[CASE STUDY] Race to the top - testing different ranking strategies

Can you give some more details on the numbers and speed for STRATEGY 1.
How many Tier1 web2.0 did you create?
How many Tier2 links?
How many links did you create each day?

rankdominator said:
I think with Fiverr its hit and miss ... but for $5 I do not really expect anything anyways - its more the diversity I am after and letting others do the work for me. Nonetheless, here are the updated rankings after some work has gone in for the last week:

Current Rankings:

1) STRATEGY 1 (Quality based links): 18
2) STRATEGY 2 (Quantity based links): 42

Strategy 1: Another BHW user (Kimi) had a good list of Web 2.0 sites floating around (just use the search button - its called 92 Web 2.0 sites or something similar) - so we created some further unique content on about 10 of these sites (roughly 300-500 words each - most that we had not used beforehand - Thanks Kimi) - anchor text was split between keyword and raw urls. All had pics - some just a single pic, others 2 or more pics with relevant title and alt tags. The content is not spammy in that it is not keyword stuffed, but we believe it adds some value (or at least is informational in my eyes )
Strategy 2: Bought a few more big backlinks packages - 5000+ social bookmarks, a different directory submission gig, some more blog comments.

Overall the content on the Tier 1 sites seems to be beneficial. None of the Web 2.0s have been taken down - I think that comes down to proper content, unique and non spammy looking text. It would pass any manual reviewer as well. Obviously taking the time to create the content upfront is the onerous part, and certainly writing the 10 articles takes its time - but I do believe the rankings will be longer lasting. Time will tell whether the upshot in rankings for Strategy 2 will last for some time. Previous experience tells me Strategy 1 is so much longer term and not as volatile after algorithm changes either.
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Hey rankdominator really awesome case study Can you please answer following questions:
1: What are the local exact searches (I know you stat keywords are easy-to-medium)
2: In Strategy 1 you only build 8 high pr web2.0s with unique content and images?
3: Are you using spun content in building high pr links like comments, web2.0s(if you doing)
4: Some web 2.0s like wordpress, tumblr, blog.com also offer setting for changing website title and description. Do you changing that in Strategy 1 and 2 linking
5: How many times you are using your main keyword in 400 words article
Thanks
 
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Still not clear about STRATEGY 1 and I have exact questions like tabish. Can you tell more details about it because I'm so interested in WEB 2.0 to rank my site. Looks like you don't have enough diversity though.

So, your tier-1 links are web 2.0 which point to your money site or what?
 
LarryPage said:
Can you give some more details on the numbers and speed for STRATEGY 1.
How many Tier1 web2.0 did you create?
How many Tier2 links?
How many links did you create each day?
Click to expand...

Around 10 tier 1 web2.0s - and not more than 20 tier 2 links to those tier 1s.
Links per day is minimal - this strategy is not about quantity of links - but rather quality links that are targetted (i.e. using good quality content that is relevant (LSI based content) and checking the effects. If I had to hazard a guess the link velocity is less than 3 per day - but this is just because on some days I might create the majority of the links - and then let them just stew for a while. I do not actively go and index the links - so Google may find them at their own pace.
 
Mnet17 said:
Still not clear about STRATEGY 1 and I have exact questions like tabish. Can you tell more details about it because I'm so interested in WEB 2.0 to rank my site. Looks like you don't have enough diversity though.

So, your tier-1 links are web 2.0 which point to your money site or what?
Click to expand...

Yes - tier 1 links are mainly Web2.0 links, I have added about 5 "guest posts". all these tier 1 links point to money site directly.
For Tier 2 - I have minimal web 2.0 links pointing to the Tier 1 links - these Tier 2 links are a further bunch of web 2.0 and 1 or 2 guest posts (on wordpress blogs)
 
dollarzz said:
No further updates?
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Sorry have been a bit busy on other projects - and wanted some of the results to settle down as well.

So some further updates as at today:

Current Rankings:

1) STRATEGY 1 (Quality based links): 11
2) STRATEGY 2 (Quantity based links): 28

For Strategy 1, the SE results have dipped into the top 10 (at # 9) and as at today is sitting at 11. The link velocity here is very minimal - I have created around another 3 articles on guest posting services (average PR of domains is about PR2) - all travel related niches though. Further to this I have created a number of further Web 2.0 properties (Tier 2) with unique content - these link to a spread of the Tier 1 links. Also created articles for 1 or 2 other wordpress blogs and pointed those links to Tier 1 web 2.0s. So all in all (I have not been counting really in terms of the amount of links created) - there must be about 20 odd links in TOTALITY across both Tier 1 and Tier 2.
For all the PMs regarding Strategy 1 - on a general note I think people over-engineer the details. I would not be able to tell you the keyword density percentage that I use per article, all I can say is that most articles are between 400 and 600 words. But for some articles I only use 200 words and more pictures - I just mix it up a little. The link anchors that are used are roughly as per the OP. I just go with the flow and since Im not tracking the stuff exactly - the percentages may vary up or down in terms of raw url anchor, LSI keyword, or exact keyword. The ranking improvements and movements are definitely more steady though. I do see a larger initial movement upwards, then incremental bobbing around when it settles (For example from 18 to 10, then to 9, then back to 10 then 9 then back to 11)

For strategy 2 - I have bought about another 10 services off of fiver. More social bookmarks - wiki pages, directory submissions. The rankings here are VOLATILE!!! At one stage I actually thought that G may have sandboxed me, because
rankings were nowehere to be seen for about a week. The site then reappeared at about 35 and is now down into the 20s. However, the volatility of the SE movements and the swings is definitely more.

I'll give it a few more bursts for each strategy later in the week

Any questions - feel free to ask

Thanks
 
omnipotent$ said:
Great strategy. But how come no more updates?
Click to expand...

I do have other tasks to perform - and updating on a daily basis when sometimes I have not done anything in terms of backlinking will not add much value to the thread.
Also, for the FIVERR services - I want to see when the rankings settle down before providing updates.

Will update again later in the week when more backlinking has been undertaken

Cheers
 
You said for startegy 1 (quality relevant links) you built 10-12 Tier1 properties/links.
It sounds to me very small amount (10-12 links) when most competitors have hundreds and thousands of links pointing to their website.
Am I wrong?
 
So in between some hectic algorithm changes, we have had some major movements across all of my clients sites, as well as my own.

We have let some of the links stwe to see whether would be picked up and placed some further links across both Strategy 1 and Strategy 2.

So herewith an update: (Sorry for the delays - it has been some hectic times lately)

Current Rankings:

1) STRATEGY 1 (Quality based links): 2
2) STRATEGY 2 (Quantity based links): 47

Im not too sure if you can read anything into the results, as during the test, good old Big G released another algo change, but Im not too sure it resulted in any movement - however saying that - Strategy 2 did fall down the rankings, and even during the time fell to below 300.. whereas Strategy 1 rankings were a solid improvement.
Can you discount Penguin 2.0 in the results - what I would think is that the amount of sites that Penguin was targetting was so small - that these test sites would not be captured in the mix...

Linking that was performed:
For Strategy 1 - some further quality High PR links were undertaken - roughly around 5 High PR posts linking to the main domain (2xPR5, 2xPR4 and a PR2), and about another 5 linking to the Tier 1. (3xPR3 and some odd PR2). ALL of these were genuine posts on non spammy type sites... they are not your usual link farm type sites but rather well aged domains.
Ive always seen good movement with these types of links

For strategy 2, bought another 3 Fiverr services - another 12000 odd links to my tier 1 sites ... or so they say....
Im not convinved that pushing just volume / quantity is doing much now. I think it has settled at max ranking 42 in the last couple of days, and then slid slightly to where it is now - and has not moved since.

I would suspect that I could get Site 2 to move up with some other types of links directly to the site - and I am not going to be doing any more Tier 1 linking using Fiverr (the overall benefit to cost ratio seems to be tipping the scales now)

I think since Im not prepared to continue throwing fiverrs at links that do not seem to be helping much, I think I will conclude this test.

My thoughts:
Quality links will always work - and when they are on domains with some form of authority, they will do even better.
Throwing thousands of links at your Tier 1s - sure this will probably eventually work - my best bet would be to mix it up a little, I think Google is also looking for some links direct to money site as well... The one pro here is that the Tier 1s will continue to give link juice long after the fact...

any questions , just PM me or reply here
 
very nice case study.. Quality is still the best..
 
Thanks a lot for sharing your results/insights with us!
 
Can you recap what you have done in Strategy 1 to work so well?
When you write "High PR posts" do you mean guest posts?

rankdominator said:
So in between some hectic algorithm changes, we have had some major movements across all of my clients sites, as well as my own.

We have let some of the links stwe to see whether would be picked up and placed some further links across both Strategy 1 and Strategy 2.

So herewith an update: (Sorry for the delays - it has been some hectic times lately)

Current Rankings:

1) STRATEGY 1 (Quality based links): 2
2) STRATEGY 2 (Quantity based links): 47

Im not too sure if you can read anything into the results, as during the test, good old Big G released another algo change, but Im not too sure it resulted in any movement - however saying that - Strategy 2 did fall down the rankings, and even during the time fell to below 300.. whereas Strategy 1 rankings were a solid improvement.
Can you discount Penguin 2.0 in the results - what I would think is that the amount of sites that Penguin was targetting was so small - that these test sites would not be captured in the mix...

Linking that was performed:
For Strategy 1 - some further quality High PR links were undertaken - roughly around 5 High PR posts linking to the main domain (2xPR5, 2xPR4 and a PR2), and about another 5 linking to the Tier 1. (3xPR3 and some odd PR2). ALL of these were genuine posts on non spammy type sites... they are not your usual link farm type sites but rather well aged domains.
Ive always seen good movement with these types of links

For strategy 2, bought another 3 Fiverr services - another 12000 odd links to my tier 1 sites ... or so they say....
Im not convinved that pushing just volume / quantity is doing much now. I think it has settled at max ranking 42 in the last couple of days, and then slid slightly to where it is now - and has not moved since.

I would suspect that I could get Site 2 to move up with some other types of links directly to the site - and I am not going to be doing any more Tier 1 linking using Fiverr (the overall benefit to cost ratio seems to be tipping the scales now)

I think since Im not prepared to continue throwing fiverrs at links that do not seem to be helping much, I think I will conclude this test.

My thoughts:
Quality links will always work - and when they are on domains with some form of authority, they will do even better.
Throwing thousands of links at your Tier 1s - sure this will probably eventually work - my best bet would be to mix it up a little, I think Google is also looking for some links direct to money site as well... The one pro here is that the Tier 1s will continue to give link juice long after the fact...

any questions , just PM me or reply here
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