[Mini Case Study] Is Content Still King?

Hello all, I'm here to provide a miniature case study for you guys, so that you don't have to test it yourselves. I will update this thread whenever I find any changes. (please excuse my weird sentence structure. I'm sort of exhausted right now haha)


Anyways, here's my problem. I own a site that has well over 500 articles on it, and it did amazing (to me) during the years of 2011 and 2012, netting in about $11,000 a year on its own. Unfortunately, I was new to SEO, and decided to do some weird link building techniques to it, and it degraded after that. I decided to disavow the links around the summer of this year, and a month later, it was climbing to the top yet again, and $40 days weren't uncommon.

Here's the catch: those 500 articles were actually pretty thin, and by that, I mean that the articles were pretty weak, consisting of about 300-400 words each, with the occasional 500-600 word articles, and the rare 700-1000 articles. After the hummingbird update, I've noticed that the articles with 300-500 words started to do even worse in the serps, but the 600-1000 word articles excelled quite greatly (don't take my word for law. This is the case for me. It might or might not be the same for you).


With that said, I've decided to update all of my articles on this site to that of a 600 word average while targeting LSI keywords, as well as using synonyms over the course of a couple of months. Here's what my test groups will consist of:

• New Generation - Articles that have been recently published (about a week ago tops), but contain weak content (300 words).
• Old Generation - Articles that have been published a while back (about 3 weeks to 4 months ago), but also contain weak content (300 words).
• Alpha Generation - Articles that will be published in the future, but will contain at least 600 words right off of the bat.

In order to tell whether content itself will prevail. I will not do link building to these articles (blog comments, web 2.0s, etc.), other than publishing different articles pointing back to these articles on my other sites related to this niche. Note: This niche isn't all that competitive, so it may or may not reflect as greatly on your sites.

If you have anything to add - such as what I should do, or any other useful advice - feel free to reply! Other than that, feel free to follow me on my case study!

Good luck. Be careful though if you was making 11,000 month don't try to fix what is not broken

Alright, so I already started on the New Generation test group. Here's what I did:



[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Article Number[/TD]
[TD]Current Amount of Visits a Day (Average)
[/TD]
[TD]Words (Before)
[/TD]
[TD]Words (After)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Article #1[/TD]
[TD]6 Views/Day[/TD]
[TD]350 Words[/TD]
[TD]597 Words[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Article #2[/TD]
[TD]10 Views/Day[/TD]
[TD]306 Words[/TD]
[TD]612 Words[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Article #3[/TD]
[TD]5 Views/Day[/TD]
[TD]381 Words[/TD]
[TD]610 Words[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Also, on the side note, I won't be updating this thread daily, as changes will take at least a week to reflect.

Great test, I'm going to follow along. I did have a new site that I was working on that was brand new, no backlinks but had a ton of well written content. It is actually climbing up in the SERPS pretty quick.

Good content on your money site is good for conversions, other than that, anything thats just not-spun is sufficient.

I use 600 words of spun content that passes CopyScape (and is therefore 100% unique) until my sites rank. No point in putting effort into a site that's not going to rank.

Definitely following this case study. Let's us know

Interesting study.Do you write, outsource or spin yr articles?

Interesting case study. Still content is king only..

Very interesting case study mate, please dont give up updating

Interesting. Thanks for taking the time to document

Subbed.

Subbed. Keep us updated looking forward to the results.

Meloman said:

Good luck. Be careful though if you was making 11,000 month don't try to fix what is not broken

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That's correct!

But NOw, focus on enhancing what's doing well, and bank $11k/month!!

Will subscribe to this. Would be interesting to see if there would be some changes if you increased the wordcount even more to 1200-1500 words, and when/if there's a turning point.

I thought more is less From what i read, you made 11 k per year, not pm ?

Meloman said:

Good luck. Be careful though if you was making 11,000 month don't try to fix what is not broken

Click to expand...

Sadly, I'm only making that much from it a year, rather than a month . Thanks for the advice though!

TJchiller said:

Will subscribe to this. Would be interesting to see if there would be some changes if you increased the wordcount even more to 1200-1500 words, and when/if there's a turning point.

Click to expand...

If this case study proves to be successful, I will definitely do case studies on that as well!

deBling said:

I thought more is less From what i read, you made 11 k per year, not pm ?

Click to expand...

I sort of disagree with the more is less concept. The reason being is that with more content, you are showing Google that you are knowledgeable in your subject, and on top of that, you can target SLI keywords and phrases as well, which is pretty much a standard now thanks to the Hummingbird update (from what I've researched).

I'll be updating later today with my Old Gen and Alpha Gen articles if anyone was wondering!

Sub....I am thinking of flooding one of my sites with 2-3 articles per week instead of 2-3 a month. I have till the end of the year to see if it helps...Good luck

I will love to see how this goes


Ive seen alot of good content site getting slapped in the past I hope this will go well for you

good topic, I am interested in how this turns out!

very good study,

as myself, i just started a 2 month old site, dating review site, i wrote the article myself, though im not native english speaker, so the articles maybe not that good, but still can read lol, I just have less than 15 links in two month, so roughly on offsite SEO, but i actually did some onsite seo, the 15 links are totally blog comments and high PR website directory, the words of all my article are excel 500 words, some are 600+, rarely 700+, 56 articles now, within two month, i do not know whether it is a good news for me, with no outside SEO, i have nearly 40-50 unique IPs everyday, all from google search queries, and average 80-100 PV everyday, i haven't put adsense on it yet, i just have a question


Does adsense allow dating review site? I asked many people, some say yes, some say no, BHW, my sites contain no adult content, or tips like that, just normal review some cool dating site in every niche dating, i think i must risk my adsense account on this site?

Finally, thanks for op case study, from what im thinking(though newbie), with no SEO, more words content means a lot, more long tail keywords, more signals to google maybe??!?!?! But with SEO, and high PR domain, backlinds, etc, i SAW many sites rank for poor content even just 100 words or less, in the last last last, i really think insert some picture in your article, add ALT tags, should do some help.

newbie terry from Asia country