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.
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.
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 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
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.
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!
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!
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
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?
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!
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. 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.
Your article very interesting, I’ll try to put into practice, thanks
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 😉
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.
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.
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.
Great Post Lisa! Thanks!
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.
Very good article. I’m going through a few of these issues as well..
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.
I am not getting good traffic in my blog.. but now i will try to follow yours instructions now. thanks
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 🙂
Believe it or not your article give me inspiration to keep make my website better
Thanks Lisa 🙂
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 🙂
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 !!!:)
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 knightsofapocalypse.ns@gmail.com.
I’ll also teach you a trick I recently learnt.
I would be really grateful.
Back links are important to make your site ranked in search Engine
is backlinks really important i have 90 plus backlinks but still i am not getting good traffic why?
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 https://blog.2createawebsite.com/2012/06/25/google-authorship/
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.
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
Just found out about you! Like the simplicity of your site and your writing style. Keep it up.
Thanks, Mike!
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.
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.
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!
Great post.I should definitely try this on my upcoming new blog.Thanx for the tips
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!
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 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.
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!
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.