I wrote last month about my attempt to pay closer attention to the effect building links has on my website rankings. My idea was to stick with one link building company (in this case, Linkvana – 14 day trial for $5 affiliate link / 50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link), aim for a competitive search term (‘international volunteering’) and see how far a few links would boost me over the course of the month. You can read the original post here.
Well, the results are in. Sort of. I outsourced 30 short posts with one link in them and four articles with several links. Of those, all four articles have been posted and 22 out of the 30 shorter posts are live. In that time my international volunteering ebook page has gone from page seven on Google to page two where it’s been as high as number 13 and currently sits at around number 17… at least according to my Google search results from Rwanda.
I still have 8 posts floating around out there too which will be posted one per day so I guess the final results won’t really be in until a week or so from now. But the message is clear, at least to me. This works. It’s pricey at $147 a month (plus another $2 to outsource each article… although you could certainly write the articles yourself if you have more patience than me) but if you’re someone who knows that your site will make money and just needs to climb the rankings, it’d be totally worth it. If you have lots of sites, even more so.
I’m also about to start targeting the keyword ‘Kigali‘ for my newest site which I think is a bit ambitious. True, it’s not exactly a popular world city with a lot of websites aimed at it, but it’s still a single word keyword and could be tough. My original plan was to be content with the keywords ‘living in Kigali‘ (which I’m currently ranking #1 for) but now, based on what I’ve seen with this experiment, I’m aiming for the number one spot with Google for ‘Kigali’. Yay, another experiment in the works!
As for my ‘international volunteering’ keyword ambitions, I’m going to switch to Build My Rank and see if I can use that site to push me to the front page. It’ll be another 30 links over 30-ish days and I’ll report back at the end!
Glad to hear that the link building is going well Kirsty. I think it should be quite possible to get onto page #1 for ‘Kigali’. It usually isn’t worthwhile just hammering away at a single word keyword though. Instead it would likely be better to target several overlapping keyword phrases concurrently. Basically build up enough relevance for phrases that include ‘Kigali’ and you’ll naturally improve the single word rankings too. So maybe build links with a mix of keyword phrases such as: kigali rwanda, kigali city, kigali life, kigali news, etc. You’ll find that some of those keywords are easier to rank for. So you should get traffic quicker with this strategy. Good luck.
Sign up for an account at Google Webmaster Tools – that will give you an idea of how you are ranking more broadly.
Try this url to confirm rankings from other areas: https://adwords.google.com/d/AdPreview/
That way the rankings you see will not be skewed by your location or other factors. I personally don’t like relying on Google Webmaster Tools to tell me my broad rankings. I’d much rather see the rankings themselves to see which sites you still need to overcome.
Using both is probably useful – adwords to get specifics on location, and GWT to get statistics of how often you are appearing at different SERP positions.
Thanks, Dude! I hadn’t tried that tool
Love it these things are so motivating to know that a little work really pays off…..
I have a couple of suggestions
On the landing page change the last sentence from
” lifetime through volunteering.”
to
” lifetime through international volunteering.”
Change High lighted text from
” The Underground Guide to International Volunteering ”
to high light just “International Volunteering ”
and the same with the italicized string with the same words…
Small stuff but it may help..
Great post, Kirsty. I’ve been looking into Linkvana and I’m glad to hear that you feel that you’re seeing some results, especially with a relatively competitive term. I’ve been using another link service, but have had a hard time evaluating it due to the recent deterioration of link tracking programs.
BTW, I’d also agree that you can just sort of naturally target secondary KW’s like “Kigali” by just sprinkling them in.
Keep it up…it’s very cool to see someone who’s blogging with a worthwhile mission behind their content!
It’s interesting to follow your link building tactics and I’m sure it must be gratifying to see such great results so quickly. I’m curious though, if you’re at all worried about when or if Google will ever catch up to you. Buying links is clearly against their Webmaster Guidelines, and while I acknowledge that they have difficulty telling the difference between paid vs. non-paid links, they are severely cracking down on the article farms you are submitting content to.
I guess my question is, do you see this same tactic working 1-2 years from now?
Cheers,
Andrew
BuildMyRank sounds like a good way to improve PR. Rather than continuing with my friends in India (they’ve been great doing SEO and then link building for me through Elance), I want to try BMR for 6 months to see if I can bump it up a little. I noticed that WeSiteGrader.com changed one of their metrics from “Incoming Links” to “Linking Domains”. Does this mean that quantity of links is no longer as important as how many domains link to your site?
Thanks for reporting your results. This is very helpful for me and others, who are struggling to keep up the momentum and build a sustainable income going forward.
Pretty good results. I will have to look into that company.
Also, I would have to agree with Lea, get a webmaster account and you can track a ton of stuff on your website.
Know how it feels, i have put 85 articles on my site and didn’t seem to do much and even submitted the to article sections
Hi Kirsty
I have a question for you. Do you think links to other sites work in increasing pagerank? And should links to other sites appear in a blogroll ( and thus on every page of a site) or on a separate links page? I’ve been told a blogroll is not given as high ranking by google as a separate links page?
Are you sure that this is the most ethical way to do it. Google juts killed JCpenny for something like this! Just be careful.
google just changed its algorithm. Make sure you dont hit links from content farms and scraper sites …
i always follow link text and linking from guest posts . they are really valued by google … try it out sometime
Great results
Congratulations..
Hey Kirsty this is great to hear as I have heard a lot of ppl say very good things abt linkvana. You may want to look into a program called ranktracker, its made by a company called link assistant. Its a program that allows you to keep track of your all your keywords.
Another thing as well is if you use a gmail acct or a google acct google will adjust your rankings to show sites that you commonly visit. With ranktracker it searches google anonymously and if you pay for the software it will allow you to save your keywords and see the difference over time. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the tips and advice everyone! Ya I guess I sort of have it in the back of my mind that Google might not be too impressed with this sort of thing. But so far, so good, I guess.
I think it’s a good idea to be able to accurately track rankings… thanks for the options. I’m just looking into Ranktracker now. Thanks Wanderingtrader… I’ll let you know how it goes.
how did it work out for you till now ?? and progress report
i always follow link text and linking from guest posts . they are really valued by google … try it out sometime ı am learn
i have tried using mgid for more traffic. it also improved your adsense earning a bit if the traffic is high . mail me for details
thanks , Sourish
I have tried mgrid to get traffic, and it is really great. Mgrid is great. It works.
i like your approach
Good try. Staying on top is what you need to survive in the web world. People try buying link, which is considered illegal by Google and are not to be followed.
You did a good try.
Hey Kirsty this is great to hear as I have heard a lot of ppl say very good things abt linkvana. You may want to look into a program called ranktracker, its made by a company called link assistant. Its a program that allows you to keep track of your all your keywords.
Another thing as well is if you use a gmail acct or a google acct google will adjust your rankings to show sites that you commonly visit. With ranktracker it searches google anonymously and if you pay for the software it will allow you to save your keywords and see the difference over time. Keep up the good work!