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Linkbuilding Experiment for Auto-blogs

by mikeevee
4 replies
My first website was one I built back in 2002, entirely coded by hand, during some time off work while I was "housesitting" some building work to help out my mother.

That first site taught me a huge amount about what works and what doesn't.

I tried everything, much of which would now be called BlueFart (doorway pages, link farms, and keyword stuffed pages). Overall it seemed to work and traffic built quickly. I was making £1000+ per month in affiliate sales, went back to work and let it run itself.

Almost 10 years later I have barely touched the site (www.playhard.co.uk) and it still brings in a decent affiliate income. Much less than before, but given I have spent a total of perhaps 2 hours per year on it I am happy enough.

The problem was that I tried so many different ways of building traffic and links that I don't know which ones helped me and which ones just hindered. Nowadays I try to take a more scientific approach.

One of the things I used in 2002 was a great linking tool called LinkMan.

Now, 10 years later I have a network of autoblogs. I have never bothered building links to them (I know I know), because my method has been to churn them out quickly, move onto the next and then let the traffic come over time.

I was interested to see whether adding LinkMan to an autoblog would help.

I am not expecting anything too great. After all LinkMan is about reciprocal links and we know that Google doesn't place much weight on those anymore. However, the beauty is that it takes minutes to set up on an autoblog and then runs on autopilot, so if it even adds a little traffic then it will be worth it.

I am going to run an experiment, starting today. Two autoblogs, both with LinkMan set up to handle linkbuilding automatically. I have measured the traffic and will see how they perform in 4 months.

If you are interested to see the results please subscribe to this thread.

Starting point
Blog 1 - www.chelsealatest.co.uk, PR 0, 242 hits / month
Blog 2 - www.casino-choices.co.uk, PR 0, 81 hits / month

Both blogs have been live for 6 months and traffic doesn't vary much. I also have two similar sites that I am going to leave without LinkMan so that they act as a control.

The linkman page, if you would like to see, is at http://www.casino-choices.co.uk/affiliates/

If anyone has any experience of LinkMan I'd be interested to hear.
#autoblogs #experiment #linkbuilding
  • Profile picture of the author dtea
    I love autopilot, try it on one of the blogs and then compare the two after you add it.
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    • Profile picture of the author mikeevee
      Originally Posted by dtea View Post

      I love autopilot, try it on one of the blogs and then compare the two after you add it.
      Sorry, I dont understand. What is this autopilot that you think I should try?

      I have now started the experiment using LinkMan. You can see it on my sites here:
      Links » Chelsea Latest
      Affiliates » Casino Choices Industry News


      If anyone else has trouble installing on Wordpress let me know. It takes a few changes but I got it to work perfectly in the end
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      • Profile picture of the author mikeevee
        Has anyone got any experience or views on this experiment?

        Is there any merit in reciprocal links at all?
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        • Profile picture of the author Tony Marriott
          Originally Posted by mikeevee View Post

          Has anyone got any experience or views on this experiment?

          Is there any merit in reciprocal links at all?
          SEO has moved on a very long way since 2002. Most of everything you did in 2002 will likely get you into trouble today.

          Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines state the following

          ..........Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:
          • Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")..........
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