So, you may have been wondering why I waited a full month to post my BMR results. Unfortunately, right when I had posted part one of this review, Build My Rank had decided to temporarily not allow any new sign-ups until their blog network is improved. Then, to my ultimate astonishment, Google de-indexed all of BMR's sites as of March 19th!! What an incredible shame!! I'm very disappointed.
However, with that news I'll talk a bit as to why blog networks are a bit 'gray-hat' in nature but that you could mimic BMR in a more personal way (just that it will take you much more time and effort) to earn more online. Anyway, let's look first at my results.
I'm not going to put a lot of effort into this post considering BMR's status at this point. But, let's see just how well it worked (you can find descriptions of these sites in the previous post).
Site 1: Seattle Guitar Lessons (final rank: #2 in Google) - as I noted in the last post this site started at #16 as a literal quoted string and #19 as an open search. After only three BMR posts to pageranks of 2 and 5, this site jumped up to #6 quoted and #10 unquoted by November 13th. That was only about three weeks since the start. I only posted three more articles over the full time span. By mid February 2012, Seattle Guitar Lessons was ranked #2 for both open and closed string searches. Great results for only six posts!
Site 2: The Diet Solution Program (final rank: #9 in Google) - as I posted earlier, this was the site I was going to push the limit on with BMR. Starting out at #52 quoted and #57 unquoted, this was my make-or-break site having fallen off over the last two years. I posted about 30 BMR articles over the three month period. By the end of November, this site was up to #29 in Google. By the end of December this site was up to about #15 and I was starting to see affiliate traffic and clicks. At the end of the test period it had busted into the top ten of Google results. Better yet, I made enough affiliate earnings to easily cover the entire test period ($177 of BMR costs) plus some more!! Great results for a site and affiliate product I had given up on.
Site 3: The Agile Marketer (final rank #15 in Google) - probably the toughest site to promote with BMR, I was very, very cautious with my home site so as not to get penalized by Google or over-promote with back-links. Like I had mentioned before, the search term for "How to Make Money Online" is extremely competitive! Starting at #63 quoted and with no results unquoted was a interesting starting point. By January and with only about 15 posts on BMR, this site was at #22 quoted and #32 unquoted in Google. By the end of the test, The Agile Marketer ended up at about #15 both quoted and unquoted in Google. And, to top that, many of my posts rank much higher now. A great result!
Like I mentioned earlier, BMR is a bit gray-hat considering that their blog network didn't classify blogs by topic - they used multiple categories for each blog much like an article site such as Ezinearticles.com or iSnare.com. In my mind that was a mistake on their part. They should have had sites fully devoted to a certain categories such as diet and health, or internet marketing - thus their demise with Google shutting BMR down.
I'm not going to give you a list of other blog network sites - there are a number of them. However, the interesting learning from BMR for me is that posts between 150 and 200 words are just as effective as 500+ word articles for ranking in Google. There's no reason that you couldn't create your own mini blog network for a specific topic - especially if you want to push page rank. It would take some serious effort, but, if you found a group of people willing to join you in creating blogs with short posts in a category, I think it would work.
Otherwise, your best option now is to fall back on article marketing. Perhaps BMR will rise again - we can only hope. They still are allowing email sign-ups in case they ever return.
However, with that news I'll talk a bit as to why blog networks are a bit 'gray-hat' in nature but that you could mimic BMR in a more personal way (just that it will take you much more time and effort) to earn more online. Anyway, let's look first at my results.
Build My Rank Results
I'm not going to put a lot of effort into this post considering BMR's status at this point. But, let's see just how well it worked (you can find descriptions of these sites in the previous post).
Site 1: Seattle Guitar Lessons (final rank: #2 in Google) - as I noted in the last post this site started at #16 as a literal quoted string and #19 as an open search. After only three BMR posts to pageranks of 2 and 5, this site jumped up to #6 quoted and #10 unquoted by November 13th. That was only about three weeks since the start. I only posted three more articles over the full time span. By mid February 2012, Seattle Guitar Lessons was ranked #2 for both open and closed string searches. Great results for only six posts!
Site 2: The Diet Solution Program (final rank: #9 in Google) - as I posted earlier, this was the site I was going to push the limit on with BMR. Starting out at #52 quoted and #57 unquoted, this was my make-or-break site having fallen off over the last two years. I posted about 30 BMR articles over the three month period. By the end of November, this site was up to #29 in Google. By the end of December this site was up to about #15 and I was starting to see affiliate traffic and clicks. At the end of the test period it had busted into the top ten of Google results. Better yet, I made enough affiliate earnings to easily cover the entire test period ($177 of BMR costs) plus some more!! Great results for a site and affiliate product I had given up on.
Site 3: The Agile Marketer (final rank #15 in Google) - probably the toughest site to promote with BMR, I was very, very cautious with my home site so as not to get penalized by Google or over-promote with back-links. Like I had mentioned before, the search term for "How to Make Money Online" is extremely competitive! Starting at #63 quoted and with no results unquoted was a interesting starting point. By January and with only about 15 posts on BMR, this site was at #22 quoted and #32 unquoted in Google. By the end of the test, The Agile Marketer ended up at about #15 both quoted and unquoted in Google. And, to top that, many of my posts rank much higher now. A great result!
Build My Rank Shut Down - Alternatives
Like I mentioned earlier, BMR is a bit gray-hat considering that their blog network didn't classify blogs by topic - they used multiple categories for each blog much like an article site such as Ezinearticles.com or iSnare.com. In my mind that was a mistake on their part. They should have had sites fully devoted to a certain categories such as diet and health, or internet marketing - thus their demise with Google shutting BMR down.
I'm not going to give you a list of other blog network sites - there are a number of them. However, the interesting learning from BMR for me is that posts between 150 and 200 words are just as effective as 500+ word articles for ranking in Google. There's no reason that you couldn't create your own mini blog network for a specific topic - especially if you want to push page rank. It would take some serious effort, but, if you found a group of people willing to join you in creating blogs with short posts in a category, I think it would work.
Otherwise, your best option now is to fall back on article marketing. Perhaps BMR will rise again - we can only hope. They still are allowing email sign-ups in case they ever return.
1 comments:
There are several blogs that I make but they're not really getting views. I'm glad you discussed it here in this post. My Houston SEO specialist friend also helps me advertise my blogs in some ways.
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