Terry Kyle's Big 60-Day Backlink Experiment

OK, here's the 60-day backlinking experiment that I will be running and documenting in this sub-forum starting on Thursday 17 September 2009.

Hopefully this ambitious public experiment will help many Warriors here and you'll enjoy the ride!

I don't remember seeing anything like this on Warrior Forum before so it should be interesting and possibly sort out a few SEO/SEM myths from facts (and maybe prove that different Search Engine strategies can each achieve the same objective).

Starting on Thursday 17 September 2009, I will simultaneously run 4 different SEM (Search Engine Marketing) strategies on 3 different NEW GoArticles in the same niche plus one BRAND NEW website BUT with approximately the same search volume for the 4 different keywords.

This is not really an SEO experiment in the sense that I can't do much with on-page factors like internal link structure and H2 tags etc as the three articles are examples of so-called 'parasite hosting' on GoArticles and the fourth will be relying on WordPress SEO power and Ken Fry's SB101.

Why GoArticles?

GoArticles are particularly responsive to backlinking but I will choose keywords where there are currently no GoArticles on Page 1 of Google USA (though I live in London, UK) or at least no more than one at the moment.

Each article will target a different keyword within the same niche, be just over 500 words and use the exact keyword phrase 5 times. I will try to have a roughly similar search volume for each keyword (at least 100 searches a day) and a roughly similar degree of difficulty for ranking.

Why 60 days?

In my experience, it takes time to get serious search engine traction with a money site (some Web 2.0 sites generally fade out fast) and this experiment is about building a stable, high, long-term rank for each article.

4 different search engine strategies will be used:

Article 1

Normal backlinking using the backlinks of Angela, PJ and my own WSO (including only IRRELEVANT sites to niche) - 50 backlinks per week for 8 weeks (60 days), minimum PR 5.

Article 2

Backlinking only to RELEVANT sites, blogs and forums (are they of higher value given their topic relevance? Let's see) - 50 backlinks per week for 8 weeks (60 days), minimum PR 5.

Article 3

SENuke Pro including Link Wheels with all feeder sites backlinked using the backlinks of Angela, PJ and my own. Some articles used in each of the Web 2.0 sites will be spun by Power Article Rewriter to an originality degree of about 40% (I usually hit about 43% judging by SEN). Other articles will be spun by Human Rewriter (which I haven't used before but Jeremy Kelsall rates highly).

Though I've had plenty of success with my own backlinking methods, I have briefly trialled SENuke a couple of times in the past without much success - could have been the proverbial 'nut behind the wheel' - but this time I want to use this experiment to fast-track my learning curve on SENuke.

Helpful Warrior Tom Brite is my SENuke wingman he has awesome SE Nuke buyer bonuses by the way so hopefully we can all learn the nuances and insider tricks of SEN Pro during this 60-day experiment.

Wild Card - Test 4

I will also create a brand new site on Thursday, a dot com site with the search phrase in the domain name, install a WP blog as the main site (not in a sub-folder), change the Permalink post names section to be more SEO-friendly, add more RSS sites to ping, install Warrior Jeremy Kelsall's Content Blender plugin (more on that later), Google Sitemap Generator, All-In-One Seo and Google Analytics.

I will create 60 highly spun versions of a few articles and set up the blog to publish one each day. More importantly, one inner page post URL (the first post) will be added to Warrior Ken Fry's SB101 WSO which relies solely on social bookmarking backlinks. This site will get no other juice except from the daily posting of a seemingly original article (with cloaked aff links at top and bottom like the GoArticles), WP's SEO-friendliness and SB101.

And...

Each GoArticle will have two cloaked affiliate links in the same call to action sentence, using offto dot net, one at the top of the article (permitted in GA) and one in the Bio Box.

Each article will direct to the same Clickbank product (each with a different Tracking ID), a product with a respectable gravity of roughly 100+ (probably) and each keyword should show as anything from "Easy" to "Doable" in SE Nuke and have a green or yellow SOC (Strength of Competition) result in Micro Niche Finder.

I'll post screen grabs of these when I choose them. I will also choose a niche with universal relevance across the world - that rules out reverse phone lookup, dammit!

A new ClickBank account will be created for this experiment.

My secondary goal at the end of the 60 days (approximately 17 November 2009) is to sell, one, some, or all of the article accounts and the website here on Warrior Forum and/or at Flippa.

Value estimations on site flipping can be volatile but I will look to sell each article account for a minimum of 10x monthly revenue e.g. if one of the GoArticles is averaging $100 a day and $3000 a month, I will TRY to get $30,000 for it but let's see what happens. That could be too ambitious.

I know that a GoArticle is not as attractive to a buyer as a standalone website and there are always fears about GA changing their rules (on affiliate links, for example) or Google suddenly slapping them (as they have done with Squidoo in the past) so my valuation is lower than the 12-24x monthly profit ballpark with normal websites.

Time will tell there.

However, website buyers are ultimately attracted to revenue, be it from a popular YouTube video or any other form of web property so hopefully that stage in this experiment will prove as interesting to you (and me) as the SEM stage.

By the way, I have absolutely no interest in promoting one method over another and am only interested in what WORKS in this 'race' between the 3 articles and the new website.

I will not be favoring any one approach and will be doing all four simultaneously over the 60 days with my outsourcer backlinking Article 1 (IRRELEVANT sites), me backlinking RELEVANT sites for Article 2, SENuke doing the 'heavy lifting' on Article 3 and SB101 carrying the hopes of a generation for the brand new website.

I make no income predictions whatsoever but let's see how the race goes.

As the experiment unfolds, I will post screen grabs of GA article views, ClickBank hop stats, commissions, Analytics stats etc.

Hopefully 200 Warriors won't jump all over these keywords when the experiment begins which would artificially distort the results of this test.

Being able to show the keywords, site, articles and progress is what will make the whole experiment worthwhile.

So, one niche, three GoArticles, one brand new site and 4 different SEM strategies.

Let the race begin and feel free to chime in with your questions or suggestions (parameters can be modified before the start) as we go...

More details soon as we get closer to the kick-off.

Stay tuned...

BTW, if you've just dropped by for the first time and feel like this thread is of value to you, don't forget to hit the "Thanks" button below on the right!