LinkPushing Case Study

1337WuLF said:

Thanks man, I honestly don't know what to do any more. With the recent Panda update (2.1) One of my sites dropped to #400.. It was ranking #4. I have recently just sent 3 pushes to this.

And one of my other sites is completely out of the top1000. It was ranking #10 before Panda 1, I have sent 1 push to this.

Do you think this is enough? Do you think its just a dance or?

(sorry for getting off topic)

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If you have dropped that far, there must be something on the site that linkbuilding alone will not cure. If you are down that far, then no I don't think that those pushes will be enough.

Double check all your seo parameters on the site. Make sure you are not linking to a bad site or one with malware on it. I personally link to very few sites. Most of them have no outbound other than monetization links. Comments on the blog get links removed if they are good comments and help my content. Otherwise they go into the trash bucket.

TNphoneman said:

If you have dropped that far, there must be something on the site that linkbuilding alone will not cure. If you are down that far, then no I don't think that those pushes will be enough.

Double check all your seo parameters on the site. Make sure you are not linking to a bad site or one with malware on it. I personally link to very few sites. Most of them have no outbound other than monetization links. Comments on the blog get links removed if they are good comments and help my content. Otherwise they go into the trash bucket.

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Hmm, I'm not sure, I recently redesigned and recoded the site. It jumped a ton in rankings, then dropped heaps a week later. Perhaps they think my downloads are infected or something?

TNphoneman said:

I think that the keywords would do better if I pushed them at the individual subforums but that was not part of the study. We are throwing them all at the home page. We are still only 3 weeks into this too.

Let me ask you all a question though. Would you like to see what happens when we push the keywords to the individual subforums? What do you think?

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What I find interesting is that you are doing a test and I think it's a huge challenge to rank a forum with 100kw for your main url. I would love to see the result of your test, because I'm a bit skeptical that it's durable, but I would love that you proved me wrong with such a test that you are doing at the moment

That being said, then might it be worth to consider doing some LP to internal pages (subforums) for two reasons.

My approach to linkbuilding is that it need to look natural to Mr. G. So in the a perfect Go0lge world, then would you not be making a single link yourself, but all links would come from people who use your forum and find your information relevant to share with other (linking). If you only have a lot of backlinks to your main url and no links to any subpages, then do I have a hard time to believe that it look natural to Mr. G. But please prove me wrong

Another reason is, that it might be easier to rank some kw, if the words appear on the subpages, but on the other hand do I also find it very interesting that you try to rank some kw, without any onsite SEO.

From a IM point of view, where your goal is to rank and get a lot of traffic, then do I believe that you would benefit from deep linking.

But from a case study point of view, then would I prefer that you stick to your original plan and only LP your main url.

But it's your case study and your decision mate. I will follow the project no matter what you decide.

1337WuLF said:

Hmm, I'm not sure, I recently redesigned and recoded the site. It jumped a ton in rankings, then dropped heaps a week later. Perhaps they think my downloads are infected or something?

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That is a big piece that was missing from the discussion. Did you keep the same page names? If not did you do a 301 redirect? If you did not keep the same page names, there is your problem. The old pages were indexed and now you have a new page on the same domain with the same content until the old page is purged.

If it is wordpress and just a new theme, make sure that there is not any bad hidden links on your site. i.e. using a hacked theme that has a hidden iframe imbedded in it.

@Chriss - LOL you make some good points. For one, this is my first forum build and it was kind of a back burner sort of thing. It is phpBB and I don't know it that well to actually do the seo. The title tag is done already with the forum name or post name.

I can't help what people put into a title so that is just something that a forum has to live with. Just like you can't help what people put into their post content. Maybe put a content filter that takes the words "thanks nice post" and turns it into 3 paragraphs... LOL

I am leaning towards changing the linking, for the very reasons that you mentioned, it is a more natural linking process. To be honest I did not even think of this when I started. The odds of someone throwing 200 linkpushes at a site (not just a forum) is better than someone throwing all of them at the home page.

Thanks for the input.

TNphoneman said:

Some times all you need is a set of jumper cables to get things started. Glad I could help with that.

I have a question about your keyword going down, was the site sitting dormant for a while? I have seen my customer sites drop in the beginning only to pick back up later on. I have seen the same thing happen with scrapebox comments on a stagnant site so this is not something that only occurs with linkpushes.

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My site is fairly new, perhaps 1-2 months. The last 5 days for the EMD keyword have been 104, 100, 97, 197!!!, then I checked today expecting it to be out of existence, and it was 10! I was pleased by that. The 197 threw me for a loop. Google dance, google dance I tried to tell myself. Sure enough it prob. was and will be.

StarkContrast said:

My site is fairly new, perhaps 1-2 months. The last 5 days for the EMD keyword have been 104, 100, 97, 197!!!, then I checked today expecting it to be out of existence, and it was 10! I was pleased by that. The 197 threw me for a loop. Google dance, google dance I tried to tell myself. Sure enough it prob. was and will be.

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I have found that new sites will rocket to the front page or close and then drop like a rock. Google says Oh LOOK a new site and posts it up high and then takes another look and says nah it don't belong there and drops it. Once I start the linkpushing the dancing seems to stop and it steadily climbs up to the ladder. Every once in a while I hit them with something else to just change it up. I have one that was getting no higher than #9 before I hit it with some .edu links.

TNphoneman said:

@Chriss - LOL you make some good points. For one, this is my first forum build

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I would like to get some experience with a forum myself. I'm considering either to go with phpbb or vbulletin. Do you have any recommendations or things to consider?

TNphoneman said:

I am leaning towards changing the linking, for the very reasons that you mentioned, it is a more natural linking process. To be honest I did not even think of this when I started. The odds of someone throwing 200 linkpushes at a site (not just a forum) is better than someone throwing all of them at the home page.

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What strategy did you decide to go with?

Chrisss said:

I would like to get some experience with a forum myself. I'm considering either to go with phpbb or vbulletin. Do you have any recommendations or things to consider?

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vBulletin by far is the better platform because of all the features that it can do. I have found a few minor things that a phpBB can do that the vBulletin can not. If all you want is a simple forum and nothing more then save your money and use phpBB.

Chrisss said:

What strategy did you decide to go with?

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I want to wait until the 4 weeks is up before I decide. I am still leaning towards pushing the individual forum categories.

Ok, it is the end of week 3 and here are the current rankings. The keywords are slowly starting to return. There are now 9 words ranking as opposed to 5 last week.

If funds allow I'd vote to see another month with the exact same strategy to see if the pattern of indexing/ranking continues in a similar vein.

It is going to continue. I am still leaning towards linking to the individual forums though. Like Chrisss said, it does look more natural that way. I have not decided as of yet though.

TNphoneman said:

vBulletin by far is the better platform because of all the features that it can do. I have found a few minor things that a phpBB can do that the vBulletin can not. If all you want is a simple forum and nothing more then save your money and use phpBB.

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Do you know if it's possible to change platform from phpBB to vBulletin?

I even consider just make a regular wordpress site and use a forum module, just to test a strategy that I have in my mind. I'm sure I can have a fulworking wordpress site in less than an hour and I problably would spend a lot more time learning a phpbb forum!?

To test my strategy is all I need is a test site, but it would be nice to have the option to change, if it becomes a success.

Chrisss said:

Do you know if it's possible to change platform from phpBB to vBulletin?

I even consider just make a regular wordpress site and use a forum module, just to test a strategy that I have in my mind. I'm sure I can have a fulworking wordpress site in less than an hour and I problably would spend a lot more time learning a phpbb forum!?

To test my strategy is all I need is a test site, but it would be nice to have the option to change, if it becomes a success.

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I believe that there is a utility within vBulletin that does exactly that. phpBB is not that hard to use. Not exactly a walk in the park but with a little research, you can do a lot with it.

You wrote in another tread (can't find it now) that you only SB your LP tiers with 50 links. First was I bit skeptical, why you didn't just blasted them to dead.

But I have been thinking it over and have to admit that it makes sense. Because if I blast a tier with 30.000 links, then would I increase the risk that G. notice that something is wrong. Even though all links won't be found right away, but still.

Anyway - I have taken the consequences and changes my own linkstrategy a bit. I now only blast all my first tiers with a maximum of 50 links per week from the same linksource. But I will mix it up better, say like: 50 SB links, 50 profile links, 50 bookmarks, 50 articles etc. a week on each tier1. And then repeat this process every week.

Rep+ and thanks for sharing your experience and make me revise my own linkstrategy.

Chrisss said:

You wrote in another tread (can't find it now) that you only SB your LP tiers with 50 links. First was I bit skeptical, why you didn't just blasted them to dead.

But I have been thinking it over and have to admit that it makes sense. Because if I blast a tier with 30.000 links, then would I increase the risk that G. notice that something is wrong. Even though all links won't be found right away, but still.

Anyway - I have taken the consequences and changes my own linkstrategy a bit. I now only blast all my first tiers with a maximum of 50 links per week from the same linksource. But I will mix it up better, say like: 50 SB links, 50 profile links, 50 bookmarks, 50 articles etc. a week on each tier1. And then repeat this process every week.

Rep+ and thanks for sharing your experience and make me revise my own linkstrategy.

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I just don't want my links to get a spammy look to them. I know the articles do not read well some times but I don't want google to see my pushes as spammy by sending a large blast at them.

Now with this study, I am doing nothing other than the linkpushes. That is what I do for my other sites.

This weeks update. Not looking so good so I am going to change it up a little and push directly to the subforums. In reality, this is what you do when linking, not only pushing a sub forum but also changing your linking strategy. I think we will see some words starting to bounce back fairly quickly.

Is Greg - TNPhoneman?

Forgive my ignorance as I am always missing the point. But the column saying Google i your screen shots is your position in Google for the KWs and the arrows are representing you being up or down on a position right?

DebbieSprules said:

Is Greg - TNPhoneman?

Forgive my ignorance as I am always missing the point. But the column saying Google i your screen shots is your position in Google for the KWs and the arrows are representing you being up or down on a position right?

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No I am not Greg. Greg is BassTrackerBoats.

Yes that is the postion and the arrows indicate up or down for the day and the week.

TNphoneman said:

I just don't want my links to get a spammy look to them. I know the articles do not read well some times but I don't want google to see my pushes as spammy by sending a large blast at them.

Now with this study, I am doing nothing other than the linkpushes. That is what I do for my other sites.

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I can see what you are trying to achieve here and it makes sense in terms of not blasting the tiers with thousands of links. The problem you may find however is that as of a couple of weeks ago I believe I am right in saying that LP's now come with an automated SB blast to all the top tier propoerties thrown in with the membership.....there was an email from Greg about it a few weeks back.

takeachance said:

I can see what you are trying to achieve here and it makes sense in terms of not blasting the tiers with thousands of links. The problem you may find however is that as of a couple of weeks ago I believe I am right in saying that LP's now come with an automated SB blast to all the top tier propoerties thrown in with the membership.....there was an email from Greg about it a few weeks back.

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Yes they did. It's not an exact number more of a guideline for me. I want somewhere between 50-100 and since I use Paper-Boy for my blasts, I always end up with a little more. I use the 50 number to tell me what package I need to buy. I may knock that number down to 30 since both Loopline (used by LinkPushing) and Paper-Boy both always over deliver. With 50 pushes, that is still a large package.

Edit: I went back and reread what you posted and them doing the SB blast is not a problem. It is a part of the service and that is what I wanted to test was using linkpushing alone. What they do within their service is what needs to be tested. If they did xrumer, as long as it is part of the service I have to go with it. The good thing is that I happened to be in on the first month that they did this so there will be no change in the service from day 1 unless they somehow add something else.