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. Also see the updated article here.
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 ago).
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!
Check out the update on this site’s traffic here.
good article.
After the fred update backlinks are not working but real tropical trust backlinks are making a good impact on site traffic this guide/article definitely gave me a nother path to build spam free blogs.
Fred? Wow! I remember a time when I knew about every Google update and their names. Shows how I’ve moved past SEO. Feels so good not to have to keep up with what the Big G is doing anymore. If you just focus on genuinely connecting with people and putting out good content that’s going to win in the long run anyway.
Hey I linked the information in the article though its been 2 years since the piece was written, however some of the principles still hold good in my understanding. Though the SEO has changed so much in 2 years but still the basics remain as strong and effective as they were 2 years back or rather at the start of the SEO phenomenon.
This is awesome Lisa and I strongly think the success of this site you are referring to lies hugely on the niche and your writing abilities.
I had a bid of that experiment in the past when I did an amazon site. I just wrote and published articles. They got traffic from Google, generated about 3 sales then – that was 2013.
I think if you do proper niche research, you can do well without worrying about some backlinking gimmicks 😉
Agree! The niche is EVERYTHING!
Hi Lisa,
How is that even possible?
I only can drive some traffic by using social. Can’t get tons traffic without link.
It’s very possible. That site is now up to 250,000 monthly views. It has links but I’ve earned them instead of built them manually. When you are interested in the niche and know how to write content that stands out you don’t have to build links yourself. You will earn them.
Hello, Lisa Irby
Thanks ! nice comment about back-linking , please ,give me advice what is the reasons back-link so important a site. I waiting for your suggestion, Here is my site http://www.consultantbd.tk
How is that even possible? I can’t get any traffic without tons of links. You must be producing better more shareable content.
And it’s a niche where people are very active on social media. That also helps. Not every niche has followers that share a lot of content. So I got lucky there. For the record, the site is now up to over 250,000 page views per month.
Hi,
Good day Lisa!
I have a website on weebly.
Can you give me some advice on how to create backlinks for my site?
Can i create it manually or should i buy a software for this?
You can check my site @ http://www.condounitsin.com
More power to you and your site…
Hope to hear from you soon…
Thanks in advance!
Nice info Lisa, but one thing that needs to know apart from the backlink method of course is how much promotion you’ve been doing through social media and or word of mouth 🙂
Almost no social media and word of mouth. That’s the trick. Find a good niche with a lot of mediocre content and it’s much easier to earn links and stand out.
Really inspiration, Lisa Irby 🙂
The efforts you’ve made over the site (although if it’s confediential) is really, really amusing and is really helpful for the bloggers who’re looking for some great inspiration in order to start niche sites or any site which is been targeted in a specific topic.
And perhaps, it’s really mesmerizing to see that you’ve good such good traffic and that is without any link building – Superb 😀
– Bishal Biswas
Hello,
I too started my 2nd niche site after a terrible mistake of ignoring long tail keywords and too much focusing on main keyword. Lets see how it goes this time.
Hello Dear,
I’ve heard this many times over about putting a link on blogger(DOT)com and WordPress(DOT)com that points back to my site. I’ve done this many times over and the end result is both blog networks deleted every blog I’ve created in the past, each and every time. This alerts their spam filter and the blogs are automatically deleted. After contacting Blogger and WordPress about this, I was told never to post links pointing back to my sites; It’s violates their policies.
I’ve started a niche website and it’s about one month old. I’m not receiving enough traffic from search engine or I can say that 98 % of my website traffic is coming from social media.
I want to know what I’ve done wrong here.
What I’ve to improve so that I can start some rankings anf searches from google search engine
SEO is an ever-changing , what seems to be working now won’t work in the future. getting traffic without back-links is possible but it won’t help in creating authority.
I agree and have choose not to focus too much on links but I probably need to step it up a little in order to remain relevant.
I think some of SEO strategy using massive backlinking and put in not related topic, so it’s just like spamming
Hi… I like your method and I’d love to use it. But I have a view question.
You said that you only spend time about 3 hours per month.. Is it means that you only making about 3 articles per month? And what the result of the first couple of month if I may know?
I want to know how long I must patiently waiting for traffic..
Starting tomorrow I want to make as you said : long tail keyword article. Hope I can get the same result .
Hi Daryl
I don’t think it’s about how much time you spend. This was written almost two years ago so even a lot has changed since then. Getting ranked is not about time spent = X results. It’s about are you generating the signals that Google wants to see to rank you. Are people sharing your content? Are they linking to it? Do you have a social media following?
You cannot look at building traffic like a 9 to 5 where hours spent = results. Even if I did know the answer, it would be 100% irrelevant to your own individual experience. You can’t look at traffic building like that. You need to look at the bigger picture. Where you rank now depends much more on off page things like certain backlinks, social media, your overall authority, etc.
No one can tell you how long it’s going to take because there are too many variables.
I’m sorry for late reply.. I don’t know why email notification from your site goes directly to spam… Anyway, thanks for replying..
I create social media, but still no one share about my content.. It’s understandable I think, because I’m sharing about personal needs that makes people feeling they didn’t need to share it I think.. ( personally I thank like that too about what I’m doing right now )..
So, basically right now my strategy is making articles, reviews based on long tail keyword that have low competition and little search too ( about 100 – 500 search per month ).. What do you think? I didn’t make any backlinks too.. ( I just build one if I’m commenting site like this because it has “website” field at comment form )
what do you think? is it good? :).. I hope I can get good result like you >_<….
Hello again Lisa… It’s about 2 weeks after I build my site and make an articles..
First for your information, I track my keyword ranked in google once a day..
For about 5 first day, I get ranked well ( I’m targeting long tail keyword ), and about 5 days ago, suddenly about 10 keywords ranked in top 20 drop to nothing . And it’s happened until now…
Did you ever get this situation? I didn’t even make backlink, I don’t understand why I’m getting deindexed and it didn’t come back. not even in top 100…
And, if you have time, can you take a look at my site.. I think I’m promoting something that didn’t easy to promote even though I’m already research for it and I get many good keywords for it, but I can’t manage to think a plan how to get email subscriber, facebook likes, or twitter followers.
I’m really glad if you can help me a little to grow up, I really need some pointers, critics about how am I making this success..
Thanks..
Lately, backlinks are harder to get simply because of the new comment plugins (which prevents this and tend to have traffic within the plug in itself) and the evolution of Googles algorithm itself. I totally agree with your post Lisa, I would rather have quality content rather than utilizing my time looking for backlinks. Although It wouldn’t hurt if you do some off site SEO as well.