Has anyone ever used Social Monkee to get backlinks for their hubs?

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   Cardiaposted 12 years ago

   I read in someone's hub last night that they used Social Monkee to get backlinks for their Hubs. Social Monkee says that it gives you 25 backlinks every day for your page.
   
   Has anyone else used this? Is it reliable, and worth it? I'm currently trying to build up my backlinks, and I'm using Twitter, as well as sending it to friends and family.

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      kgala0405posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I have not tried it, but I did take a look at the website.  I personally don't like the idea of downloading their toolbar.  A lot of the time these toolbars install things that can track what your doing on the internet (maybe I'm paranoid).  If you decide to check it out, I would recommend creating a separate e-mail address and do what your doing here (asking questions).
      
      My recommendation is SocialAdr.com.  I'm not an affiliate and I won't even bother to leave a link.  Its a easy way to create back-links without spamming sites.  You can pick and choose which sites you share, which is a nice feature.  It works on the basis of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

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         homesteadboundposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         You do not have to download a toolbar now.

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      homesteadboundposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      You are able to get 25 links for each hub period, unless you pay for more, but then it still is only a one time shot.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I haven't looked at it recently - they keep changing their model to attract more people, which (IMO) says something about them. 
      
      Backlinks are only worth having if they're enduring.  A lot of these paid backlinking services create links on blogs, directories or link farms that don't survive,so they're a waste of money.

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   LeanManposted 12 years ago

   I think at some point in the near future our Ms Google (she must be a woman because she keeps changing her mind) will be very easily able to tell who has links coming from services such as social monkey and those links will either be devalued significantly or may even harm your site!
   So just think a little about what G is looking for and how easily G will be able to tell in the future if you are gaming the system..

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   Wesman Todd Shawposted 12 years ago

   I think this is a bad idea.  I wouldn't use it because if it's not something that Google is penalizing right now, then I believe that it's something that Google will be penalizing in the future.

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   DonnaCosmatoposted 12 years ago

   I did sign up and give it a short term try. However, I'm not comfortable with the idea of allowing someone else control over where my links would be placed or how the descriptive text would be "spun." It was a trust issue on my part and not anything negative about the site as it seems to be well managed and professional.

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   prairieprincessposted 12 years ago

   I signed up for it and used it a few times (for maybe about 12 hubs.) Shortly after, I was put in the Sandbox, or whatever it is, by Google. My traffic went from 1000 to 50 in two days. I don't know if it was connected, but I am sure wondering.

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   alipuckettposted 12 years ago

   I was just thinking about using Social Monkee last week.  I actually went to the sign up page and started plugging in my information, and something about the whole thing gave me a bad vibe, so I stopped.  Now, hearing prairieprincess' story about being put in the Google sandbox because of it, I'm really glad I didn't!

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   Garrett Mickleyposted 12 years ago

   I used to use it a year or more ago but never noticed any difference so I stopped.  Never helped nor harmed.
   
   I also used to throw my sites in there whenever I first launched them to get a little starting push.  I don't know if it helped.

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      charliegrumplesposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I agree .. same here really .. most of these type of sites add links to very low value sites .. you shouldn't get punished .. after all .. I could add anyone's links here to it if I was so inclined so can't see the big G punishing people but it probably isn't worth it

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   LindaSmith1posted 12 years ago

   There is no tracking with social monkee, so it is impossible to know if it helps or not.

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      kgala0405posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I agree, if you can't track it how do you know your link is actually getting posted.  I guess you could go to each site it submits to and search for for your link, but who wants to do that.

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   LindaSmith1posted 12 years ago

   Kgala: Social Monkee does not tell you where your links are going.

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    chuckblposted 12 years ago

    Linda, yes it does. You go to the reports section and can click on the links. Otherwise, type in your hubpage into google and the links will come up.

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    daisynicolasposted 12 years ago

    I signed up and paid $47 to get  100 sites.  Haven't noticed any changes in my traffic at all.

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    charliegrumplesposted 12 years ago

    another problem is that you can have a page getting 100 links over I think (top of my head) 7 days. The problem is that it then stops which must look a bit dodgy for google.
    
    I paid but haven't used it for ages. I prefer the free IMautomator which gives u 15 bookmarks on the free version. Some of these fail so not every page you submit gets 15 as that could look dodgy too. The one I just checked got 9 links over 45 days which I suspect is more valuable than 100 over 7 days.
    
    Has anyone used their paid version with any success?

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       Wesman Todd Shawposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Paying for backlinks is against Google Adsense Terms of service.  That's a terrible idea for someone here to try - using a paid version of Social Monkey.
       

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    chuckblposted 12 years ago

    Yeh it is against google and hubpages rules to pay for back links so make sure you do not do that.

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    charliegrumplesposted 12 years ago

    you aren't paying for backlinks .. you pay for use of the software and then use that to submit your pages to social bookmarking sites. That isn't the same as paying someone money to add links to their sites.

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    LindaSmith1posted 12 years ago

    Chuckbl: I checked reports, and I get I have nothing submitted.  Anyway, I never noticed any change. I stopped using Social Monkee and I certainly am not going to pay for it. The Google+1 has helped and I use IMautomator as well.

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    thejeffriestubeposted 12 years ago

    Social Monkee includes a type of article, keyword, and description spinning. In my book, all things that make you look bad to Google, other writers, and the general searching internet.

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    Gareth Pritchardposted 12 years ago

    HiAll,
    
    I have used social monkey not with hubs but with some of the links pointing to my hubs, it submits to social bookmarking sites. Search engines don't actually count links from social book marking sites as far as I know, they stopped doing it few years back, so there is not much value in the links. Social bookmarking links are usually used for getting pages indexed quicker, supposedly but that depends on the worth of the social bookmarking sites themselves. I don't think the social bookmarking site they post to have much value.
    
    This is how I think social monkey works, the owners of the social monkey site also own most, if not all of the social bookmarking sites they post to as well, and most probably they are on the same IP addresses, so the links are even less valuable. This works for them because they are building the social monkey site, at the same time as building multiple social bookmarking sites. When the social bookmarking sites have sufficient numbers submitting to them, they are then sold for high dollars as they look for all the world like sites of high value because of the numbers posting to them, boom-cha-ching.
    
    I don't think there is very much value in posting links from social monkey but I also don't think it will hurt your site either and see no negative effects from my own efforts.
    
    It is a bad idea to post links from the same sites, over and over anyway because as far as I know, one link from a site is counted as one link but two links are only counted with the same value as one and so on. Every time you post a link from the same site it devalues all the other links so is almost a waste of time.
    
    Link building is about spreading your links out all over the place with as much variety as possible, not all coming from the same places. 
    
    Thanks, Gareth.

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       Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       That's true. Link diversity is vital.  There's simply no point in having multiple links from one website or directory - after the first one or two, you're getting no extra benefit.  And bear in mind, even if you're linking to different Hubs, you're still linking to the same sub-domain every time.
       
       So unless you're absolutely sure Social Monkee is posting to new sites every time, you'd have to question the value.
       
       The other thing to consider is the quality of the sites.  Do they have page rank? Do they have real content or are they just a list of links?  If they're low quality, they'll eventually get slapped by Panda and then the links won't count, and your money will be wasted.

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    homesteadboundposted 12 years ago

    Here is the link to the same question I asked a few weeks back:
    http://hubpages.com/question/136833/hav … -signed-up

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    recommend1posted 12 years ago

    Does this explain why I have hundreds of joining members on my website with no visit recorded ?  Does it do my site any good or harm that these 'members' have apparently registered ?

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       Gareth Pritchardposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Hi recommend1,
       
       I don't know what you mean or are asking with this could you enlighten me a little bit more?
       
       Members shouldn't be a problem unless you can't manage them all. As for them doing your site any good or harm that depends on a number of things like do the search engines know they are members?
       
       I would think that if your site has a closed membership then it wouldn't be possible for search engines to know they are members because they can's see your member lists anyway.
       
       Then again I am not even sure of that because recently I have read an article that talks about headless browsers being used by search engines to index sites and these things could log into a site and index it if they wanted to. I don't think they would show up as a search engine in your analytic's either as a search engine spider would because they are browser based so you wouldn't know.
       
       As I have said I am not sure it is only what I think and we can all think what ever we like but it doesn't make it fact.
       
       Thanks, Gareth.

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