Authority Link Network Review
Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps not. Maybe you’ve heard people in the SEO community refer to “ALN” and had no idea what they were talking about. Well, in this post, I’m going to shed a bit of light and offer my thoughts on this particular “link network” after having tinkered with it.
Some time ago, I blogged about the pros and cons of blog networks, and I went into some detail about blog networks in general. Authority Link Network (aka “ALN”) is basically a blog network, but it is unlike any other one I’ve ever used. The main thing that sets ALN apart from the other ones I’ve tried in the past is that along with the paid option you would expect, there is also a “free” option.
Yes, the quotation marks around the word “free” imply that there is a catch. However, it’s a pretty dang neat catch. If you want to get access to ALN without paying, you simply have to add a blog or two of your own to the network. This pretty brilliant system makes it so that fresh, quality blogs are constantly being added to the network. Naturally, there are some guidelines for sites that are submitted to be accepted.
Criteria
- You can only submit sites that are built on the WordPress CMS, version 2.6 or newer. If you are running older versions than 2.6, finding a good blog network is probably the least of your problems.
- The “Hello World” default WordPress post must be removed. No brainer.
- The default blogroll must also be removed. Sorry, I know you like linking to WordPress Planet whenever possible.
- XML-RPC must be enabled. If you don’t know what this is, it doesn’t matter. Just go to the “Writing” section under the “Settings” tab in your WordPress backend area and click the box to enable it.
- The blog can’t exist in a subdomain or a subdirectory. It needs to be on the root of the site.
- You must use any theme OTHER than the default WordPress theme on the site. Don’t be lazy.
- Have multiple categories (every post shouldn’t be posted under “uncategorized”).
- The site MUST be PR1 or higher. PR0 sites are not accepted. Also, if you are submitting a site with a TLD other than any of the following: .com .net .org .info .co .ca .me .us .biz .co.uk .com.au .net.au .ws and .t, it will basically count as only half of a regular submission.
If it seems like they are a bit picky, that’s because they are. The strict guidelines help ensure that the network isn’t clogged up with a bunch of junk sites. There are some other obvious rules (you can’t remove articles/links that have been posted to your sites) and a few not-so obvious rules. You’ll have to read through their FAQ for detailed info.
If you don’t want to bother with adding your own sites to the network, there is always the paid option. The cheapest plan (called the “Basic” plan) currently costs $14.95/mo. Considering the quality of the sites on this network versus most of the networks I’ve seen/used, I think that’s an extremely reasonable price.
Click here to get started with ALN.
Sounds like a very interesting service. How effective have you found it with your sites?
Well, I’ve only really been using it for about a month now. I have seen some improvements (1-2 spots for sites ranking first page), but it’s difficult to attribute that to one particular SEO effort, since I’ve been hitting those particular sites pretty hard with links.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to get a dedicated post with 0 other OBLs on a PR4 domain. Of course not all the blogs in the system are of that caliber, but the majority of the ones I’ve checked have been pretty nice. And the pool of blogs has been growing like crazy as more people are taking advantage of this unique system.
One thing I wish they would change though would be making it so that blogs submitted to the network need to have a custom permalink structure. It seems like half of the posts I get have URLs with the default WordPress permalink structure (/?p=123). Although, it may be good for diversity…
Thanks for the reply! I signed up a couple weeks ago, and have seen some movement on the keywords I targeted.
How would you rate this service in terms of riskiness? As in, how risky do you think it is pointing these links directly to your money site vs an intermediary?
Very Nice, I’m checking it out.
I’m curious tho…
off topic
What do you use for bookmarking?
BMD?, sicksubmitter?, socialadr?, something better?
Interested to hear your thoughts.
@Takeshi The riskiness is debatable, but I haven’t had any problems yet. It’s not like it creates thousands and thousands of links. Just be sure to vary your anchor text a bit. Oh and I’ve been pointing them at money sites, but they already have pretty robust backlink profiles.
@Tegs For bookmarking I either use Amit’s services (Wickedfire service provider, username Red_Virus) or Drip Feed Blasts.
This sounds like a good idea. There would have to be some sort of quality control to ensure the blog content is good quality.
This is a great network!
Recently i found another one called Blog Authority Network.
http://www.blogauthoritynetwork.net
They have bery nice features, and they network is growing fast.
Thank you for this interesting post !
Sounds like exactly the sort of service that Google are currently in the process of deindexing en masse. I’d steer well clear of anything like this
It’s true, many link networks have been hit pretty hard. The reason I’m sticking with ALN is that they have been very quick in making adjustments to their service to keep it relevant. A bunch of changes have been made to the system…if I find the time maybe I’ll blog about “ALN 2.0″ as well.