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.
Hi Lisa
Great infortion on the Backlinking before this i past lot of time on the back linking but now i know the other about the backlinking so thanks for this information it’s help me a lot.
Thanks Lisa Regards form Luckiest Malik Zahid
i love this article.but i still do not understand that without backlinks,that you still receive a good bunch of traffic.thanks for the article
I never said the site doesn’t have backlinks. I just have not chased them and they were created naturally. Big difference.
Hello
and welcome penguin the second.
Just wanted to know how your site is performing since ugly penguind 2.0
The reason I ask is that a lot of sites were hit although they didn’t build any backlinks at all.
It was not impacted at all. In fact, the traffic is higher in June than it was in May.
good post!
Good idea.But 1 question coming in mind.How many post you hae made till now and daily how many article you submit in your site.
It looks very interesting. I have a new blog. I suppose I should stop spending too much time on back links and spend more on creating quality articles.
Thanks for the wonderful post.
Thats true cuz this is what happend with since i start design a website for my business ! i just getting ranking cuz the quality of my contents!! with no backlinks at all
How can I use twitter to get more traffic? I have an amazon.com astore. How can I advertise my astore to get some income?
This is a great report. I have a question though. Did you do any kind of keyword research or some research on domain name or was it just a heat of the moment and bought everything without think too much.
It was more heat of the moment. I knew it was a topic I could write a lot about since I was going through it and there weren’t a lot of well-built sites around it (just articles here and there) so I think finding the right niche played more of a role than keyword research. I did very little of it.
Be blessed for sharing what has impacted your success. I have learnt a very important lesson. I still have one doubt in my mind and that is about paid traffic. How realistic is buying traffic? It actually confuses me.
Buying traffic can cost you a lot of money if you don’t split test and really measure/track everything. It takes time and money to figure out PPC.
nice article!
Lisa, does every post in your blog target low competition keywords? Or, do you just shoot from the hip with most of your posts and not research putting low comp keywords in your titles?
Honestly, I shoot from the hip for most of the posts. That’s the advantage of choosing a niche that is not that competitive, so yes I guess you could say that most of them target low competition just because of the nature of the niche. But stay tuned, I’m about to do another niche experiment and talk more about the specifics I go thru when starting a niche site and SEO.
Nice article Lisa.. You’ve got pretty high pageviews in your site.. You’re making good with that I guess..
Hello Lisa,
Thanks for sharing this experiment
I’m totally agree with you , my website traffic raise every day without back links because i’m care about good content and unique articles .Now my traffic near to 4000 visitor/day so 120000 visitor/month
Good idea.But 1 question coming in mind.How many post you hae made till now and daily how many article you submit in your site?
Thanks to websites like yours can learn a lot, especially for people like me, that we are novice in internet.
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 for info, it was very helfull.
please I need to know what codes is missed in that website specially in head ??
http://www.alforsan.net kindly let me know
Very nice tips, Lisa. Definitely, Google loves content more and more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wow. Great results.
good post for seo. i think backlink is main point of seo. ok however thanks for post. please look down.
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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.
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!!!
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
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 🙂
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 🙂 If it saves time, by all means.
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……………………………………………….
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
Makes me feel a lot better. Thanks for the fascinating post Lisa!
that’s great. your step can be a guidline for me to build site without (chasing) backling but having high traffic.
Thanks Lisa- Great info as always, will be coming back for more !JB
Thanks for info. Cheers 🙂
I can’t believe your site got so far with 0 link building
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.
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…
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.
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
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.
Hi Lisa,
Was this success done without your Google authorship rank?
Thanks
Sure was!
Hello Lisa,
Thanks for sharing this experiment
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.
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.
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.
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,
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