Does Anyone Else Track Their Linkbuilding Efforts With AWSTATS? Read This
I've been conducting an experiment for the last 14 days or so and would like to show my results and ask your opinions. This is a case study so bear with me while I explain.
Site #1: This is a wordpress site, about 6 months old with a PR1 and naturally occurring incoming links. I have 3 articles at EZA and 2 Squidoo lenses pointing at it. It has been submitted to the Major social bookmarking sites. I have quite a few comments on the blog so it is growing naturally. It has about 10 pages/posts of content. Result (according to AWSTATS)=132 links. It ranks quite well for my chosen keyword(s) and is getting a steady stream of traffic although I haven't put much effort into it.
Site #2: Much newer site which isn't ranking all that well yet but is starting to get a trickle of traffic. The only thing I've done is submit an article to 10 of the 'top' article sites (not EZA) and appeal to the forum one night because google had not found it yet. No social bookmarking on my part (intentionally). I got 24 links from 2 unknown benefactors after I mentioned it on here, and the traffic began coming in within 2 days. Please Note - 23 of the links can be attributed to the same person but from different sources! (I'll get back to that in a minute) AWSTAT=32 links.
Site #3: Totally an experiment. Content created from RSS feeds as discussed in Keith's thread, nice layout, no article submissions. Over the course of the last 10 days or so I've submitted the site to 15 site directories (PR3 & PR4), 48 RSS feed sites, the 'Top Ten' social bokmark sites (Digg, Stumble, Propeller, Google, Yahoo, etc.) and just yesterday 15 of the sites that I discovered by reverse engineering the method my benefactor used on site #2.
The results I'm noticing are by no means conclusive, but based on my test here is what I've found.
The social bookmarking efforts with the major players have resulted in links from Digg, Propeller, Stumble, and Yahoo...no others.
The article submissions resulted in links from EZA...period, no others.
48 RSS feed submissions got me two links (rssmicro and feedest) and the 15 site directory submissions yielded One Link (so far, still early on this one).
The 15 low PR sites that I submitted to yesterday on site #3 are all showing up already in my AWSTATS and guess what? Site #3 got a few organic hits today...
These sites are not representative of my usual efforts, the first one was started and neglected due to lack of interest and the other two, although they are in niches I will pursue, were started as part of this experiment in link studies.
I know I've left out a lot of details, but what conclusions if any can be drawn from this?
Steve
(p.s. They're all Wordpress, btw)
Site #1: This is a wordpress site, about 6 months old with a PR1 and naturally occurring incoming links. I have 3 articles at EZA and 2 Squidoo lenses pointing at it. It has been submitted to the Major social bookmarking sites. I have quite a few comments on the blog so it is growing naturally. It has about 10 pages/posts of content. Result (according to AWSTATS)=132 links. It ranks quite well for my chosen keyword(s) and is getting a steady stream of traffic although I haven't put much effort into it.
Site #2: Much newer site which isn't ranking all that well yet but is starting to get a trickle of traffic. The only thing I've done is submit an article to 10 of the 'top' article sites (not EZA) and appeal to the forum one night because google had not found it yet. No social bookmarking on my part (intentionally). I got 24 links from 2 unknown benefactors after I mentioned it on here, and the traffic began coming in within 2 days. Please Note - 23 of the links can be attributed to the same person but from different sources! (I'll get back to that in a minute) AWSTAT=32 links.
Site #3: Totally an experiment. Content created from RSS feeds as discussed in Keith's thread, nice layout, no article submissions. Over the course of the last 10 days or so I've submitted the site to 15 site directories (PR3 & PR4), 48 RSS feed sites, the 'Top Ten' social bokmark sites (Digg, Stumble, Propeller, Google, Yahoo, etc.) and just yesterday 15 of the sites that I discovered by reverse engineering the method my benefactor used on site #2.
The results I'm noticing are by no means conclusive, but based on my test here is what I've found.
The social bookmarking efforts with the major players have resulted in links from Digg, Propeller, Stumble, and Yahoo...no others.
The article submissions resulted in links from EZA...period, no others.
48 RSS feed submissions got me two links (rssmicro and feedest) and the 15 site directory submissions yielded One Link (so far, still early on this one).
The 15 low PR sites that I submitted to yesterday on site #3 are all showing up already in my AWSTATS and guess what? Site #3 got a few organic hits today...
These sites are not representative of my usual efforts, the first one was started and neglected due to lack of interest and the other two, although they are in niches I will pursue, were started as part of this experiment in link studies.
I know I've left out a lot of details, but what conclusions if any can be drawn from this?
Steve
(p.s. They're all Wordpress, btw)