I have now been messing about on the Internet for about 3 1/2 years. I have over 30 domains under my belt now. This sounds like a success. It is not. Of these 30 domains, and believe me when I tell you that Webologist is not the one, only one domain has proved to be a success. All the others get a few lousy hits a day and raise next to no cash whatsoever. The one that is doing well currently averages 5300 hits a day, which is nice.
Anyway, recently I have been forced into a situation where I need to start making more money online (I was made redundant). I have learnt a lot about SEO, I have done all my own SEO, so getting new sites ranking well should be a breeze? Not so.
Firstly, I realised that I need to determine why my good site is good. I meditated on what I used to do in the early days – lots of mistakes I know – but figured where I was failing was that I could not be bothered to do link building any more. In the early days I submitted my website URL and its RSS feeds to many directories. I also used article directories, left blog comments and joined countless forums. This I determined must have been where the success came from. But link building is boring, so I did not bother with my new sites.
After speaking to a pal who had, in his opinion, successfully used link building services, I opted to get some lovely chaps out in India to do link building on 4 websites. So, what was the result?
After a month of link building (OK, maybe too soon to tell, but we are living in the Caffeine world now) 1 of the 4 sites is doing much better, but the other 3 are pretty much static. The one that is doing better is responding to a huge content drive on my part, and promotions locally (its a local directory / portal site). If anything, one of the other sites is worse.
On analysing the link building, the outsource company is placing links on a huge number of free directories. They have a spreadsheet (I get the copies in daily reports that do not always come daily) with over 1500 directories listed. An insane number. But why am I convinced that it will fail? Well, several reasons.
- I just found in My Yahoo a list of directories that I submitted links to about 3 1/2 years ago. From that list, all but a few of the directories have been totally abandoned (either a new site in its place, or domain dropped).
- My pal that thinks his link building has been a success has done a lot of his own work, networking with other companies, doing interviews, and even has a few of those Government links that so many people rave about.
- If these manual link building services were good, then by now my good site which no longer has many directory links would have been knocked off the top SERPs in Google. There is just so much competition, and so many new sites popping up everyday.
- From the link building results so far, there are a very low % of confirmed links. Hundreds of links submitted, but only a dozen confirmed links from the same few directories, which all have pretty dubious titles.
Okay, my analysis is not scientific. My reasoning is not entirely clear. But I really feel that outsourcing link building to a company that just submits links to free directories is a waste of effort. Google knows what these directories are trying to achieve. Some of them even call themselves “SEO Friendly Directories” which is like having a giant sign saying “SPAMMERS CONGREGATE HERE, PLEASE GO AWAY MR SEARCH ENGINE”. No search engine would take such directories seriously now. Maybe 5 or 6 years ago they were still worth it?
But, even if all these free, crappy links did help today, how many of the directories will still be active in 4 years time? 2% of them maybe? The domains come up for renewal and the owners generally realise that they were themselves scammed into buying a get rich quick scheme. Just imagine it: “GET RICH BY WORKING FROM HOME. BUY THIS DIRECTORY SOFTWARE AND YOU CAN QUICKLY BUILD A SEARCH ENGINE TO RIVAL GOOGLE.” People do fall for this nonsense. Desperate people are gullible people. After 2 years they generally discover that their $500 software will never make enough money to recover the costs, and they let the domain expire. Your links disappear.
So, what does work? Well, who knows (other than a bunch of Googlers locked away in a bunker somewhere in California). But one thing is sure, paying a few hundred dollars for someone to spend a month building links may seem like a bargain, but if the results are as poor as mine, then it is still a few hundred dollars wasted. Spend some time writing 20 new articles and submit them to the article directories. Suggest some link exchanges. Leave some blog comments, even participate in forums. Add value everywhere you go though, do not just spam.
I am still unsure why my main site is a success. But I am sure that it is not down to a bunch of crap links. Probably 3 1/2 years of hard work, almost 1000 unique articles, a great design and lots of fresh content. Plus it is not a “made for Adsense” site and I never spam it anywhere. That could be it. But a link in a phpLD directory is certainly not the reason for its success.
Maybe the next 400 dollars I spend will be on getting some new content written. I hear that there are some pretty cheap writers in Thailand……
