February 2009

Link Builder's Pro "Service"

I know a lot of you out there may eventually decide to hire a link builder, so I want to tell you a bit about my experience with Link Builders Pro.

In the 4th quarter of last year, I hired Link Builders Pro to develop links for a website I promote. At the time, they were offering essentially the same package as they still offer, albeit for $1800 instead of their new price of $2500. (Why they raised the price I’ll never know).

It is important to note a few things about Link Builder’s Pro before paying them anything- as it is tricky to get concrete expectations after you have paid. Please keep in mind that this is just my experience, and yours may differ.

• Link Builders Pro uses blog farms. An example of which is here: (http://www.generaldir.net/business_and_economy/law/). Sadly, this is actually a “good” example of their offerings. Other examples from their final link report are here:

http://www.patonchessstore.com/business_and_economy/law/

http://www.uighuralp.com/business_and_economy/law/

http://www.051163.com/business_and_economy/law/

http://www.faddy.info/business_and_economy/law/

• Link Builders Pro uses low-quality blogs without established Pagerank. Of the initial meager bump in links the site saw, only a handful actually had even a pagerank of one. Yes, less than 1% of the pages with links pointed at us had any pagerank whatsoever. OK, maybe the homepage of the website had a pagerank of 1 (on rare occasions), but that certainly doesn’t mean the page you are linked from has any link value at all. These links pass almost no value at all. They may even hurt you in the long run.
• Link Builders Pro doesn’t meet deadlines. In our case, they ran almost double the estimated 6 weeks.
  

  The closest thing to a "Statement of Work" we received.

• Link Builders Pro does not deliver what they claim. As my screenshot attached shows, Link Builders Pro claims to deliver “thousands of links from hundreds of websites with established PR [Pagerank].” They simply do not even come close. If you ask them why not, they’ll tell you to wait 90 days. Well, after 90 days there are even less links in the Yahoo Site Explorer then were there when I started the dispute. Currently, three months after ending our contract with Link Builders Pro, there are less than 400 links (of almost negligable value) that were developed by Link Builders Pro. That isn’t thousands, and I would be surprised if even one of the links was on a page with a PR of one or greater.
• Link Builders Pro will not work to your satisfaction. I’ve made all of these statement to Greg at linkbuilders pro (the owner) and he couldn’t offer any sort of resolution. His main argument was that to get what we wanted (we eventually asked to receive even the most modest interpretation of his website’s claims… and we never received it) would cost much more than the $1800 we paid. I haven’t heard such an asinine argument since the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. (God I love that show.) So if you want to get what you paid for, you are going to have to pay a lot more than you paid. Does this sound like a Zen Koan to anyone else?

I could go on for days and days explaining why you shouldn’t use Link Builders Pro, but I think we’ve covered the basics. Why would you pay $2500 (the cost of a nice vacation for you and your family) for what in my experience turned out to have absolutely no effect on a website’s rankings? It doesn’t seem prudent to me.

My suggestion to anyone considering a linkbuilding firm would be:

1. Know what you are buying. Read up on Linkbuilding from Eric Ward, the master of Linkbuilding, so you can spot a fake.
2. Get promises in writing.
3. Understand SEO , or hire an SEO, so you can call them on their bullshit.

I hope this is helpful to you guys. And if Greg or anyone at Link Builders Pro comes across this site, please feel free to contact me with your response and I will happily post it right here.

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