I always wondered how effective getting back links to the articles on my site to improve search engine ranking and increasing traffic really was. I mean, getting links is hard work so is it really worth the effort?
Oh sure, you’ll read all about how important it is on every forum and blog you go to, but I’m the kind of person that likes to see things for myself so I decided to do a test on some of my indexed pages and find out just how helpful (or not) more backlinks could be.
Now one way to get backlinks is to write articles, but I’m kind of lazy so I decided to try out the article announcement blogs over at Blogging Underground. They have a bunch of high PR blogs that you can use to add a paragraph or 2 with a link back to your webpage. There’s also a ton of blogs contributed by members, but I used mostly the Au blogs in my test.
Below is my findings – I tested out 7 keyword phrases providing them with links from the blogs and monitored them to see how the blogs helped improve search engine ranking for each keyword. I dripped the links in one or 2 a day, skipping a day here and there so it would appear natural.
In the chart, you will see what position each phrase was in when I started, how many blogs I published links on and the position 1 month later. In reality, the pages moved around a lot in the SERPS, some even disappeared for a while but the ending position seems to be where they have settled for quite a while. The test ended about a month ago and the positions have held with no new links added.
| Phrase# | # Links | Starting Position | Ending Position |
| Phrase 1 | 7 | Page 2 Position 3 | Page 1 Position 5 |
| Phrase 2 | 4 | Page 2 Position 3 | Page 1 Position 2 |
| Phrase 3 | 10 | Page 2 Position 6 | Page 1 Position 5 |
| Phrase 4 | 7 | Page 2 Position 3 | Page 1 Position 3 |
| Phrase 5 | 5 | Page 1 Position 2 | Page 1 Position 1 |
| Phrase 6 | 13 | Page 2 Position 9 | Page 1 Position 4 |
| Phrase 7 | 15 | Page 2 Position 10 | Page 1 Position 9 |
Most of the phrases were on different domains, but phrases 5 & 6 and phrases 1 & 4 were on the same domain.
How much did it effect the traffic?
I think adding the links had an overall buoying effect for many of the pages – not just the targeted one. Below you will find the average unique visits per day at the start of the test for each phrase and then the average at the end.
| Phrase# | Starting Traffic | Ending Traffic |
| Phrase 1 & Phrase4 | 10 | 28 |
| Phrase 5 & Phrase 6 | 480 | 900 |
| Phrase 3 | 10 | 20 |
| Phrase 7 | 95 | 120 |
| Phrase 2 | 5 | 5 |
You’ll notice that moving phrase 2 up had little effect – that is due to the fact that it gets hardly any searches.
So, all in all, I’d say the test was a big success! I was able to improve search engine ranking which resulted in more traffic to my sites and, as we all know, more traffic = more money!
So, if you want an easy way to get more backlinks and more traffic head on over to Blogging Underground and get those pages ranked and earning today!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice results with a quick test like that. I see that AU now has a new Blogging Underground. Are you a member? If so, what kind of results are you seeing with the system?
Yes, I am a member of the blogging underground – you actually get that included with AU. I’m doing a case study on it right now – using Mikes techniques that he talks about over there and I will publish that in a month or two so keep your eyes peeled!