Note: This article was updated in February, 2013 and I’ve added a screenshot of the traffic from Jan-Feb, 2013. Traffic stats are below.
I couldn’t wait to write this post because the results I’m about to show you probably go against many of your opinions about search engine optimization today.
If you’ve been following me closely, you already know I’m not a fan of aggressive backlink building.
I’ve always found it to be a tedious task that leads to short term results for the most part.
Having said that, I’m not against SEO and focusing on the right kind of backlink building.
For example, growing your brand and building relationships by writing guest posts on high quality, relevant blogs or any kind of natural link building that abides by Google’s guidelines is fine.
I just personally don’t believe in spending loads of time chasing backlinks.
As a result, a lot of people have criticized my stance on this, stating that I never had to focus on it much because some of my sites are mature and have an advantage.
While having an early start played a tremendous role in my success, I am still finding that today, quality content in the right niche still works for SEO.
I can’t write a post like this without mentioning how risky it is to rely completely on search engine optimization — especially today. So as you read through this, please understand that SEO should only be one part of your traffic plan.
My Little Experiment
In July, 2011 I created a new WordPress authority niche website as an experiment to see how far a website could get today by just writing content and doing absolutely no backlink building whatsoever.
To be honest, I didn’t expect the site to do well and I will reveal the traffic results below.
Some of you are not going to like this part, but I made the decision not to reveal the site to anyone (at least not yet) and my name or any other identifying details (Adsense ID, company name, etc.) are not associated with the website or domain records.
Although, I am using my picture because I just don’t like faceless websites. 
Why So Anonymous?
First of all, I don’t want any mentions/links on my sites to skew the results. Second, I am getting tired of seeing my content scraped, copied and plastered all over the place.
Of course this is not going to completely prevent that from happening, but it will cut down a lot of it.
Being transparent has its advantages and I have no regrets because it builds credibility and a loyal following. However, there are obvious disadvantages, and for this experiment I have chosen to keep it hush-hush.
Pat Flynn recently wrote about this same issue on his blog where he decided not to reveal one of his newer websites after so many people tried to duplicate one of his experimental websites. I completely understand where he’s coming from. So I decided to take a leaf out of his book and keep this one quiet — especially while I experiment to keep the results from being skewed.
Traffic Reports
Even though I won’t reveal the site, I will at least share some statistics you may find interesting. Here is what the traffic looked like for the past month…
Here’s an update from February, 2013. Traffic is still increasing gradually. I’ve added roughly 20 pages since this post was originally published (6 months ag0).
This is not a huge increase by any means, but it’s not bad considering how little time I spend on this site.
For the record, this screenshot was taken from the WordPress.com Stats plugin. That’s what I use to easily access my traffic stats right from the WordPress admin panel.
More Things to Note
- Even though I am not actively/manually building backlinks, the site is earning them naturally through other blogs who link to various articles. So I’m not saying you don’t need backlinks. I’m just saying you don’t have to chase them. Slow, natural and steady is what Google loves.
- The site has about 120 pages and posts combined, and I have no real publishing schedule/pattern. I spend about 2-3 hours on the site per month. Seriously.
- Most of the traffic is from Google, but it also receives quite a few visits from Facebook. Of course, I cannot see the actual referring page on Facebook in my reports (I hate that!), but it’s probably from people sharing the content on their walls. I do not have a Facebook business page for the site.
- I didn’t do much number crunching with keyword research. Most of the search engine traffic is from a variety of longtail phrases instead of competitive keywords.
- The site is not overly optimized. In other words, I don’t go overboard with keyword repetition and I made sure to vary my anchor text (text inside hyperlinks) when linking internally.
- Bing and Yahoo are also drawing more traffic than usual, which I found quite interesting. Perhaps it has to do with the niche and the audience demographic preferring Bing over Google? I have no way of knowing for sure.
- Once again, I’ve taken the tutorial route with my approach to this website. As you know, this has worked so well in the past, and I love teaching. So I continue to use that style as opposed to just posting generic information and re-reporting facts.
- I’ve chosen another niche where I can use my own personal life experience with the subject to educate and inform.
- So far the site has escaped all Panda and Penguin updates.
- I did manually submit to Google and Bing/Yahoo and also created sitemaps for each engine.
- I’m not using AdSense (it’s not a good niche for CPC ads at all) but I am selling sponsor ads and monetizing with affiliate programs.
Backlinks?
As I’ve already mentioned, I have just focused on writing content instead of searching for backlinks — which is what I normally do. But what is most surprising to me is the Google traffic I’ve received compared to the minimal number of backlinks I’ve earned.
Right now, there are only a handful of sites linking in according to Google Webmaster Tools, and a couple of sites that are just scraping my RSS feed and displaying my posts.
Why Does Google Love The Site?
Could the mild success and traffic gains be a result of the penalties other sites have incurred from unnatural linking, etc?
I’m not sure.
I haven’t spent too much time observing what my competitors are doing. The traffic growth has been very gradual but steady, and I didn’t see any major jumps in traffic with any algorithm updates.
My main goal was to see how a website would perform in Google today without doing any manual link building.
Google seems to be less concerned about the quantity of your backlinks and more interested in the quality, diversification and how natural your backlink patterns are.
After all, the Penguin update really decreased the SEO influence of many types of backlinks.
To Sum it Up…
Don’t get me wrong. The moral of they story here is not to just focus on SEO to build a business. I was just trying to make a point that you can still receive good traffic from Google without obsessing over backlinks and just focusing on quality content.
There’s nothing wrong with targeting the engines for traffic. I mean… you have to start somewhere, right? As I mentioned, you just need a plan to diversify beyond SEO if you want longevity.
As I continue to emphasize, my overall business is not SEO dependent thanks to my forum, multiple YouTube channels, residual income, social media (especially Facebook), my email list, offline consulting (occasionally) etc. I’ve diversified my income and traffic sources to give myself a great deal of stability.
I hope you are planning to do the same.
Also, finding the right niche and angle is key too. Yes, the Net is incredibly saturated with websites, but a lot of the content out here is poor quality and created with minimal effort.
I don’t exactly buy the “net-is-too-saturated” claim as a reason for failure. This experiment definitely proves that.
So the door is still wide open for high quality, useful websites. The angle you take is what will set you apart and get you going in the right direction.
Never underestimate the power of establishing your unique position in a well-defined niche!
Hi, my name is 
Great post.I should definitely try this on my upcoming new blog.Thanx for the tips
Whew! It’s good to see this. I’ve always felt like it should be about the content, but so many people go crazy telling you how to “trick” Google. Even after writing up a report about focusing on content strategies I’ve found myself questioning my assumptions from time to time. It’s really nice to see some hard numbers on this!
May I ask why you responded to the first comment, rather than start your own thread?
I’m with Carmen; my face looks a lot cuter at the beginning of the thread…
Thank you, Lisa for you very informative post. Expect that I will be your constant visitor. God bless!
it’s nice to see this article, somehow we should stop overanalyzing how to do SEO things in our site, after all great content is the KING. =) cheers!
Quality matters and not quantity! Never thought you will be experimenting like this
Your first 2 words said it all. I had a Lens that was ZERO SEO optimized, no back links built, NOTHING.
And, just like Lisa, over time people see it, share it, Like it, etc. and traffic steadily rose.
It shared a personal experience of mine that was helpful. Linked to an Amazon product and not it’s converting at about 12%!
My mentors are saying this exact same thing. Hmmmmmmm. There must be something to it:)
This is a GREAT post!
-Charlie
Interesting post. I’ve never liked building backlinks. It’s something I struggled with when I first started my sites. Not too long ago I gave up on it completely. I’d much rather focus on content.
Hey Lisa!
This is a great post. I too have another website and I don’t post on a schedule and it’s doing quite well, considering. Quite a few of my posts from the site, are on the first page of Google. I’m not focusing on building backlinks or anything like that, just on writing and putting out quality information and it does pay off.
Good for you Evelyn!
I am guessing that the largest amount of traffic comes from your email lists or rss feed subscribers?
The thing is in order to build lists and people interested in opting in for Feed Burner… I think there has to be a website that has received SEO attention that was the foundation for filtering traffic to the new site.
Where did all of the followers come from on Youtube?
I think you have to be a well know authority in order to achieve the results that you did on this new site.
Hi Jordy,
I’m not doing any YouTube and my RSS email subscribers are at about 500. Most of the traffic is coming from Google and Facebook.
I found a niche that has a lot of single blog posts on the topics, but not many complete sites so I took advantage of that.
I don’t think you have to be well known. I think sometimes a little luck is involved with the niche you choose. I met someone at a conference who makes a living creating sites the way I do. He is completely anonymous. Not normally the route I’d take but it was a fun experiment.
Sounds like you have discovered GOLD Lisa. I’d like to know how someone goes about finding such a precious thing in this overcrowded Internet world.
Thanks for responding. I value our friendship and have great respect for all the wisdom that you share.
Hi Lisa, this sounds like a fun experiment and I bet it was hard to keep it under wraps since you are using your picture. You said that you didn’t have a Facebook page but are you doing any social networking at all on the site? Are others sharing the content on Twitter or is the site getting any Google+1 love?
Could it be that you are just amazing??? I bet that’s it.
Ha ha! Thanks Ileane! I have a Sharebar on the site for Twitter, Google and Facebook. I get a few shares of Facebook but nothing big. The Google Plus button hardly gets used.
But I don’t do any direct social media where I’m building relationships, re-sharing, etc. I have mainly just been writing content.
wow lisa I just saw your post on your facebook page, It is nice that you did all that without backlinks, good job!
This is more inspiration for blogger like me ,Because till now my blog have no back links.
Keep Posting lisa….
Hey Lisa,
Interesting! I’m not a massive believer in chasing links. Links that build themselves are the ones you want. How to do that? Like you say, quality content. And now with social media to lend a helping hand we have all the tools at our disposal to create success online.
Can I give you one pointer though? You might not want to link to nastiness like the person above has done. It might damage your reputation
I meant gozada, sibi must have jumped in front of me!
Yikes! Thankfully CommentLuv lets you remove links. I didn’t see that. Thank you.
No problem, but you’re not done yet
If that was his/her last blog…
I Love it. I am only a 3 month old blogger, but from the beginning of my education I have been turned off by the concept of “spinning” and creating stuff for the purpose of back-links.
Perhaps the reason why I like reading you is because you say the things that I wish that some one would say.
Thank you for your research.
Wow, thanks!
Great experiment Lisa! Natural SEO beats SEO on steroids big time. What you are implementing in that site is a backlinking strategy without backlinking
Create content that people will want to link to and share and the best links will come! What we need is patience and perseverance but unfortunately, those are in short supply these days.
As for the Adsense CPC for this niche being dismal, maybe you need to add another experiment to this site to debunk that one too LOL It may not compare to the high CPC niches but with good traffic, there is decent money to be made in all niches especially as you’ve taken a unique approach to this niche. Throw in informative YT videos and you’ll be wowing lol
Let the experiment begin!
Hey Flo,
Oh I haven’t even spent much time on monetization and I’m sure I could do an ebook or some other kind of digital good. Once I sit down and really focus on the site more, I will spend more time on monetization.
I literally have spent only a few hours per month on the site, if that, and just threw up some ads and links.
As you said, this is a great time to experiment and I’ll be doing that more later when I get some time.
Awesome post Lisa!!! I still think some niches can be to saturated to get to the top. Well, at least you know you can do it all over again from the start
You Go Girl!!!
Hi Shannon,
Thanks for coming by. Yes there are some niches I wouldn’t touch but I was commenting on the “net is too saturated” claim. There is still a lot of room for the right angle in certain niches.
That is a nice little experiment you did. In fact, I inadvertently did the same experiment when I started my blog.
When I first started I didn’t know a thing about SEO – backlinks, titles, keywords, etc. – but I just created my posts the way I wanted.
Much like you, I started to get traffic with very minimal SEO and no backlinking – albeit with not as much traffic.
Some of those old posts that I didn’t do much with are still my top traffic generators from search engines, and they have been for over two years.
I recently tried to do some backlinking for some posts, and those posts didn’t generate any traffic. Since then I have stopped trying to get backlinks and focused more on just publishing content.
I guess the old method of “getting what you don’t go and look for” still holds true in the online world.
That is so true, Paul. I think backlinks are overrated — especially after Penguin. When you build a genuine site that helps people and solves problem you will be amazed at how it will blossom.
Hi Lisa, as always I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for this good information. I was informed by my mentor about doing other avenues for more exposure and to have a niche being different from the other sites. Thanks again for your knowledge.
As always Lisa, great job, interesting, fun. I have a brand new site (couple of months old) haven’t back-linked much, couple here and there naturally, and it is doing great with traffic (and sales) from now on, when I create a site, I am just going t keep doing what I did with this site.
Hi Lisa
Interesting experiment you have been doing here. I think it is kind of an eye opener for many bloggers too. I have been working hard on my SEO and back linking skills for more than 1½ and I am not getting anywhere close to the numbers you have on this your little “hidden secret”. Maybe it is a nice think or maybe you are simply just a better writer than me? No, that can’t be the reason
Hi Thomas,
LOL, I think a little luck was involved here and I found a good niche and just happened to have the experience to provide a nice angle that isn’t overdone.
It is amzing what is possible with skills and experiences. Two things that you can’t buy for money. I guess I should just keep up the work and keep on my self improvement. By the way my blog was just increased from a Google PageRank 3 to a PageRank 4 blog in the latest update Google made last week. I guess I am doing okay after all
Yaaaaay!! Congrats, Thomas!
Excellent experiment. Quite right not to share the link for a whole host of reasons. Great to see that purely great content is enough to get excellent traffic figures. Just a year and a half and 100 pages get thousands of visitors a day. It must be a great niche and the site must fulfil a need that not many others do.
Do have a blog attached to the new site? or when you add new content you just send to the subscriber list?
Thanks, You rock, chica
Hi Kim,
It is a WordPress site so it has the blogging functionality already built in. I mostly add static pages though. Feedburner automatically emails the subscribers any new posts. But I don’t have a separate list — at least not yet.
Beautiful Lisa. I promote you every chance I get and something like this proves why. I’m said that people need to stop relying on search engines so much and that SEO is only a small piece of it all, at least after the initial parts, and that content will drive traffic because it’s hard to stop. I also don’t chase backlinks because I just don’t have the time or inclination to do it.
I’m glad you’ve succeeded because it makes me feel like I’ve been right all along as well. You go on with your bad self!
Hey Mitch!
Great to see you here and I can’t say thank you enough for the support and referrals. Means a lot.
I have never bothered with building back links to any of my website’s it has always been creating content and I tend to create articles on things I can’t find. Great post Thank you.
Great experiment Lisa. I have tried something similar, with a little less successful results. That could just be the difference in competition, I suppose.
On my last blog, I spent a lot of time and money on backlinks and was getting a decent amount of traffic. I was well into profit, but I noticed that if I stopped building those backlinks, my Google rank would fall rapidly.
Granted, most of my traffic was from my list but if I were to do the same thing now, I would be banned from the search engines almost immediately. This site is brand new though versus the last one which was well established.
I don’t really plan on searching for links on this site and these results are really interesting to see!
Thanks,
-Gabe
Same experience, Gabe. The idea that you have to keep building streets to your store forever and ever — it’s Promethean. Lisa’s top secret experiment is in line with what I once thought site building was about: write content, and audience builds over time. Lisa, does your new site use CommentLuv?
Hi Astro, no it doesn’t.
Well, that’s good to know! The endless battle for back links could be over:)
Interesting experimental results, Lisa. This is going to make a lot us feel uncomfortable and sad, as we realize that we have waisted so much time with all sorts of link building.
Time wasted never regains! However, as the web evolve, we learn great lessons.
I am very proud of you because you abandoned link building ages ago (if you ever started with it), and now as havoc wreck across the net post Penguin, your advice or strategies are beginning to sink in the brains of many, who ignored them way back.
Great experiment! That makes your content uniquely yours-original.
Will you ever retire? Lol. Looking forward to enjoy your content ’till I reach an age when I can’t read anymore.
Hi Lisa,
I’m glad your site is doing well without back links and based only on the content. I was wondering if the search engines themselves know that you own the site. For example, do you have the site listed in your Google webmaster tools account? Or it is hosted on the same server as one or more of your other sites?
Sometimes it seems to me that Google takes into account the importance of the person that owns the site and not the site itself.
If there is not way that any of the search engines can identify the site with you, then I’ll take it as absolute proof that anyone can make it on merit alone – even at this late stage of Internet marketing.
Hi Angela
It is hosted on the same hosting account, but I have other sites on different topics on that same account that aren’t doing anything in the SERPS and trafficwise. So I don’t think that has anything to do with it. I think it’s more about the niche and the lack of competition (especially the angle I took).
Hey Lisa, I admit it, I do work in the backlink business (Marketplace for Backlinks) and we promote link buying and selling. However, there is one point that we both agree on…quality content is the foundation for effective SEO and apparently (thanks to the intersting findings) we have learned that Google likes that – so much that with only few backlinks you still get such a high traffic rolling in. I’d really be interested to look at things a little more detailed – i understand that you are not disclosing all this additional data…however I would want to find out what keywords you are ranking with and what position you are at…also, is there just traffic with a high bounce rate… INTERESTING experiment though. Thanks for sharing.
Lisa,
I’ve noticed many times when doing competitive research that websites with zero backlinks are in the #1 position in Google. I assumed (apparently correctly thanks to your post) that it had to be the result of quality content. So my conclusion is that if you aim to please real, live humans and include some SEO for good measure, you can’t help but rise to the top.
http://goarticles.com/article/6816650
Well I believe that if you find a good niche with a little luck you don’t need backlinks to get a huge traffic. It is a great post Lisa, it prove to many “seo” Expert that backlinks are not everything to get traffic.
congratulations on your new site’s success Lisa. it’s very refreshing to hear.
a few folks I know, and myself are doing the same thing. in fact an authority site challenge duel is brewing and I am happy to participate in it.
I am seeing similar results, with organic traffic picking up steadily as more content is published. interestingly like you, I only see enough back links that I can count with one hand.
it is one positive sign that Google has its priorities right
but time will tell.
QUESTION: is the site’s subject matter one that you know inside out? or is it one that you are having to research and write about?
would love to hear more as it progresses.
all the best
Hi Sunil
I was hoping to hear from you and your experience since you also do similar work. Good to know you are seeing the same kind of results.
I wouldn’t say I know the subject matter inside out but it’s something I am actively involved in where I am constantly posting my experiences and helping those trying to do the same. I am actually learning as I go and I post the results.
What exactly is an authority niche website? I have never heard of this before.
An authority niche is where you build up a bunch of content on one topic. You also have experience with the topic so your audience looks at you as an “expert” or someone who is very knowledgeable and not just someone putting up generic info that can be found anywhere.
Sorry for the double post. But I just want to say that your experiment didn’t work for me. personally, I find that backlinking is just as important as writing great content. It all has to do with time management.
It’s rare when someone backlinks to me but because I write exceptional content, I rank on the first page of google for many key words and phrases.
interesting experiment. but where do u even find the time to write 100 pages of content simply for an experiment? I can barely manage my own blog! haha. but anyway, I think its the instructional content that really gets the most natural inbound links. People just love to share stuff if they feel like they are the *first person to discover it*
LOL! 100 posts in a year is really not a lot when you know and like your subject matter. If you think about it, that’s about 8 posts a month and some are really short. Now had I chosen a topic I wasn’t as interested in or was just doing for the money it would have been a lot harder. And definitely agree about the instructional content.
Very awesome ! Absolutely something we should all aim to do.
Hehe what a mystery
It makes me curious to know about your secret blog
Anyway awesome results!
What about monetization results?
I have done very little monetization as of yet. It’s definitely paying for itself but not earning a lot yet. With the amount of traffic I have, I can do better. That will be my focus going forward. I really wasn’t expecting this traffic.
This post couldn’t have come at a better time Lisa! I’ve been worried about how to get quality backlinks and how imperative or not it is to getting traffic to your site. Thanks so much!!!
Hello Lisa, Fact that we no longer need to be too careful about seo is simply a great thing to know. Seems like we are going back to the days when Google started up, when content was the major factor that ranked websites high.
Especially liked your mention about Pat Flynn, his first website about on leed exam preparation was simply focussed on content, he never knew seo or any internet marketing, he was simply writing his posts to help him with his exam preparation. And the traffic started building in.
Now I think I can put all my focus on writing and making the cntent excellent. And forget about seo as it’ll happen naturally – which is what Google is expecting on websites.
Dr.Spencer Jones
Hi.Lisa,
I have read a fantastic article to day presented by you. It is really a nice article I can say.I am using the commenting on blog for blog linking only.You Know why?
To increase the traffic to my web site so that my web site can be ranked on Google’s page ranker.But now I throw total attention towards my site’s quality product and not that much towards back linking the site.Thanks again for so beautifully written article by you.
Woow! That’s amazing.
All the time i’m lookin for backlinks so i can rank in the search engines.
Now i know, I can rank in Google without a Backlink:D
I thank you very much. Nice post!
the majority of visitors of my blog comes from search engine, send blackklinks to my blog is an excellent means to optimize for google.
I had a question about the traffic stats…where did you get them from Lisa? It doesn’t look like Google Analytics.
Hi Tony
I use the WP Stats plugin and chose that screenshot for no other reason than it’s accessible and I check it regularly when I login to WordPress. The Analytics page views report looks about the same.
Something is working. I am sure you do not know all the facts but you are doing a good experiment.
Thanks Lisa for a wonderful Post. As you mentioned you gained amazing results just by way of quality content. This may probably work only if I have a niche website where my primary focus is affiliates, sponsor ads, adsense etc. What if I have a business website where I sell service with a landing page. Do you think this may work even then?
Hi Pauline,
I’m not sure this strategy would work as well for service or product-oriented sites UNLESS you can find relevant content to write about that is related to what you sell.
For example, say you were promoting your fitness coaching services. You could have a separate section on your site called “Blog” or “News”. That is where you would post all your info-content related to fitness that could help draw in business to your service. Make sense?
Very awesome Lisa! thanks for your sharing. I will build my new site next week:)
Hmm I don’t quite get it!
So you built a brand new website with high quality articles and the traffic just started coming from Google without you building links or doing anything else?
How long it took for the site to get indexed and rank higher in SERPs? Was your nich competitive enough? From what I know you can rank pretty fast in a niche with no competition, but it takes time to rank in a more competitive one (even with quality articles)
Another great post, Lisa. I started a new website re-branding my businesses just 4 months ago that went from PR0 to PR2 in the last update. No backlinks. Not monetized like my blogs. However, my traffic is only appr 1950 pageviews monthly at the end of month 3. I guess it is still an infant, but I am really trying to get it right this time. Having 100k pageviews is my goal monthly. I know that is lofty! Thanks for giving us so many tips.
Lisa, this is an awesome post. I’ve been away for awhile but so glad that I saw this in my FB feed. I have a lot of blog posts to catch up on because I see some topics that I’ve missed.
I agree that backlinking is arduous and can be tiresome and glad to know that good content is key. I recently read an article in Website Magazine that specifically addresses the topic of content marketing. Thanks for sharing your experiment and promise not to stay away so long next time! LOL
Great to see you back!
Thanks for the great post Lisa. I have a new blog that I’m working on and I’m trying to figure out how to get more traffic. One of the things people keep saying is to get more backlinks but there must be other ways. Your post is very encouraging that maybe getting more backlinks isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Interesting post, I wonder how much more traffic you would have been able to get with backlinking on top. Maybe next year you should start a blog with backlinking to compare.
Take it easy.
Great Post!
July 2011 – August 2012, thats a long time. Was it a lengthy process or did you see results straight off the bat?
Hi Jerry
I think it’s a matter of perspective because I don’t feel it was long at all…. especially since I spent very little time working on the site compared to my others. From what I’ve been hearing, many people would love to have that traffic after one year.
I completely believe you as I have seen after Panda and penguin update..NIche sites are performing better..Though I don’t have as success as yours..but few of my niche sites with 3-4 blog posts are getting around 300-400 visits a day..which is still good…as Traffic for target Keywords are less…
The key is consistency and maintaining the quality… I’m sure you must have taken care of overall on site SEO ….
Hi Lisa, Did you write your content for the new blog/site with SEO in mind? meaning did you focus on key words heavily and drawn out posts, or did you just write for the “humans”? lol
I always write for humans. Some posts are longer, some are short. My main focus was problem-solving and help. These kinds of sites are the best to create because they build loyalty.
What a great experiment! Do you promote this site on social media at all or do you just write and that is it?
Nope. Only content. Imagine if I had spent the time to really do some social media, huh?
Its quite fasinating how you managed to get traffic from search engines with concentrating too much on SEO. This does prove that what matters is content and not SEO.
Nice experiment Lisa, I think this might suit me now seeing as all my previous backlink building methods seem to be obsolete since the Google updates earlier this year.
couldn’t agree with you more
your findings are extremely precious
i always believed my site can survive without links but never dared to stop collecting ones
Hi Lisa,
Very White Hat – clean and proper. Congrats on ethics and on providing value without over-gaming the search engines.
That’s really the way it should be for the most part – more quality content gets better traffic.
Still, I do think page rank should count a little as long as a backlink is from a relevant site and/or page (not that you would disagree
).
I think that guest posting is a good way to get those links along with value-added forum posting and blog commenting with links back to the site.
I don’t see any reason to do any backlinking beyond that and much of it either no longer counts or counts against a site – especially if it’s not a relevant backlink.
I like to see people such as yourself rank the clean way.
Congrats once again! You’re setting a great example. Like your writing and your personality.
Erik
I wonder how much more traffic you would have been able to get with backlinking on top. Maybe next year you should start a blog with backlinking to compare.
Take it easy.
I have also created a blog on the lists of top 10s and hope, I will be able to drive more page views using your tips. Thanks for the informative post.
This proves that the search engines are already looking for high quality content. You don’t have to try to trick the system.
I am having some interesting results as well it’s funny how much work can be done trying to rank for a keyword when some posts rank #1 organically.
Seems to me to be more about TIMING and TITLE than anything else.
What did you learn that was not what you expected going in? With your experience.
I always enjoy reading your article Lisa. Your take on a popular topic like this just help a new blogger see things from a fresh perspective. Keep up the good work!
It need lot of effort ? can a single person perform all the above stated task ?
I also agree with you Lisa. After recent Penguin update, one thing has become very clear. Content have to super quality to get better ranking. Good quality backlinks can help but not more than content.
I have seen a blogger blog page having PR2 within a few days after publishing which was built for web 2.0 link building purpose. Later I understood, it the quality content which have made this blog ranking so fast.
Content really is king. I had one page on one blog that for some reason was the perfect content in Google’s eyes and boy did it drive traffic. Too bad it wasn’t paying traffic!
Hi Lisa, Cheers to a Great Post. Can touch more about the ‘saturated net’ and how to choose a niche? I am currently working on a fashion based website right now, I jumped into it and have tried seo and writing content which works well together. Thanks Again.
Hi Kay
I always approach my niche selection by fulfilling a need or solving a problem that is related to that topic. Problem-solving/help sites generate a sense of loyalty because you are helping someone and it’s a better way to build that connection.
very encouraging post Lisa.I think we know have to focus on other methods besides link building.
I think you are right. What is most original about you, what is most unique to your own personality and character, when translated through your blog or website is most likely to be a hit with other people. Then they will engage and then, maybe, hopefully, you will make some money too!
100,000 Monthly Page Views with No Backlink Building is really amazing! thanks for your sharing!
Lisa,
you have such an awesome way of making this sound very simple to the web audience. In addition, DrewryNewsNetwork really appreciates your humble and down-to-earth likable attitude, in how you successfully relate to others. Thank you for just being you, Lisa. And, keep up the good work on the content creation. By the way, are you using Dragon Naturally Speaking to create content on your blogs?
What you do when you build your site really is a kind of microbranding. The angle you take establishes your brand. People often choose between similar products based on the brand message. For example, bottled water is bottled water. But if your environmentally conscious you might choose the brand that uses recycled containers. Or you might like the particular location one brand obtains its water. That’s why they tell you all those things on the bottle: brand message. You can probably take information that is readily avaailable and present it in a personal, witty, or particularly clear way and still find a following. I visit this site because I like Lisa’s delivery and her personal experience of making a living online. People can replicate the information here but they cannot replicate the 2createawebsite brand without cloning Lisa. Showing yourself is a very accessible way of branding your content because you’re inherently unique. Humans are much more apt to remember people than abstract URLs etc. If you don’t do that you still have to work hard to establish a voice and a style of content that is uniquely you. Understanding the importance of branding was a “aha moment” for me. So it seems as if Lisa found another good niche and took an angle nobody else though of. It’s very encouraging that even in the mature web and without any blackhat SEO a site that offers a different take can still do well!
Very well put and thank you so much for the kind words.
I definitely enjoy what im reading right now, Yes its true, i believe in your concept of SEO and right or quality content. Sometimes, if you got the best content search engine will definitely give you traffic even without any backlinks. Why? Because it has a sense of reading the content and could help the search more in line of the readers. I mean, the content itself is searcheable.
I also noticed that it is possible to get a great amount of traffic from Google with the help of content even though your site does not have many links.
I can also confirm that in my cases the niche was about something very searched for. I didn’t make a lot of money with ads because there were no advertisers for that niche.
Perhaps this is the main reason it was so easy to rank in the first place. Where there are no advertisers there is little competition too.
Also, finding these kind of niches with 0 competition that can generate huge traffic is very hard.
Julius,
I think Google has quietly changed up. You see, they ranked websites and blogs higher in SERP’s not long ago, based on content & backlinks. Today, it seems as if Google is indexing pages faster in the search results pages, regardless of the backlinks. For now, I think they are looking for more content and not too concerned with backlinks to deep pages. Then again, I could be wrong. No one knows for sure
I’m actually noticing this too with a lot of niches.
Wow, that’s great. Congrats. Thanks for this article.
That’s very well said, we often chase SEO practices and ignore the basics of website building and the importance of content. Back-links are important but not above the content of the site.
What a refreshing story in these days of doom and gloom about how you have to be a big brand to succeed.
It’s been so long since I launched a new site, the thought of doing so again now was quite daunting, but after reading this I feel much more optimistic.
One question Lisa, did you get your very first traffic without any incoming links? I seem to remember that ‘back in the day’, Google wouldn’t even index a site unless it had an incoming link or two. Has that changed do you think?
Thanks again for such an encouraging article, both for the newbies and us old (jaded
hands.
No, I had some links from other bloggers who had mentioned my site, but these were gained naturally — meaning I did not participate in a link exchange or linking scheme. I do think you need *some* links. I’m not saying you shouldn’t desire quality links, I’m just emphasizing that I did not focus on link building specifically.
That makes sense, thanks Lisa.
Hello Lisa,
I’ve been a warrior since 2003….seen a lot and this article, is really close to my heart..
I’ve honestly believed in the fundamentals of marketing more than depending on one source of traffic like SEO
I’ve written a personal email to you..not sure if you’ve read it or not…but i truly believe that it is time for people to realize the importance of having more human interaction than the google machine dependency …just an opinion.
and thanks for this wonderful goldmine of information…real genius…
I am doing SEO + SMO however not getting so much traffic. I do not know the reason for it.
Hello Nena,
SEO is only one part of marketing.
remember, internet marketing is all about building relationships. so, focus your energies to help people in your community and you will start seeing a penetration. hope that helps.
Hey Lisa,
It’s my first time here (I actually landed here through your post about Affiliate Disclaimers). This is a great experiment. I really hate backlinking and have spent years writing for revenue sharing sites while refusing to backlink my articles. After the last few updates, my revenue sharing traffic has gone down and I am moving on to making my own sites.
This is very encouraging for blogging and niche site building without all the crappy linking so many think is a must.
I did have one question…how does one come across a topic that has blog posts, but no full sites? That sounds like a great way to take advantage of a hole waiting to be filled, but doesn’t seem like an easy thing to find.
Thanks again!
Hi Danielle,
It wasn’t that I was actively searching for a site with few full sites. It just happened to be the case with the topic I was interested in writing about. When I was analyzing why this particular site was performing so well that was one of the reasons I came up with. So it wasn’t that I actively searched for such a topic. That part was all luck because I was going to do the site regardless.
So instead of starting with research, I started with my own interests. The topic just happened to be less saturated.
Just like I’m not into backlink building, I’m also not into doing much research before doing a site. Not saying that’s a good thing, just being very honest. If I like the topic and have something to share/teach I’m going to go for it. I just try to use the techniques I’ve learned with this site (user engagement, knowing my visitor’s key issues, etc.) and hope my site will get the attention of others.
Hope that makes sense.
Lisa,
Thanks for taking the time to comment back. I figured luck probably had a lot to do with it. While I am still a tad jealous, I can definitely say congratulations and keep up the good work. If the quality is as good as around here, there’s no doubt it will just keep growing!
Danelle
Hey Lisa.
This is so amazing and awe inspiring.
I am totally loving this post. I don’t even know what words to describe how this article makes me feel.
That is quite refreshing and inspiring results, thanks for sharing.
I’ve noticed that google seems to grab my posts and rank them high within minutes of posting them up. I have very few if any backlinks and have been boggled by these results. My blog/business is in a highly competative industry. My past blogs, years ago, i recall spending weeks gaining backlinks and very little to show for it and now, with very little seo effort/thought im ranking rather well with many longtails. Again thanks for sharing your results. Very inspiring.
This is an interesting experiment Lisa.
It’s also important that you created articles without repeating keywords for SEO purposes.
Going after long tail keywords or getting found by long tail keywords is definitely one of the best ways to get organic traffic.
I do have a question though, how many posts do you do each week/month? Thanks!
Yes, very true. I did not do any keyword stuffing over over the same phrase. As I said in the article, it has 100 posts/pages so if you divide that by 13 months that’s about 7 new pieces of content per month.
you wrote posts/pages… so that doesn’t mean you have 100 pages?
A combination of both. I don’t know the split between the two. I was using the word pages as posts and pages.
oh and you are not talking about your Natural hair journey site are you?
No, that site is not anonymous and I’ve mentioned it here. Although that site is doing well too with no backlink building.
But by writing original content is already a good method of SEO. I am still on learning Mode Lisa.Trying to improve my website without hurting it in any way. Awesome post by the way.
Hey! I’m just curious about something you’ve said in this post: how come you don’t have a Facebook Fan Page for this site? Everyone goes crazy about the social community, how come you don’t?
The whole point of the experiment was to see if I could still build traffic the old fashioned way. I may, of course, do social media later. I just wanted to focus on content for the sake of the experiment and all the naysayers who say you MUST use social media and build backlinks manually.
Hey, Lisa! Now that you’ve explained to me, I find your experiment great! Few people put accent on the content anymore, which is sad. Most of bloggers check Google Trends, they write something fast and then start promoting the article on social media.
That will never be me. I would rather talk about something that I’m more interested in where I can show my experience than to only write about something just because it’s trending. It’s always easier for me to write about things that I have more experience with.
Hi Lisa! How long does it takes to reach your 100K Monthly page views? Thanks.
after reading your text, to me only explains one thing, google is getting smarter. I mean people that have a blog or a website that really work on it… will have their credits, then there’s the ones that are more interested in thousands of backlinks that gets a bit UN-natural is just the way i think i guess… plus i think google especially google kind of makes a “profile” on the blogger itself…the ones that are successful will always be successful …and the ones that drop domains, that end up quitting aren’t… sometimes it makes me thing this way… what do you think?
Those who hates link building will gonna love this experiment. I mean, to read the whole post to just post one comment on it.
Hi Liza, No wonder why you have many readers and followers, you did have good articles around here that readers can learn more about.
Hi Lisa, I have come across your website before, I’m sure you’ve done an article on SBI. Any way, lately I’ve been all wound up and agitated about only have one back link. I have searched the net recently for easy ways to build links but there are so many sharks that just want your money. You have inspired me to carry on creating quality content and forget trying to hard about those back links. Love ya work gal.
Thank you so much for writing this article! In my niche (wedding industry), getting backlinks from the top wedding websites can be very expensive. This year, I moved away from the temptation to sponsor advertorials, banner ads, and giveaways because of my recent budgetary constraints. I also gave up my SEO experts and surprisingly, I’m still getting decent views. But what I need to do now is to create more share worthy content especially now that Facebook has the promote button.
I have to agree with you in many respects. SEO and content should go together to maintain the efforts built up by the SEO. Overall, just having good content is both fulfilling and does the job to a great extent already. I’m an SEO guy by the way.
Lisa, what an informative and interesting thread. It just goes to show that it is a good idea not to get too obsessed with Google SEO and focus on also diversifying marketing and business efforts outside of SEO.
I recently bought your WP Starter Book. I’m half way through it. Great Job! You have already helped me to understand better the need for balance between dynamic and static pages. A big thank you!
Hey Jude! Thanks so much for your support and glad my book was able to shed some light.
Awesome work Lisa! Your experiment looks good! Well done and keep up the good work. Your writings are great.
Great article, but depressing that your experiment gets 100x the traffic mine gets, after 2 years and 192 article. A pox on you Google.
nothing works for me without backlinking
Hi Lisa,
You know what, I have been reading your posts for quite some time already. I am already a fan here. I am just new to the blogosphere.
I dare to comment on this post because this is what I have been doing on my other website, not my self-named website. Its an assorted website though but yeah I am not fond of extreme backlinking after the google updates.
I have to admit I was earning good on google adsense on my niche websites but after google updates those websites gone to nowhere.
Thats actually the reason why I bought a new domain and started to blog on just any stuff I like. I am not building tons and tons of backlinks for it but I am glad I see some cents rolling into my google adsense account.
God Bless Lisa!
Hi Lisa, it’s great you got much more traffic from google without backlinks and it’s all about your writing skill. and i like your some small tips which i mostly ignore in my sites.
honestly, it seems magical when you say you didn’t really bother about seo and i’m seeing like thousands of visits. thinking about it, i wonder what kind of niche site a person would build these days to get good results seeing that so many website exist on all kinds of topics. i do hope i find something that i can use to improve my blogging skills and give my readers quality content.
I was searching for a some good blogs on SEO and came across this post. I must say – very interesting results. There is no doubt content is becoming king as Google changes their algorithms, but I haven’t seen many cases quite like this one.
Loads of traffic with no real SEO strategy to speak of other than creating quality, useful content for many long-tails. It gives me a lot to think about. Thanks!
I will realy happy if this is true, since Google is the most important creature who can bring me traffic, And all I know to get attention from Google is Backlink.
Yes I also know that Google love content so much.
Well, I try to more persistent writing content from now on.
Google is the king ofcourse. Google can do any thing. Either it is the matter of increasing traffic or decreasing. Google just Love Social Media and content nothing else.
I’m puzzled by some of this. Since the Penguin update my sites have slipped down the rankings as Google seems to favour directories and other large organisations with huge numbers of back links that I can’t possibly compete with. My content is original and relevant – much more so than the directory sites that Google favours. Interestingly I still come up well on Bing and Yahoo which don’t seem to be prioritising directories that searchers are not really looking for. I wish more people used Bing!
Great post.I should definitely try this on my upcoming new blog.Thanx for the tips
Thanks Lisa! I’ve read pretty much all of your website and it was the first one I stumbled upon 2months ago when I started mine from scratch. Actually I found you on youtube first.
It’s really great news to know about back linking as I’ve only really put my energies into writing at this beginning stage.
I love 2create a website I can’t tell you how much you’ve helped me!
This is really amazing and inspiring at the same time. I really do think that creating unique and quality content is the key. Besides, when you do that the linking back to your blog comes naturally from people wanting to link to you. And yes, those look like amazing stats for a website that is only a year or so old. Was the domain a newly registered domain or was it one you bought that had age?
Thanks, Gary. New domain.
wow, that makes it just that much more amazing. So on average how many times per week did you post, if you don’t mind me asking?
It was random honestly. Some months I wouldn’t publish anything and then 12 articles the following. So it was when I had time. There was no rhythm at all.
I guess that busts the myth of needing to post 4-5 times a week. :]
I think maybe you post more consistently on a blog, but Lisa created and AUTHORITY NICHE WEBSITE… There’s a difference… here’s another question, how many pages did you create in planning stages of your site? or when you published your site how many pages did you have at that time, that went live? yes, proud of me, that’s a good question, lol
Hi Kim,
I always publish content immediately. I don’t write offline and then launch. I never worry about it being “incomplete” because who’s going to see it unless I start promoting it, right? So I just started writing one page at a time. I am so not a planner. When I have an idea, I just go with it and start writing. That’s how each and everyone one of my sites began.
Hey Lisa, I loved this post, as my main hobby is creating niche affiliate sites and using SEO to drive targeted traffic.
My opinion has swayed back and forth a lot over the past couple of years when it comes to link building.
From building dozens of these sites and diligently tracking the results – all while testing out different approaches – I can say the following:
1) I agree with your stance. You’re safer long-term if you do right by Google and focus on what you should inherently WANT to focus on anyway, which is wowing your visitors with amazing, share-worthy content.
This may take longer to gain traction, but in the end you’ll be much better off and will eventually climb your way to the top of Google.
2) Unfortunately, despite all the recent changes and updates by Google, I’m still seeing some seriously aggressive spammy backlinking that works tremendously well.
This actually angers me and disappoints me, as it does make it harder for those of us doing “the right thing” to compete.
However, bottom line is, I wouldn’t want my business relying solely on SEO anyway… and even still, for the SEO traffic I do rely on, I sure wouldn’t feel good about using such aggressive black hat tactics, as “hopefully” it’s only a matter of time before Google catches on, leaving these spammers no choice but to throw in the towel and make way for the *real* value adders, like yourself
Thanks for sharing and I don’t blame you for keeping the site hush hush.
All the best,
Brad Campbell
Hey Brad!
Yeah, there’s still some spammy techniques out there that still work, but Google will eventually clean all that up. Just keep focusing on building a site that’s best for your users and everything else will follow.
Just found out about you! Like the simplicity of your site and your writing style. Keep it up.
Thanks, Mike!
Interesting excercises, is true the best way for increase visits is with good quality websites, nice and original content and your site rocks in the search queries, very nice information and congratulations for your website
Great post, Lisa. Here’s a question I didn’t see asked in the comments… Did you notice any new links to your site over the time your site was being built? Or after it was done, have you gathered incoming links from people linking to your content naturally?
One other question – what was your internal link structure? With blogs, I notice my recent posts getting most traffic and older posts dropping off over time (probably normal). Did you do a lot of internal linking from post to post or just post new stuff occasionally.
Hi Ryan, yes I definitely did see gradual links pop up. They would show up in my referral reports in WordPress and I still continue to earn them naturally. It’s definitely important to note that I *do* have backlinks, they were just earned gradually and I think that supports Google’s new algorithm because it looks more natural.
The site is mostly static and not a traditional blog format even though it uses WordPress. It’s very much setup like my hair site napturallycurly.com – which is primarily a static WordPress site. I have always preferred this kind of format for sites that teach information and this blog is really the only WordPress site that is set up in a more traditional format.
I think to this day it’s the reason 2createawebsite.com (the static site) receives far more SE traffic than this blog. The internal linking structure is better.
Very good questions.
Great post Lisa you never fail to write such valuable posts. I know I might sound like a broken record and I know you didn’t optimize the pages regarding keyword repetition but i’d like to know if you at least had your target keyword phrase in your page title, url and content and whether it was exact match or just phrase match type. Also how many words were your posts on average? The last but most important question i’d like to love to know is are you using the authorsure plugin to have your face pop up for your main site in the serps? Because i’ve seen faces pop up in the google serps for posts but only twice have I ever seen a face pop up for the main website and yours was one of them. How are you doing it??
I appreciate your hard work and service to us noobs
Hi Dan,
1) I always include my target phrase in the title. I just try to include more words and lower the density
2) They were pretty long from 700 words to 1200 (the longer ones do perform better so length is important, I believe)
3) I have never even heard of that plugin, I just followed the advice I have here http://blog.2createawebsite.com/2012/06/25/google-authorship/
is backlinks really important i have 90 plus backlinks but still i am not getting good traffic why?
Back links are important to make your site ranked in search Engine
Hi,
I also have a blog. It’s trending up but my ad-sense application gets rejected everytime. I think you can help me out. Can you please get in touch with me on [email protected].
I’ll also teach you a trick I recently learnt.
I would be really grateful.
LISA i just luv your post its so damn different and interesting !!i have seen so many blog abour blogging but i am hooked to your blog i just luv it !!!:)
Lisa,
This post is really inspiring, but it made me confused as well about the importance of link building.
It is not the first time i see someone talking about such an experiment, however i still think that this would be the exception to the rule and the rule still rules
Believe it or not your article give me inspiration to keep make my website better
Thanks Lisa
I’m glad its not just me who finds building backlinks to be pretty dull,its going to be tough developing engaging content for my new employers site
Lisa
awesome traffic you work hard so you deserve it. I mean SEO is huge so knowing a little seo and applying it anybody can get these numbers.
I know my blog will reach those numbers and higher but its nice to see your stats hard work pays off
SEO is king….organic traffic is far more better than referral traffic which may dry up any time but if your blog posts are well optimized search engines will be throwing you traffic even if you do not do anything on your blog.
Content is King, With good and quality content you will automatically get natural backlinks. That is what i learnt from this post.
Thanks for sharing..you have made my day today with this article.
Dear Lisa
I like your website and blog, so many thing I should learn tobe a blogger. Your contents are so useful and I love the way you post “focus in good content”
Thanks so much.
Thanks Lisa for all the work that you do to provide US with so much info. I’ve been looking at your site for the past year now. I’ve start my own website in a touch niche so traffic is slow but not bad.
I am currently going the backlinking route and yes, it is tedious at best. The most my site have ever obtain is 600,000 page views a month. That was with the help of adwords and seo.
Your confidence of blogging without giving much more importance on backlink building is good.I support these kind of approach.Actually i also believe that content is the main thing to drive traffic and attract Google.If the content is standard and have good information then you will have your own traffic from that content.Thanks for the post.
A good post which recognizes that, ultimately, quality content does rule the roost. I think what you really seem to be saying here is not so much that linkbuilding is useless but rather that (to keep up with the chicken metaphor) it is best to be diversified and not put all of one’s eggs in one basket.
Thanks again for underscoring the virtues of soundly written content.
I had never heard that without back-links we gain the more traffic but Your practical example convenience me and I believe in Quality matters and not quantity! Never thought you will be experimenting like this.
I am not getting good traffic in my blog.. but now i will try to follow yours instructions now. thanks
Backlinks seems to be the selling point of most traffic posts but this is a little different from the rest and I will definitely give it try. thanks.
Very good article. I’m going through a few of these issues as well..
Wow. This is absolutely amazing. My sites (so far) haven’t suffered from any Google updates but I have been worried. I am very cautious when it comes to link building but I am a frequent visitors to many blogs and I do leave a link there. Do you think this can have a negative impact and be seen as spammy? My each post is different, I always want to add some value. Now I am even thinking of giving this up.
Great Post Lisa! Thanks!
I’ve been of this mindset for a long time. While I do not have a high traffic site, I do not waste time on backlinking and let the site “speak” for itself overall. Everyone I know is stressing and straining on building traffic, buying traffic (BIG NO NO in my opinion) and other utterly time-consuming activities.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with no backlinking – it proves my stance and supports yours.
So, in this new google algorythm, it is not too important in building backlinks?
Backlinks are always important, but it’s the QUALITY of the backlinks that matter more. A link from an unpopular blog is not going to be worth as much as a link from a PR6 blog, for example. Basically Google devalued a lot of links they used to value.
Hi Lisa, We are new to website building, I have read your points about not building backlinks. If you have so much traffic, won’t the people visiting this site leave links if they like the site though. Essentially this is how back links are supposed to be created aren’t they?
That’s my point. I didn’t say the site had no backlinks, I said I didn’t chase them. So yes, there are backlinks, but they were earned naturally. That’s the way Google wants it.
My blog with over 400 google indexed pages+post receive no more than 20 organic traffic from google. I didn’t do much bakclinking but I have a fair PR4 for my blog, and overall daily traffic is only 150. I think your experimental project was just too lucky
Your article very interesting, I’ll try to put into practice, thanks
Great post. I find my traffic builds more quickly when I build pages. I am now just positing to my facebook business page and making new pages for my site. It is working great. People love good information and the word spreads. Good information makes people stay on your site longer and that gets googles attention.
It would be good to concentrate only on writing content for own website. And not to waste time on back links.
But from my opinion the strategy will work only in case if in website is content that is not available in other websites and the content is required by visitors…
Question is how get ideas to write such content….
Great post and congrats on the results. Quality content to me is key but I’m choosing to take a more holistic approach which is not to rely on just one method. Quality, affiliates…there is a lot I’m learning to do. I’m hoping to have some good results like you over time so thanks for reinforcing what I’ve always thought! Cheers!
Hi Lisa,
I have recently started a new blog on investing and economy (http://www.projabber.com/).
My key focus through this blog is on discussing market trends and strategies. I guess its not a bad niche after-all.
The problem is that I haven’t seen a single search visitor so far. I have restarted this blog and deleted all the old posts. Now I have around 12 posts in about 2 months. What could be wrong here?
Really helpful article. Iam a beginner in blogging and i was really wasting time researching on backlinks. Nothing worked for me but this really make sense
The above experiment is kinda different than simply starting out if you are promoting the site on a already busy facebook site or website. Did you start fresh without your other sites helping this experimental site, is 100 pages about what it takes to see a noticeable increase in the adsense earnings…great idea…love your site!
No backlinking and still this much traffic??
Its really inspirational for my new blog.I have recently launched android niche blog, surely will try this on it!!
Thanks for sharing!
Sometimes it happens with me that I create the site and just forget it for months and then after few months I return and see that site is ranking on page one and has very good traffic.
Good content attract good backlinks and that attract search engines.
Thanks for sharing this great stuff. So, What I conclude is submit your site to niche authorative website, another thing I believe is add yourself to more google plus circles, would also help. Do you know any site that is trusted for working from home and that pays daily without taking any payment from users.
Thanks in advance.
Dhruv Thaker
developer http://gujaratonlineinfo.com
visit for gujarat business guide, gujarat business directory, gujarat information, gujarat tourism information, gujarat business information
I feel the same way about building backlink’s. Just create unique content and let Google do the rest. I have started outsourcing my backlinking campaigns on freelancer and focused my personal effort on writing unique content.
Thanks Lisa for the wonderful post. Content is still king and great content will always rule supreme in Mother Google. People forget that Google’ initial mission was to control the content of the world and make it available at the click of a button to the user. If people help Mother Google with her dream she will help people with their dream.
Hi Lisa, good information. You obviously have knowledge that everyone is hungry for.
I tried a blog several years ago but did not really take it seriously and after 4 years have only received 8k visits. I’m in the process of rebuilding it now.
Do you think having a Pro Theme like Genesis helps get traffic?
Hi John, I think the theme has very little to do with it unless it’s just coded poorly and the engines can’t read the content. I know a lot of theme developers say their theme will help with SEO and when it comes to page loading that may play a role. However Google doesn’t care what theme you use. For the most part, it’s about content, NATURAL backlinks that you build slowly over time.
Thanks for the reply Lisa. What theme are you using for your test site?
Also, good tutorial you did on setting up the Genesis theme. I found it very helpful.
Thanks John, every WordPress site I have now uses the Genesis Lifestyle Theme. I am truly a fan!
Love the feed back that you put into your site, so much good info it’s hard to grasp all of it.But with your knowledge I have started my wordpress site and continue to learn.
Thanks
Glad to see your approach. I’ll try to implement this.
Hmm, the methodology is not arguable in most respects especially post Panda, Penguin etc. However for new sites investing time in backlinking (quality backlinking) can well be wroth the pain. Again for new sites the use of Twitter is extremely effective at getting the bots crawling.
I agree with this. When I put less effort on backlinks, I get better results! It sounds crazy but that’s how it is.
This is fantastic for a new blogger such as myself to see. As I understand it, the best way to develop search traffic, for any niche, is this…
1) Create Great Content that actually helps people
2) Create is often.
3) Wait.
As your site gets older and you gain natural links, you will see more search traffic.
Also, consider making your sharebar 5-10 pixels wider, it is cutting off some of the “tweet” button in my browser (chrome).
Really Good article, its good to know that you can get good traffic from Google without obsessing over backlinks.
Great Content is always key, Thanks for the info:)
HI
Lisa . I am truely fan of your blog. Can i know what kind of blog content gains more traffic. As per this post which blog / content u have used for getting traffic.
Hi Lisa, thank you for this information, I am new to the whole website building, started my first ever two websites and now in the process of learning how to get traffic to them, but to be hoenst with you I find it really difficult, at least for me, I’m not doing that much of a backlinks, but it seem to me that nobody even know my website, I get 1 or maybe 2 visitors a day, if I’m lucky i’ll get 5.
I started doing social networking, posting in twitter and facebook, but it doesn’t seem to help, nobody wants to click lol, I’m not sure where to go from here, if you could give me an advice I would really appreciate it.
Hi Nawaf, It looks you are doing fairly well. Your website seems to be attractive and content-rich at the first glance. Your Alexa traffic rank and reputation are not bad. If I am not wrong, you created your domain name on November 9th and you complained that nobody knew about you on November 24th of the same year. This is kind of weird. Perhaps you have recently redirected your content from another domain name. Note that the internet community awareness might have been re-set to zero due to redirection. It takes time Nawaf. It takes time. Just keep adding new quality content to your site. This is the basic lesson we all learn from Lisa; our knowledgeable web business teacher.
You mention Pat Flynn, I have spent a lot of time learning from his posts, he has tried to share a lot, I quite agree that some things are not to be shared. I really appreciate what you folks do share, it takes years off the learning curve.
Yes, he’s quite an inspiration.
You don’t go straight to the point. This whole article was useless. You did not talk about what’s mentioned in the TITLE of the article of the 100,000 views. Bu@#$%^&
Thank you for reading.
Lisa,
I admire the fact that you experimented with creating a niche blog and then educated everyone about your findings. You are a great mentor and teacher
Thank you,
Ken
Thanks for coming by, Ken!
This is really amazing for me. I do not know if we do not have any backlink, how can the page rank of our site increase and how can we get the high rank on Google or any search engine.
You blog is very nice!
Hello Lisa,,Thanks for the information and techniques but i would like to know the top number of back-links pointing towards your site if you could provide me???
. I am just beginner blogger and trying to know how much number of back links do we need to get pr5 as your website..
Hi Shashank,
Your comment here is somewhat irrelevant with the post but anyway, I am a new blooger too and willing to help other new bloggers like me.
To get google recognized backlinks of a site, go to google and type link:websitename and then enter
To get bing recognized backlinks of a site, go to bing and type site:websitename and then enter
Note that bing counts backlinks significantly higher than google. In other words, you can say that google counts only quality back links.
To get Pr5, you need several thousands of backlinks if they are of low quality and even less than a hundred if they are of high quality.
Hope this helped.
Lisa I have to thank you for the wealth of knowledge that has come from your site I’m now building a site for my wife and have learned some much that I now no what works and what is a waste of time
Thanks again
Dane Crosby
For you it’s possible. But for a new blogger its Never be so easy to get monthly 100,00 views.
Yeah. I also think that it’s really difficult to get 100,000 views without backlinks.
I never said the site didn’t have backlinks. I said I haven’t been chasing them — big difference. Of course, the site has backlinks.
Inspiring article. Wish I could do it.
Great information Lisa, can you provide some insight to an example of the types keywords you use please?
Is there any criteria that you look at when doing keyword research, like competition, Monthly exact visits, CPC etc…??
It seems that if you only have 100 pages/posts and get 100,000 views each keyword must get hundreds of searches a month or so.
Thanks in advance for your help,
Kyle
Kyle, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m not a keyword research person. I don’t do keyword research on every page I create to be honest. I get a general idea for what I want to target and begin writing and I am very conscious about using varieties of the keywords I use.
This is a topic I am very much passionate about. There weren’t too many sites that focused on it in great detail, so I went for it. The overall demand for the topic is probably not what most people would say is “ideal” but because of longtail phrases, that’s what makes the traffic add up. This site is not in a very competitive niche compared to this one and many others.
That’s why I don’t get too bogged down in numbers, stats, etc. If you’re passionate about something and you know there is an audience, go for it. Share your personal experiences with how they relate. When you do a good job, people will share your site. Notice I didn’t say I didn’t have any backlinks. I do and most of them are voluntary. But I don’t chase backlinks. So the success of the site is a combination of content and people linking to me naturally.
But as far as calculating keyword CPC, monthly searches, etc. I don’t even bother with that anymore. I just write, teach and share.
Lisa.. question for you, please.
I have a section on my site about which I have considerable knowledge and could blog as you do, ‘free expression’ style, and I could probably genuinely help people.
This is a SiteBuildIt site….
My question to you……. lol (are you sitting down?)
What is your opinion about writing content and not paying a lot of attention to the ‘Analyze’ parameters, well, to rephrase, what bad things could happen if I depend on longtail keywords in my articles.
I would actually prefer to build content in a free wheeling way, I have a ton of ideas that would not necessarily be in accordance with the SBI! article and page criteria.
Do you have any suggestions for me……..
If I felt I could write whatever comes into mind…… wow, freedom for sure, and I could really offer some great ideas for others. I feel bound and restricted by what I have learned to be the page building criteria.
Thanks
Hi Dave
Read my comment above this one. As you can see, I put very little stock into that now with SEO evolving. I choose a phrase I want to target and just mention the keywords naturally and try to use variations. Other than that, I don’t obsess over that anymore. And in my opinion, SBI! needs to revamp their wording/training on that. SEO is becoming less about keyword density and more about social shares, quality backlinks and more.
Hey..!
You so fast to reply. Thanks….
I will start to make pages that are more geared to sharing my knowledge and experience, this will be interesting for me and hopefully to others.
I will benefit and so will my readers if I can simply ‘spew out’ what I feel to be right.
I would so like to be able to write freely, I have a lot of knowledge and experience to share in some areas and sharing that knowledge is far more appealing to me than wondering what the pandas and penguins and seagulls will think.
Thanks for your input.!
daveM
I read a few blogs each day, and some of those are very high page rank and big traffic blogs. What I am amazed at it…. these people have no selling pitch, they blog on their personal interests, they share some of their techniques, they just write whatever is interesting them at the time. I am pretty sure that they are oblivious to keywords as they write the blogs, they just write them.
The readers love the blogs and sign up for whatever.
These writers.. they gain a lot of trust because they are so personable.
AND… these people are the ones that are making the major incomes.!
I have not arrived at that place yet, where I have the ability to communicate effectively with the readers, I can see that there is a big hill for me to climb to be able to blog effectively and engage my visitors.
Great and very useful information. I will try doing the same thing, hope i get good results like you.
Hi Lisa,
I have been following this post and comments for some time. Just wondering if you got that much traffic without offpage SEO (link building) then your onpage SEO should have been spectacular. What onpage SEO strategy did you follow and which plug in? Hope you answer.
Thanks,
Adnan
This was all onpage. Now, I do have backlinks from other sites that were earned gradually and naturally, but the onpage was very, very white hat. Meaning I pick a phrase to target, use it in the meta title and maybe a variation of it in the page title. I don’t mention it a bunch of times in the copy. I just write naturally using variations of the phrase and related phrases. I interlink the pages quite a bit throughout the site using anchor text and variations of the phrase so it doesn’t look spammy.
I will try doing the same thing, hope i get good results like you. Im also problem with backlink in google.com even my site already 1 million ranking
WOW, a 100k page views! Only in my dreams. I have tried blogging but too time consuming. I admire you for providing us with such an array of tips and advice. I could NOT do what you do and on a consistent basis. Keep up the good word (and work)!
I think , there is a very high competition in todays world and building backlinks is equally necessary along with creating quality content.
i love it!!
Awesome to hear stories like this when a site just takes off naturally, it’s so much easier
Quite interesting write up. I really hope we dont die of information overload online. It just simply shows that there is no brick and mortar method to marketing websites online. Try and see what works for you and also diversify!
ohh very Thanks!!
Awesome!!
Wow, Lisa – you should get yourself hired as a page contents writer with guaranteed SEO effects!
That’s really impressive and very true at the same moment – one won’t get through search engines guts without a decent and differentiated page contents.
To the skeptics- I believe that this is great advice. Internet marketing is like a game of chess to me. I would rather be one step ahead of Google in order to protect my business. One wrong move and your income is thrown out the window. Sure article marketing may currently work to a certain extent, but it will not be long until Google slaps those directories with a turkey, horse, or whatever kind of animal Google deems appropriate for its next update. Aiming for quality over quantity is of priority to me. I have come to the conclusion that article directory marketing will only work if manually submitted. Only submit to directories with high PR and avoid article marketing robot at all costs.
Hello, But still i am not actually using the power of web. I have started it from last 3 4 months and what i am getting is 20 or 30 page views. Someone told me that use backlinks (Specially i dont even know how to do it) But after reading your article it shows the power of content. if you have any tips please share it.
Lisa, I know you posted the traffic report a month before this article was written, but when did you see a significant increase, I mean like 50-100 visitors a day to about 1000 visitors a day. Sorry I’m a newbie. I just wanted to know when I should expect this if I follow the “seo rules”. Congrats on your success, I love reading your post from time to time.
Awsome. Thanks for your tips
interesting that my comment was not published, I aksed some crucial questions
Hi Lisa,
If it’s not too much trouble, could you take a look at my website http://www.goldenshanty.com ? Since I am not getting any visitors.
Thank you so much
ok, nice, seems that I have been heard
my questions were:
1. have you siloed your site by building categories?
2. if yes, how many did you build?
3. how many articles did you post per day?
thanks and best regards
i’m number 1 page 1 ranking google no sales yet with my clicbank account ? it’s been 5 days at number 1 now when will the sales come also it’s for sale how much is it worth ? $
Hi Lisa, Great article. I’ve just recently started my blog and I was googling how to improve ranking and came across your site. I’m so glad I have, otherwise I would be obsessing over backlinks.
Wow. Thanks for tips. Very very helpful tips.
Hey Lisa
My problem is that i get quite a lot pageviews but I have less comments and followers what to do?
my only two questions is what is the SEMrush value of the traffic and if there is no links what links have naturally been linked even if it wasn’t you..
My blog is currently reaching 30,000 Traffic monthly, and a bit slowing down recently. Really need some fresh ideas and new effective ways to build it to another level of achievement, to 60,000 monthly traffics, to 90,000 monthly and eventually 100,000 per month!
Great number you’ve achieve there Lisa. Keep it up.
I started blogging a month ago and am up to 15 posts. Using mainly social media and a little SEO i have just hit 4000 views. I guess ill just keep writing quality content to build up views rather than spending to long on SEO since the blog covers a wide range of topics not a niche as such.
Huge traffic without build back links is possible and that’s only for SMO i.e Social media optimization.
Interesting. I will try your methods and see if it works for me. In the web world, each and every online based business needs traffic for its promotion. Even if you have the best product, the best website and everything else you need to make it the best business out there BUT if the webpage lacks traffic, the business will not do so well. Thus, sending traffic to your website is necessary for a business to carry on effectively and profitably.
It is definitely true that you can still build a large, consistent stream of traffic just by writing and providing high quality content, rather than by focusing on backlinks. While backlinks are obviously very important, Google has been focusing on making very high quality content gain more authority, and this was one of the main reasons for both the Penguin and the Panda updates.
High quality content will provide a steady stream of highly targeted traffic and improve a website’s, a blog’s or even a specific webpage’s rankings in the search engines very quickly!
Awesome man…
Keep it up…i am also planning to do the same
Great to hear that you do such a tremendes job just to see what is the reaction of the search engine.
Thanks for you share your answher with as. Kipe like that!!
Great article, excellent info. However, it doesn’t work for everyone. Being a web design agency, competing in the Google ranks in this industry is extremely difficult, its cut-throat. I too hate backlinking, but its a task I feel I have to do being in this industry. But still, for most, what you say is very true. Good relevant content and natural backlinks are best for SEO by far.
I agree with you Lisa. That’s what I believe in. I too don’t think that Google would be stupid enough to give such higher preference to backlinks when its not such an unknown fact that many number of websites simply outsource the task of creating backlinks to get them for SEO purpose. I am also looking forward to put up quality content on my website for getting traffic and I hope it works for me as it did for you.
Will you marry me? Lol, I loved the case study, and i hope you do another one. Gives me some hope, its hard to deal with all this black hat back linking or the big companies that just pay for backlinks…
Hello Lisa, Thanks for sharing your success about getting 100,100 monthly pageviews. It seems a difficult task to get 100,000 pageviews monthly but you did it. Hope my blog will also reach this target soon but it need hard work. I will looking forward to follow your tips and get my blog on right way.
THIS IS VERY INTERESTING. I, TOO, HATE THE IDEA OF RUSTLING UP BACKLINKS.
WITH A NEW BLOG, HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD I BE POSTING EACH WEEK TO GET MORE PAGE VIEWS?
Hi Jane
You have to find your rhythm as a blogger, but the key is only post when you have something useful to share. Yes, I agree posting 3-4 times per week on a new blog can be a good way to build up your readership. But don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. I don’t believe there is a set number. Just get a feel by posting a few times a week and see how it goes. Your views will be impacted by how relevant and useful your posts are to the audience you’re writing for — and of course how you market them. Good luck!
Very interesting! I just launched a new site and have started a new blog giving tips on internet marketing. Would you be interested in guest posting for me? Thanks.
Sorry Colm, I hung up my guest posting hat, at least for now.
Good luck on your new site!
Thanks for very use full information, please guide me how i increase traffice for my wallpapers blog, and give me some suggestion i am getting round about 200 visitor per day.
http:///www.all-free-wallpaper.blogspot.com
thanks
I found extremely helpful.i would more thankful if you tell me than what i can do for mine blog to get more and more traffic .
Hi Lisa,
How long did it take you to get your site to have so many visitors? It didn’t all happen suddenly did it. So if this was a brand new domain about how long did it take you to start seeing traffic. I am asking this because I recently started my website and have no traffic at all… maybe a few visitors a day. So I am just trying to understand if it will stay like this or there will be a time when I start seeing more traffic. I already submitted the site to all major search engines.
Hi Alex
It was very gradual. I honestly don’t remember the exact numbers per month but by the 6 month mark, it probably had about 300-400 visitors per day.
But you can’t really use my story as a benchmark for your own traffic. So much depends on the keywords you are targeting, how well you’re ranking and any other traffic building techniques you are using. Just keep writing and consider joining some of the social blogging sites like BlogEngage, BizSugar, etc.
Its helpful information Lisa, can you provide some insight to an example of the types keywords you use please?
Hi Lisa, good stuff. I bought your book, NWS and also bought the Genesis Lifestyle theme from your affiliate link, then redesigned my BLOG. Since then my web traffic has increased 10 fold. Thanks for the good information.
The web needs more honest people like you who tell it like it is with out the fluff.
Wow, John thanks so much! I appreciate you stopping by to say that.
Wow 100k views without SEO and backlink building? I can’t believe it.
Hello Lisa, Thanks for sharing your success about getting 45000 monthly pageviews. It seems a difficult task to get 100,000 pageviews monthly but you did it. Hope my blog will also reach this target soon but it need hard work. I will looking forward to follow your tips and get my blog on right way.
Can I increase my sales and profits without focusing on just traffic?
Do you emphasize Organic or Pay-Per-Click marketing techniques?
I’m googling to find “no backlink just write”, and i’m so happy to read your post. I don’t have to much time or money for backlink building so i just write what on my mind. your post inspired me…
I have my website at google rank 4 in search result without a single backlink, in 3 months as well I will not name my site.
it depends also with the domain name and site content.
builiding traffic without backlinks is very diff. it takes hell out of the site.
Hi Arun
It’s important to note. I didn’t say the site has no backlinks. I said have not been actively chasing them. They’ve been built naturally.
We are very much thank full to u Liza , you really share very good details at no expense. keep going on,
Wish u all the best
I love this and you give me an encouragement to focus on building my content and my site than wasting time looking for backlinks. My only addition is that one can benefit by spreading information about what one is up to in various places online with or without backlinks.
I started a blog a year ago with no success. I started another one that I have really put the time and effort into and the results have been great the first week with 3500 views. Having real content is truly the key and I am having a blast. http://shoelessbride.blogspot.com/ Thanks so much for your help. Deborah Stilettos
Thanks. This post brings motivation, as link building is a tedious task
Great inspiration piece
How this is a great site to find and bookmark, Done. I’ll be checking back. Its very useful to all webdevelopers. Thanks You Lot
One important question:
Did you buy an old domain name or did
you create a new domain name yourself that was brandneu.
As I believe old domains get traffic much faster if they are old…
I am not sure if I should buy an old domain name or make one up myself?
It was a brand new domain. I just think I found a really good niche that wasn’t explored and expanded on as much as I’m doing.
Lisa you rock, always have great posts with relevant information to keep me on the right path and moving forward. We greatly appreciate your blog and insight. Does twitter really do that much for SEO I find it annoying to manage
Hi Dane, Twitter may help if you have a really engaged following — meaning top influencers (people with large followings) often share your tweets, etc. So it’s about using it effectively and most people don’t. If you don’t have a following that actively shares your content then it’s not going to have as much of an influence on SEO.
this is very nice blog, you can also visit my site to see how to earn money through Google.
I’m glad you are talking about this subject and decided to monitor this new site for research to share with us, your fans. Thank you very much. You have made me smile with your not so secrets to blogging success.
Mr.MakingUsmile
niceeeeeeeeeeeeeeee great yeeeeeeeeeeee
Thank you very much for this article. It is very interesting to see that a website can have a high traffic without SEO. This really gives hope to move forward in promoting my work sophrologist without being a specialist web marketing
I can surely say that you have done allot more work on this project . Really , mind blowing and motivated post but lisa I wanna say that you are lucky enough to have this kind of blasting search engine traffic . I am also running two websites and in my opinion backlinks boost your website in a very short time instead of any other method . They are working for me like a charm
Hi,
Interestingly, I also tried the same concept very recently. I am currently getting my articles ready. I focused more on keyword research. I am planning NOT to build or buy back links for it except using free back link sites every week to get 25 back links a week. I will post my results. Thanks for a great sharing.
Venkat
I’ve been obsessed with building backlinks for the last few months, so I found this interesting and helpful. Thank you
Well Lisa, you rock as usual.
I am entirely not focused on backlinks, guess I’ll be penalized for that. However, I enjoy writing, So I put fingers to keyboard and let the creative juices take me where they will.
I am constantly aware of what’s going on around me, and try to use questions or comments to write about. I maintain a (niche) cooking blog, and a friend commented that they hated a particular vegetable. So I wrote an article on that, highlighting particular keywords. Still think this is the way to go until I can get some natural backlinks.
Hi..Lisa, I have a new blog with using wordpress platform. I love wordpress because it’s SEO friendly and I like to write the article on my blog. I have a question: How is important the fresh content for blogging? Thanks
did you use wordpress for this website ?
Yes.
Thanks.
Actually I waned to ask about your main site2creteawebsie.com ? Is that also built using wordpress ?
No it’s an HTML site built with Dreamweaver.
Hey Lisa ,
I am a newbie in the field of blogging. So can U please Help me Getting traffics to my blog.It would help me a lot.I also want to have 4k visits regularly.
Please help me getting some traffics.
This is my blog:http://billionaresofglobe.blogspot.in
Thanks.
hi lisa
We have work with wordpress last 5 month but not increase visitor on my site & we have post 18 article but visitor show day 10-25 /day pls help me & suggest me best option for my website:-
http://tips4dailyincome.com
Awaiting for your soonest reply……………
I rarely do any keyword research – I just write what I enjoy and know about. Although I do not chase backlinks maybe I should be pandering to the search engines a little. My post titles are normally written from a traditional copywriting angle.
Just happened upon this post and wanted to tell you I really enjoyed it.
Funny, or ironic as I have a blog in which I am pretty much doing the same with.
Totally hot topic, complete original posts most of which are longer (500-1500 words)
But posting on average of 2-3 times a week, an experiment for me and really just a few sparse ads.
Thanks & I look forward to reading more,
Kobi
Thank you!! What are all the ways to make our visitors to see our website
How do you start a RSS link everyone says you need one but its hard to find info to set one up
Thanks
Really loved this article! I am a novice in website building. Financial reasons have drove me to trying my hand at internet marketing and of course affiliate marketing.
I consider myself a good writer, saying that thou I struggle with how to write good content, or if I am writing good content??
Recently, I restarted my website, rebuilding it, so its not active per sec yet. And I am working on several more that will work as well with my main site.
Thanks again for your posts and so on. I am an info junkie by nature and always wanting to learn more about everything.
Hi Lisa,
This was a great source of information for a newbie blogger like me. I have recently started a food blog to write about some unique and less known food traditions and recipes on my website http://www.mangopickle.net. I am more of a hobbyist here than professional. Web gave me a channel to take my passion for food further. Having said that, being a techie by profession (not in web domain though) I am also very interested in understanding and learning the way web traffic work & of course I would like to see my website gain good amount of traffic. It’s been about 3 weeks since I launched my website and I have been reading several articles on what is the best way to boost traffic to your site and honestly it has been very very confusing. The first tip most of the articles give you is to build back linking. I seriously do not have the time and personality to go after peoples web space and ask for back linking. It just beats the purpose for me of trying to create a content with the love of sharing for someone out there who is truly would love to read it. Your article was a relief to read you don’t need to chase such things. Having said that, I still wonder, what can someone like me do to boost the traffic who is writing about a topic that is so widely available. My website hardly has any traffic other than direct (people with whom I shared my web). Should I just keep writing and wait for it to pick up? how do I make sure it even shows up on the search ??
Hi and thanks for the article – I found it very interesting.
I tend to like to ponder the comments on blogs I read, but yours just got way too long lol
I run a few websites, with blogging my main tool for developing my online audience (with a little social Networking thrown in). I have never actively sought backlinks – I’ve always been put off by the aggressive way people sought them, and I’ve always figured Google would get to the bottom of this eventually, punishing those who flouted.
One thing I did notice was – my main website, which I use for my Computer Repair business, has taken a drop in PR from 3 to 2 in the past 9 months, and no matter what I do, this doesn’t seem to be rising again at all. I found PR3 very easy to get, but very hard to regain once lost. I put quite lengthy, technical blogs on this site, which definitely has upped my traffic (I went from approx 1500 visitors pm to about 6000 after a few months), and I have also noticed that good-quality content has made the Bricks & Mortar businesses take more notice, as if I’m gaining some prestige with them as a result of the blog.
Do you get hung up on PR at all, or am I worrying for no reason?
Anyways, thanks for the article – I found you whilst running off at tangents whilst looking to improve my own sites. I’ll certainly have a good read through the rest of your articles now that I’ve found you, and I am certain I will take some pointers from you, for which I’m always grateful.
One tip I will give to anyone who bothers to read down this far …… when blogging for your website – ensure you consider your audience and pitch your article for them!! I found, when I started my Computer-related blog that I ptched my first few articles too technical, as if they were for those who already know quite a bit about computers. This is not my target audience, and these people shop around way too much to ever deal with small-fry like me. Once I realised this, and started aiming my articles towards the ‘layman’ or average person – my traffic and work picked up dramatically. The wording and pitch of my articles is pretty much perfect now for my tasrget audience and my blog is raising my traffic month on month.
Hi Mark
PR has never had any kind of impact on my actual traffic. I’ve had my PR drop but traffic go up. I think there is too much hype over PR, Alexa, etc. What matters most is your traffic. Thanks for coming by!
Hi my online toy business has been going just over a year and didn’t do to bad last year, but i’d like to get ranked organically if possible.My domain http://www.jacksonprice.com is ranked at one at present and would like to get this to at least 2 and the keyword (ride on cars)(kids car’s) etc ranked to.
I don’t have many backlinks and want to know weather i need them or is there away around this ?
I’ve had to learn everything from scratch about seo and i’m still learning as i don’t have the funds to pay companies £1000′s.
I’m not a big business and i just resell for a supplier and it’s just me running it, i only need 5-6 sales a week to succeed and i can run this full time.
I’ve put alot of hard work into the site and everything has been designed by me, i am so very close to achieving my goal and i’m not expecting to by one of the big boys.
I’ve also just submitted articles to 3 article sites and ones been posted so far.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Kind Regards
Darren
Hi have created Airport Websites and have tried to be an active commenter on blogs and articles, dont know if webmasters are just not approving my comments or are links just not registering on sites like alexa.
any advise you have in regards to how long it would take for links to display on alexa, would be much appreciated.
Regards
V
hi lisa i am really looking for how to bring traffic on my site, and its really helpful for me, i am going to apply the tips on my blog, hope that it will increase my traffic..
Wow awesome…
This is the way i did on my blog, just create a unique content for visitor and forget about link building.
Hope can get result like what you got soon…
Keep writing Lisa…
The main thing in this post for me was: without backlinks! This is a way which i didn´t went in the past – so maybe on my next starting project i can do it! Great Post! Thank you!
I’m so happy by visit this site that i’m already bookmark this site and I will come back again . thank for great post.
Insightful article, Lisa. Proves it’s possible to get significant exposure using only natural means.
Awesome! Great and very useful information. I will try doing the same thing, and hope i’ll get similar good results like you.
Hy Lisa, what a surprise – with a brand new domain such an success… very, very good! Wow!
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for sharing this experiment and the fact that sites don’t need SEO tricks to draw traffic. When you first chose the niche, did you include any keywords in the website domain name?
It sounds like your research consisted of seeing what humans were interested in rather than search engines and it paid off.
Thanks,
Brett
Its amazing that you have received so much traffic without actively seeking backlinks. I am a new blogger and I have no idea what or how to execute backlinks so its good to know I dont have to.
Hi Lisa,
It was a really a wonderful experience to read your article on the right knowledge for SEO stuff. I am a fresh blogger and do not know much of building large loads of traffic to my blog, but I am trying whatever I can do to make it more SEO friendly.
Also, I do think that not every website that promises strong backlinks provide us they really promise. Some of them are just to fool the innocent bloggers and webmasters by advertising their own websites over free advertising spaces people’s quality blogs. I feel, a blog is made for writing and sharing your stuff and we should concentrate more on writing than wasting our time in promoting more than what is present on your website/blogs.
Well, thanks a lot for sharing the awesome knowledge. I wish a lot of old and fresh bloggers(including me) will benefit from it.
You hit the nail on the head. There are so many services/scams out there that want you to believe you need them for traffic and they are preying on newbies who don’t know what they need. Backlinks are important but if you can buy them, Google will devalue those kinds of links because the sites that sell them are typically not valued in their eyes anyway.
It must be a great niche and the site must fulfil a need that not many others do.
Much like you, I started to get traffic with very minimal SEO and no backlinking – albeit with not as much traffic.
Some of those old posts that I didn’t do much with are still my top traffic generators from search engines, and they have been for over two years.
I recently tried to do some backlinking for some posts, and those posts didn’t generate any traffic. Since then I have stopped trying to get backlinks and focused more on just publishing content.
Great experiment! That makes your content uniquely yours-original.
Well, you have the proofs, so no one can say that this doesn’t work. But the problem here is that getting natural backlinks takes time, and honestly a lot of it. But it’s the best way to avoid getting banned by search engines.
Hello Lisa,
Thanks for sharing this experiment
Hi Lisa,
Was this success done without your Google authorship rank?
Thanks
Sure was!
I notice that you do not use meta keywords or descriptions for pages. What is your thought process on this. It clearly has no negative effects on your rankings?
I had a plugin conflict and had to disable my plugin for meta descrip/keywords temporarily, but for the record the keyword tag is completely ignored by most engines now. Google admitted they don’t use it. The description is still relevant though — not just for SEO but to engage people as they are browsing the results.
I run a few websites, with blogging my main tool for developing my online audience (with a little social Networking thrown in). I have never actively sought backlinks,when I create a site, I am just going t keep doing what I did with this site.thank you lisa
Wow that’s some amazing results! I can’t believe your site got so far with 0 link building, it must have been a very slow start.
Hi Lisa,
Great article. There is always a struggle trying to balance what Google wants and what you want to do with a website. I’m not sure that is a good thing…
Nowadays my blog itself seems good in traffic flow but not like yours and I am looking forward to handle the things you mentioned in order to increase my blog traffic.
I can’t believe your site got so far with 0 link building
Thanks for info. Cheers
Thanks Lisa- Great info as always, will be coming back for more !JB
that’s great. your step can be a guidline for me to build site without (chasing) backling but having high traffic.
Makes me feel a lot better. Thanks for the fascinating post Lisa!
its proof too… so many of the sites on search engine have less in links but they are ranked too well on search engine just because of there unique content >matt cutts in several video sessions clearly says if you have a quality stuff no one can effect your position
Well, Been trying the so-called ‘Natural’ back linking deal. By that I am posting blogs, lining other content that I add to my sites to other content rich & high page ranking sites. Bottom line is, this is all fine & dandy…but it does not generate any more traffic that I can see, at least not now. Maybe in the future over time.
What I need is No Guru crap, and a real system to get targeted traffic to my site. I have been at this online marketing thing now for about a year. I am no dummy, I read, research everything, and still not one sale…nothing zip!!!!
Tired of buying so-called “paid traffic” , same thing…no sales & my wallet is empty.
I have started doing You Tube videos, that is a bear cat in its self, but I can see where if you put out good vids that pre tain to what your marketing that helps create traffic to your site…naturally.
Finally; Google has been messing with me a lot and I can’t even get my site approved for Adwords campaign let alone Adsense. I start a campaign, that I am paying for & they dis approve it or suspend it. Tired of their garbage!!! I run a legit set of sites, no adult content, no hacking, no other funny biz, & yet they(google) block me at every turn.
Tim I feel your pain. I have to admit, I did it the slow way. And unfortunately to many people that is not “sexy.” Granted, I got started early and things have changed but I still the best way to build natural is to work harder in the beginning on figuring out what your unique angle is going to be.
I think people get so caught up in “submissions” and doing, doing, doing that they never really have a solid plan for how they are going to brand themselves. So they end up getting lost in a sea of similar sites all seeking traffic. In other words, many people are doomed from the start because they didn’t have a plan. I’m not saying that’s you because I know nothing about you.
I have always relied heavily on content and video. It was slow growth but it’s much more stable than some of these “fast” tactics that people sell that may only work for a short time anyway.
Great reply Lisa. I think if in the beginning, all you are focused on is traffic and systems for getting traffic, it will be a hard road to pave. Instead, I believe it is better to build relationships. What I mean by that is, instead of posting comments into a forum in the hopes of building traffic, or worrying about page rank or if this is a good backlink…post to get exposure and build relationships. Before you know it, traffic will start coming.
There isn’t exactly a do step 1, then 2, then 3, etc and in this amount of time you’ll have X amount of traffic. It’s a journey and sometimes grueling. It will certainly test your resolve. But everyone’s situation is unique. You have to keep looking for what works for you. No one can say how long that will take. The only way to find out is to keep trying.
Well said, Brett. I do think a common problem is exactly what you said. People treat this like a “Step 1, 2, 3 process” and then X will happen and that’s the problem. You are building a business and this takes time, trial and error. Great, great way to explain it.
By the way, just quoted you on my FB page and left a link to your site. It was too good not to share.
Awesome Lisa! Thank you.
See…that whole thing in action now
EXACTLY.
My thoughts too, Brett – all the best for Tim – and if he handles Lisa’s direction, he’ll move on through. Not sure about his choice of area though – just looked below…..
Thanks for the reply. I am an Ex Combat Army Officer, 30 plus years. I don’t know the meaning of ‘quit’,lol
If it saves time, by all means.
I have been testing an Article submission software, that helps me submit my articles with one entry and bang submits them to thousands of real blog directories, thus it does create ‘natural’ back and forward linking. Its a tool, not a ‘get rich’ quick thing,lol.
Tools are good
My main site Men Only Magazine is new, just launched a month ago.
I know, there are other ‘like’ sites out there , but there is always room for a lil’ comp I always say
Their content can only enhance mine, or so I feel.
I am testing some video editing software and dub/audio software.
More initial goal when I embarked on this “Let’s have an online business” deal was to at least make a living. I wasn’t side railed by the Guru’s too much, nor suckered in by the hype of make $20K a month BS.
I don’t mind hard work, I am use to it. But I’d just like to start making a little cash off my efforts. No not $20 K a month, something more realistic of course
Tools are good, but only if you can prove they are worth your time. Sure, article software will do the work and save time, but are you evaluating what it’s doing for your bottom line? I feel like there are a lot of people doing busy work that is not really worth the time spent (with regards to SEO). The general consensus now is that those submission techniques are pretty much time-wasters now.
In 2013, SEO has changed dramatically and I’m not sure some submission software is as good of an investment as it may have been in 2009. Google knows that people use mass submission software to inflate their # of backlinks. So they devalue most of those sites and look at social media shares and select backlinks from relevant, popular sites.
I hear what you’re saying and your goals are very realistic. However, I just think your time would be better spent learning how to engage your “followers” via social media or producing high quality youtube videos that build your brand. Just my opinion.
But sounds like you’re ready to get your hands dirty and not afraid of some hard work, so that’s good.
Yes, I do do actual article writing and submit those. As well as Social Media, FB Twitter etc…
But it seems if you do not buy advertising, you will NOT get the views, nor the likes you need. And even then, at least in my experience thus far I haven’t been able to produce more than a page view for every $50.00 spent via Face Book, lol.
I strive to get my content to be great, look great and what People are looking for.
Still……………………………………………….
Hi Lisa
this is a very interesting post (y) what I was doing is publish an article on my blog and 3 days later when it was already indexed in google I publish it in an article directory, same article, I published an article yesterday and from now on I wont publish it in article directories so I can have fresh an unique content on my blog 
Will let you know if there’s any change, Thanks for this amazing post, have a great day
Hi Lisa,
Thank you so much for your informative article. Really , mind blowing and motivated post. I admire the fact that you experimented with creating a niche blog and then educated everyone about your findings. Awesome!!!
Mixed feelings about this post from my end really. I like the fact that this sounds possible but it quite hard to swallow… Plus I especially noticed you started quite early which you also stated. I doubt new blogs can get this amount of success with just quality content… In the end some one more authoritative might find your content, scrap it and still rank ahead of you. But that’s ok. I will run an experiment of my own. Thanks for sharing.
Wooww Amazing !! Thanks
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Wow. Great results.
Great information… Ive been focusing on building pages & worrying about getting back-links. I don’t care to do keyword searches because of my sites niche, so I use a lot of long tail keywords. I’ll keep this bookmarked so I can read more later.
Nice little case study. Of course, if I read correctly you started this over a year ago. I think people build tons of backlinks because they don’t want to wait 1-2 years for Google to recognize their site as legitimate and worthy of being on the first page.
For yahoo and bing as well.. I’ve heard they especially like more mature sites and don’t tend to rank newer sites very high.
Still, great example of how you can build a strong brand name and ensure longevity for a site without spammy backlinks and hours each day spent staring at other blogs looking for an opportunity comment.
I also love what you wrote at the end about finding a way to NOT rely on google traffic and SEO. At some point, you have to make a facebook page, an email last, etc… just like you said. This is what I need to work on now.
Yes, natural backlinks are the best. That’s what Google also loves. I don’t see much significant in building backlinks, as I once built up a site with more than 50k pvs per month without any manual link building. And if we are building links for our sites, but it’s not done in a proper way, it can certainly harm up even your current rankings. So, we must be very careful with link building.
I recognize that there are tons of way to build traffic today. ESPECIALLY with social media and youtube…But so lets say I left a link in this comment (which I have), are you saying that I just wasted my time?
It may not be a complete waste because someone else may actually click your link out of curiosity. But expecting some SEO value from dropping a bunch of comments is a waste of time today.
Very nice tips, Lisa. Definitely, Google loves content more and more.
please I need to know what codes is missed in that website specially in head ??
http://www.alforsan.net kindly let me know
Thanks for info, it was very helfull.
I’ve been doing affiliate marketing since 2006 and I’ve always paid someone to do backlinking for me until I got burned by a company that cost me 10 points on page authority on one of my sites. Thanks to social media I’m still alive and gradually climbing back up the SERP’s ladder. I’m thinking about, after reading this article, to use your approach on my new site I lanched a couple of days ago. I fell on to this site doing manual backlinking. I agree it takes some time for manual backlinking (especially if you want good ones) but after reading this I think I’ll use your mentioned approach as a alternative. I would rather write a article rather than 100 different comments on blogs for one link. This was a great eye-opener for me. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks to websites like yours can learn a lot, especially for people like me, that we are novice in internet.