Hey everyone,
I wanted to provide an update on the current experiment and then dig into the next one I am setting up.
UPDATE
Overall there is not to much to report on. The site continues to hold its ranking in the SERPs really well. YSE has seen a slight decrease in back links, but at a rate that is to be expected. Traffic and revenue both have held.
At this point I'm ok with calling the experiment an extreme success. Since I have a site that is holding so well, I am debating on whether to add content and more links to improve revenue or to leave it as is and let the site sit for say 6 months and really look at long term survival with no additional work. Would love to hear what you guys think.
As for the next experiment I am planning on launching a website on a medium difficulty root keyword but being much more aggressive with the site in a number of ways.
1) Much more content. On my first experiment I only added content a few times. Overall the site is pretty small with just 31 pages indexed. I think to blow a site up and start to compete on more difficult root keywords, the site needs several hundred articles at a minimum and new content consistently added. I may add as many as 50 articles a week, so it will need to be a fairly broad topic.
2) Let the dogs loose with back linking. I believe that you can add links as fast as you want as long as you can maintain velocity. At a low number of links, maintaining velocity doesn't matter, but as the total number of links increases, there needs to be greater consistency in velocity. 100,000 links blasted on one day, then nothing is asking for a ticket to the sand box. On the other hand, 10,000 links a week for 10 weeks generates quality rankings that tend to hold. This is the base concept behind link velocity.
3) Be more aggressive with revenue. This is kind of an add-on because it will have no real bearing to the experiment in terms of rank, but at the end of the day, we are all here to make money. Which would you rather have, a site with 100 hits a day generating $100 a day or a site with 100,000 hits a day generating $0? As P. Diddy, or Puff Daddy, or Sean Combs, or what ever the fuck he is calling himself this week once said, "It's all about the Benjamin's."
4) I also am going to formalize tracking numbers. This will include back links in both YSE and GWT, pages indexed in both, revenue, UV's, etc. If you have a statistic you would like to see tracked, let me know.
I plan on launching the open experiment in about two weeks. I'll also post soon the final decision on the last experiment and where it will go. If I do keep it open to monitor in the long term, I'll only report on it when things change, say a sudden surge or drop in traffic.
Thanks to everyone who has visit the new site as well and purchased a list. I've received a lot of great feedback. I will keep the coupon code, BHW, open for the next week or so. If you haven't visited yet, see the link in my signature.
Questions and comments always welcome! Thanks everyone.