Link Farms
This is one of those subjects that people seem to not want to discuss but I think it needs to be talked about and give you the information and you decided what you want to do with it. Link building is probably the single most important thing we do. Anchored links are the life line of our business and as such we always have to try to have every option available.
Black Hatters always have a blog network that the only reason of existing is to be used as a link farm. Link farms are a serious no no for Google and if you get caught using a link farm your site can either receive penalties or get fully de-indexed. Having said that a link farm worked correctly is an incredible resource tool and a huge time saver.
One of the questions I constantly get is how big should my blog farm be, to me it is never big enough. But to be useful and easy to manage I would say every one of you should have 20 free wordpress blogs and 20 free blogger blogs. This will give you another way for Googles bot to reach your site from another totally legit source. You also have no worries about no-follow attributes because you being the owner you know you have do-follow on the links also do not have to worry about getting marked as spam on a comment because you used a keyword anchor as your name.
Again the most important thing we do is link building. Link farms are just another tool and done correctly you will never get caught, the important thing is you stay under the radar. I have said to make 40 but remember blog farms the more the better this way you do not use all you blogs on one new domain if you have 100 free blogs for link farms you can use 40 this month for a new domain 40 for another one etc etc.
I do not want to hear if this ethical or not I really do not give a fuck what you think. I am telling you how it is and now you have to decided what to do with the information. I never told you it would be easy I told you you can have guaranteed success but you still have to work.
With all the shit daily we have to do. It still beats the fuck out of working in construction.
Popularity: 23% [?]
I would advise anyone new to blogging or creating websites to avoid link-building for at least the first Google pagerank update. once you get a PR and you understand how Google operates try making 5 new blogs a month (following Vics guide). If google sees your site being created on January 1st and then having 100 links pointing to it the next day it will look suspicious. It will look even more odd if all the anchored text links have the same phrase or keywords.
- Shamim
Shamim this is not true. The way Google counts link is on a weight system. In other words you may have 5000 links but depending where the links come from it may take months for the links to actually be added to the algorithm for authority.
If you have a brand new domain and the bot finds 5000 links in one day pointing at your index with the same keyword the worst that can happen is what will happen eventually you will get sent to sandbox. If it is a pre-owned domain with 3 years not a fucking thing will happen the links will go through the natural process of validation and weight for the algorithm.
I have had over 20 thousand domains in my years of doing this I think I know what I am taking about.
I have no idea how Tweeter works this is why I do not write about it. When it comes to SEO only a few people know more then me.
I can tell you right now you do not know anybody that has more knowledge of SEO then me. I did not wake up this morning and decided to write a post about something I have no experience or knowledge.
Ahhh, the good ol’ Vic is back!
Welcome back buddy! Hope you are still on the road to recovery. I can attest that the blogger blogs and wordpress.com are nice ways to go.
I just had two newer blogger blogs get PR 3 and one wordpress.com went to a 4. Not bad for creating some legit backlinks….now to get to work!
Elliot 100% after 2 cat scans and tons of meds just needed new glasses. Aint that a bitch.
Good tips about wordpress.com. I got caught because I was using re-written stuff from the blog I was trying to promote and linking to it.
Now my whole account is suspended. Luckily I only had a few blogs.
It might also be good to link to a number of sites you don’t own. For example, you might say “I just bought a CD from … which came today and it was really cool”
All about making it natural looking.
The important think is to have your blog farm for a few months before you start linking to your sites especially with wordpress they are really good at catching blog farms. So I have the blogs for 60 days before I even think of using an anchor link the second thing is to make natural for the blog to link to other blogs. So make sure you link often to other bloggers post or other bloggers sites make reviews this is a classical way to hide your real links when you make them.
Blogger is easier I think they are so big it is harder to maintain good quality control.
Vic,
When you say to make sure you link to other bloggers posts/sites, you mean to do this in your posts, right?
For example, a post might say something like, “I saw this really cool post on Joe’s blog about killing ants” and then you would have the “killing ants” as the anchor to Joe’s post, right?
-Marshall
Ok when I say link to other bloggers is write a post like today I was reading some blogs and I read such article “LINK” at ProBlogger and it made me think blah blah blah. Now you do this for some time maybe 30-60 days now you can come back to that original post and make a comment with do-follow with your anchored link in the name field. Try not to actually link from inside the articles to your real blogs especially in wordpress like I said they are really good in catching it.
Gotcha! Link to your own posts only from the comments AND only once the blog has aged at least 60 days to be stealth.
In post links are to go to blogs/sites other than yours.
Sounds like once you have your blog farm up and running, this can replace the D-List run, right? Or do you still do the D-List and hope your comment sticks with the anchored text (which can be a real pain in the ass!)
-Marshall
Marshall because of an email you sent me was why I wrote about this. I know some of you folks worry about getting marked as spam because of using a keyword anchor. But remember the reason I work it this way is not because of Google it is because of wordpress so they do not catch what I am doing. I would always still get maybe 20 links from the D-list just those links do not use the anchor so you folks feel better and less worries. These links would be more for Google to find your site from legit places and not the sames places.
Sounds great! Looks like I need to start making one Wordpress.com and one Blogger blog a day and come up with some BS posts with some of them linking to other blogs/sites.
In 60 days time, I can start using these “free” blogs for commenting to my niche blogs and just use a name when I do the D-List.
Thanks for the daily hint!
-Marshall
How effective are link directories? Even like shitty ones are better than nothing right? I don’t know if that is too off topic or not.
In my book as long as they are not de-indexed is all good. I want as many ave as possible to the G bot to reach my site, let the algorithm know I am not a spam site.
What about using something like this: http://www.inetzeal.net/104.html I know they submit to practically useless directories, and probably even some de-indexed ones… how much will that really hurt me… if the benefits (500 submissions and my time) outweigh the costs (any de-indexed penalties and $85 bucks) I’d gladly pay
Wordpress.com will also be on the lookout for affiliate links, so be careful about that too.
But yeah, having some free blogs is great, not to mention the built-in traffic of users’ internal searches.
Sucker you are so right the best way to say please fuck with me at Wordpress.com free blogs is to start putting ads and affiliate links. This blogs should be all personal an no advertising. As a matter of fact a few hate spam blog post will give you a few credits.
Just wondering, Would a blogging generator work for this type of link farm? I am thinking of one I know from Joe Tierney or is this too risky?
Denise no not for this deal. BloggerGenerator is one of the coolest BH tools but all the blogs sooner or later get caught and also all the links will be counted as spam. I used BG for BH only period.
this seems a little complicated, but good and noteworthy.
I have said it time and time again. No such thing as a magic bullet. It is what it is.
I understand your stance that money making online is all sweat and blood but updating 40 free blogs (linkfarm) + your niche blogs + local niche blog + long term blog (for RSS readers) + D-link run is quite impossible. Unless you have the tools to automate some of it.
Also as someone with at most 4 hrs a day blogging (full time day job), this can become more than impossible.
At the moment, I am just trying to apply your techniques one at a time to start up and see how it goes.
I can understand where you are coming from. Remember all this is over whelming because it is new to you. I have had all my free wordpress blogs since the first month they started the service and months go by when I do not even look at them they all have post spread for 24 months so again I do not even have to make a post probable till the next year. When you have a 9-5 it is hard no doubt.
Again my concern is to tell you folks how the deal is and you folks have to decide what you need to do and in what order.
The sole reason for this Blog is to tell you folks the truth. So when you see that you are just not climbing the SERPS or a new site just passes you by you know why.
The most important thing when you play a game is to know the rules. I limit my job to showing you folks the rules. You have to decide what you feel is important and what not.
It is all about responsibility. I take responsibility for my success and failures. I do what I have to do.
Those that know me like Justin, Court and the rest know that until these last two weeks my days are usually from 8am to 3am in front of my computers. I have a mission and set goals and as such I act accordingly I know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything I eat I know will have a price.
To your success buddy.
OK, as you can see, if you are doing what Vic tells you to do, it can get a bit overwhelming at first! (even if you are doing half of what he suggests).
Since this is how we will be making our living, I want to make sure I do things right and set up a system. So, here is what we have done so far:
Make process lists. What I mean by this is that you need to have checklists of what you need to do for certain operations. For example, I have a checklist to follow every time I set up a new Wordpress niche blog. This goes step-by-step from setting up the Hosting, to redirecting the URL, to installing Wordpress, to installing the required plug-ins, to creating the required About, disclaimer, etc pages.
I also have a list for the steps to take to promote the niche blogs. This just expanded since I need to set up my blog farm. This list includes using BMD, going on a D-List run, submitting the niche blogs to directories (including blog directories), and promoting via articles. I am still refining this list as it is one of the most important.
I just started a new list of my Wordpress.com accounts. This will include all the free blogs for the blog farm. It will take a couple of months to develop and properly age these blogs. However, after a couple of months, they should be on autopilot. Also, will use the feature that allows you to future date posts. Will create one new blog a day for the next 20 days or so.
Will make a similar list for Blogger blogs, though I have never set one of these up. Create one a day of these also.
The point of the Wordpress.com and Blogger lists is to keep track of the Blog names, URLs, account names, emails (since you will be using a different email for each account), creation dates, etc. Otherwise, it will be next to impossible to keep these things straight.
I am sure I have other procedural lists also, but they are slipping my mind.
Also, I will be using a proxy site (Google the term “proxy surfing”) to create my Wordpress.com and Blogger sites just to be stealth.
The point of all of this is that just starting out doing this is very overwhelming, so you need to develop a system that you can use over and over so as to ease you burden. And you have to develop lists to keep track of all your blogs, since they will become a bit much to handle if you try to remember everything (understatement of the day).
This is just what I am developing. Maybe others have their own ideas.
-Marshall
As usual Vic you’re telling it as it is.
Ethics - don’t hurt anyone, don’t kill anyone and kick everyone’s ass in the serp’s anyway you can - I think this wraps up online ethics.
Grizz the way I look at it I either do what I got to do or get out of the business it is what it is.
Ah, the entourage blogs.
As for keeping up with stuff, I have Excel spreadsheets where I track as much as I can. It’s similar to what I do for software development projects.
“entourage blogs” LMAO Love It
OK, so I have set up my first Wordpress.com blog. I noticed that by default it, like all Wordpress blogs, are set up as NoFollow blogs. However, I don’t see where you can install a plugin on a free Wordpress.com blog.
How do you make a free, Wordpress.com blog a “Follow” blog?
Yup just went and log in and they have removed the option funny how things change. You will have to make them inside the post now more then ever you want to write post linking to other bloggers
Great to have the blinds opened again! In my mind, I always thought that this was a good way to build links. I need to start trusting my instincts.
1. Where do you set up these email addresses?
2. Is it possible to make these blogs revolve around certain topics so that your links are from relevant sites?
Occam’s Razor
My bad hit submit to soon. I use gmail. In blogger you can be more niche in wordpress they even smell what you are thinking of doign and the blog is gone.
How do you get a keyword anchor as your name in the new blogger set up? All I ever get is my profile from blogger.
Great Question! I have taken to not commenting on Blogger blogs because of this. There is someway to make the anchor text show up because I do believe I have been able to comment on Blogger blogs with anchor text. Just don’t have a clue how I did it!
Also, how do you make sure the anchor text in comment is “Follow”?
-Marshall
Hello Vic,
Is using proxies for IP addresses important? Will Blogger notice or care if 20 different blogs are setup from the same IP address? Am I being too paranoid even for you?
No if you feel comfortable using proxies please do the fact is the more under the radar the better for you but hey I am the poster child for paranoid.
Another question regarding proxies: I don’t know much about them at this stage, but if I was to manage setting those blogs up with a different proxie each timer, does this mean that every time I update each blog I’ll have to switch to the relevant proxie?
One thing I was wondering the other day is how come this site does not have a page rank yet. I would have thought with the amount of traffic and links to this site it would have one by now. Or have I missed something some thing as to how pages/sites get ranked, and is Link farms a way to get to page rank up??
And if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there does it make a noise?? Just so many questions I have….
Well, one thing I think it has to do with is the Page Rank just updated and this was still a very new site. Some of Vic’s pages have PR like his About and Archive page had PR 3’s. He mentioned something about this in one of his posts.
Samm when PR update was started this site had 3 weeks and I had just had all my inlinks to the indexed de-indexed for validation so I went from a predicted PR5 to PR0 in 24 hours even before the update finished I knew I had a PR0 coming. Now if you go to a PR predictor you will see the PR5 back again as of now I have 2,160 inlinks link:bloggerunleashed.com I still have another 12k to be indexed and validated. Remember we are on Googles time.
Also remember PR is a live thing it changes constantly the PR on the tool-bar is the one updated every 3-4 months
Maybe Vic is in the sandbox. This site isn’t that old.
Yup big time SandBox LMAO
I love all these comments. I can attest that Vic is a machine, I know some of you have not gotten too much into blogger blogs yet, and its been more recent that I have experimented with them. I have written some of these posts on my blog on a certain niche I am working. I have started to accumulate many blogger blogs now. Its all about building them up and getting them fully indexed.
I decided to go back to a few blogger blogs that I set up about 2 years ago. The subject matter was absolutely trash, but I decided to make a niche for this site, and I put up 2 posts and have held rank for that niche with a blogger blog now for about 3 days on first page of Google in the second listing.
Now I know a lot of you folks are wondering how Vic can hold all these sites down, to be honest it baffles me, but I have noticed if you don’t stop working and piddling around you can get a lot accomplished in a day. You just have to go at it nonstop and set goals. Then you take a break and stop, walk away from your PC and focus on something else. Then 30 mins later you get back on for another 4 or 5 hours nonstop and don’t even browse around or chat with people. This is how you get it done!
HEy JC tnx for stopping by. If their is some one that knows me is you. Many nights JC is my main companion for work as we both do our thing and chat once in a while also every time some shit happens we show each other and write WTF? LMAO
Squidoo lenses make pretty good mini-link farms too… and you can be very specific by creating a lens to target just one keyword to point to a particular main blog.
I’ve been doing this for a few months now and can at least say I haven’t been penalised for it yet… in fact one of my niche blogs has got to page one in google through the keyword authority it got some help from a few lenses in the same niche.
I’ve noticed the same thing about antiquity applies to lenses as well as free blogs - the older ones carry more weight for links.
Terry you are so right and I can not believe I did not put this in the post. I am still amazed they have never no-followed links.
Vic,
I have a question which is somewhat off topic. Lets say I start many blogs, and I sign up with a Hosting company like hostgator which allows unlimited addon domains with one account. Is it advisable to dump all my blogs into that one account?
Costa as long as none of your blogs are all out spam yes it would not be a problem.
How do we make sure that both our Blogger blogs and Wordpress blogs are no-follow? It seems pretty damn important that this is the case.
I know very little about Blogger and the free Wordpress blogs. Any hints?
Yesterday I did a quick look and had to change my anchored links from the comments to inside the post and they did come out do-follow. In other words in wordpress the link has to be inside the post. With blogger I use them with BloggerGenarator and the links inside the post are do-follow.
By having to put the links to your niche blogs inside the Wordpress.com and Blogger posts, it is going to be a lot harder to be stealth.
What I mean by this is that a blog comment can say anything and the anchored text can be anything. Doesn’t really matter as far as the topic of the post. But, if a post or blog is about, for example, sea monkeys, then it might be a bit hard to work in a reference to a blog about why grass is green and the sky is blue.
I think doing a Squidoo lens (or rather, a bunch of lenses) might be an excellent alternative.
Bruce but what Terry said is true I know you are a Squidoo master so you can use them to for link farms.
Hey Vic
A keyword sniping site I have been working on just go sent to the google sandbox (I think)
I was ranked 5 for my keyword without quotes and now it is nowhere to be found.
Should I just forget about it and do something else or is there anything I can do?
Thanks
nnamdi,
If the domain name is new, not preowned, good chance it is in the sandbox.
The best thing you can do is use this time to keep writing keyword focused content and gaining backlinks.
Hey Vic,
Glad your back and feeling better. I’m unable to view the forum posts. Don’t know if its just me, but when I click on any of them, they do not open. I just go back to the main forum page. Maybe there is something with the WP Cache again.
Thanks.
Please if any others are having problems seeing the forums let me know to see what is wrong.
Vic,
Another off topic question. LOL.
But, have I been banned as a spammer in BloggingZoom? I can’t submit anything for the past few days for Blog Gigs.
Sorry for asking here but this is still the best place to catch you.
Costa your url has not been banned. We had to activate the url validation because of people trying to abuse the system bu your url is clean. Please is this just happening with Blog Gigs or all of your sites.
Hi Vic,
It’s just for Blog Gigs. I can still submit my other sites. This is the Error Message I got.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function logspam() in /home/blogging/public_html/libs/link.php on line 889
Could it be on my side? But a far as I remember, I haven’t done anything and other sites in the same Hosting account is not affected.
Thanks
Ok Costa got an idea post the link here so I can try to submit it see if I get the error. This seems to be a call function problem if it was recognizing your url as banned some really nice red letters come out saying this domain has been banned so this seems to be an error. Please post the URL of the story and let me try to submit it.
Ahh you are back. I don’t think you had a wink of sleep. All the hacking and all. You were hit as well? The first time I tried was “cannot find server” the second time was “cannot find database” the third time was “Install Wordpress”! Boy, you did a fresh install huh? Take it as the price of fame I guess.
Anyway, you must be working your arse out on BZ, so I won’t bother you with my problem yet. When BZ is up again, I’ll retry and let you know how it turned out.
Take care mate. Get some sleep.
I know you must be going crazy but you are getting there Vic. Sorry you had to go through this criminal act of sabatoge. Good luck and know that you are not alone in this, we are all behind you.
Nice to see you back pal
Welcome Back Vic…
If there is anyway we can give you a hand - just ask.
Although I am personally against the idea of creating blogs simply for links, I see why this post is necessary. Everyone into SEO etc. should know this stuff regardless of whether he uses it. Nevertheless, I think it’s a lot better if you have the time to create blogs that are at least somehow useful/interesting for the visitors too.
I am so glad to see you back up and running.
If this can happen to experienced people, imagine how vulnerable noobs like myself feel.
Perhaps there is some info you can share with us incase this ever happens to other people.
You seemed to rebound quickly. Glad for that!
Did not realize how much I depended on the information here until it was gone.
Hiya, Vic!
Just stopping by to say howdy. I noticed you were down and that sucks. Glad you’re back in good health.
This is a really interesting post and, yeah, I’m going to be working on that.
“With all the shit daily we have to do. It still beats the fuck out of working in construction.”
LOL construction is what I do all day while I’m wishing I was at my computer!
Vic,
So to clarify what I am reading in your post. When setting up these blog sites, we already have keywords for each blog chosen? So our blog name and URL is a keyword? But then we are writing very generic stuff on them?
Maybe I am totally miss reading what you are saying.
So far I am just using made up names as owner of the blog. And then putting very broad keywords as the title.
Man, I am so glad I understand what people mean by a “farm” now. I’m glad too that I had thought about this idea a few weeks ago and that it came to me naturally from reading your site, Grizz’s site, and Court’s site. Maybe I am starting to understand this type of business a little bit better now.