Build My Rank Alternatives

by Lissie

Build My Rank has been shutdown as of March 2012. Now plenty of people are looking for BMR alternatives. What other options are there for link building out there?

BuildMyRank.com was a site used by those who wanted build links to their websites. Link building has long been the basis of good search engine optimization (SEO). Although hotly debated - see below - in my experience - link building still works. So if you have just lost your build my rank account where to next? Read this article to find out why Google de-indexed Build My Rank, and the implications for SEO's going forward.

What Was Build My Rank?

BMR was what is called a blog network. In order to get a backlink users had to write an article snippet of at least 150 words. Snippets had to be unique and were posted to just one blog. Although there was automated checking to ensure that content was duplicate, there was very little editorial control.

On the 22 March 2012 users got a message when they logged in saying that Google had de-indexed 90% of their network and that they were shutting down the business, and offering pro-rata refunds for the current month.

I must admit I was surprised that Google had been so brutal. But I was even more surprised and the ethics demonstrated by the owners of BMR who not just owned up to the de-indexing but offered refunds! In contrast there are some other networks who have been deindexed in the past, who never stopped taking people's money (LinkVana, SEO Nitro, SEO Link Vine - are some I've heard are in this situation).

Why Did Google De-Index Build My Rank?

Google destroyed BMR because it worked. It was ranking websites. At least it had been, I was not the only user who had seen its effectiveness reduce in the last few months. So its possible that Google had already devalued links from the sites to some extent.

Mass deindexing this visibly is rare though. Why did Google do that? In some ways in makes my life easier, I know BMR is finished, I can move on. But from Google's point of view - what they are doing is sending a clear message:

  • to send a clear message to link build networks - we are after you; 
  • to send a clear message to their customers i.e. their big Adwords buyers, we are cleaning up the search results, so it will be easier for your sites to rank.

To me though - the important message is very, very clear:

BACKLINKS ARE STILL IMPORTANT - BACKLINKS HELP YOUR SITE RANK

What Did BMR Do Wrong?

Build My Rank had a fairly obvious footprint. If I was checking backlinks I could recognise BMR articles. As a human I saw:

  • all blogs were very general - they covered every possible niche 
  • almost every post was under 200 words with one link out to a non-authorative site 
  • some sites had 1000's of links from JUST BMR blogs - so you analyse one site's profile and reverse engineer the BMR sites
  • the blogs were "dead" - there was no community, no comments, no social media shares, no one home.

BMR blogs were also owned by one company. They used privacy to obscure the actual ownership, but its long been speculated, that because Google is a domain registrar, they could get access to this information. Whether this is true or not - I have no idea. To be honest the points above were more than enough for a manual review to find most of the sites.

Recommended Alternatives to Build My Rank

So what are yoru options. Well as I write this - a few days after the initial fall out - its fair to say its a fast moving environment. I'll be updating this! Keep an eye out for updates on my Build My Rank Alternatives blog post.

Alternative Blog Networks
I can't recommend any of these at the moment. Whether or not they'e been hit - Google is on the warpath - so personally I won't be using a network for quite a number of months, until the furore dies down.

Web 2.0 For Backlinks
Sites such as Squidoo, HubPages and Wizzley all provide backlinks if used cleverly. The good networks are fussy about the quality of your content.

Guest Posting For Backlinks

Guest posting has always been part of the Internet, always will be. Guest posting is NOT the same as a using a network. If you are guest posting you are providing content for a blogger who has an active site that they promote and interact on. That's as different as it gets from blog networks built solely for backlinks.

Finding guest posting opportunities can be a pain - but I do find quite a few using the Keyword Academy forums and resources. Check it out - free for the first month - so you have nothing to lose.

More of My SEO Articles

More About Me

Hi, I'm Lis Sowerbutts, I've been making a living online since 2007 and have been full time since February 2009. I make money from advertising on my websites, my affiliate commimssions from products and services I promote.  

I am also a non-fiction author. 

Wizzley is just one of the places that I write online. If you want to check out more of what I write check out my Passive Income Online blog and sign up to my newsletter! 

Nice to meet you and hope you get what you want from your online endevours! 

Updated: 03/22/2012, Lissie
 
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MHeart on 07/09/2012

I search for guest post opportunities with Google using search operators. Here's a few:

intitle:”guest post”
inurl:contributor
”Become a Guest Blogger”

You can get creative to find niche specific sites which accept guest posts. These types of links are far more powerful for ranking sites and they also give you targeted traffic as all of the sites are legit.

Tolovaj on 05/04/2012

BMR is dead now and this is not a surprise because it was too heavily advertised. Good news is users had an option to delete all their BMR links, what was not an option at many other paying link schemes.

Your advice on guest blogging is good, but I had one very bad experience with that because I posted on a blog from 'bad neighborhood list' (didn't know that but I should be more aware of that possibility). Fortunately I had an option to delete my post and now I have to wait to return lost position.

So my advice would be: have a guest post only on 'real' blog with real author and followers behind. Don't be fooled with high PageRank or similar manipulative feature. Establish contacts with real people and write for real people!

mban on 04/19/2012

Hi Lissie unfortunately i did n't want to publicize my blog network as it is absolutely free for users who can write quality articles with unique content.I only want to encourage bloggers to write some unique content with natural backlinks so that Big G may like it and a descent BMR alternative is set up.

kierangee on 04/19/2012

Sorry about mis-spelling your name, Lis!

Lissie on 04/18/2012

@mban - I deleted your comment because I don't appreciate anonymous comments on my articles touting your own self-proclaimed "blog network"

kierangee on 04/18/2012

Thanks, Liz, for this. I was actually planning to use BMR so your warning about Google's actions has been most helpful. I will follow your blog to see what happens next.

katiem2 on 04/01/2012

Hmmmm I wonder about a certain service I've been using? This is interesting and yet all part of the climate in which we work. Changes and evolution are a constant. I look forward to reading more on your research as this trend levels out and or transitions.

mban on 03/25/2012

Thanks for keeping us informed about the alternatives. I was about to launch a private blog network like ALN next week.Now it seems would n’t be wise to run such a network.But I have made my network absolutely free for basic membership where users can add blogs and post articles with max 2 backlinks per article and that too backlinks will be removed from 30% of the total articles posted. e.g. if some one posts 10 articles with 2 backlinks per article then only 7 articles will contain backlinks and the remaining 3 will not.I hope in this way we can produce quality contents to encourage bloggers to posts their articles and also make Big G happy.:)

terrilorah on 03/24/2012

Thanks for the heads up. I'm just learning all this stuff so it helps to hear from a pro :)

lakeerieartists on 03/23/2012

I will be interested in hearing your options.


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