Terry Kyle’s Big 60-Day Backlink Experiment

[turbohips]

Terry,
Stop showing all of your secrets and giving away tips for free. You already gave a major one away that is on your WSO silly man. Just kidding. I still love the WSO as I've started my own list recently and now ranking on page 1 #1-10 for a bunch more keywords. I'm slowing but surely getting to the top spots for roughly 50 keywords now. Keep up the good work.

On a side note, you touched upon a strategy that works well for me and that's simply to diversify into many back linking strategies. Sticking to only one does well but not nearly as well as throwing in the whole kitchen sink. I noticed from only using profile links I was ranking somewhat well but hit a wall. After incorporating articles, blogs, RSS feeds, bookmarking and pinging my rankings not only broke through the wall but is now beating out a bunch of competition that has 1000's of links. Much more than the few hundred that I have showing on any back link checker program.

[LIndaB]

Terry, this has been a great thread, loaded with more information and real-world proof than most SEO books and strategies. Thanks for sharing your day to day results and thoughts. And I got a great chuckle from your articles.

Incidentally, I'm not surprised that you're not getting great sales for this niche. Most women with a yeast infection are just going to go down to the drug store and buy some Monistat over the counter. Trust me, if you have a yeast infection, you aren't going to spend a lot of time researching it. You want that itch to stop NOW!!!!

[Terry Kyle]

Thanks for the terrific feedback.

Salsa has gotten in the way of a thorough CB analysis tonight but it is coming!

[NaturalStyle]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

By the way, if you're in the US, I'd love to know if GoogleGlobal is giving me accurate USA results in London!

An idea for everybody facing the same problem (I do): I've installed a free proxy script on one of my US-hosted sites so I can check the google rankings in the US while travelling abroad.

If you don't want to install your own proxy, there are tons of free proxies sorted by country available at

Proxy Servers Sorted By Country - Page 11 of 21
(this will bring up the US based proxies)

- NS

[marlon]

Hey,

So the number one site is:

Recurring Yeast Infections | Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment

Backlink Watch shows 0 backlinks. It appears to have a domain name using the keywords and content.

At first I thought it was an MFA site.

It's weird that you couldn't beat out that site with a decent amount of backlinks.

Marlon

[Poker Rakeback Mafia]

Just google the phrase google america. It gives you the u.s version of google.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by NaturalStyle

An idea for everybody facing the same problem (I do): I've installed a free proxy script on one of my US-hosted sites so I can check the google rankings in the US while travelling abroad.

If you don't want to install your own proxy, there are tons of free proxies sorted by country available at

Proxy Servers Sorted By Country - Page 11 of 21
(this will bring up the US based proxies)

- NS

Rank Tracker by link-assistant gives you your ranking for specified search terms in any Google (or other major search engine you want). Want Google AUS? Sure. Google UK? Sure.

[desireeaib]

thmgoodw

I was looking at that earlier but with so much to learn thought I would wait till I got to that point.

[Big JP]

Hey Terry,

Great to see your niche work finally revealed! Glad to see you haven't chosen a niche that is too competitive

Just wondering though, what is the actual keyword/phrase you're targeting?
Is it "Yeast Infection" ?

Also, is there a reason you didn't cloak those ugly hop links ?

Thanks Terry, it's been a pleasant journey, keep it going.

JP

[Big JP]

Originally Posted by desireeaib

You know, my site has info on yeast and how it affects diet. You could have asked me, could have save you some research!

I enjoyed this thread, I'm still learning so I know I will come back many many time.

My site is just about ready have a few more things to do and a few more content pages to add but I hope my Sunday I can start my G1 campaign.

Desiree

Haha!

I know your secret

JP

[Terry Kyle]

Before answering questions and comments, let me analyse results (so far) on Article 1.

I think the most constructive and useful way to discuss these results is to look at them one by one, every day or two.

So here are the raw stats from GoArticles and CB:

Now here is my take on these figures (bear in mind that this article is presently NOT on the first 3 pages of Google for its keyword BUT has had a previous peak of #3 and has a LOT of backlinking work being done on it right now - more on that later - and that may have it dancing around).

Actually before I do that, I want to discuss this point about any Google Page 1 results page that you see for any niche.

In the typical world of IM information overload, it is very easy to miss or ignore the wealth of information that a normal SERP can give you - even without tools like SEOQuake etc.

For example, one of my favourite strategies (which I have been shamefully ignoring for a while) is to go after a keyword with multiple properties. In fact, if you watch the keyword, 'backlinks' over the next 3 months, then look out for for my Metacafe video, Youtube video (same video edited to different length), ArticlesBase article, Buzzle article, Zimbio post, GoArticle, and press release page. In addition, I will have my own inner blog post page in there competing (around #8 to #10 on Page 1 now).

But how did I choose which Web 2.0 properties to go after?

Easy. Look at any of today's SERPs and these sites keep coming up, keyword after keyword after keyword.

That says that Google CURRENTLY likes those sites so they should THEORETICALLY - be easier to rank. In the past, my record for a SERP was 6/10 spots on Page 1 which obviously gives you more screen real estate but also pushes competitors down.

The next thing you may notice on a normal SERP is how Google likes diversity of sites on Page 1 (every page actually but it's only Page 1 that matters) BUT does show double results from certain sites with an indented 'double listing' like this:

Continued in next post...

[Terry Kyle]

Part 2:

So a normal SERP will show that Google WILL allow 2 sites from the same Web 2.0 site to appear and bracket them together.

That means you may not have a site quite as strong as another from the same site BUT Google will often bracket them together - in the higher position!

At the moment, I see a lot of GoArticles, Ezinearticles and Squidoo sites bracketed on Page 1 e.g.

During your Keyword research, if you see a lonely GoArticle at #1, a weaker one could be bracketed with it on Page 1 at #2, leapfrogging the other players.

Even better, why not simultaneously backlink 2 of your own different GoArticles, Squidoo Lenses and Ezinearticles and aim for 6 slots on Page 1.

Throw in a couple of backlinked videos, your own blog inner page/s and you have an awesome SERP.

This is how to use 'Google Site Bracketing' to your advantage in two ways, just from looking at a normal SERP page and observing what Google already likes!

Think of it as keyword domination, NOT niche domination (which is a WAY bigger job).

That is how to build really consistent traffic and conversions by testing a great call to action on one of your 2/4/6 Page 1 sites and using it on all of the others!

If a site is getting sales without much traffic in a weaker position below #1, that is a very good sign.

Continued in the next post...

[Terry Kyle]

With this 'Site Bracketing' tactic, for example, I could create a GoArticle on backlinks and backlink it just enough to get on to Page 1.

At that point, Google's natural bracketing mechanism should - hopefully - indent me with Angela's GoArticle - which is usually between #1 and #3 and even though I will have a much smaller number of backlinks than her, I will be right behind her.

That's a good WSO I just gave away there!

Actually I won't tailgate Angela out of respect for her awesome work and because she's cool BUT you can hopefully see the potential of this tactic...

[Terry Kyle]

And remember that with my own sites, backlink reporting tools are only showing maybe 20% of the actual backlink volume.

[jasonmorgan]

But how did I choose which Web 2.0 properties to go after?

Easy. Look at any of today's SERPs and these sites keep coming up, keyword after keyword after keyword.

That says that Google CURRENTLY likes those sites so they should THEORETICALLY - be easier to rank. In the past, my record for a SERP was 6/10 spots on Page 1 which obviously gives you more screen real estate but also pushes competitors down.

this was the only part that I question.

Are these sites showing up higher because there is something about them that google likes or is it because they are the most heavily used web 2.0 properties?

[Terry Kyle]

Hi J,

Thanks for dropping in.

I don't know that sites like Buzzle, ArticlesBase or Zimbio are the most used when compared with the other big guns.

Obviously there are vulnerabilities to building a business on 'parasite-hosting' but I am seeing these sites a lot in high SERP positions right now.

Interesting that Squidoo seems to be back - I've never had much luck with it but plenty of Warriors swear by Squidoo.

Maybe all the editorial changes made over there have been rewarded in Google's algorithmic changes?

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by turbohips

Terry,
Stop showing all of your secrets and giving away tips for free. You already gave a major one away that is on your WSO silly man. Just kidding. I still love the WSO as I've started my own list recently and now ranking on page 1 #1-10 for a bunch more keywords. I'm slowing but surely getting to the top spots for roughly 50 keywords now. Keep up the good work.

On a side note, you touched upon a strategy that works well for me and that's simply to diversify into many back linking strategies. Sticking to only one does well but not nearly as well as throwing in the whole kitchen sink. I noticed from only using profile links I was ranking somewhat well but hit a wall. After incorporating articles, blogs, RSS feeds, bookmarking and pinging my rankings not only broke through the wall but is now beating out a bunch of competition that has 1000's of links. Much more than the few hundred that I have showing on any back link checker program.

Sticking to only one does well but not nearly as well as throwing in the whole kitchen sink. I noticed from only using profile links I was ranking somewhat well but hit a wall.

Spot on Bruce and I believe that IM will only get more competitive in the future and that's why a multi-pronged strategy is becoming increasingly essential.

Right now I'm trying a bunch of things I've never done before on my Yeast Infection sites and seeing what has extra impact.

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by LIndaB

Terry, this has been a great thread, loaded with more information and real-world proof than most SEO books and strategies. Thanks for sharing your day to day results and thoughts. And I got a great chuckle from your articles.

Incidentally, I'm not surprised that you're not getting great sales for this niche. Most women with a yeast infection are just going to go down to the drug store and buy some Monistat over the counter. Trust me, if you have a yeast infection, you aren't going to spend a lot of time researching it. You want that itch to stop NOW!!!!

Now you tell me about Monistat Linda!

Thanks for the feedback all the same.

[jasonmorgan]

Sticking to only one does well but not nearly as well as throwing in the whole kitchen sink

did I miss the 'kitchen sink'? or is that still to be revealed. this thread has become so long it hard to keep track of all of its goodness.

I'm guessing that the 'kitchen sink' has to do with using as many sources as you can find for building backlinks.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

During your Keyword research, if you see a lonely GoArticle at #1, a weaker one could be bracketed with it on Page 1 at #2, leapfrogging the other players.

Even better, why not simultaneously backlink 2 of your own different GoArticles, Squidoo Lenses and Ezinearticles and aim for 6 slots on Page 1.

Holy crap. I always see these double postings but never analyzed them before. This is pure gold. Thanks Terry.

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by marlon

Hey,

So the number one site is:

Recurring Yeast Infections | Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment

Backlink Watch shows 0 backlinks. It appears to have a domain name using the keywords and content.

At first I thought it was an MFA site.

It's weird that you couldn't beat out that site with a decent amount of backlinks.

Marlon

Hi Marlon,

Those reporting tools can't be relied on. Remember my Panic Attacks article above has at least 1,000 backlinks but is only showing 200+ in the reporting!

I haven't beaten that #1 site there - yet!

Don't think of backlinking as a numerical 'arms race' on purely mathematical numbers of backlinks.

Only the Google 'KGB' know exactly how it is all calculated but in time, the weight of backlinks and their quality will get me there.

Hopefully!

I also want to see how some of these sites respond to a relatively small batch of .edu and .gov links - a separate experiment in itself...

Plus, if I found that I couldn't 'out-SEO' that site and was convinced that it was a paying Keyword, I could always try the famous Frank Kern 'SEO Solution' - buy that guy's website!

[adamv]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Hi Marlon,

Those reporting tools can't be relied on. Remember my Panic Attacks article above has at least 1,000 backlinks but is only showing 200+ in the reporting!

I haven't beaten that #1 site there - yet!

Your panic attack article comes up #1 when I search for how to deal with panic attacks. Another goarticle is indented under yours.

[Terry Kyle]

Hi Adam - nice avatar!

Marlon's referring to one of the Yeast Infection articles in this experiment for the term, Recurring Yeast Infections.

My wording made that unclear.

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by Big JP

Hey Terry,

Great to see your niche work finally revealed! Glad to see you haven't chosen a niche that is too competitive

Just wondering though, what is the actual keyword/phrase you're targeting?
Is it "Yeast Infection" ?

Also, is there a reason you didn't cloak those ugly hop links ?

Thanks Terry, it's been a pleasant journey, keep it going.

JP

Hi JP,

I had a few PM warnings about cloaked links (I'm going to avoid saying any more because I don't want to get sued) and opted to uncloak them - doesn't seem to have affected my rankings on other sites and articles.

For the prospects in most niches, I doubt if they notice or care about the type of link that brought them to the vendor page.

Thanks for coming on the ride too!

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Ah but well worth the time. I'm loving Windows 7. Much more productive for me. Even speeds the time with backlinking. Everything runs so much smoother.

Yep - light years ahead of Vista speed-wise and not-crashing-a-lot-wise.

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by turbohips

Oh by the way, are you also known as Jenny Milliken?

Just one of the pen-names invented for this experiment Bruce.

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by cringwall

Brilliant, Terry. Love all of this, and your audio interview from your opt-in list is pure gold. Everyone opt-in to Terry's list if you have not already.

My question to the group: Terry says we need to keep a portfolio of these high-pr sites in a spreadsheet. What type of program could we use to alert us if one the profile pages is removed? Some kind of old reciprocal-link verifcation script, perhaps? I can see a cronned script that checks 10 or so pages a day for our link and reports any failures. Does anyone have any ideas here?

Anyone?

Thanks for the feedback and hope you got a bunch of neat stuff out of the interview C.

[adamv]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Hi Adam - nice avatar!

Marlon's referring to one of the Yeast Infection articles in this experiment for the term, Recurring Yeast Infections.

My wording made that unclear.

Oops, I thought it was the panic attack article. Oh well, congrats on the #1 ranking just the same.

I'm glad you like my avatar too, that's one of my drawings. :-)

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by perryny

Hi Terry. Thanks again so much for conducting thiis experiment.

I'm about to embark on my own promotional campaign and have been following closely in the hopes to discover how effective my efforts in learning SEO might turn out if I follow your methods.

From the results you've collected (and sorry if the answer is evident in your above posts, but I don't understand fully), were you able to determine approximately how much daily traffic was generated for each of the articles, or for the site in Case #4?

I'm much more interested in the amount of traffic generated than actual resulting sales from the clickbank products.

Thanks again for all your hard work!
-Robert

Thank you Robert.

I will get to the analysis of Site 4 - I want to go into each of them in detail.

Actually, I've gone WAY off topic with that whole new 'Site Bracketing' tactic and better get back to Article 1!

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Anyone?

Thanks for the feedback and hope you got a bunch of neat stuff out of the interview C.

With respect to the checking old links. Not scientific or in anyway 100% accurate, but..

I have 1 main site that I pretty much hammer with every tool that I have. I use the SEO Spyglass software to spy on both my competitors (or, others...cough...sites) and my own sites. Anyways, the software not only compiles a listing of all the backlinks, but can come back and tell you if they are missing, no follow, restricted (i.e. robots.txt file restricted), or do-follow.

I run an analysis each week of my main site to the last weeks report (I order it by domain PR), and I make any changes to my "power lists" based upon these changes.

[Terry Kyle]

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

this was the only part that I question.

Question everything Jason - good work!

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

did I miss the 'kitchen sink'? or is that still to be revealed. this thread has become so long it hard to keep track of all of its goodness.

I'm guessing that the 'kitchen sink' has to do with using as many sources as you can find for building backlinks.

The kitchen sink revelations and much more goodness to come Jason!

[Terry Kyle]

Thanks Tom - would be great to see some screen grabs of Spyglass - how much is it? Sounds like you have a nicely disciplined, consistent routine there - kudos to you!

Anyways, back to Article 1:

Here, the first shocking revelation comes NOT from my article but virtually all the other articles on GoArticles.

Have you seen how shockingly low the view counts are on these for page after page after of search results?

I thought my view count was low until I saw how almost everyone else there was doing!

There are loads of articles with 0, 3, 5, 9 etc views.

Internet marketers or writers took the time to actually write these things that nobody ever saw.

Why?

Here's my reading of it:

In short, instead of backlinking the hell out of one good article (I'm not saying that mine are amazing at all but we'll get to that soon), these poor souls seem to write article after article, somehow hoping and wishing that it will go viral and that webmasters across the net will magically link to their article and it will be a huge success.

In fact, backlinking is creating the illusion of an article going viral!

I see exactly the same thing on EZA: loads of articles that were written months or years ago and their view counts remain in single figures. Forever.

Besides, how many times can you write a different article about exactly the same topic? 5? 10? 20?

Now I do know that some writers like Steve Wagenheim have had success with continual writing but there must be other parts of Steve's business model that make it work e.g. partnerships with other webmasters where his content is published.

But generally, to me anyway, this seems like such a flawed approach. Am I missing something?

More next post...

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Thanks Tom - would be great to see some screen grabs of Spyglass - how much is it? Sounds like you have a nicely disciplined, consistent routine there - kudos to you!

Anyways, back to Article 1:

Here, the first shocking revelation comes NOT from my article but virtually all the other articles on GoArticles.

Have you seen how shockingly low the view counts are on these for page after page after of search results?

I thought my view count was low until I saw how almost everyone else there was doing!

There are loads of articles with 0, 3, 5, 9 etc views.

Internet marketers or writers took the time to actually write these things that nobody ever saw.

Why?

Here's my reading of it:

In short, instead of backlinking the hell out of one good article (I'm not saying that mine are amazing at all but we'll get to that soon), these poor souls seem to write article after article, somehow hoping and wishing that it will go viral and that webmasters across the net will magically link to their article and it will be a huge success.

In fact, backlinking is creating the illusion of an article going viral!

I see exactly the same thing on EZA: loads of articles that were written months or years ago and their view counts remain in single figures. Forever.

Besides, how many times can you write a different article about exactly the same topic? 5? 10? 20?

Now I do know that some writers like Steve Wagenheim have had success with continual writing but there must be other parts of Steve's business model that make it work e.g. partnerships with other webmasters where his content is published.

But generally, to me anyway, this seems like such a flawed approach. Am I missing something?

More next post...

I don't think you are missing anything. I'm a member over at Wealthy Affiliate university, where the main goal of 80% of the people is mass production of articles. I find all of these articles on ezinearticles written by them, and 90% of them have ZERO backlinks. 5% of them might have a link or two from squidoo coming in. It seems like the quality (in terms of ranking and $$$, not pulitzer prize winning) is losing over the quantity. People brag about how many articles they can spin out a day.

[Terry Kyle]

Oh and a huge thanks to Tom (thmgoodw) for this very powerful free Rank Checker tool:

Rank Tracker - Track Your Search Engine Rankings Easily!

I've been trying this out while posting tonight and it appears to work well - much more precise than SEO Tools' Rank Checker (which can't do long URLs)!

On the Sales page, it looks like the Rank Checker isn't available in the free version (it's greyed down in the pics for some reason) but it is definitely in the free one.

OK, now back to the CB stats.

If you recall, Article 1 (all IRRELEVANT links) like the others has three different hoplinks: the one between the headline and the article, one within the article body and the usual Bio Box link.

This is one of the main reasons I like GoArticles, they let you stick your links anywhere, unlike EZA.

This article has peaked at #3 but is off the radar at the moment as Google is digesting a fresh boatload of backlinks to it. A certain level of volatility is normal with a new site and/or one with a lot of backlinking coming in at once.

From the 2 or so months of the experiment (and we changed from an unconverting vendor mid-way but those numbers are included),

HOPLINK A (top): 51 hops, 6 order form impressions, 2 order form submissions, 1 order placed.

HOPLINK B (within article): 125 hops, 1 order form impression, 0 orders.

HOPLINK C (Bio Box): 26 hops, 0 order form impressions, 0 orders.

From our 753 views, we achieved 202 hops for a total of 1 sale.

Sounds depressing huh?

Actually this article looks promising given the hops from Hoplink A. I will experiment with completely leaving out Hoplinks B and C as well as experimenting with different call-to-action links to observe what happens.

I need to check my records on when the CB vendor changed but a lot of those hops went to a vendor that wasn't doing any converting (or getting much order form action either from memory).

This site needs traffic (of course) and some experimenting to fine tune and to really determine IF this is a buying phrase or not. If it turns out to be so, I'll be backlinking it and trying to dominate Page 1 of that keyword for years to come.

And the numbers will be starting to get skewed by Warriors (naturally) clicking on links to see what's what (assuming they don't have yeast infections!).

BTW, a great way to tweak a call to action link is to look at what the superstars with huge view counts on EZA/GA are using and 'emulate' their approach.

Presumably, they've tried a bunch of different ones and settled on what they're using now. Learn from that.

By knowing this article and keyword, you can follow its progress and I'll show the CB Analytics stats as we continue to Christmas (if I don't call time on this experiment by Christmas, my girlfriend may kill me. And after she's killed me, her mother will kill me again).

If you didn't THOROUGHLY get that new 'Site Bracketing' SEO tactic I covered on this page of this thread, go back and read it.

Thanks again for participating!

[Jayson L]

Hey Terry,
I don't have much experience at all with SEO, so this may be the dumbest idea/thought around. You were discussing posting a link in forums with a smiley face or the period and such. Is there a way to make the smiley face have some sort of relevance? What I mean is, what if I were trying to rank for your name "Terry" and then named the smiley face Terry. Is there a chance this would give more relevance and sort of replace the anchor text that is missing by posting this way. Just an idea/thought, but like I said, I don't have much experience.

By the way, thanks for all the helpful information!

[J smith]

That's pretty good ctr actually (from my perspective) around 27% or so. It's interesting to note that link in content got more clicks but less order impressions than the link at the top. Though I guess it makes sense, people searching to buy will click on the top link, people that continue to read are likely looking for information and even though they click on the link, they aren't buying so fewer order impressions.

The bio box ispretty bad, but GA's bio box sucks anyway. Since unlike EA where your bio box is a part of the article in GA it's clearly a bio box that is after the article.

Terry I was going to send you a pm on this, but I guess ths might be useful to other people as well. When you outsource backlinks through elance and other sites, do you give the winning bidder a list of sites where you want them to put profile links? Do they use their own lists (and if yes, how do you know that they use a good list of high pr sites?) If you give them the list of sites, how do people who sell those link pockets (Angela, pj even you) feel about that since in essence you are giving away their product to someone for free.

Just curious since I haven't done any outsourcing but most likely will in the future.

[Big JP]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

But generally, to me anyway, this seems like such a flawed approach. Am I missing something?

Well, articles can also be used for backlinks, so rewrites may published all over the place to all kinds of directories, and the sole purpose of the articles is just to gain the backlinks from the articles body/resource etc. without much care as to whether they get many views or ranked high.

For example, you could write an article on "meet hot women" submit it to a top directory such as Ezine articles, then have the same article spun and distributed to as many places possible with links pointing back to the Ezine article. The Ezine article is the one you want to rank, but the other spun versions are just pure backlinks and nothing more.

Make sense?

JP

[Big JP]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Hi JP,

I had a few PM warnings about cloaked links (I'm going to avoid saying any more because I don't want to get sued) and opted to uncloak them - doesn't seem to have affected my rankings on other sites and articles.

If you get a chance Terry, please send me a PM regarding this, I'd appreciate that.

JP

[Joe2]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Part 2:

So a normal SERP will show that Google WILL allow 2 sites from the same Web 2.0 site to appear and bracket them together.

That means you may not have a site quite as strong as another from the same site BUT Google will often bracket them together - in the higher position!

At the moment, I see a lot of GoArticles, Ezinearticles and Squidoo sites bracketed on Page 1 e.g.

During your Keyword research, if you see a lonely GoArticle at #1, a weaker one could be bracketed with it on Page 1 at #2, leapfrogging the other players.

Even better, why not simultaneously backlink 2 of your own different GoArticles, Squidoo Lenses and Ezinearticles and aim for 6 slots on Page 1.

Throw in a couple of backlinked videos, your own blog inner page/s and you have an awesome SERP.

This is how to use 'Google Site Bracketing' to your advantage in two ways, just from looking at a normal SERP page and observing what Google already likes!

Think of it as keyword domination, NOT niche domination (which is a WAY bigger job).

That is how to build really consistent traffic and conversions by testing a great call to action on one of your 2/4/6 Page 1 sites and using it on all of the others!

If a site is getting sales without much traffic in a weaker position below #1, that is a very good sign.

Continued in the next post...

I notice that the second article on panic attacks which is bracketed with yours is filed under a different category on GoArticles ie; yours is in the Diseases and conditions category and the second article is in the Mental Health category.

Is this important or just a coincidence?

Joe

[Tom Goodwin]

At Terry's request, here is a little bit more info on SEO Spyglass.

SEO SpyGlass Software - Instantly Find Out How Your Competitors Got To 'Top Ten' In Google, Yahoo! and Bing Search Engines

The free version lets you search in Yahoo site explorer for backlinks on any site, and then get all of the relevant data about those links, but doesn't let you save the history of any site.

The paid version lets you search in a bazillion backlink directories, and save all of your history. At $99.75 it isn't cheap, but I consider it one of my best investments I have ever made in the IM game (after Terry's WSO of course).

Instead of screencaps, I put this 12 minute video together that details how I use it to spy on all of you guys out there

SEO Spyglass Overview - Video

[Oland]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

With this 'Site Bracketing' tactic, for example, I could create a GoArticle on backlinks and backlink it just enough to get on to Page 1.

At that point, Google's natural bracketing mechanism should - hopefully - indent me with Angela's GoArticle - which is usually between #1 and #3 and even though I will have a much smaller number of backlinks than her, I will be right behind her.

That's a good WSO I just gave away there!

Actually I won't tailgate Angela out of respect for her awesome work and because she's cool BUT you can hopefully see the potential of this tactic...

Excellent!

As you pointed out this information is highly valuable all by itself. This can be used for all kinds of things.

Thanks Terry!

[jazbo]

One word for this thread. Gold dust. Thanks for sharing your work Terry, it just keeps getting more interesting with each page.

[perryny]

I'm with you Jazbo. I think we're all with you on the value of this thread.

What the heck is it doing out here in the free SEO forum anyway? If this isn't War Room material, I don't know what is!

[Marhelper]

Originally Posted by Terry Kyle

Oh and a huge thanks to Tom (thmgoodw) for this very powerful free Rank Checker tool:

Rank Tracker - Track Your Search Engine Rankings Easily!

I've been trying this out while posting tonight and it appears to work well - much more precise than SEO Tools' Rank Checker (which can't do long URLs)!

On the Sales page, it looks like the Rank Checker isn't available in the free version (it's greyed down in the pics for some reason) but it is definitely in the free one.

OK, now back to the CB stats.

If you recall, Article 1 (all IRRELEVANT links) like the others has three different hoplinks: the one between the headline and the article, one within the article body and the usual Bio Box link.

This is one of the main reasons I like GoArticles, they let you stick your links anywhere, unlike EZA.

This article has peaked at #3 but is off the radar at the moment as Google is digesting a fresh boatload of backlinks to it. A certain level of volatility is normal with a new site and/or one with a lot of backlinking coming in at once.

From the 2 or so months of the experiment (and we changed from an unconverting vendor mid-way but those numbers are included),

HOPLINK A (top): 51 hops, 6 order form impressions, 2 order form submissions, 1 order placed.

HOPLINK B (within article): 125 hops, 1 order form impression, 0 orders.

HOPLINK C (Bio Box): 26 hops, 0 order form impressions, 0 orders.

From our 753 views, we achieved 202 hops for a total of 1 sale.

Sounds depressing huh?

Actually this article looks promising given the hops from Hoplink A. I will experiment with completely leaving out Hoplinks B and C as well as experimenting with different call-to-action links to observe what happens.

I need to check my records on when the CB vendor changed but a lot of those hops went to a vendor that wasn't doing any converting (or getting much order form action either from memory).

This site needs traffic (of course) and some experimenting to fine tune and to really determine IF this is a buying phrase or not. If it turns out to be so, I'll be backlinking it and trying to dominate Page 1 of that keyword for years to come.

And the numbers will be starting to get skewed by Warriors (naturally) clicking on links to see what's what (assuming they don't have yeast infections!).

BTW, a great way to tweak a call to action link is to look at what the superstars with huge view counts on EZA/GA are using and 'emulate' their approach.

Presumably, they've tried a bunch of different ones and settled on what they're using now. Learn from that.

By knowing this article and keyword, you can follow its progress and I'll show the CB Analytics stats as we continue to Christmas (if I don't call time on this experiment by Christmas, my girlfriend may kill me. And after she's killed me, her mother will kill me again).

If you didn't THOROUGHLY get that new 'Site Bracketing' SEO tactic I covered on this page of this thread, go back and read it.

Thanks again for participating!

I went to the page and gave my email address for the free version and opt'd in and then got an email with a bunch of links to other services but NOTHING for the free version of this software. Was this your experience too?

[Terry Kyle]

Hi Mar,

That's weird! After you put your details in here:

You should then be taken here for the free download:

Try again Mar and let me know where on earth 'the lou' is!

Thanks also for the feedback above.

[Marhelper]

Hey, thanks man. I finally got it to work and now the hard part is figuring out how to use it to max capacity. Great thread.

"The Lou" AKA St. Louis, MO.

[reapr]

Terry what are your thoughts?

I have picked up in the last several posts that if you have an article ranking on one of the better directories that you should use senuke or some other method to create articles and point it back to that article? In otherwords point back to the article?

[Doug D]

First of all: Thanks Terry...for a documented case study...for all to follow and interact with.
I just wanted to throw in...I've been using a custom java "bookmarklet" for pingomatic, for about 2 months now. It works exactly the same as Sean's vid on backlink booster.

No disrespect toward Sean, as he seems like a nice dude. But, I have specifically done blocks of profile links....one as a control, and one using pingomatic. There was no difference in the % of profile urls cached between the pingomatic'd and the control. They both sucked, of course.

I have done the same testing with RSS submissions (using rssbot). The only alerts I ever got were from feedagg, and it didn't appear that G. followed the links, as my results were the same as with pingomatic.

I would love for these one-click solutions to be effective, but my experience tells me that their not. At least not when applied to 3rd party sites. There are still many great apps for RSS.

These are easy things to test. If anyone else has actually tested and verified the results, I would love to hear about it.

Sorry Terry, didn't mean to go off in another direction, but it seemed germane to the thread?

Doug

[Tom Goodwin]

Note that I'm almost certain (as certain as a human could be without asking Sean) that Sean's ping bookmarklet is not the "1 clicK' backlink booster they everyone has been touting. My thought that was that Sean was just adding his version of the bookmarklet to add "stickyness" to that page touting his new product.

Originally Posted by Doug D

First of all: Thanks Terry...for a documented case study...for all to follow and interact with.
I just wanted to throw in...I've been using a custom java "bookmarklet" for pingomatic, for about 2 months now. It works exactly the same as Sean's vid on backlink booster.

No disrespect toward Sean, as he seems like a nice dude. But, I have specifically done blocks of profile links....one as a control, and one using pingomatic. There was no difference in the % of profile urls cached between the pingomatic'd and the control. They both sucked, of course.

I have done the same testing with RSS submissions (using rssbot). The only alerts I ever got were from feedagg, and it didn't appear that G. followed the links, as my results were the same as with pingomatic.

I would love for these one-click solutions to be effective, but my experience tells me that their not. At least not when applied to 3rd party sites. There are still many great apps for RSS.

These are easy things to test. If anyone else has actually tested and verified the results, I would love to hear about it.

Sorry Terry, didn't mean to go off in another direction, but it seemed germane to the thread?

Doug

[Doug D]

Originally Posted by thmgoodw

Note that I'm almost certain (as certain as a human could be without asking Sean) that Sean's ping bookmarklet is not the "1 clicK' backlink booster they everyone has been touting. My thought that was that Sean was just adding his version of the bookmarklet to add "stickyness" to that page touting his new product.

Ya, I understand that the Pingomatic bookmarklet is not the "backlink booster", but he eluded to B.B. working like the bookmarklet....except that it would go out to many more sites. And perhaps he's going to mix in some rss or something. I just don't buy into getting 100's of backlinks and certain indexing, with some one click method. I only say this because I have done extensive testing with those methods and they had no influence whatsoever on my % of cache, as compared to control samples that received no such treatment.

Maybe I'm wrong. If I am...I will happily pay 3 x the asking price...if his product could consistently get me even a 80% cache rate - Which should be a piece of cake if each backlink "boosted" url is getting 100's of backlinks as stated in the video.

Sorry Terry...didn't mean to hijack ya.