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.

You like that stupid title? Yeah, I know you do!

Today I’m going to talk about blog networks. To be more specific, I’m going to talk about services offered that include multiple blog posts over a network of blogs all owned by the same person/company, with the aim of acquiring quality, in-content links from various web properties. As with pretty much all SEO services, there is plenty of garbage to separate from the gold. I’m going to talk about some qualifying factors I look for before choosing to use or not to use (or continue to use) a blog network service.

Footprints
If you’re buying 100 blog posts, the whole dang point is to make it appear to Google as if 100 different sites decided your site was worth mentioning. I cannot say with certainty exactly what factors are analyzed by Google in order to determine the uniqueness of any given group of sites. Anyone who tells you with certainty is either a liar or in breach of their NDA with Google and soon to lose their employment. However, we can use logic to determine what criteria should be met to ensure that the posts look unique in the eyes of Googlezilla:

• •Unique IPs – Most all services offer blog posts on sites hosted on unique C-class IPs (if they want to compete)
• •Unique Themes – Does using a small handful of themes over multiple sites necessarily make a blog network worthless? I’m my opinion, no. But I’m definitely willing to spend more money on a network that uses lots of unique themes.
• •Unique Content – Whether the articles are all hand-written (super expensive) or they are spun, you obviously want the articles to be unique.
• •Anchor Text/URL Diversity – This is very important to me. Not all blog network services offer a lot of flexibility in spinning your anchor text or URLs. In some cases you might not want to spin your URL, because you are only targeting one particular page. I understand that, but you should still be spinning your anchor text to some extent to make your links appear more natural.
• •TLD Diversity – Not a make or break quality, but I’m not willing to spend as much on a network of blog posts that are all on .info domains.

Shit That Pisses Me Off About Crappy Blog Networks
Obviously the goal of anyone who creates a blog network is to make money. That is all fine and dandy. The trouble comes about when sharp corners are cut to make the network more profitable. Here are some red flags that the blog network you are working with/considering working with is a steaming pile of poo:

• •Minimal Inbound Links – How hard is it to at least drip feed some links to your blogs so that those of us paying for posts on them might actually get a tasty drop of link juice out of them?
• •Pray for Indexing – Related to the above gripe, there are many crappy blog networks that simply do not get crawled because Google doesn’t give a flying fig about them. Why? AINT GOT NO LINKZ. Or worse yet, the domain was blacklisted a long time ago.
• •HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DOG AND MAKE HIM LOSE WEIGHT AND GROW HIS PENIS WITH MONEY MADE FROM FOREX INVESTING – Okay, if the network has a ton of posts not even remotely relevant to each other or the title of the site, I might still use it. But a niche specific network or a big network that gives you the flexibility to decide what category of sites you want your content on is worth infinitely more. Nobody wants their well written article posted right above some gibberish post about dick pills.

I have used a lot of different networks, this is true. Definitely more bad than good. To share all of the good ones would be shooting myself in the foot, but I will mention one that I used just recently that I’m quite satisfied with, offered by LinkMason. Visit the link for the details.

So, basically I got this far in the post, then got distracted by YouTube videos about that homeless guy with a radio announcer voice, and then got involved in a heated email thread with some friends, and now I’ve completely forgotten where I was going with this post (if anywhere), so I guess I’ll just stop now.

Happy New Year!