If you are a member of SEOSUnite than you have undoubtedly seen the RankWYZ subform.

While I’ve already covered some potential ways to use RankWYZ, I’m actually going to talk a bit about how NOT to use it.

My RankWYZ & Blog Network History

I’ve been using web 2.0 blog network tools for over 4 years. I’m not talking about first generation ‘posters’ like SENuke – but actual network building tools for better quality web 2.0′s.

At first I used Link Farm Evolution. When I was using it the script supported tumblr and WPMU sites. While WPMU sites were ‘typically’ lower quality, you could find a few decent sites – but trust me when I tell you, they were few and far between.

Tumblr was considered a higher quality social network/blogging platform at the time. Even to this day there are some incredibly authoritative blogs hosted on tumblr.

But eventually I wanted to get to more desirable domains, and that meant that I needed something like Link Wheel Bandit. I enjoyed using ‘LWB’ while I was using it, but that was 1.0 – I have no idea how the newly released v2 works.

But by using domains like wordpress.com – I could build some domains with more authority. Of course, actually generating the content for it was a problem. If I had something like Content Foundry back then, life would have been much easier!

But They All Had Unforgivable Problems

Link Farm Evolution support very few types of sites and wasn’t up to the task of penetrating anti-spam mods/plugins effectively. (Don’t know if that’s still true?)

LWB supported better sites, but only 16-20 of them while I was using it. On top of it, I would have to restart the program every 6-10 hours because it would eventually lock up.

The Best Tool Would:

1.  Support A Lot Of Sites
2. Post On Even Well Guarded Sites
3.  Run Well

In Step The 2nd Generation Web 2.0 Tools

Right now there are really just two tools that run large blog networks effectively in my opinion. Those would be RankWYZ and FCS Networker.

I’ll save a comparison of the two tools for another post, but I use RankWYZ personally despite also having FCS Networker.

Things I Like About RankWYZ

1. The User Interface
2. The Excellent Content Generation Abilities
3. The Various Linking Methods (Especially like the author box…)
4. The Account Store

For me, it’s easy to use – the workflow just makes sense as a very “Step 1, Step 2, Step 3… ” process. It can get human readable content from social networks and news sites, or generate non-human readable gibberish text if that’s what you desire.

I’m a huge fan of the authorship box because it allows me to ‘Guest Blog’ on these prebuilt domains just the way that I want to. And I hate creating accounts. If you really want to, they have an account creator – but I like to spend more time doing labor intensive and more profitable tasks.

The Mistake Most Newbies Make

With the ‘ease of use’ of the modern blog network managers, it can be tempting to just constantly ‘blast’ your site with dozens of posts a week from the same blogs.

The Hidden Strength Of Web 2.0 Blog Networks

While you could just blast the hell out of your site (and likely get it slapped in weeks), the better option is to create large domains first – then post once or twice on each blog with a single link back to your site.

Of course, don’t forget to use little white hat tricks where possible, such as co-citation. If you are unfamiliar with co-citation it’s pretty easy to understand.

Co-Citation And Analysis

Basically you want to link out to other authority pages in your niche in the same post that you use to link back to your site. Because they are on the same page, that might indicate that they related. And if there are 9 links to trusted domains – your 1 backlink to your site might also be related as ‘trustworthy.’

Of course, it’s all a theory. But I use it because it’s easy to do and seems to have some value.

There are two truths I’ve found with co-citation.

1. Sites that link out to a lot of authority and niche related pages seem to rank more easily.
2. Sites that get backlinks from pages that also link out to other authority sites seem to rank more easily.

In both examples I same ‘Seem’ because I can’t completely prove it. It’s not as if I built multiple sites, all of the same keywords. I thought about doing just that but ruled it out.

The problem with testing that is the fact that we don’t know exactly how Google evaluates content, if at all beyond basic (Yes/No) functions for the basic algorithm ‘bean counter metrics.’

Of course all algorithm functions essentially boil down to (Yes/No) or a specific score, but for the purposes of this discussion I mean simple metrics such as headings, keyword on page, keyword in title, etc.

What I’m getting at is that content could still play a variable and that negates any test until you have specific knowledge of the current content evaluation process.

But Back To The Point…

You will want to use more common SEO advantages where possible and include a link back to your site very infrequently.

Doing so is prudent because of potential penalty signals. This keeps your inbound link velocity below any potential ‘threshold’ that may or may not trigger an algorithmic penalty or manual review for instance.

In addition, your links will be coming from already established blogs with plenty of indexed content.

But The Surprise Bonus Is There For The Taking

You see, not only can you manufacturer these completely natural looking blogs, but you are also able to go one step further and make them thematically related to your sites.

For instance, with RankWYZ you are able to generate human readable content from a set of given keywords. RankWYZ will then go out and fetch social or news content and ‘curate’ it on your site – complete with a link back to the original source.

While it is duplicate content and you are feeling fidgety about that – you can throw in completely unique ‘gibberish’ posts. But if even that doesn’t make you happy – well there’s an answer there too!

Content Foundry will be releasing a feature shortly that will produce unique, human readable content from scrapped material.

So if you use articles generated that way you can build a blog network of micro niche sites related to your site with completely unique, human readable content.

After they have 50+ posts indexed by Google, start dripping in your links. And I mean DRIPPING!

Just a few links a day will do you and quite frankly – I would suggest even less.

A Word Of Caution

Make sure this is only part of your link building process. There should be PLENTY of other signals and links mixed in.

If you only have a few sites and you really want to go all out – use BuzzBundle. I was shocked at how effective that tool ended up being – but the secret is the type of content you share.

Consider using posts that are really helpful and link to your money pages from them. That way when the user gets to your page, they find something pleasant and helpful and once you build that trust – link them to your ‘offer.’

But whatever you do make sure that you are using a web 2.0 blog network in a mix with many other types of links.

Do Not Make Yourself An Easy Target

If you only link to your site using web 2.0′s you will be an easy target no matter how great those blogs are.

You don’t want to make your backlink profile appear ‘uniform.’

But Wait A Minute

Don’t relate or apply that to self hosted blog networks. I’ve seen many sites rank purely from blog network posts – just not web 2.0 blogs networks.

I’m not a big believer in using just blog networks but even I have to acknowledge that they have worked extremely well.

Got All Of That?

If not, here’s a quick wrap up-

1. Don’t constantly blast your sites from the same blogs.
2. Use basic advantages where possible. Co-citation for example.
3. Use web 2.0 blog network links as a part of a greater mix of links.
4. Drip links to your site as slow and naturally as possible with automation.

Feel free to leave comments or start a thread with questions.

Thanks,

GOY