Ranking Result Using Only Blog Network

[ascura]

Here is the screenshot from micrositemasters rank tracker (free account).



Actually I wanted to make this as a kind of journey several months ago, but I thought it would be a boring journey, so I decided to just try it and see how it performed and share the result to BHW. It will be quite a long post but still shorter than if I made it as a journey from the beginning, lol. And sorry for my English, I?m not a native speaker.

As title says, I use only blogs network for the link building. You can call it semi private blogs network since it?s actually public but the owner decided to close the new members registration. The amounts of blogs are under 1000 blogs, PR1+. Please don?t ask or PM me the name of the network, I will not respond, sorry. And if you know or can guess the name of the network, please don't mention it here, thank you.

The articles posted on the network are not high quality, mostly just auto spun content. I personally use both manual spin and auto spin, but mostly (70%+) use auto spin using spinchimp free account (great spinner anyway!). Though they are auto spun I keep the topic of the article related, means if my site is about hosting then the article will be about hosting. The blogs network though accept all kind of articles, not niche specific.

The results on the image above have been stayed stable since around the beginning of October, so it has been almost 3 months, pretty solid I must say considering I only use not so quality network with auto pun articles.

The anchor texts are diversified but I don?t track it so can?t give you percentages estimation of the anchor text diversification. But I can say the main keyword is used in more than 40%, maybe even more then 50%. And yes, I also use ?click here? type of anchors as well as raw URL.

I don?t send lots of links each day, always under 10 links per day, and they?re divided into several pages (more about it later), not so aggressive link building. I can send more links but I wanted this way since I want to see the results. The network doesn?t provide URL list so I can only depend on the trackbacks, which only record around 30-40% of the distributed articles. Means, for each 10 posted articles on the network I will only get 3-4 links on where the article is posted. Collect and bookmark them with BMD. Nothing more.

Now I have my own private network consist of PR3+ blogs and I know I will be able to break the page 1 easily if I also send links from my own network. But I really want to see how far and how long the result will be.

This month I put one sidewide link (blogroll) on my PR4 blog, using domain.com anchor. I do this mostly just to give sidewide links to make it more natural. Yes, I believe that non-excessive sidewide link is still valuable and important on the overall link profiles. Maybe it doesn?t help the ranking directly but the overall domain authority maybe will increase, purely based on my opinion though.

Now regarding the onpage as well as link distribution.

The money site is built in wordpress, the target keywords are posted as page (let?s call it money page), not in post. I use pretty quality article ($5/500 words kind of article) on the money pages but use only poor quality for the articles on post (not even close to those $2/500 words article). I divide the post on several categories, i.e shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting. Post several articles on each category, and put link on it to the money page as well as other posts on the same category, interlinking between similar posts. I hope you can understand what I mean here.

The links from the blog networks are distributed to the money page and to the article on the posts. So each distributed article contains 2 links, one to money page, one to post article. Sometime 3 links, the last one goes to web 2.0 or authority site (i.e wikipedia, rarely).

So that is what I did for this example site. I know one example is not enough, we can?t even call it an experiment. The result is presented above, and it has been stayed like that for almost 3 months. I don?t know how many algo updates, roll outs, and refreshes during this 3 months.

I will not put a conclusion here, I don?t want to spread misleading information since this is just one example site. You decide. Hope this post can bring any benefits to you.

 

[smallbusinessguy]

Where do you get $2/500 word article writers? Or do you mean these are ultra spun readable content?

 

[ascura]

Spun (not ultra) readable content, not always pass copyscape
I believe there are several $2/500 words writers here.
or maybe you can search around outside BHW.

 

[myownhero]

Do you build any links to the private blog network posts or do you just let them sit?

 

[ascura]

bookmark them with BMD only, maybe around 5-10 bookmarks for each post.
Just to make sure they're indexed or at least crawled.
and I don't have all the links from the network, just about 30-40%

 

[ritesh]

Whats the competition like?
Blog network links are powerful no doubt but they should be built slowly and spread across the through out the inner page along with anchor text diversification.

 

[ascura]

competition is pretty hard in my standard, page 1 and 2 and even more consist of authority sites.
The vendor site (brand owner) almost dominates the first 3 pages.
I can say I'm the only "average joy site" across those keywords on the first 5 pages.
cpc is more than $1 for each keyword, several are $2+
I don't monetize the site though, I don't have adsense account and the affilate rejected me on CJ.

 

[RankGeek]

All the best! Make your money quickly, though.

 

[lover]

What kind of traffic are you getting on your site?

 

[ascura]

thanks rankgeek

@lover: unfortunately not really much, around 50+/day, almost all from SE.
Most of those keywords are dominated by the brand owner website with site links or simply multiple URLs on the first few pages.
And several also have google places.
Combine those two with adwords listing, even at #3, my ranking is still below the fold.

the purpose of this case study, if I can call it that way, mostly is just to show me how non private blog networks with poor contents still can bring result.
you know, there are many 'rumors' around the net about "you have to use unique content on the tier 1 links".. "this kind of links will get you no where".. "you'll be penalized with such links"... "blog networks are death"... "the doomsday is postponed until someone found another ancient artefact"...
(I even use non unique not really readable content on the main site)
I'm not saying those statements are wrong, maybe they are right in certain (or most) cases.
the real concern is, people easily believe to what other people say without testing it themelves, and even spread those rumors to other clueless people....

will my site get penalized in the future?
most likely, since even there are many so called white hat sites get penalized
until when it will survive? I wish I can predict it.
but for now, it works and let's see the ending of the story.

Just to add, forgot to mention it on the first post, I stopped posting new article on that site since more than a month ago.
So no fresh content factor here and the ranking is stil stable.

 

[namepimp]

It is very pure in SEO to solely rank a website based on a selected backlink type like blog network. Variety is the key. You need backlinks from all sorts of areas!

 

[Gyuman82]

I would be really surprised even if a "semi-private" blog network didn't get de-indexed due to the spun content / selling of links.

The spun content is easy to detect and could be a problem I think.

 

[ascura]

namepimp: yes, you should vary your links profile. that's the common wisdom among us, right? but for now, let's see how long this one type link can survive. of course, I will not suggest anyone to NOT vary their link profiles.

Gyuman: actually, there are deindexed rates at around maybe 10-20% each month. but the constant new links sent each day seems can handle the link losses until now. I use this network mostly just to support Tier1 links, but that's for other sites, not in this specific site.

 

[namepimp]

Ascura: If you build one type of backlink, you will not survive. You will be penalized and forever banished in google and your website will disappear in serp, and i never give advice to people like that, it is like you are pushing them to the river.

 

[namepimp]

It is the same thing as human, if you just eat one type of food, you will die. You need all varieties and vitamins. If only blogs can work, everyone will have all blog backlinks, and blog backlinks will eventually die. This is simple logic and I see no future in only massively built or consistently built one type of backlink.

 

[ascura]

Yes, and actually I even said that on my reply above your first post.

 

[unclemike]

Spun (not ultra) readable content, not always pass copyscape
I believe there are several $2/500 words writers here.

Against the rules to promote any other forum around here.

 

[ascura]

i'm sorry, I didn't mean that.. edited.
maybe you want to edit your quote as well

 

[audioguy]

Stop it people. Spun articles still work. Don't just listen and believe what you hear in forums.

I'm going to take my small network to the next level in 2013. If there's anything you could do, stay ahead of the competition. Semi-private network will be tracked down sooner or later, so make your own and make a killing quickly.

 

[kegnum]

Congrats... I would assume that these sites will get hit at some point but if you get good at it, you can just keep rebuilding.. As long as you can bring in some good money it is well worth it. Who knows though, I am starting to see some one page micro sites on the first page for some serious KWs again.