Today marks the 4th and final week of link building associated with this make money online experiment. Over the course of these 4 weeks I have written 17886 words over 14 different posts, articles, or hubs. According to the Yahoo Site Explorer I now have 89 links pointing to the page that I wanted to rank for the long tail of the money keyword that I was targeting. Google’s link: query show 7 links. The page sits at a PR 2 since the update literally just happened. (The PR of the whole site jumped to a 3 from a 2 by the way, might be related to the experiment, might now - it doesn’t say)
For readers following along, here is my updated campaign sheet and keyword targets:
Strategy to Rank For Pack Gangster Switches Net
- write long winded post on with links to other pages targeting other related keywords (3/5, 2524 words)
- use subheadings of long winded post for hubpages
- Hubpage 1 (3/7, 1326, links:S1(a), S2(i) )
- Hubpage 2 (3/5, 1157, links: S1(a), S3(i))
- Hubpage 3 (3/15, 1268, links: S1(a), S3(a))
- Hubpage 4 (3/24, 2693, links: S1(i))
- use hubpages for article runs w/ one link to S1, one link to hub
- Article 1 (3/10, 699, links: hub1, S1(a))
- Article 2 (3/6, 623, links: hub2, S1(a))
- Article 3 (3/20, 476, hub, S1(i) )
- Article 4 (3/24, 601, links: hub, S1(i))
- submit to long winded post to a blog carnival (3/19)
- write post on S2 that targets “Pack Gangster Switches Net” (3/10, 1205, links: S1(a))
- do S2 article run (3/25, 515, links: S2(a), S2 (i))
- write post on S3 targeting “Pack Gangster Switches Net” (3/15, 1985, links: S1(a))
- do S3 article run (4/2, 1504, GCPTT(i))
- submit to a blog carnival (3/31)
- write hub for S3 post (3/30, 1310, links:S3(a))
keyword targets
keyword searches rank prepublish 7 hours 1 week 2 weeks 4 weeks 8 weeks Pack Gangster Switches Net 1 140 (24) (11) (9) (9) (8) () Pack Gangster Switches Net 2 260 (62) (20) (20) (18) (17) () Pack Gangster Switches Net 3 n/a (56) (19) (17) (14) (13) () Pack Gangster Switches Net 4 210 (-) (37) (35) (17) (23) () Pack Gangster Switches Net 5 140 (36) (13) (8) (7) (10) () Pack Gangster Switches Net 6 480 (-) (60) (60) (29) (9) () Pack Gangster Switches Net 7 320 (-) (139) (177) (142) (98) () Packing Gangster 201000 (42) (37) (42) (27) (27) () Gangster With Packing 54000 (36) (34) (35) (24) (31) ()
What I am finding most interesting about these stats is that my rankings seems to top off two weeks into the campaign. Just by adding fresh content to the site (which will be a year old in June) that targeted the long tail I made huge surge in the SERPs for that keyword and variations of it.
Then, about two weeks later, I saw a jump in my rankings for the related money keyword. This could have been a result of the big G finding my site more relevant because of my increased ranking for the long tail or it could be that they just felt like my site should get a bump in the SERPs because they are nice guys. I can’t really be certain.
The big question though is this: did this experiment help me make more money online? Well, in March I made $205.77 from Adsense with this site ($6.64 per day). In February, I made $152.44 from Adsense ($5.44 per day). Now the entire $1 per day increase cannot be entirely contributed to this campaign, but it probably helped. It may also increase my earnings in the long run because it has certainly helped push me up the SERPs for the money keyword I am trying to target.
I will continue to monitor the rankings for one more week to see if I get a bump in the SERPs between now and then, but I doubt much will happen in just 7 more days. What may be really interesting to see is where I stand with these keywords a month or two from now. With my link building efforts complete will the rankings stay stagnant? Or will my link building efforts continue to improve as more of my links get found and the pages increase in age and authority?
I don’t have the answers yet, but that is the reason for experiments like this - to see if I can make money online.