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My Linkvana Review

After several months of usage, I’m getting a good feel for how Linkvana is working out for me. Overall, I’m really impressed with what it can do, this is my official Linkvana review.

I’ve written some preliminary stuff about my usage of Linkvana, but I haven’t written my official review of this system yet. Until now. I’ll try to keep from getting too long-winded, so here it goes.

The Pricing

First of all, let’s go over the pricing. I want to cover this first because this is something that I really focused in on when I was new to the system. Even though they offer a 5 day trial, the regular monthly price of $147/mo seems like a lot to absorb.

It’s worth every penny.

I must say this though: It’s worth it to compare the amount of time and money you may have to spend to manually build links in relation to the price of what Linkvana will cost you.

For me, it was a no-brainer, using a service like this saves me so much time that I can focus more on creating good content for my sites.

If you are managing and working on SEO for at least a few sites or more, the monthly fee will probably be a minimal cost versus how much benefit you can get from the system. If you have one good money making site that needs SEO help, the cost will more than likely be justified in that situation as well.

Me, personally, I like to spend time building new sites, adding content to my sites and overall staying focused on improving the sites themselves as much as possible. Using Linkvana to help with SEO related link building allows me to focus on all that good stuff quite a bit more, so it’s very much worth the cost to me. It allows me to do what I like to do and spend a lot of my own time where my time is best spent. I can still say this after several months of usage.

How Linkvana Works

It is very important to understand exactly how Linkvana works before you start using it, to keep yourself from having any surprises based on your expectations.

Basically it works like this:

• You write (or outsource) 100 word “posts”, each post needs to be original content
• These posts can contain one link with a keyword as the anchor text, pointing to your site or pages
• The posts are distributed to their network of blogs, with each post ending up on a different site.

The end result:

• You will have many different sites, on many different IP addresses, pointing back to your sites and pages with original content and with links using your keywords as anchor text.

This is as powerful as it sounds.

About the posts:

• Each post you submit to the system needs to be unique, no spun or reused content is allowed.

This point really needs to be stressed. Even when I first signed up, for some reason I thought I would write one post and that one post would be distributed to multiple sites. That is not the case.

For each link you want to build, you will need to write a completely unique 100 word post.

This might sound like a lot of work, but it isn’t, and the logic behind this makes the time spent writing unique content worth it. The idea is that each post is unique content, so you won’t run into duplicate or spam content issues and the integrity of their site network is maintained.

Writing the Posts

After you sign up for Linkvana, you can immediately create projects and start submitting posts to build links.

I prefer to write posts myself, mainly because I don’t feel like absorbing the expense of outsourcing 100 word posts at $2 each.

You can outsource posts for $2 each in the Linkvana interface, which is a really handy feature. That option is always available if you need it or if it becomes cost effective for you in the scope of your campaigns.

I find that it takes me about 5 minutes or less on average to write a post, I can crank out lots of posts if I sit down for a couple hours and just type.

I like to spend about one half day every month writing posts for each project, then queue them up and distribute them over the course of a month, on auto-pilot.

What it comes down to is that I just have to spend a couple days each month writing posts and doing keyword research, and Linkvana does the rest of the work.

Then, with all the other days in the month, I can spend time building up and adding content to the sites themselves. Which is what I’d rather be doing anyways.

My opinion – don’t let the whole “unique content for each post” idea deter you from using Linkvana. This type of approach is better for your link building efforts than using duplicate or spun content, and it doesn’t take long to write those short posts anyways. And even if you are truly lazy, outsourcing the posts is just a couple clicks away in the Linkvana interface.

Using The Interface

[sensitive info has been blacked out, to protect the innocent, or whatever they say on those lawyer/cop shows]

Linkvana’s user interface is pretty straightforward, there aren’t too many things to distract you from what you really should be doing in there.

The Main Projects Page

When you first log in, you are brought to your list of projects. This is basically a list of each project you have set up within Linkvana.

Each “project” is centered on a single domain, and you can only create one project per domain. For this reason, you will probably end up like me and basically have one project set up for each of your sites.

On this page, you get a quick rundown of the status of each project. For each project, you can see at a glance:

• How many posts are currently queued
• How many posts have been sent
• How many articles are currently queued
• How many articles have been sent
• How many bookmark packages are in process
• How many bookmark packages are complete

Don’t worry, I’ll cover the articles and bookmarks later in this review if you are wondering what those are.

You can choose to archive any projects that you have created, which removes them from this opening Projects screen. This way, you only need to look at projects that you have currently active.

The Project Summary Page

Each project has a project summary page. This is where you enter the domain name for the project (your web site url), choose a category for your posts to be organized under, and set the rate at which posts will be distributed to the network.

For each project, you can choose to distribute posts (and articles) to the network at the following rates:

• Every 3rd day
• Every other day
• 1 per day
• 1 per week
• 1-3 per day
• 2-5 per day
• Humanize (this rotates between all the options above)

I typically choose “every other day”, “one per day” or “1-3 per day”.

You will also notice that on this Summary page there are also some other buttons at the top. You can use those options to do the following for each project:

• Manage your list of links/keywords
• Outsource posts
• Write/manage posts
• Write/manage articles
• Outsource bookmarking

Let’s get to the link/keyword management next, as this is a really nice feature.

The Links Page

Each project has a section where you can store a list of urls (your pages) and the keywords that you want to use as anchor text when linking to those pages. At first I thought this was kind of a weird way to set it up, but after using the system now, I understand why they did this.

You can basically create a list of links as such:

http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage1.php|keyword anchor text
http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage2.php|different keyword

You can add as many url/keyword combinations as you need into this list.

Then, when you are writing posts (which we will cover next), you simply can select the keyword from the list and insert it into the post, automatically creating the anchor text link for for you.

I like this for the following reasons:

• This prevents accidentally typing urls incorrectly while creating posts
• This makes it easy to see a quick list of target keywords while writing posts
• This makes is easy to outsource posts, you simply need to specify quantity for each keyword/link combo when placing orders

So, basically, having this separate list of links/keywords is key to making other parts of the system efficient.

The Posts Page

After you have entered your link/keyword combinations, you are ready to start writing posts.

To do so, you simply click on the “Posts” button when viewing the project summary. This brings you to a list of all the posts that are either saved or queued for the project.

Pretty nice huh? You can see the date that each post was submitted to the network, and you can also see the posts that are still queued.

To add a new post, you will click on the “Add New” button, which brings you to the “add post” page.

The “Add Post” Page

Adding posts is pretty straightforward. You simply need to enter a title, enter the content and insert a link.

See the “Link:” option on the bottom left?

That is the list of your keywords that you entered along with urls in the Links section for the project. You simply select one of your keywords from the select box and click the “Add” button, which automatically inserts the keyword as a link to the url you specified.

Remember when I mentioned that it’s easy to crank out 100 word posts at a high rate of speed if you write your own content? The link feature is a big reason why.

That simple select box with a list of all your project keywords makes it easy to get a quick view of the keywords you need to target, and then you can also insert the keyword as an active link with a single click. This makes writing posts kind of mindless and very efficient once you get on a roll.

You can save posts if you need to further edit, or you can send them to the queue right after typing.

Once you write a few posts, you will probably find that you rarely need to save them and most of the time will write and send to the queue immediately. And rinse and repeat.

The Dashboard Page

The dashboard in Linkvana isn’t exactly the first screen you see when you log in, which is what I typically consider a “dashboard” to be. In this case it’s more of an optional overview of link building stats.

On the dashboard you get to see three specific things:

1. The total number of posts you have submitted, and then how many of those are live or queued
2. The total number of live posts for each keyword
3. Your number of live posts per project, and total number of live posts, compared to all other Linkvana users as an average over the last 30 days (not pictured above). This can be a bit of a motivator as it shows you how you compare to other Linkvana users over the last month in terms of how many posts you are generating for your projects.

I typically use the dashboard to see the total number of live posts for a keyword.

What Are Articles?

Ok, so at this point I’ve mentioned the articles a few times. Time to explain what they are.

Articles are basically handled the same way as posts. Except articles are longer and can contain more links.

Each article needs to be at least 250 words, rather than the 100 word minimum for a post. And each article can contain up to 3 links.

Think of it as a beefier version of the post. This is a great way to mix in some diversification in content for your campaign. Also, Linkvana states that articles are put into more category-specific blogs, meaning that the overall content of the sites that articles are sent to is related to a single category. They have completely different sites on their network for the articles.

Articles can also be submitted directly to Ezine Articles and GoArticles through the Linkvana, which is a nice perk, giving you some extra options.

What Are Bookmarks?

You will have also noticed that I mentioned bookmarks, which is something that was added to Linkvana after I first subscribed.

Bookmarks are pretty neat. You need to purchase credits to use the service, but you can basically select from the following packages:

• Twenty five bookmarks for $16.
• Fifty bookmarks for $26
• One hundred bookmarks for $40

When you order bookmarks, you can enter three different anchor text variations, three different descriptions, a list of keywords, and then submit. Then the Linkvana staff (or whoever handles the bookmarking) will submit your bookmarks to various bookmarking sites using various bookmarking accounts.

I was reluctant to try the bookmarking feature at first, mainly because it costs extra. However, when I did decide to try it I was surprised at the results I got for some of my target keywords simply from one or two bookmarking runs. It was worth it.

If you don’t have time or resources to handle social bookmarking for your link building campaigns, this can be a great outsourcing option, and it’s super quick and easy to place a bookmarking order.

I also like this because it gives additional opportunity to diversify the types of links you are building, but it’s still contained within the Linkvana interface for easy access and management along with the other features they offer.

Customer Support

Support is always a big thing for any system of this nature. You may run into issues or have questions from time to time, as with any system.

Whenever I’ve had to contact support, they have responded promptly and they are very courteous. This has been true since the day I signed up.

Also, there is a very extensive FAQ section available to all users of Linkvana. And I’m not kidding when I say extensive. You can pretty much get any question answered by reading the FAQ.

In fact, they recommend that you read the FAQ after registering, and so do I. You will learn about all kinds of neat little things by taking a single read through the FAQ. They don’t just cover the technical aspects of the system in the FAQ, they also cover some strategic recommendations, so it’s well worth the read.

And even though it’s a very extensive FAQ, it really doesn’t take that long to read through it as it is very concise and to the point.

What Type of Results Have I Seen From Linkvana?

This is really the key question right?

I’ve extensively covered the user interface and how it all works, but what are my results from using this system?

I’ll do the best I can to describe results without giving up the details of the campaigns. I do need to protect them afterall.

Case #1:

Trying to target a very competitive 2 word phrase.

The 1st page of results in Google is top-to-bottom filled with sites that have at least PR4 and are at least 5 years old each, some are 10 years old or more. There are no weak sites ranking on the first page for this keyword.

I came in with a site that is only 3 years old and had minimal links built to it. I wasn’t even in the top 200 for the target keyword six months ago.

6 months ago I started building links to this domain with Linkvana and really nothing else besides some random natural links that the site garnered. I targeted the home page with the main 2 word target keyword and some variations of that keyword. I also started building links to the inner pages of the site.

Over the period of six months, I only built about 100 links with Linkvana to this site, with maybe half of those going to the home page with the main keywords (and it’s few variations) as anchor text.

The site is now on the first page of Google for the target 2 word phrase, at position 5, and it’s not wavering. In fact, as I continue to build links with Linkvana at only a rate of 1 every other day I continue to climb towards the number one spot.

This particular site is also used to promote products through an affiliate program that are directly related to the content of the site. The affiliate program is through a fairly large e-commerce store in this product niche. I’m now out-ranking the store that I’m an affiliate of, for the very competitive 2 word phrase that is the most generalized term that describes the products sold on their site (and promoted through mine).

I didn’t think was even going to be possible a few months ago, I’m totally blown away by these results.

Case #2:

An 8 month old site with product reviews.

I’m using Linkvana to get products reviews to rank on Google for 2 and 3 word keywords that directly describe the products. Through keyword research, I have determined that these keywords are fairly competitive, once again with heavy hitting sites on the first page of Google, such as Amazon and other large e-commerce outlets.

For each review I write, I’ve found that I can build about 20-30 links using Linkvana, with maybe 5 varying anchor texts (the target keywords and variations) and get on spot number 5 or above in about a month. This is not bad at all, and makes it easy to get a page ranked in the index for the keywords I want it to rank for, get some traffic to it, and test how well it converts. All without PPC costs.

It takes a little longer to test this way, in comparison to using PPC, but with a little more patience I’m saving myself a ton of PPC costs that I used to spend to test pages that promote physical products.

And when a page does work, and does convert from the front page of Google, I’m already there and can continue to build links to solidify the search ranking consistency and push to the top spots.

Using Linkvana in Combination With Good Keyword Research

This is where I find Linkvana to be most powerful.

If you target keywords with weak competition, you will blast your way onto the first page of results quite quickly. By quickly I mean within weeks, not necessarily days, however I have been able to pull that off in a few instances as well.

Get yourself some techniques or software (Market Samurai is pretty nice for this) to help find keywords that don’t have very tough competition on the first page of Google.

Tough competition would be sites with huge link profiles, lots of PR, and lots of good domain age. If these types of sites dominate the entire first page of results, you will have to work harder to get in the mix.

However, if the first page of results doesn’t contain these types of authority sites, it’s pretty much “open hunting season on the free range” for somebody armed with Linkvana and knowledge of SEO techniques.

That’s about all I need to say about that.

Thoughts Regarding Link Diversity

I feel that link diversity is very important in SEO, so in that regard I would suggest to people to not solely rely on a system such as Linkvana.

However, I have tested Linkvana on a site, using Linkvana as the ONLY method of link building. The site got indexed fast, started to climb through the SERPs, and is still ranking quite well, even though I stopped building links a couple months ago. With maybe 30 links to this test site, from only Linkvana, it’s getting 30 unique visits a day and is holding it’s position for the keywords I targeted. Not too bad for very little work compared to other sites I’ve got out there.

I feel that this is an example of Linkvana being used by itself, effectively.

That specific example makes me feel comfortable that Linkvana can be used as a sole link building tool effectively.

However, I would suggest mixing in other link building techniques for full effect. You can rely on Linkvana to carry the main load in regards to link building if you are strapped for time, and then mix in other methods when possible.

Here’s how I like to use Linkvana to carry the main load of link building projects, while mixing in other methods for diversity:

• Use Linkvana to build a healthy and consistent number of keyword links from the blogs on the Linkvana network. Keep posting frequency consistent and vary the anchor text, but do target the keywords you want to rank for with Linkvana. Build links to both the home page and inner pages.
• Use Linkvana to outsource maybe 25-50 bookmarks per month, or as needed, to mix in links from social bookmarking sites (all while not really having to do much work).
• Jump on any opportunity to comment on blogs related to your niche (to leave a link of course), but don’t get spammy. Leave thoughtful comments and contribute in a positive way with your comments. You can be an opportunist here.
• Jump on any opportunity to guest blog on related blogs. Use these articles and links to build your brand by linking to your site and inner pages with your site name. Mix in target keyword links occasionally as well. You can be an opportunist here, too.
• If you are part of any forum communities, link to your site from forums whenever it makes sense, but don’t spam and stay within forum rules.
• Get listed in directories whenever you run across one that might be a good fit for your site. Don’t just try to get into directories for the sake of getting in directories, though. Be opportunistic here as well and make sure you find good directories that have sections specifically related to your niche.

Basically, the idea here is to use Linkvana as the consistent backbone of your link building campaign, and then mix in as many other opportunities as your time allows.

This has worked out very well for me, and keeps me from being bogged down constantly with link building work.

Conclusion

Ok, so according to WordPress I’ve rambled on for at least 3000 words here. That’s okay though since there is a lot of info I wanted to share.

Bottom line:

• Linkvana does work, and it works quite well, for both competitive and non competitive target keywords
• Linkvana will save you a lot of time
• Linkvana requires patience (actually… SEO requires patience as a whole)
• Linkvana has options to help diversify links, with it’s article and bookmark options

If you are interested in Linkvana, I would suggest trying it for 2-3 months.

Do at least one campaign, target just one or two keywords, and get a good chunk of posts out each month (unless you’re feeling more ambitious, which could very well be the case).

I suggest targeting just one or two keywords at first so that you can focus during your trial to see what Linkvana can actually do. Keep the posting consistency even, such as 1 post a day, 1-3 posts a day, or maybe even just 1 post every other day.

You will see results after a couple months, unless you pick uncannily tough keywords for some reason.

Keep in mind that I was very skeptical at first. I almost canceled my subscription after 2 months. But then I started to see the results of my efforts, and the results were good, very good.

If you are interested in trying Linkvana, try the 5 day free trial – or if you don’t need much more convincing, sign up now and get 50 free credits (which can be used to outsource posts or bookmarking).

Good luck to you in your link building efforts!

Related posts:

1. My BuildMyRank Review
2. My Backlinks Genie Review
3. My Market Samurai Review
4. My Bookmarking Demon 5 Review
5. Linxboss Reactions