I recently made a post on The Keyword Academy (TKA) forums about a site I created on September 25, 2011. This was the 3rd site I monetized with Amazon, and the first site that I got an Amazon sale off of. Originally I didn’t know how I would fare with a product site as all of my previous sites had been informational sites monetized with Adsense. Well, approximately 6 weeks after creating the site it passed the Amazon payment threshold of $100. This got me thinking…
What did I do that caused this site to rank so quickly and turn a quick profit? Well, the resounding answer I got from fellow TKAers was “new content bonus.” And to be fair, it is quite possible that this site has been experiencing a new content bonus and may continue to experience this bonus for another month or so. There really isn’t anyway to tell. But something in my gut tells me it isn’t a new content bonus. I’ve posted more on this site (over 20,000 words to date) than any other site I own. I’ve done almost no backlinking, and I couldn’t help but think…
Is it possible to build a profitable site without link building?
Let’s analyze what I’ve done first.
Keyword Research
Just so you can see the type of site I’m working with.
This is a screen shot of my primary keyword in GAKT
This is a screen shot of the top 10 competition using Long Tail Pro
On Site Content
The site consists of the following:
- Product Reviews
- Product Accessories
- Product News (i.e. new product releases)
- Product Articles (i.e. tips or tricks, “best of…”)
Like I said above, I’ve written a little more than 20,000 words which equates to around 45 posts.
Off Site Content (aka Link Building)
- Submitted my site to IMT Top 100 Website Directories (FREE)
- Purchased 50 Supercharged Bookmarks from IMT ($2.50)
- Wrote 3 Post Runner Articles, total of 5 links back to the home page (all PR0-1)
- Created a Squidoo Lens with around 500 words and 1 link back to home page
- Answered 2 questions on relevant forums to the product with a link back to the home page
- Submitted my Black Friday article to SocialAdr until it received 50+ bookmarks
Everything I did above took me about 1 hour. That’s not exactly heavy link building. That’s essentially no link building (in my mind, though others will disagree).
Traffic
Unfortunately I don’t install Google Analytics, and I didn’t install WP Site Stats until around 2 weeks in, but still you can get an idea of the traffic. As I write this post I’m set to break 400 page views tonight.
This is a screen shot of my traffic statistics using WP Site Stats
I’m ranking on Page 1 for at least 3 different keywords that get around 700-800 exact/local/monthly searches. I’m also ranking on Page 1 for “Black Friday Keyword Deals”, though my Black Friday traffic is only around 6-7% of my total daily traffic.
Profit
This is what it really comes down to. Can I continue to bring in revenue on this site for the next couple months without any link building? Well here’s where I’m at so far.
September = $0
October = $24.62
November = $118.07 (as of 11/20/11)
Going Forward
As much as I’d like to toss some links at the site, particularly on some relevant forums, I’m not going to. I’m probably going to regret this with Christmas right around the corner, because I know for certainty those people are on the forums searching for “Best Keyword of 2011″ and “Best Keyword”. And I also know for certain the answers in the top 10 are all dated 2009 or earlier, which means any response I have with a link back to my site, even if the link is no follow or even if it is just a plain text link, will definitely send considerable amounts of traffic.
However, I want to know if I can continue to grow this site by just posting quality content. And I’m sure a lot of ya’ll would like to see the results as well.
So, what do you think? Will it grow or will it die?
This is great information, thank you so much for sharing your success and your discoveries. I’ve been at this a couple of years and haven’t seen your type of success.
Thanks a lot!
Thanks for stopping by Karen. I’m doing my best to share some pretty cool information. Let me know if there is anything in particular you’d like to see and I’ll try to make it happen.
This is a very interesting experiment. One I have wondered about since I don’t have it in the budget for backlink monthly subscriptions. I have experienced ranking without backlinks with one of my sites and I’ve been on page one since day one a few months ago. I don’t know how it is doing it but the bounce rate is super low and the engagement stats are really good so I am thinking that is helping. People seem to really like the site. This is the first I have heard of new content bonus even after countless hours of reading the blogs. Can’t wait to hear more!
I’m coming up on the 90 day mark and I’ve got some pretty cool stats to share in about a week.
Good luck with your site that is on page one, hopefully it stays there!
Can you give an example of what the layout of the sites you build look like?
The site for this case study is using the Broadcast theme that I found at Themeforest.
I change my layout quite a bit, still trying to figure out what works best. A lot of times it depends on the niche. In about a week I’m going to be showing how I set up a site as part of Niche Rivalry.
ok awesome! Thanks!