UPDATE: I am no longer recommending Search Engine Trust. Shortly after making the recommendation I started getting complaints about it. Nicholas then stopped returning my emails, and he never paid me the commissions that were owed. Also, it appears that he has shut down the site. Nicholas and his business partner certainly did a good job of sweet talking and earning my trust in our phone conversation, but apparently it was a facade. I’m sorry I ever recommended it, and I have removed the links from this article.
Edition #114 – 02/20/2007
Today I’m going to introduce you to a new service called Search Engine Trust, but before I do that, I want to give you some good solid information about web traffic and linking.
If you own a website, then one of your primary concerns (if not THE primary concern) is getting traffic to your site.
Since the traffic component is such a big piece of the internet marketing puzzle, I’ve reviewed many traffic-related programs over the past couple years.
Some of them have been duds, others have been good. Some of them are based on tried-and-true marketing principles, and others are based on flash-in-the-pan tactics that work today and won’t tomorrow.
One conclusion I’ve made is that there is NO magic bullet. Yes there are plenty of techniques, strategies, and combinations of strategies that DO work, but there is no one single magic bullet that will work for everyone across the board in every situation.
When it comes to getting free traffic from search engines, SEO (search engine optimization) is the name of the game. Most webmasters in our internet marketing niche have become pretty good at on-page optimization. We all know that we need to have our keyword in the “title†tag, keywords on the page, etc.
But unless you’re in a relatively obscure niche, those common on-page SEO factors will not get you on the first page of search results.
In most cases, it takes a LOT more– and the biggest key has been and continues to be back links. Back links are links from other websites to your website.
If you’ve been in this game any amount of time you’ll already know this, but I’ll explain it here briefly for the sake of my newbie friends:
All back links are not created equal.
There are so many factors involved that I’m not going to cover them all, but the most important qualities of a back link include:
– the anchor text
– relevance of the site linking to you
– page rank of the page linking to you
The anchor text is the text of the link itself. For example in this link: marketing newsletter the anchor text is “marketing newsletter”.
In general, you don’t want the anchor text to be the URL itself, because in the search engine’s eyes that increases the likelihood of it being an automatically generated link (and thus less valuable).
It is best for your anchor text to include the keywords you are targeting. At the same time, you don’t want to use the same anchor text for all of your back links, or the search engines may suspect you of spamming the web with automated tools.
While it is most commonly believed that back links from any source (with the exception of what Google calls “bad neighborhoods” like porn and gambling sites) are of benefit, it has been evidenced that links from relevant sites are much more valuable.
There are two main reasons for this. First, inbound links from relevant sites help to establish your site as an authority on that particular topic, which in turn can improve your search engine ranking. Second, you have an increased chance of getting clicks directly from the other site since its visitors are interested in your topic.
While I don’t believe PageRank is an accurate measure of a site’s worth, it does play a factor in Google search result rankings. Sites with higher PR will generally be listed higher than those of lower PR, and the main way to gain a higher PR is to accumulate back links. Back links from pages with a higher PR are more likely to improve your own PR.
Additionally, back links from higher PR sites can also help your site get indexed quicker and spidered more frequently.
In case you hadn’t noticed, relevant back links are really a double edged sword which can help you in several ways…
– Increased authority of your site
– Increased PR
– Traffic directly from the link
Because of these benefits, obtaining back links is on the top of my SEO priorities. In the past, I’ve covered several methods of getting back links…
– using a semi-automated system such as SEO Elite to request links directly from other website owners
– simply paying someone to build links for you
– submitting to directories, posting in forums, blogs, and other tedious and somewhat spammy techniques
Today, I’ve uncovered what seems to be one of the best solutions to date.
I met a guy named Nicolas Messe who is in the business of owning websites. Along with his business partner, they build new websites and acquire active websites, and now they own a ridiculous amount of websites.
I was on the phone with them for two hours last night, and discovered that their online empire is simply enormous.
They literally have so many websites (most of which are indexed and ranked well by Google), that they’ve decided to provide a new service to a limited number of people.
This limited group of members will be allowed to post back links on these websites. They have websites in tons of niches, so you should be able to find plenty of good places to post your links.
I know, it sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? That’s why I spent so much time on the phone with them finding out who they are, what their business is, and how it works.
I’ve also signed up for the service and I can assure you, it’s real. Upon signing up, I received my login info where I could go see a list of sites available for me to post links on.
They started with 50 sites, and as the sales letter says, they’ll be adding more (with increasingly higher PR) on a regular basis. On the starter list, there was no site lower than a PR3.
One area that the sales letter doesn’t explain is exactly *how* the system works for actually posting the links. So I’ll let you in on that secret here, so you know exactly what you’re investing in.
Each of the sites is a WordPress blog. Your system login will allow you to login to ANY of their sites (you don’t have to register separately for each one). ONLY paid members are allowed to post on these blogs, they are not open to the general public. And when I say “post”, I’m talking about posting real blog posts, not comments.
That’s good because then your link will appear on the home page of the blog (which will get spidered regularly), and it will have it’s own page with a “permalink”. And of course, the links do NOT contain the “nofollow” attribute.
You could post an article containing your link, or just a sentence. In my opinion, the obvious downside of this system is that the sites themselves will get degraded over time as they begin to look more like splogs (spam blogs).
However, Nicolas and his team are confident that it will remain under control since the membership is strictly limited, and they have a virtually endless supply of sites that they can continue to add to the arsenal.
As far as my business is concerned, it was a no-brainer.
I could spend hours upon hours contacting webmasters, trying to get my own back links…
I could spend anywhere from $10-100 per month for a SINGLE text link with a link broker…
Or I could pay someone overseas to build links for me on a PER link basis…
But why would I do any of those things, if I can post an UNLIMITED number of links whenever I want? With this new service I can choose from a wide range of sites, and I can use any anchor text I wish to use.
Do you have a website?
If you answered no, then this isn’t for you. You need to back up a couple steps and get set up with your site first.
If you answered yes–you have a website–then the next question is; do you want free search engine traffic?
If you answered no, then again this probably isn’t for you. If you’ve already got all the traffic you need, then there’s no need to bother with trying to get more.
But if you answered YES, then I think this is a good opportunity for you to consider. If you own a website, and you want free search engine traffic, then the value of this service is well worth it in my opinion.
You can check it out here:
(link removed – no longer recommended)
It’s not “super cheap”, but when you consider the alternative of spending countless hours or huge sums of money to acquire links, you’ll understand why this was the most economical choice for my business.
As always you can leave your comments here in the blog.
Have a great day!
Very cool! Definitely worth testing for sure. Once you get links in the 1000s, its really hard to come up with more and more sites to get links from- especially when you want them to be relevant. And for one price for unlimited URLs, this seems like a fantastic deal. I hope they really do limit participation though. Thanks for the heads up Eric!
Hi Eric,
I actually ran across this website about 3 weeks ago. I was very intrigued however it seemed too good to be true. So I have been hovering, and searching trying to find more information on the service. I have come to really trust your judgement. I really like your upfront, candid appoach. And I really like that you take the time to completely research something before you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Thank you for that and thank you for taking the time to give a detailed post to this service!
Hi Eric, I didn’t get to read all of it, but I have saved it to go over it
when I have more time. What I saw so far is great.
Sincerely, Ev.
Thanks for your recommendation – it’s refreshing to only get emails that give a good review of a product and explain why and how it can be helpful.
Good one Eric,
Regards
Jen
Like Shannon I to have come across this site before,
I thought it was rather expensive but kept the address
so that I could check it out when I had more time
now you have done this for me.
Thanks.
Ted. 20/2/2007.
Hi Eric
do you know what happens if you decide not to continue with the service after a few months?
Also, have you noticed an increase spidering activity as a result of your new links?
cheers
hugh
Hi Eric
I have been looking at this traffic system but I did not know their websites were wordpress blogs. Thankyou for the research you put into this. It sounds good in principle but a few things worry me about it! Are the blogs on different Class C ip addresses and were they created individually or with splog wordpress software. That sort of software mostly has a signature that the search engine can identify and one day bring your wordpress domains crashing down on you. I think backlinks are on the way out for SEO purposes with Search Engines, and especially with Google who is apparently working on a new algorythm. I have been Google slapped silly this week on many Adwords campaigns. In my opinion a much better approach to ranking and traffic for your websites is using Web 2.0 methods that are not search engine dependent. Then you can tell the search engine to put their new algoritm where the sun don’t shine.
Anteek
Hello,
Could you please explain me more? If it starts only 50 sites, so how I can get the sites that related to my topic sites. For example if I have 3 topics site like camping, gardening, insurance so what kind of sites will I get for links?
Sorry I have to ask the question here, I can’t find any contact information on the site you mentioned.
Thank you.
Hey guys, those are some good questions. I could probably answer them to some extent, but first I will see if Nicolas can answer your questions as he is obviously the most knowledgable about his product and policies 🙂
My main concern is how many subscribers is he going to admit. Too many and it makes no sense to be there.
What is the limit to the number of subscribers?
Thank you for letting us know Eric. I really start to like SEO since my sites are getting decent rankings.
It’s important to provide value on the Internet.
Eric,
This is a great idea and looks well done. You’re right about it not being “super cheap.” Perhaps others will consider it a good idea and do something similar for a lower price.
Ok Eric, I appreciate your research. I will surely check the site out.
The only valid reason that I could see for this would be to get spiders to your own targets. (which can be done much cheaper and with same final outcome). The power of the backlink is directly related to your checkbook with their service, so if you get into a situation where you cannot pay, then you of course lose all of those backlinks instantly. That seems like a lot of risk for someone without deep pockets or a guaranteed flow of income to ensure that you could keep paying for the long term. On the other side, it looks like a great marketing strategy from their side. I guess for a fast short term boost, this could be valid, but for long term, it just isnt a good situation to get yourself into.
Hey Eric;
Thanks for this. This looked like a good idea for a link dev service so I signed up and did some investigation. Unfortunately, I wanted to go into detail about the the available URLs, but the whole site is has been down for the last hour at least (7:45pm EST 02/20/07).
Yes, many of these sites are topically themed, but many have unrelated spam posts in them. For example, in the “Home and Garden” section, on a site that is supposed to be about the topic ‘interior designs’, almost half the pages/posts are obviously automated for many variations of the keywords ‘get rid of acne’??? How is THAT properly themed? AND, all the sites I CHECKED have exactly the same design – if that doesn’t trip a filter for human review, I don’t know what will!!
After further investigation, while the sites ARE generally PR3 and a few PR4, vitually NONE of these sites have backlinks themselves (as reported by Google), while there are minimal links as reported by MSN and Yahoo. It seems the PR for THESE sites was appointed strictly on the age of the domains, with some consideration for backlinks (which G doesn’t reveal to the public – only to the site owner through webmaster tools).
Also, most of the posts on these sites (that I checked anyway) were only posted within the last 3 months.
Also, if there are say – 500 members – and say 10% want to post to a particular site on any given day – that’s 50 posts to one site in one day!!! Won’t that trip a ‘too-much-content-in-one-day’ filter and effectively ‘sandbox’ the site? http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3070792.htm (creating too many pages in too little time spreads PR out too thinly to give ANY pages at least a PR of 1, so ALL pages get low PR (possibly 0), and thus effectively drops THAT site from the SERPS, and any post pages (not home page) will have a PR0 -so your link juice is severely watered down. BTW, if 50 people DO post to one particular site in one day – your link only stays on the home page for a short time (hours?) until it is pushed off the home page by others who post after you. The home page can only hold so many new posts – and it’s not 50!! – more like 20.
Again, as I mentioned, I have signed up for this service, but my intuition is that it will soon follow the footsteps of all the other magic bullets that have been shot at Google, which they have easily caught with their teeth… AND BEEN BANNED (ie: traffic equalizer, metawebs, article blaster, etc…).
Lets hope this one doesn’t get bastardized and abused and sent to the graveyard early. Looks like it could be valuable if it floats for any length of time.
I hope Nicolas can clear up some of these issues…
Thanks again.
Hi Eric, many thanks for your review and resulting report on Search Engine Trust and their back-linking program. It does sound so fantastic, almost “too good to be true” that these guys will provide PR3-PR7 rated sites for anyone to link to but are they for real?
I’m sure you have said this before now, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”.
I know you said you spoke to Nicolas Messe on the phone which hardly seems like concrete proof that they can offer this great service long term.
The monthly cost may seem attractive to you but for those of us who don’t have that sort of cash lying about, it is really a high price to pay someone unknown until now for something I feel is an expensive risk.
I’m sure it will hardly dent your wallet anyway, as you have made your millions already, lol.
Hey guys- again I would rather Nick answer your questions, as I’m not really qualified to speak on behalf of his service, any more than my short experience with his company warrants. As my review indicates, my experience thus far is that it is a service worrth checking out. I don’t blame any of your skepticisms, as I myself am skeptical of it’s long term performace. However, only time will tell whether it will be around to stay, and I did want to give you all the opportunity to join me in trying it out.
I never claimed this to be a “magic bullet” (as I’ve often said, there is no magic bullet), but I do think it could be a valuable PIECE of your overall SEO strategy.
This sounds a little like the service provided by Article Underground. They have about 24 Word Press blogs ranging from PR4 to PR7. The system works well for getting pages indexed and for getting sites out of the sandbox. AU seem to monitor their sites quite well, and come down hard on anyone trying to spam the blogs with automated posts and irrelevant content.
I’ve never received much traffic directly from these blogs, simply because the only people visiting them seem to be other web site owners.
I would agree with you, Eric, that this is a very useful weapon to have in your SEO arsenal, but can never be more than a supplement to solid link building.
I would also go along with Jacques Baudoin who says that Web 2.0 avenues are probably worth looking into if you’re interested in supplementing your site SEO. There are obvious advantages to gaining a modicum of independence from the Google megalith.
Bear in mind that this is not a new technique and came into being about a year ago. There are many PLR membership sites that have a similar service for their members and they all have the same thing in common – they use blogs (normally WordPress) to achieve this aim.
Google will be fully aware of this technique by now (if you know about it, they know about it) and will eventually devalue the links. Think about it – Is it natural for every single blog post to have a link to another website? Is it natural for blog posts to be theme related yet unrelated to any of the previous blog posts?
“BackLinkSystem.com” – Ask yourself truthfully, does that sound ‘white hat’ or ‘black hat’ to you? Ok, ask yourself another question – will it be ‘white hat’ or ‘black hat’ in a years time?
If you invest one hour a day posting to these blogs or you invest one hour a day writing/submitting articles (a tried and trusted method of old), which one do you think will still be bringing you traffic in a years time?
Hello everyone – First I want to thank Eric for taking the extended amount of time to do a full review of my new service. For those of you who have not been through one of his due diligence exercises, suffice to say it is like being in court.
I want to take a movement to answer everyone questions:
(1) “Do you know what happens if you decide not to continue with the service after a few months? Also, have you noticed an increase spidering activity as a result of your new links?”
Answer: There are a couple of answers about canceling the service. If a member needs a “break”, I am happy to try to work with them so they can rejoin without losing any of their previous investment of time and money. If someone is looking to cancel the service completely, we would also try to work something out that would cover the maintenance of their posts. Outside of these two options, a member who cancels their subscription would have their posts removed after a period of time. Regarding spiders, I can say that there is a marked increase in target URL spider activity. Members can even “super-charge” that activity by taking advantage of the social bookmarking, permalinking and rss features included with the service.
(2) “Are the blogs on different Class C ip addresses and were they created individually or with splog wordpress software.”
Answer: I have access to a large block of Class C IP and use assorted hosting providers (dedicated, virtual, shared, etc.) from all over the world. With 1,000s of sites, there is no way to give every site a different c-class IP. However, we have not physically linked the sites in anyway. The mapping of c-class IP assignments has also been done to minimize any type of inner-linking. From the search engines perspective, we have done everything possible to have each site perform as an “island unto itself”. Concerning “splog wordpress software”, we try to use the most common wordpress themes being adopted by legitimate bloggers worldwide. There are 2 ways of not creating footprints. One – create an absolutely unique template for each (virtually impossible with 1,000s of sites) or Two – use a template so common that the search engines cannot ban it because it would take down everyone not just their target urls. We use strategy #2. We have a very comfortable relationship as our sites interact with the 3 major search engines. This is not a service that was thought up overnight. I have been building this system for almost 2 years. I have gone through multiple Google updates and changes to the search engine algorithms. The system works and it has worked for a long time now. The reason is very simple, back links are one of the most stable metrics in building organic traffic. All the new search engine technologies (i.e. LSI, etc.) can be incorporated into a back link strategy and used to build a stable promotion platform for you online business.
(3) “Could you please explain me more? If it starts only 50 sites, so how I can get the sites that related to my topic sites. For example if I have 3 topics site like camping, gardening, insurance so what kind of sites will I get for links?”
Answer: Once you become a member, you are sent a questionnaire for request for niches. We will incorporate those requests as we make more of our sites available. The quantity of sites you can post on is very large and grows everyday (100 the 1st month and hundreds more starting with month 2). In addition, you need to create a wide range of anchor text links for the sites you are targeting. For example, if you site is about gardening, you can post on the Home Sites. You can also post on the Kids Sites by posting about involving kids in family gardens. You can post on Health Sites by talking about the health benefits of home grown food. We can help you broaden your linking approach through our training programs. It is this approach that will give you the large range of content that will have the largest impact on your ranking factors.
(4) “My main concern is how many subscribers is he going to admit. Too many and it makes no sense to be there. What is the limit to the number of subscribers?”
Answer: Over a 1 year period, our subscribers will have access to 1,000 to 2,000 sites to post their links. We will add and freeze sites in order to balance the quantity of posting with the promotion capabilities of the sites. In reality, we could handle thousands of subscribers based on our management of sites and the quality of high trust factor urls we own. I am not stating that to brag, it is just the reality of what we own and are making available through this service.
(5) “…only valid reason that I could see for this would be to get spiders to your own targets. The power of the backlink is directly related to your checkbook with their service, so if you get into a situation where you cannot pay, then you of course lose all of those backlinks instantly.”
Answer: I understand your point and why that would be a concern. I have tried to provide a safety net to our members (as answered in question #1). I am also not sure how to answer your statement that this is “just a spidering service”. If you feel that unlimited anchor text back links from 1,000s of independent sites is just a spidering service then I agree, there are much cheaper alternatives. What is more interesting to me is your statement about “The power of the backlink is directly related to your checkbook”. This is a very interesting point. I take this view. Everyday it becomes more and more difficult to be successful online as it relates to traffic. Do you think that 2007 is going to cost more or less money compared to 2006. How about 2008, 2009 2010. The price of making money online is going up and will continue to go up every year. I am providing an opportunity for people to use my real estate to build a solid promotion platform for their online business. I have invested more money than most people earn in years of work to build this system. I built it to support my own online businesses and have had great success. This is just an opportunity for you to take advantage of the same platform at a price that significantly brings down your cost of creating 1000s of anchor text back links.
………..I will continue with this post shortly. Thanks again for the question and your interest in Search Engine Trust. By the way, if you want to send your skype or phone number to nicolas@searchenginetrust.com, I would be happy to talk to you in person to help answer any of your questions.
–Nicolas
Yeah, this one seems a little “iffy” to me too. I’d give it a go if it was less expensive, but can’t take THAT big of a risk for something that could be slapped silly by Google soon. Maybe this can be cleared up by Nicolas and we could be made to feel better about it…we’ll see.
“Yes, many of these sites are topically themed, but many have unrelated spam posts in them. For example, in the “Home and Garden†section, on a site that is supposed to be about the topic ‘interior designs’, almost half the pages/posts are obviously automated for many variations of the keywords ‘get rid of acne’??? How is THAT properly themed?”
Answer: The rules and terms of service are very easy to understand. We have on staff, moderators that go through the sites and delete the posts that are not in keeping with the theme or TOS. Members that abuse the system will be asked to leave. It is very simple. That is not to say that members will find bad posts in between reviews. However, I would rather run the service playing catch-up than forcing all users to go through a review and delay process.
“AND, all the sites I CHECKED have exactly the same design – if that doesn’t’t trip a filter for human review, I don’t know what will!!”
Answer: This statement is incorrect. Not all sites have the same design. We strictly limit the type of designs we use based on the most widely used templates by legitimate bloggers. Why the most widely used? There is no way the major search engines can penalize us. In doing so, they would be penalizing hundreds of thousands if not millions of other site owners. However, that in of itself is not a complete answer. You are forgetting about trust factor. You are using the logic of someone who is starting from scratch. That is not the case with my sites. My sites on average are 3 years old. They have a very strong and respectable history with the search engines. My system works because I work with the search engines, not against them. I give them what they want. Trust factor, link popularity, page rank, age of site, etc. By becoming a member of Search Engine Trust, my members “bleed” those ranking factors to their target URL.
“After further investigation, while the sites ARE generally PR3 and a few PR4, virtually NONE of these sites have backlinks themselves (as reported by Google), while there are minimal links as reported by MSN and Yahoo. It seems the PR for THESE sites was appointed strictly on the age of the domains, with some consideration for backlinks (which G doesn’t’t reveal to the public – only to the site owner through webmaster tools).”
Answer: The first month you get 50 PR3’s and 50 PR4’s, PR5’s and PR6’s. The PR3’s, of course are going to have the weakest ranking factors (weak compared to the PR4 – PR6 urls). The age of the sites are a huge factor, along with the link popularity. I would suggest focusing on Yahoo verses Google for link popularity as Google does not publish accurate numbers. Going into month 2, you get more urls to post on everyday. PR3 to PR7. Each month is a minimum of 100 more sites. Do not be surprised if I release 200 to 300 sites a month.
“Also, if there are say – 500 members – and say 10% want to post to a particular site on any given day – that’s 50 posts to one site in one day!!! Won’t that trip a ‘too-much-content-in-one-day’ filter and effectively ’sandbox’ the site? http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3070792.htm (creating too many pages in too little time spreads PR out too thinly to give ANY pages at least a PR of 1, so ALL pages get low PR (possibly 0), and thus effectively drops THAT site from the SERPS, and any post pages (not home page) will have a PR0 -so your link juice is severely watered down. BTW, if 50 people DO post to one particular site in one day – your link only stays on the home page for a short time (hours?) until it is pushed off the home page by others who post after you. The home page can only hold so many new posts – and it’s not 50!! – more like 20.”
Answer: We easily manage the sites base on usage and freeze / release sites for posting to ensure that the ranking factor bench marks are preserved. Yes, you are correct, posts will fall off the home page. Yes, you are correct, the archive pages do not have the same strength as the home page. However, you are getting 1000’s of anchor text back links from 1,000s of sites. Search Engine Trust’s system forces our members to create a natural looking back link strategy spread over 1,000s of sites. Each of the archive pages bleed ranking factor from the home page and pass it to the target url. There are companies charging thousands of dollars just to accomplish this back linking strategy to one url. I am sure you have heard of pre-sale pages. The whole concept behind pre-sale pages is to post one off a home page with high PR. Regardless, I understand you point, however, I think you comments do not take into consideration the true power of my sites as they interact with the search engines.
“Again, as I mentioned, I have signed up for this service, but my intuition is that it will soon follow the footsteps of all the other magic bullets that have been shot at Google, which they have easily caught with their teeth… AND BEEN BANNED (ie: traffic equalizer, metawebs, article blaster, etc…).”
Answer: I built this system exactly because of those experiences. I learned the hard way and after spending near $40,000 in Internet tools, mentoring programs, etc. Success with organic traffic is based on trust factors and back links. Once I understood the game, I decided to “give them (the search engines) what they want”. While everyone else was begging (asking for reciprocal links), borrowing (comment spamming, etc.) or paying through the nose for back links, I was building or buying high PR sites. This is not a magic bullet and nothing in my sales letter or statements here indicate I am selling anything other than an anchor text back link system. There are no secrets, no smoke and mirrors. Think about it, while most of the IM crowd was sending out 1000’s of emails begging for reciprocal links, I was sending out 1,000s of emails offering to purchase websites. Today, I have an intimate relationship with the major name registrars. When they have sites that meet my needs regarding ranking factors, they put them in my account (automatically). Why, because when you spend six figures on domain names, you have the ability to create a new type of relationship online. Members of Search Engine Trust, get access to that power for what I consider to be a very reasonable price.
“Bear in mind that this is not a new technique and came into being about a year ago. There are many PLR membership sites that have a similar service for their members and they all have the same thing in common – they use blogs (normally WordPress) to achieve this aim.”
Answer: This is not a PLR service in any way, shape or form. Additionally, the PLR services like Article Underground have a very limited number of sites to post on. There is nothing comparable online with 100 sites let along 1,000s.
“Google will be fully aware of this technique by now (if you know about it, they know about it) and will eventually devalue the links. Think about it – Is it natural for every single blog post to have a link to another website? Is it natural for blog posts to be theme related yet unrelated to any of the previous blog posts? “BackLinkSystem.com†– Ask yourself truthfully, does that sound ‘white hat’ or ‘black hat’ to you? OK, ask yourself another question – will it be ‘white hat’ or ‘black hat’ in a years time?
If you invest one hour a day posting to these blogs or you invest one hour a day writing/submitting articles (a tried and trusted method of old), which one do you think will still be bringing you traffic in a years time?”
Answer: There is nothing we are doing that is not in keeping with the Search Engines terms of service. We have 1000’s of sites and allow our subscribers to write content about their interests on our sites. Regardless of back links included in the post, this is what blogging is about. This is not black hat, grey hat or anything else other than the ability for people to post content about their interests. My sites have been online for years, my sites have maintained their indexing for years, PR and link popularity in place years. I agree with you that this is not complete answer. Article submission and directory submissions are a good example of additional techniques website owners should use. However, Search Engine Trust is built on years of trust. Trust that plays a key role in the success of my members.
I hope that helps clarify some of the questions.
Eric, I very much appreciate the time and consideration you have given my product.
Again, I am always available (even by phone), if anyone wants to talk.
All the best,
–Nicolas
nicolas@searchenginetrust.com
What does Jonathan Leger think of this?
Hello Eric,
This is like inviting a band of marauding Vikings into the church picnic at Westminster.
There won’t be traffic, page rank or life left once they’ve passed.
Unless Nicolas plans to let in less than 50 people and police it like a hawk, this is a fast track to getting your site banned for participating in link farms.
For proof of concept check out Nicolas Messe’s sample page – [edit]. This is nothing but a FFA (free for all). Many of the articles lead out to either affiliate links (why post affiliate links on FFA?) or to machine generated article farms.
This concept (post your own links on a network of sites) could work as a very underground, very limited and heavily policed private club but not as a Viking raid of indolent corner cutting webmasters.
Sometimes you promote the weirdest junk, Eric. Sincerity is not an excuse for fatuity.
This time you may not only be putting your readers pocketbooks in danger (the price at $157/month is not an obstacle in the quest for quality high PR links) but the long term inclusion of their websites in Google.
FYI, Mr. Nicolas Messe (probably a nom de plume) has absolutely no useful history on the internet as a marketer or anything else until he came out of the woodwork to promote this set up.
Do you really want your readers to send $157/month to a guy with no track record? Remember – stop sending the $157/month and all your links go down. Or in six months when Mr. Messe’s sites drop out of Google and he shuts the whole thing down, all your links go down. Along with $1000 of each participant’s marketing budget.
Nicolas;
Thanks for your answers – they are strong from your point of view. As I said, while this generally looks like a good idea, there seems to be some flimsiness in its operation.
Here’s my example (just one):
Your site: [inq….net] – does not have ONE post in it (as of 11:45pm EST – Feb 21/07)! Yet, in your TOS, you say we can’t link to sites that are under construction?? Hypocritical? And, when I do a “site:” check at Google – it looks like this was a parked domain that had tons of contextual text link ads making up almost 1,200 pages of…. crap. (Domain park spam ads) – same title, same content with only difference being dynamic keyword insertion causing contextually served ads.
Same with [adria….com] – no posts??
While the IDEA you have here is strong and amazing, in practice it is operating as ‘weak’. I just hope that your massive domain buying budget can help clean up and strenthen what you have sold to us – before it all becomes worthless.
Thanks again,
Paul
PS: I am going to continue to post on these sites because I need links. 😉 Which is why I bought your system… I ‘trust’ you.
La Vie- To answer your question about whether I want my readers to spend $157 on a guy with no track record. First of all, the reason Nick doesn’t have a track record is that he has been a very successful undergound marketer. Second, I want my readers to assess their own businesses and decide whether it is something that makes sense for them to try. Maybe I should have said this (I generally assume my readers are pretty smart), but if you only have $150 per month to invest in your entire business, then you’d want to think long and hard about whether this is where you want to put it. As I mentioned above, this should not be viewed as a magic bullet, but rather a piece of your SEO strategy. Do I have the same concerns as you? Certainly, but I also think that only time will tell… And I also think it’s worth the risk for those who can afford to try it, which is why I’m trying it and recommending it. Suppose it DOES work well for the next six months, and then Google changes their alg and Nick’s service becomes worthless… I’d still be glad I benefited for those six months.
I do like your marauding Vikings analogy though 😉
Hello again,
Just a couple more responses:
La Vie, your statements are incorrect and you are trying to make your point based on emotion not facts.
How you established the arbitrary number of 50 as the tipping point to be called “marauding Vikings”
gave me a good chuckle. I would take your points to be more serious if they could be substantiated.
However, a further reading of your post just points to basic lack of information.
Lets just look at your statement, “Nicolas Messe (probably a nom de plume) has absolutely no useful
history on the Internet as a marketer or anything else”. This statement puts into question your ability
just to do a basic search, let alone give advice based on facts verses fear. Maybe John Reese
highlighting my experience online using Traffic Secrets would be a good start. It is right on his main
sales page. It has been there for years.
Listen, I am not running away from any question or comment (as you can see from above). Your post
is based on so many incorrect facts and statements of fiction it is hard to take your question seriously.
–Nicolas
Hi Paul,
(now here are some good, well researched questions)
The history of how I developed this concept in very much tied to my change of focus from a strict Internet marketer to
a combination IM / Domainer. I have found it very surprising that these two worlds have so little interaction between
each other. My opportunity came when I was able to master the art of buying domains and combine that skill with
purchasing sites with high SEO / IM benchmarks (the Domaining world is not as interested in those statistics).
A BIG part of Domaining is monetizing sites via parked services (especially services that are dynamic in nature).
All of my sites get parked while they are in development. It is a very large part of my income and if done correctly,
can preserve a sites rankings in the Search Engines.
In addition, many of the sites I purchase are from other Domainers who were using their site for the same purpose.
Even if a site is parked, it still needs promotion. That is the reason you are seeing some of the results in the
backlink statistics.
At the end of the day, I really have an unlimited supply of sites (either in my ownership or available to buy). All I really
look at before buying is the history of the site (including age), indexing by the major SEs, good link popularity, page rank, etc.
If it meets my criteria, I will add it to my collection.
It seems that there is some honest misconceptions about the way search engines interact with sites as it relates
to back links, ranking factors, etc.
Eric, if you are interested, I would be happy to conduct a conference call to answer some of these questions in depth.
To make it even more interesting, I would even consider setting up a mini version of my service (one to four PR4 – PR6
sites) that participants on the conference call can later use for creating links….free of charge of course.
–Nicolas
Hi Nicolas,
I definitely was thinking along the same lines as Paul (those who pay attention know he’s experienced in SEO) but I, too, need the links (in the many 1000s) and frankly $157 is nothing when I make that back in just over an hour by keeping my clients top ranked. Also, its cheaper than ME paying for the domains & bandwidth/hosting for our own feeder sites.
What encourages me (because I’m not really impressed with the initial sites) is that you already planned to dole out the increasingly high ranked sites after your customers proved THEMSELVES trust-worthy. Yep, I’m pretty sure these one or two month old PR3 and PR4 ranked sites will suffer over time from the ridiculous spammy content that people seem compelled to write (lazy lazy people), but if you do enact your editorial control and ask people to leave that can’t follow the rules, those people won’t make it through the first couple of months (either by choice or by being asked to leave), keeping the higher PR sites more protected.
Well, at least that’s what I read into it since I am hoping this proves to be a nice addition to our linking strategies.
IMO, this isn’t really for those who are promoting a handful of sites (someone mentioned they had three sites?), but for those seriously promoting dozens or more (either their own or for clients) that are shooting for the serious contender category of search engine presence (i.e. many thousands of backlinks).
Again, at least worth testing out for me. If it loses $157/mo worth of value, then we move on.
A self-submitted testimonial on an IM product website is what you provide as evidence of
1. your existence
2. your business acumen
3. your trustworthiness
Please.
In that testimonial, you note that you are making your money marketing a business opportunity to stay at home moms.
Anybody else’s alarm bells ringing?
Nicolas, I’ve checked out your demo PR7 site (Eric won’t let me post the link here, although you posted it yourself on one of the dozen sites to which you submitted the same “hard core marketer” letter – it should be out here for people to look at IMHO) – it’s a spammed up free for all, full of junk posts and junk links.
If you think this kind of thing is any kind of useful long term link building, feel free to enjoy your opinion.
Others may disagree. I’m one of them.
If your business opportunity for stay at home moms resembles your link building, it’s no wonder you’d rather cloak yourself in mystery.
As you’d like us to buy into a long term scheme wholly dependent on your good faith and business acumen, could you be so kind as to offer us a little bit more information about yourself and your past business projects.
Eric, this is starting to resemble more of a carnival shell game than any kind of legitimate marketing or SEO discussion.
$157 month for unlimited splogging and FFA links. Leave the network, down go your links. Blech.
This “opportunity” might be useful for marketing ephemera (flavour of the month products) or possibly launching new sites (giving a few months momentum before the whole thing collapses). It is not part of SEO for a long term business.
One’s time and money would be much better spent on creating high quality content and publicising that content.
Traffic power, traffic king – this another in a long line of slippery traffic shortcuts for overeager and naive webmasters to long regret.
Nicolas, this is not fear versus facts. This is reality versus hype. Sanity versus scam. I noticed when you picked the places to publicise this scheme you picked on the lightweight webmaster forums (top25web.com, copywritersboard.com, seochat.com, forums.lilengine.com, nettalk.us, customer forum for seoelite) and not on the heavy duty SEO forums (searchenginewatch.com, threadwatch.org, digitalpoint.com, cre8asiteforums.com, highrankings.com).
If this scheme had any real merit, you would be sold out in days in the serious venues. But every time you go near a real SEO forum the holes in your scheme get called out. I guess it happened again.
Hey Nicolas and Eric;
Count me in for the conference call!!! I’m started to get a little disgusted that the CRAP that is being posted to the blogs that you (Nicolas) said would be removed in keeping with your TOS – IS STILL THERE. In your words (from your post here on Feb 21 @ 3:08pm):
“The rules and terms of service are very easy to understand. We have on staff, moderators that go through the sites and delete the posts that are not in keeping with the theme or TOS. Members that abuse the system will be asked to leave. It is very simple. ”
Well – I have reported several examples DIRECTLY TO YOU of posts that were ‘not in keeping with the theme or TOS’ – and they are still there?? Did you ‘ask’ the member to leave, and they refused? It doesn’t seem so simple now…. hmmm.
Are you short staffed (with all the money you spent, I’m sure you have an automated way to delete ALL posts from offending members )?
If you are short staffed – I VOLUNTEER to help removed the spam posts from your sites – to help maintain the quality guidelines THAT I PURCHASED with your package.
Also, why do you send me emails (that are mass emails) requesting me to respond, then you do not reply when I answer with serious concerns?
Please put a foundation under this seeming house of cards….
To Eric;
You said “Suppose it DOES work well for the next six months, and then Google changes their alg and Nick’s service becomes worthless”…
It won’t take a Google ‘alg change’ – just a disgruntled member to report these sites directly to Google. Now, why would a member become disgruntled…? Maybe because the TOS – THEY PAID FOR – are ignored by the operators and thus devalue the purchase the member made?
Eric, please emplore Nicolas to clean up his act – AND ENFORCE THE TOS. Then, there will be NO REASON for Google to penalize any of these sites, and we will all get what we paid for. Or are we already getting that?
Hey guys…. i haven’t had chance to check my blog for a few days and i see that this conversation is still raging 😉
La Vie- as I’ve mentioned before, a bit of healthy skepticism is great. If you don’t like the way the product/service looks, fine. Your opinion has been expressed, likely seen by many, so lets leave it at that. Unless you’ve actully tested it yourself for a reasonable amount of time I don’t think you can really say much more about it…
Paul and Nick- I would suggest please communicate with each other directly… I don’t mind you posting pertinent info here, but this isn’t the SE Trust helpdesk…
Eric, I don’t know why you cut out the link in my post to discussion about searchenginetrust.com on webworkshop.net. For the record, I have nothing to do with webworkshop.net and I know none of the individuals personally. Personally I found the discussion there about searchenginetruust pertinent and relevant. Hyperlinks make the web richer. Still it’s your weblog and you are free to slice and dice as you choose.
As you point out, I am not a member of searchenginetrust, but I have taken the time to sign up for the trial and look carefully at the sample site. I’ve also looked carefully at the PR campaign behind the launch of searchenginetrust. Had searchenginetrust made the grade, I would have signed up for the full service. I did not, for reasons outlined above.
Other experienced SEO’s – Paul Marek for instance – have joined searchenginetrust.com and are not entirely happy with what they’ve seen
I don’t think telling Paul to take his very legitimate concerns about searchenginetrust away from your article recommending SearchEngineTrust.com is fair to your readers. And in any case, Nicolas Messe has not been answering Paul’s email queries. I don’t know where else Paul could turn.
Nicolas Messe should be careful in the future not to bandy about phrases like “basic lack of information” and “uninformed”. As the this post and the post above indicate, I’ve spent a good deal of time fact checking this case. I hope my research results shared here and can save others time tracing the same ground.
I work as an SEO in the real estate and mortgage market so I have quite a bit of experience with building backlinks. If there were a silver bullet for link building, I would be first in line. But to date there isn’t one. And any that have fleetingly appeared have wreaked havoc on their purchasers sites within a few months of deployment.
You would do your readers a world of good if you wrote an article explaining the basics linkbaiting instead of suggesting black hat tricks.
For instance, this whole article about searchenginetrust is a good example of linkbaiting (albeit it somewhat inadvertent). There isn’t a lot of discussion about searchenginetrust and Nicolas Messe on the internet to date. You are now number two for “Nicolas Messe” on Google. For better or worse, whenever anyone decides to write about searchenginetrust, there is a good chance that they will link this post. Over time, you should get some very good high PR links from SEO sites out of the whole escapade.
The above is an example of both controversy and freshness linkbaiting (searchenginetrust is controversial; you were first). Your readers would be well-advised to employ similar techniques in their own link building. Linkbaiting is free, you just to have to use your own noggin and most of the incoming links are permanent.
Liebe und licht.
La Vie- there’s a couple reasons I cut out the link. One, I’d rather keep the conversation here on my blog. Two, I’d seen a couple forums where people were posting the actual URL’s of the paid member websites. Although non-members can’t post links on them, I don’t think it’s right to intentionally publicize the domains since people are paying a lot of money to post their links on those sites and I wouldn’t want to jeopardize those sites by drawing negative publicity to them.
I don’t mind Paul and others posting their results here on the blog. But I don’t think it’s the best place for people to try to communicate with Nick, or with anyone for that matter. Maybe Nick was slow to respond, but he probably checks his email more often then he checks my blog comments…and of course he’s not obligated to even read my blog.
As for link baiting… hmmm, that’s not a bad idea. As you mentioned, it was inadvertant on my part, but it may be a topic worth writing more about some time.
Hi Eric,
This is great information, I am going to look deeper into it later today. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Wow, Iam new to this internet blogging. I started a website and have been read some of Eric’s tips. I never thought I would see such powerful statements. This sounds like teams I have been on. I learned allot today. I am not sure I will invest my money till I research these sites more.
I really came on board today because my website published 01/20/07 it has had 134 views in Jan.; 222 in Feb.; 60 in Mar. so far and not one purchase. I think my target is off. I stopped Google adwords and went with a private advertiser. I was hoping to find some miracle answer to targeted traffic here; however, I learned that there is no perfect targeting of traffic rule, from what you are saying. You all have similar problems I have in many cases.
Live and learn! I have been researching this internet business thing for years and jumped both feet in this last November. I make more in my yard sales, than online. The internet web publisher, merchant account, store front, and the advertising has cost me to take a second job. Don’t get me wrong I am not giving up. I will make money on the net sooner or later. One way or another, but honestly, through trust, and hard work, if not critical thinking.
I do think that the comments on this blog should point out facts, not so much gut, I personally want to hear the facts not the demeaning opinions to be honest with you. I think most of the blog is great conversation to read about. I did not know about SES or PR? etc.
One last thing, “Just for the fun if it, make your words sound like music to others ears”. Ok! That was my therapy for the day.
I gave Searchenginetrust.com a try and wished I never had, they do offer a pretty good selection of blogs to post on but most of them are full of unrelated postings and your post will be pushed off the first page very quickly and the pr is only good on the first page, but the worst part of all is the total lack of response from them, if you have any questions or something is not working correctly with your login and you start a service ticket or send them an email your wasting your time because they do not respond!. About the only real use of the service is to get a new site indexed quickly but I see no long term benefit from the service and lots of hassle with customer service so save yourself from the waste of time and money and look elsewhere for links.
I am an ex member (as of 5 minutes ago) of Search Engine Trust.
I very much wish that I had read the debate on this site first before joining but I want to thank Eric for creating the space here for the argument to take its course.
I thought my experience would be worth adding to the debate for anyone who has still to make up their mind. I joined very recently and was slow to put up any posts on the WP blogs offered by SET. I was unhappy about the sites I looked at and some of the posts I saw. The opportunities for posting to the sites are limited for someone like me who covers one main niche area and I was able to choose only from 5 available sites – only two of which looked as if the content was relevant.
I made four brief posts in two sites a few days ago and I began to have a bad feeling about the company I was keeping. Many of the posts were rudimentary, written in very poor English and off-topic for the category in some cases eg a mortgage link in a health and beauty blog. Some of the posts were clearly spammy. This evening I logged in to find another site in my category – under the high PR list – and the latest post on the front page was total gibberish.
Traffic for my site has been rapidly rising as I have been posting original content most days. In one of the subdomains I have had a five fold rise in traffic this month largely from good results with SE’s and social bookmarking. Traffic was not so much the issue for me – my aim with SET was to establish links quickly – something I hadn’t given enough time to. Since putting up the links on the SET sites I have noticed a sudden drop in traffic which has continued over the last few days. Whether this is linked in any way I can’t say but it deepened my anxiety about SET.
I found Eric’s site through a simple search for “Search Engine Trust membership site reviews” and what I read here confirmed all my worst fears. I have now logged into the SET sites and deleted the posts I made and I’ve written to Nicolas Messe to cancel my subscription and ask for a total refund since I have had no value (and possibly some harm) from the $157 I paid so far.
In future I’ll go back to focusing on creating sustainable links through excellent content and legitimate linking strategies. I suppose you could say I’m choosing the “hard” route to link building. But like a previous comment said – there really isn’t a soft option – there very rarely is with anything worthwhile and lasting.
Thanks to everyone who commented here – it’s been very helpful and I’m thankful that I’m out without getting in too deep!
Update – I thought it only fair to let you know that I had an email this morning from Nicolas confirming that he would give a full refund of my subscription to SET.
I gave him further background about my decision since he felt that I had been listening to “forum gossip” and should have reported the infringements I found. The last point is right but I found a lot of infringements to the TOS without really looking and this made me doubt the activities of the “moderators” or whether they existed at all. I don’t consider the debate here forum gossip and only came here after feeling very uneasy about SET so the first point is definitely not accepted.
Anyway – I consider his overall response fair in the circumstances and just wanted to say so here.
howdy. I’m a searchenginetrust.com member… I have been for about a week now… in fact I think I just went past the deadline for the refund..
Anyway – I’m not really sure how I feel about it yet. Some of the things said here scare the hell out of me… But I also find that people often over react to things.
I have seen some examples of not only my links being counted but of blog posts I’ve made ranking themselves… which is pretty cool. If used in a very long tail way – could be an additional way of getting some traffic along with the link.
I’m worried about Google and the other search engines eventually discounting all of the links… definitely worried about that. I’m worried that Google will be able to sniff out the fact that, for example, I have the same login name for all of the blogs?
Some people have mentioned sites being de-indexed due to something like this. I don’t see how that’s possible since these are just incoming links and you don’t have to link out the sites. It seems the worst thing that could happen is the links being discounted, otherwise anyone could sign up and get all of their competitors de-indexed.
I should also add that I’m not overly impressed with the customer support so far. Nick never responds to my emails. I also find that there are too many really spammy posts. I think there has to be a bit more policing going on to keep the sites from being hurt long term.
Someone else mentioned that its a good thing that the higher PR sites are saved for people who stay past the first month and I can definitely see the logic in that. Perhaps it’s then that the real value of the service will be shown.
Just like weirdbiz, I signed up for this service, but requested (and got) a refund on the 6th day of the 7-day trial period.
As weirdbiz stated, there were so many unrelated posts posted on specific-topic blog pages. For instance, one user posted about Corvette parts being for sale on every single blog I had access to. The rules of SearchEngineTrust clearly stated that you had to limit your posts to 200 words (I saw this violated a few times) and only post relevant to the blog topic. So, in other words, Corvette parts being for sale had no business being on the food and education blogs that I visited for instance, but the user in question clearly either didn’t read the guidelines, or, more probably, didn’t give a damn and ruined it for everyone. I only use him as one example. Probably 40+% of all posts on the blogs were off-topic or were mindless dribble with a hyperlink thrown in.
I emailed the powers-that-be probably about 6 times over my trial with numerous URL’s pointing to various numbers of these posts and asking that something be done. I assumed something WOULD be done, since Nicolas had stated that the forums are moderated and that anyone caught breaking the rules would be banned and lose all their money. Alas, not ONE of my concerned emails met with any response from the company over 6 days, and, as far as I could tell, the spam posts remained on the blogs. The company stated that they don’t require posts to be approved so that users don’t have to ‘wait’ for their links to be published, but therein lies the whole problem. If the blogs were moderated as they claimed (and I saw no evidence of this whatsoever) and posts had to be approved first, that would most likely solve this whole mess and weed out the riff-raff. Alas though, my email to Nicolas stating as such went unanswered as well.
I can’t complain though as I did receive a refund of my $157, but I was not impressed by the lack of customer service that I experienced. You’d be surprised by what just a simple response to an email can do for a customer, just to show you’re listening and paying attention. But even my request for a refund went unanswered without an email from Search Engine Trust, and, instead, I only found out about my refund via an email from Paypal.
Perhaps, as weirdbiz said, the real value kicks with the higher value sites, but what I saw initially made me want no part of parting with my $157 to find out.
hm… tonight i just checked and a bunch of the sites have all dissapeared completely… many of the new sites seem to be PR 0 and some are even not indexed. i must say… i have seen some of the links showing up incoming… but i’m definitely getting concerned. why are so many of the sites all going down at once? their must be a connection between them to all go down at once (shared hosting? thus same IP?)
those sites are all back online… i thought i should mention that. although i’ve still received no customer support from SET of any kind. i’m wary but sticking with it for now…
Service is now $247 / month ?? That’s quite pricey or is it to regulate membership?
I hope I can provide a small reality check here. First of all, as an actual subscriber (at the $247 a month – eek!) my first experience was not good. Almost as soon as I joined they moved a whole load of the blogs and my signin details got lost in the process. A day and a half later, and frequent two waying through the helpdesk, and the hiccup was solved. The point being there was a problem, there was two way communication, and the problem was sorted.
Second, I’ve started on the health blogs and no, there aren’t any spam posts, the posts do look genuine and each of the blogs has a different theme (the only common point being they’re all WordPress).
Third, the links came up in my cPanel AWStats very quickly.
Fourth, what the heck is the difference between these blogs and most article sites now? There’s been a lot of comment about ‘white hat’ article marketing but just take a look at most ArticleMarketer fed sites for instance – now that’s article spam if ever there was.
It’s too early to say whether I’ll be sticking with this yet – only the results will tell. Personally, I think the StomperNet approach of using ‘real’ web sites to exchange ‘real’ articles has the most legs long term, and there would seem to be an opportunity for setting up other webmaster co-operatives to do exactly this. It’s certainly something I’ll be starting on my new site, hopefully at no cost if possible (as there’ll be mutual benefit). Big respect for Andy and Brad, but the regular cost commitment for StomperNet is just outlandish for those getting started generating traffic.
Chris – let me know when you set that up man! That’s a great idea. I’ve stuck with SET and at this point I’m glad I did. Their sites did very well with the recent google update and I’m showing rankings for long tail words very quickly…
Well, the big difference between SET and article directories is the fact that article directories are free (for the most part).
I’m all for finding new link sources, but if I’m going to spend money on something like this, I’ll head over to payperpost and place a post that gives me 50 links at $5/post or 25 at $10/post. You don’t create the content, you don’t worry about google discovering the network, you get different IP addresses, and you can specifify how you want the post laid out….e.g. Pagerank, type of blog, positive/negative, etc.
Not only that, the links are permanent so you can skip a month or do it every other month. Seems like a way better option to me.