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.
Hy Lisa, what a surprise – with a brand new domain such an success… very, very good! Wow!
Awesome! Great and very useful information. I will try doing the same thing, and hope i’ll get similar good results like you.
Insightful article, Lisa. Proves it’s possible to get significant exposure using only natural means.
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.
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!
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…
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..
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 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 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 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 ??
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.
How do you start a RSS link everyone says you need one but its hard to find info to set one up
Thanks
Thank you!! What are all the ways to make our visitors to see our website
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
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.
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……………
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.
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.
did you use wordpress for this website ?
Yes.
Thanks.
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
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.
I’ve been obsessed with building backlinks for the last few months, so I found this interesting and helpful. Thank you
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 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 🙂
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
niceeeeeeeeeeeeeeee great yeeeeeeeeeeee
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
this is very nice blog, you can also visit my site to see how to earn money through Google.
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.
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.
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
Great inspiration piece
Thanks. This post brings motivation, as link building is a tedious task
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
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.
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 🙂
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.
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.
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…
Do you emphasize Organic or Pay-Per-Click marketing techniques?
Can I increase my sales and profits without focusing on just traffic?
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.
Wow 100k views without SEO and backlink building? I can’t believe it.
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. 🙂
Its helpful information Lisa, can you provide some insight to an example of the types keywords you use please?
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.
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 .
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
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!