Forumlinkbuilding.com Review Through The Eyes Of A Link Builder

I recently had a client want me to go ahead and purchase a package through ForumLinkBuilding.com and I will admit I’ve heard of them before, but never paid too much attention. I will warn you I’m not one to bash people but I’d to give you my opinion on why you should not use this service as it’s pretty much spam. I still think Link building with forum signatures can be a viable option if you’re heavily involved within the community, and the forum is related to your niche.

So they offer 3 different packages which include link building on a wide range of forums, niche related or not, it doesn’ matter. The packages also come with some directory submissions and what not…pretty standard. The prices for the packages range from $400-$7000….yes $7000 for apparently 6,000 guaranteed one way links. I first thought there is no way a human is active in the forums contributing in any positive way possible so I set off to see for myself and my client.

They have a client testimonial section which links to actual clients and their domains. This made it real easy for me to analyze the backlink profile of those sites listed, as well the companies main domain. For all the clients there were only a few forum signature links showing up in their profiles, and the posts checked out to what I guessed all along. Sure enough the forum posts that were still active came from bot generated accounts with 1-3 posts, and those posts were always along the lines of “this post has a lot of great information in it” etc etc etc. Not only that but those clients were not ranking anywhere for the keywords they were targeting. No surprise there either.


This was just one of dozens of examples of the forum posting you’re getting and a lot of the accounts I came across were of course banned. The company itself uses its own services to promote their link building packages, a lot of it came from forums but at least they were webmaster forums. That’s fine and legit, they all have services sections. But diving deeper more of the same spam was easily noticable with a quick glance using Link Diagnosis.

Google search results for forum member names used lead me on more discoveries of the same type of spam all over the place. So one of the few things we can get out of this is that if you want to get links out of forum signatures you’re going to have to put some human effort into it, and not be spammy. Needless to say I had to inform my client that going this route would be in poor judgement and be only hurtful in the long run. I do not condone techniques like this but I’ll let the rest of you folks be the judge of that.

More Scammed: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=9299500

  • Mike
    I've been involved is search marketing since 1998 and have always been amused by all the short cuts offered, most don't work. The funniest part is when companies like isellpr.com tell you how great they are and their site is only PR1. ForumLinkBuilding.com is PR0 and even LinkBuildr.com is only PR3. If these supposed experts can't do better than that, they won't do much for you unless you are in an uncompetitive situation. It doesn't make much sense.

  • HappyDude
    Objectively speaking, who's to say this blog wasn't created to damage their per while pitching your services. This is totally biased. You got noting to lose from Forumlinkbuilding.com (who's highest cost package is ~$4K), and if they don't get you results, you do a chargeback on your credit card for the full amount with prined documentation of their guarantees and supporting documentation of the lacking results. SIMPLE. I LOVE it when companies guarantee becasue always hold them to it, and there really isn't any risk. They're (technically) not doing anything wrong (in Google's eyes), so what does it matter. Naturally, many of the posts will be deleted, but ALL of them?! No way.... Mod are WAY too lazy to catch ALL o them, and eventually when they do, Forumlinkbuilding.com will post a replacement in its place. If you own one company, it might be best to get "higher quality" links, but when you own 4, 5, 6+, companies like Forumlinkbuilding.com are god-sent.
  • NotHappyBuddy
    1.They accept paypal payments and after 2 months you can't make a refund.
    2.Just ask them for 100+ forums with their links as an example. You will never receive them.
    Maximum they will send you as an example will be 15 very old links (from 2007) on 7 forums with link to their own website.
    They simply can't show you such example because they can't do it.

    Once again ALL their testimonials have been fabricated!

    They show you some positive testimonials from digitalpoint back from 2007. They used to do forum posting back in 2007
    like about $20 / 500 posts and this is how they received many positive feedbacks for such cheap service. You can't find any
    fresh positive feedbacks because such positive feedbacks don't exist. Or possibly you can find such feedbacks with members that just registered on forum in order to post one positive feedback(obviously fake).
  • I didn't need to blast their services to pitch my services. I'm already a well respected and known member of the SEO community. I'm doing people a service just by warning them here.

    I don't give a $#@! that they do their services, they should just mention its blackhat. I've clearly proven that here. I'm sure having spam links blasted for 4,5,6 sites is great, but like me who deals with fortune 500 companies, this will not do.
  • Thanks for confirming what I suspected. I think the easiest way to see this is a potential scam is looking at the Better Business Bureau logo at the footer for their site with no link....and when I did a search for them on BBB.org, nothing.

  • Guest
    I think that most or possibly all testimonials have been fabricated.

    Please check 43c videos on front page of forumlinkbuilding,com with a guy:
    Jim Spasey, Small business owner :)
    and his website:
    php-mysql-team.com

    According to the whois the domain name (php-mysql-team.com) belongs to:
    ---Mr. Konstantin Shevchenko (the owner of forumlinkbuilding,com) !!!! :)

    http://whois.domaintools.com/php-mysql-team.com

    Konstantin Shevchenko +3.80679032999
    Konstantin Shevchenko
    Vishgorodskaya str., 38, 96
    Kiev,Ukraine,04114
  • Sweetshinemarie
    You are everywhere .... But of course .... hihih
  • Guest
    Some more information about spammers from scam.com:
    http://208.86.2.178/showthread.php?t=128085
  • Yaroslav
    Official Reply from ForumLinkBuilding.com

    Dear Linkbuildr,

    First, I want to thank you for making a review about our service and our company :)

    Of course, I would appreciate if you made a deeper analysis and found out why we succeed for already more than 7 years (since 2003), but I’ll help you with that. I’d like to mention that ForumLinkBuilding.com is not just another company, that builds links using forums. We are very FOCUSED on building links from forums, we do this since 2003, and that’s why we do this better than anyone else.

    Our employees always make all posts manually. If our posts were spammy or poor, they all would be removed and our company would simply bankrupt long time ago since we give a 1 YEAR permanent link guarantee and replace any removed posts within 1 year of order completion. As you probably know, we provide Forum Link Building Service since 2003 and have a great success in this area.

    We’ve got more and more recurring clients who are very happy with our services. If you dig dipper, you’ll see that according to Yahoo Site Explorer (http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu7UdQvtL1L4AZTFXNyoA?p=linkdomain%3Aforumlinkbuilding.com+-site%3Aforumlinkbuilding.com+forum&fr2=sb-top&sao=1), we have 80,000+ backlinks from forums.

    According to Google, www.ForumLinkBuilding.com has the following rankings on Google.com:

    forum link building 1
    forum link building service 1
    forum link building services 1
    adult link building 1
    one way link building service 2
    link building prices 2
    forum link building 2
    link building packages 3
    one way link building services 3
    one way link building 6
    build one way links 7
    link building service 7
    link building services 13

    In case if you don't know, the listed above keywords are highly competitive. Additionally, we also have top rankings on Google & other search engines for hundreds more other, less competitive keyword phrases.

    According to Compete.com (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/forumlinkbuilding.com/), we receive 30,000+ visitors / month mostly from Google & forums. These facts prove the effectiveness of our service more than anything else does.

    If that’s still not enough from you, please feel free to contact any of our clients, listed on this page http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/view/testimonials and speak to them directly. Note: this is just 3% of our clients.

    That being said. Now let me ask you a question: why did you at all decide, that our company left those posts, which you found? We are not the only people who communicate on forums and make posts there :) Those spammy and poor posts do not belong to us. As I already said, we give 12 MONTHS permanent link guarantee and replace any removed posts. That’s why we always do quality posts not to have to do the same work twice. Another reason, why we make only high quality posts is because we have so many orders and build so large quantity of links daily, that if we were spamming forums, we would be banned everywhere long time ago. But we are not. Moreover, many webmasters are very thankful to us because we help their forums grow. We reply to members’ questions, help them solve their problems and make their forums better.

    And the most important reason, why we care about the quality of our posts is, of course, our clients satisfaction. We care about ForumLinkBuilding company reputation, about our clients’ satisfaction level, about that they stayed with us for years, and that’s why we have developed a whole system of posts quality control, thanks to which all of our posts stay alive for many and many years.

    Thank you,
    Yaroslav Korchagin
    yaroslav@forumlinkbuilding.com
    Marketing Department Director
    www.ForumLinkBuilding.com
  • I don't mind the rebuttal, all is fair in love and war. Those posts were MOST definitely made by your company as they were from the clients listed at the time. I otherwise would not care except a lot of people, in my opinion, are getting snake oil SEO.

    I highly recommend anyone look at the backlinks and you'll quickly see you have pretty much comment + blog spammed in a very blackhat way on tons of unrelated sites;

    http://classic.linkdiagnosis.com/?q=http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com

    For example, for the lazy;

    http://www.cna.com.tw/MicroBlog/post/e69785e8a18ce689bee887aae5b7b1-TOBYe7af89e5a4a2e9818ae4b896e7958c.aspx

    http://good-times.webshots.com/album/502446512PDVdoy - and from this post I see

    "Thanks for the shots. I had a reunion like this once upon a time ago, lol.. But I guess most of us already forget each other since that night. There was no second gathering at all! Link building services(link removed)"

    http://spotlight.reuters.com/forum/2009/10/11/availability-update

    I could go on and on...the only reason Google hasn't banned you yet is either because you spend so much on Adwords, and or because they usually suck a fat nut these days.

    The bottom line is the service is blackhat spam that reputable companies should stay away from. If I did this for a client I'd be fired within a day.

    Peace out bitches!



  • Actually on second thought, let's take a look at some of your "clients" taken from hxxp://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/view/testimonials

    1) Kate Ross for Infor Global Solutions...doesn't exist.

    2) http://classic.linkdiagnosis.com/?q=http://prim... - 83 unique and lousy ass links.

    3) Johnson Fire's 13 lame links here http://classic.linkdiagnosis.com/?q=http://www....

    4) Dasexporters - http://classic.linkdiagnosis.com/?q=http://dase...
    Won't even run because it can't find any links.

    5) You've been banned on Digital Point Forums more than I have!

    I tell you what. You provide the site for "Brian O'Connor" (Business owner USA (LOLZ)), and the Alexa ranking to prove the link power that's delivering over, and I quote, "Half a Million Visitors to Our Site per Month", and I'll take this post down.
  • Yaroslav
    1. We're not banned on DigitalPoint.
    2. Moreover, we've got Premium Membership on DigitalPoint. Check this out - http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/download/digitalpointscreen.png
    And what about you? I see, no Premium Membership.
    3. We've got 151 Internet Trader Rating on DigitalPoint. And what about you? Again nothing. Your rating is 0. Strange, strange...
    4. As you can see from the above image or just here http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1801907&page=1, we are Phone Verified user one DP. And you? Again nothing? Oh, uh...

    By the way, as you can see from this screenshot http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/download/digitalpointscreen.png, in the last month www.ForumLinkBuilding.com was visited by 66,065 people. Does it mean anything to you?

    As to our clients, sorry, but we do not disclose our clients’ private information, unless they allow us to do that.
  • I don't go on DPF because it's full of noobcake affiliate marketers, you can find me on http://www.WickedFire.com.

    Here is a previous thread where your company was banned from DPF:

    http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t...

    I have a hemorrhoid site that got over 100k in visits last month, does that mean anything to you?
  • Yaroslav
    Oh, thanks a lot for showing me these links! I didn't even know about them :)

    Most of all I liked this one - http://www.cna.com.tw/MicroBlog/post/e69785e8a18ce689bee887aae5b7b1-TOBYe7af89e5a4a2e9818ae4b896e7958c.aspx ! Don't you see anything "strange" like Chinese characters, for example? : )))))) Do you really think we know Chinese and build links from Chinese sites to our own website? :) That’s really funny : ))) Even if we did, why would we need to build links to ourselves from Chinese sites? : )))) What for?

    As to http://spotlight.reuters.com/forum/2009/10/11/availability-update, do you really treat this PR6 link as a 'bad link'? :) Or what? What's wrong about this link? :)

    Just for your information, I see all of these links first time and have no idea who made them. I believe some of our clients or someone else did. No idea. But that doesn’t even matter.

    The funniest thing is I don’t even understand the nature and sense of your post.

    And one more thing, why are you so angry? Let’s become friends and partners instead of becoming the worst enemies.
  • Carl wolf
    First of all I want to chime in here and thank you for the absolutely entertaining comments.

    Next, I'm going to quote you:
    "Don't you see anything "strange" like Chinese characters, for example? : )))))) Do you really think we know Chinese and build links from Chinese sites to our own website? :) "

    Based on the frequent grammatical errors in your English, I'm going to take a stab at it and guess your first language is not English. Since I don't know you personally, that leads me to believe you speak another language fluently which for all I know very well could be Chinese, Russian or even Punjabi. So yes, I do believe you could (possibly) be building links in another language, Chinese potentially being one of them.

    If you want to make this giant debate end, I would suggest giving us examples of some of the links you've built for your company. I'm sure they are no secret since you've already been transparent about which keywords you rank for. Instead of debating based on your current rankings, give us some examples of your quality link building service.

    Thanks
  • Yaroslav
    Hi Card,

    Yes, English is actually my third Language after Ukrainian and Russian. Thanks for taking the time to let me know about my mistakes, I appreciate that. I always strive to regularly improve and polish my English as well as I can. I want to make it really perfect.

    No, I'm not from China or any Asian countries. I'm from Ukraine (Europe).

    No problem, on the following below 3 pages you can see our link samples. All links have anchor text ‘Link Building Packages’ and follow to http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/view.php/link_building_packages

    Backlinks pages:
    PR5 homepage, PR2 backlink page - http://www.geekboards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156
    PR5 homepage, PR3 backlink page - http://www.geekboards.com/forums/showthread.php?t=206
    PR6 homepage, PR3 backlink page - http://www.blackberryforums.com/bes-admin-corner/96160-bes-licensing-thread-3.html#post1038711
  • I'm not trying to be enemies, nor am I wanting to be friends. I'm trying to save people money from blackhat methods. I don't care if people do it, but no legit corporation should EVER use these tactics as they are.

    You're also clearly lying about not knowing of those links, and the Reuters one is spam. Try doing that as work for a client like Sony...they'd can you so fast.
  • More insult to injury here. You say they write great posts...I say you create dupe content ie

    http://forums.ssl.com/Topic488-3-1.aspx - For potential clients, just do a Google search for the first sentence in "their" post.

    "This section discusses creating one or more back-end SSL servers for an SSL proxy list"

    Copy + Paste pwnage.
  • Can you recommend a fair links building service? I bet all uses some similar methods...
    Thanks!
  • I'm known pretty well throughout the community..feel free to give us a shout!

    http://www.linkbuildr.com/link-building-services/
  • WebPro360.com
    Ryan,

    Good work. Your blog post confirmed my suspicions there was an obvious caveat to the promises of this and other outfits making similar claims. Thanks for the research and exposing the scam.

    There is no effective shortcut (in my opinion, no alternatives) to the tedious, manual work of building your reputation and earning links over time.

    If it sounds to good to be true...

  • Hey! THANK YOU so much for this post. I was seconds away from dropping $4,000 bones with these guys, trusting what they had to say on their site. I have been in link building for years and should know better, especially when the forums they sign up with have nothing to do with most businesses they promote, ex: adobe.com. That's cool and all, but what if I have a catfood site?!

    Yeah, so thanks again for posting this I did a last little search to see what others had to say and I'm glad I didn't go with 'em.
  • No problem! Like it's not against the law to do what he's doing so I cannot really hate too much for that fact. It's, I think in my right, to inform serious companies before jeopardizing their websites rankings. Google would definitely not look kindly to this, nor would adobe.com and others. I imagine there would be grounds for a lawsuit for spamming as well if the target company was large enough.

    I'd be more than happy to talk about a natural link campaign at anytime http://www.linkbuildr.com/link-building-services/
  • Gana
    More info on scam.com (yes, forumlinkbuilders ARE SCAMMERS!)
    http://208.86.2.42/showthread.php?p=932119