Michael, on a couple of occasions in this post, you alluded to the fact that word on the street is – once you stop paying for the 10LAD service, the articles and links stay, but results diminish.

This could easily dissuade people from test-driving the service for short (2-3 month) trial periods. Can you surmise what’s behind those rumors?

Excellent blog.

-Matt

People are more likely to click on links if they like what they are reading and any converting traffic is good traffic to me. It’s unfortunate that so many articles I see on article archives are cheap, schlocky, “I’m just here for the link” copy blasts that really offer little value to the reader.

@William Alvarez: As Michael’s pointed out already, most link building networks deploy all-purpose sites, as well they should – from an SEO and link building point of view there’s absolutely no reason to do otherwise. Yes, there’s a prevailing myth amongst Web marketers and even plenty of SEOs that sites should be “focused” on specific topics and that links should only be placed on “relevant” websites – as if the search engines cared about that. Well, they don’t, and anyone who claims otherwise should first come up with proof positive to the contrary before blithely stating as fact what’s mere human-intuitive conjecture. Not holding my breath, though: there’s so many well ranked sites around covering just about every topic under the sun that this bluff is so easily called and trashed, it isn’t even pretty anymore.

In the case of blogs, all published articles get posted in relevant categories which, like it or not, is the established way blogs are structured topically.

As for “lack of pretty”: the whole idea about a defensible link building network is that we DON’T want it to stand out in any particular way: not on the content, not on the design front. It *must* look like an utterly average, common denominator affair in order to convince the engines of being as “organic” as we want it to appear.

Clients should understand that this is for LINK BUILDING, after all, and not for winning a content competition or a design award, and hey: not even for humans reading their articles so much as for the engines to get the link love flowing. Sure, this may appear different to the human eye, but that, I’m afraid, isn’t the point. This said, we’re deploying over a thousand different themes across our network for better variance – if you don’t like any of them for aesthetic reasons, too bad: better set up your own then, I guess.

And yes, we’re one of the very few companies who will actively promote their competitors: because it’s in our clients’ best interest not to put all their eggs in one basket. In link building, you really cannot have enough high quality networks to spread your links across, which is why we wholeheartedly recommend you sign up with Linkvana, Firepow, Backlink Solutions, Article Underground and anywhich other established and well reputed network out there as well.

Of course I’m sorry to learn that you didn’t find favor with our service. And yes again, could be it isn’t of much good for your particular link building campaign. The vast majority of our customers, including quite a few major online marketing agencies, seem to be very happy about it and fluctuation’s minimal. As they say in auto marketing: your mileage may vary. So I do wish you better luck elsewhere.

Subscription networks like 10 Links A Day, LinkVana, and 1WayLinks all share aesthetic drawbacks you’ll find with article distribution services like ezinearticles, Article City, ArticlesBase: they are general purpose repositories with ugly URLs and broad mixes of topics. CNN will never be about one topic, and who in our industry would turn down a link from their site?

As for whether the service works, it seems to work okay to me. I don’t worry about what the blogs look like. I’ve never seen a search engine care about that. And the referral traffic that it passes through to the sites I link to is always a welcome addition.

Am I endorsing the service categorically? No. I don’t think it will help in all contexts. I’ve heard that Ralph himself has advised some of his clients not to rely solely on 10 Links A Day. I know I don’t. But I’m satisfied with the value I receive from the network.

Ultimately, it’s Ralph’s business to promote and manage. I cannot take responsibility for it. We each have to decide for ourselves what we want to do. I’ve read reviews of the other subscription blog services and they are about as mixed as what you’ll find for 10LAD. Some people like them, some people don’t.

We have to keep trying new things in SEO. I hope no one feels like I led them down the wrong path if they used the service on the basis of this article and felt disappointed. The links pass value. They pass traffic. That’s really all I care about. I’ve read enough ugly blogs over the past 9-10 years that aesthetics mean nothing to me.

We have great copywriters on board who create original content for social networks and for article directories for several of our clients, and have gotten good results in a very consistent way.

I do not recommend this service whatsoever. My team describes it as:

” it’s a most disappointing service”
“where each site was composed of article with any topic. There was no regards to keeping each site unique and focused, and the url structure of each was eerily similar”

My $0.02
Please feel free to share my opinion with fantomaster.

Some folks out there (especially in the sports publishing world) have created similar networks/relationships that work extremely well in terms of both SEO-related inbound links and direct traffic referral.

It’s just that these networks are not formalized via a specific website or marketing service. It’s more of a guerilla network.

And of course, the barrier to entry is good content. If you can’t produce that (articles, images, videos, games, etc…) you likely won’t be able get access/exposure.