponsive and don’t understand that they have to go in and approve the posts, or the system is broken.
Either way, the articles aren’t getting posted and I am about as unhappy as you are with the system. Considering who the creators are, I expected quite a bit more.
.-= Matthew DC´s last blog ..Earnings Update =-.
It is definitely tempting to drop the programs and go back to the basic considering the operation costs we occurred month to month paying for the subscriptions. But thinking of that, most of us started Micro niche site promoting with article directories, but eventually everybody started to abandon ship.
Why did we abandon submitting article directories in the first place? During my tenure in the corporate world, I realised there is this kind of cycle. It goes like this… we started doing things with Method A and in order to improve performance we invented Method B and realise it work better then A so we started using B then C then D and so on and so forth, eventually we ran out of options, ideas or documentation, we come back to Method A again.
So are we taking a step back or is this really the holy grail of backlinking? Frankly, if you ask me, I can’t really remember why I drop article marketing. Backlinking has along been my fav subject, I am truly interested to know if article marketing is really enough, we wouldn’t know – unless we test and compare it, maybe the members in John’s forum had already tested it.
But being the usual stubborn me, I like to see it with my own eyes. I will be running some experiments on my end. Since a few of my new sites should be ready in these couple of days. I will use a group solely for article marketing and the others for the current backlinking methods which involved BBP, UAW, Profile, edu links and BLS and see how do they compare.
Will keep you posted on my findings, meanwhile do keep us updated of the discussion in John’s forum on this topic.
Cheers
.-= Tinman´s last blog ..Day 48 – Update On My 4 Words Domain Site =-.
Thank you very much for the review of Spyglass – love your organized how-to style and screen shots.
Another thing I want to thank you for is the SEOLV comment – seems like that’s definitely the trajectory (downhill) from other blogs I’ve been reading. I’m definitely going to be looking more into that when I get the chance.
I did want to ask you a silly question, what about software like Magic Article Submitter, or Mass Article Control, both of which submit to directories?
Also: have you tried One Way Links or Article Ranks? I’ve read a review from another marketer using 1WayLinks and Article Ranks as well as other systems…just wondering if you’ve heard or tried either.
Thanks again.
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Looking For The Quickest Way To Rewrite Articles? Here Is How The Best Spinner And Magic Article Rewriter Compare (Part One) =-.
Hi James, I owned the Magic article submitter. Although her sister software Magic Article Rewriter is fantastic, but I have my reservations about the submitter. So far I submitted 6-7 articles for my sites but hardly there any noticeable benefits. Even though it shown that the article was distributed to 500 plus sites, the links are hardly been indexed.
.-= Tinman´s last blog ..Day 49 – Listed My First Site For Sales =-.
Hi Sara,
I was using seo linkvine but cancelled and got a refund.
What do you thing of blog blueprint these days?
Randy
I think I am going to go back to basics. I used UAW for a month and ALREADY my links have gone. I am really quite annoyed and feel I have wasted a lot of time so I think I am just going to stick to article marketing and see what John has to say in the update. Oh well I wanted some help but obviously it was a waste of money
It is hard squeezing the time in with a toddler running about though!
Anyone else that uses the paid version ($100) of SEO Spyglass? I have reason to think that SEO Spyglass isnt reporting an accurate umber of backlinks because a friend of mine uses yahoo Site Explorer, which indicates about 4000 backlinks to his site – and SEO Spyglass when I run it indiactes only 1600?!!?
Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this?
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