Unbiased Connect Content Review

I have been thinking about ConnectContent for awhile and actually joined for a couple months to test it out.  I actually decided to give it a whirl because several of my peers were really pushing it and I figured that at $12 bucks a month, what did I really have to lose, right?  Well, after a couple months, I can actually speak my peace about this subscription based program.  To be fair to RT Cunningham, you can find other reviews of people I listen to and trust here, here and here.

I should mention that I am not an affiliate of this program and therefore have absolutely no reason to persuade you into trying it.  This is solely based on my personal experience with ConnectContent.

So what is ConnectContent and what can it do for you?

Simply put, ConnectContent is nothing more than a link acquisition service with a twist.  Most of these link building services like linkvana operate under high priced membership sites.  The premise is simple.  You write a little 100 word blurb and anchor a little text as your keyword and they put it on one of their many sites within their network.  The problem of course, is the price….most of the better link subscription services are anywhere within the ball park of $100-200 per month.

ConnectContent is similar but different.  Instead of relying on a network of sites that is owned by the principle, ConnectContent is nothing more than a connector of webmasters that are looking for links from other webmasters in their prospective niche.

Of course, I shouldn’t have to tell you what the benefit of using these types of services could be in regards to ranking your keywords in the search engines.  Obviously, if you are to believe that links matter, then finding other sites easily without having to do the grunt work (more on this in a few) that most SEO types have to do for their clients.

So, you log in, you list your site, along with tags that will make it easier for other webmasters to find you and list the anchor text that you want them to use.  They in turn will find a spot on one of their pages on their site and place the anchor thus giving you a link.  You will do the same thing for others.  And so, you get webmasters helping webmasters by forming a “link co-op” of sorts.

And in order for it to really work, there are rules in place to ensure that someone can’t simply grab links and not give.  The higher the PR of the linking page, the more points you get and therefore the more potential you get for getting links.  On the other side, if you are linking to a bunch of PR n/a pages, you will need a bunch of them to be able to qualify for a PR1 link, ect.  This rule is supposed to encourage members to link to their most best pages and thus pass on the best PR to the person wanting the link.

But does it work?

In a perfect world, I would have listed a webmaster’s page on one of my best sites and another webmaster would do the same.  That would be the most ideal situation.  In a less than perfect world, you would get links that would be both very good mixed with not so good links.

HOWEVER, in the case of ConnectContent (at least in my experience), the links I recieved were from sites that were new to fairly new that were hosted on free blog networks like blogspot on sites that may be a step up from a link farm.  To spell it out, the links were not only not great, but were from sites that I could have easily made myself and had a better chance of building trustrank over time.

In fact, I have to wonder if some of these sites were built for the purpose of housing the links so that they could recieve links themselves.  In other words, they were in effect, gaming the system.  I should mention that this isn’t JT’s fault.  When you offer a co-op, you have to expect most to still be as self-serving as possible.

That’s it.  Would I suggest this? Based on my experience, probably not.  While it could be a decent way to diversify (and it is cheap), there are far better ways to get links than to rely on link building networks.  It ain’t a solution though (and to be fair, neither is linkvana) in which a webmaster can simply use this one service and not expect to do anything else.

Better solutions to linkbuilding on the cheap

So, since I would’t recommend ConnectContent, I am sure you are wondering what other options are there for the struggling webmaster trying to get backlinks worth something, right?  

These options take a little grunt work but will possibly pay off not only in link acquisition but also in building relationships with your peers.  And regardless of what you think, you are either going to pay for your links or build relationships to get links.

• Blogrolls- Do a search query for your keyword and start sending emails to those in your niche asking for a blogroll exchange (for those using them).  Yeah, I know that blogroll links aren’t exactly that sexy BUT they still work to a degree and WILL boost your rankings.  Plus, you are becoming involved in the community that you are serving. Expect to get turned down or ignored along the way.
• Anchor text exchanges-  Like blogrolls, you can also contact a fellow webmaster and offer them what I like to call a 1 for 1.  How this works is you ask them to place some anchor text in one of their older articles (you will need to ping it) going to your site and promise them the same.  This works.  It is effective.  But it does require you to reach out.  That said, you will find that you will not only build links but will build relationships with others in your market.
• Boost the rankings of the links you already have-  Let’s face it, we are all pretty narcissistic by nature.  We only do things that directly will help us.  We don’t want to spend the time and energy on other people’s sites.  The reality is that if we were helping those that were helping us, we would be far more successful than ignoring the sites linking to us.  If you happen to get listed on a mid level blog or website, why not build a quick lens or hubpage linking to their site?  Why not?  Why not build a wordpress blog with a few tags with their link on it?  Wouldn’t it bolster your site by improving the page rank of the site in question?  Why not bookmark it, list it on digg, take an excerpt and post it on scribd as a word document?  Most won’t consider this as practical but it is what I do for most of my money sites.

Anyhow, Connect Content may be decent for a webmaster that is looking for other supplemental link building strategies but I wouldn’t expect the world.  Then again, at $12 a month, you can’t expect the stars….Until next week

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