
[2009-03-28 The three sites I created for this test were thin affiliate sites. I did a very poor job of creating the sites and have not done what needs to be done to make them good sites. As a result, I have not kept the domains, and you will no longer be able to look up these sites in Google. If you find any results after this update then that means someone else bought the URLs and anything you find is not mine.]
As you probably already know, I recently purchased 30 Minute Backlinks (if you don’t know what this is you can read my first post about this here and my second post about this here). My first impressions of this method for gaining backlinks was very positive. To date I’ve created three toolbar using the instructions from Michelle MacPhearson for sites that were either very well established or almost so. Since creating these three toolbars and submitting them to various locations I’ve gained 1,583 backlinks.
But, how much did this help my sites in search engines? I really don’t know because the sites I created these toolbars for have already been around for two to eight months. The results look good but I haven’t been able to gauge the effectiveness of what I did.
The more I thought about 30 Minute Backlinks the more I wanted to know exactly how much it would benefit brand new sites. So, I’ve decided to put 30 Minute Backlinks to a test.
Over the last two weeks I created three web sites. These three sites are brand new, meaning I purchased the URLs either last week or early this week, and have built new niche stores on them. I have done nothing to promote them other than submitting each site’s dynamic sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools. The only marketing I will do for these three sites is to create and promote a toolbar for each site using Michelle’s 30 Minute Backlinks.
To make this as fair as possible I am going to control as much as possible. First, I’m not going to disclose the URLs for these sites until I’ve finished my testing. I don’t want to skew the results by doing this. Secondly, I created three sites that are very similar. The do not contain any duplicate items but they all contain items from the same categories. For example, let’s say I created three sites selling cars (I didn’t but let’s just pretend I did). One site would sell Ford cars, another would sell Chrysler cars, and the third would sell General Motors cars. All the same category (cars) but each sells unique cars so there are no duplicate items on any of the three sites.
The reason I am testing three sites is because I want to compare how effective the different ways of promoting the toolbars is on getting the sites indexed and ranked in search engines. Here is what I am doing to each site:
Site #1 | |
| The least promotion of toolbar/site. | |
| I will submit toolbar to the shareware repository that software directories go to for new products to list on their sites. This site will have the least promotion because I am simply telling directories that I have a new product they can list if they want, but I’m leaving it up to each directory to find my toolbar and let them list it on their sites if they want to. Doing this can take months to gain backlinks. | |
Site #2 | |
| Site #2: A bit more promotion of toolbar/site. | |
| As with Site #1, I will submit toolbar to the shareware repository that software directories go to for new products to list on their sites. I will also submit site directly to 30 software directories using the trial version of a software directory submission program. For this test I am using the trial version of this software, which will submit my toolbar’s information to 30 directories. If I decide I like the results I may buy the program which will then allow me to submit my software’s information to 100+ directories. | |
Site #3 | |
| Site #3: The maximum promotion of toolbar/site. | |
| As with Site #1, I will submit toolbar to the shareware repository that software directories go to for new products to list on their sites. I will also submit site to up to 800+ directories using software I already purchased. I’m not sure I need to promote my toolbar this heavily so I’m very interested in the results of this test. If I find site #2 does about as well as site #3 then I will get a refund on the software I’m using for this method. It is also possible that using this method will get my site sandboxed in Google (purposely not indexed for a period of weeks or months) because I will be getting a large number of backlinks quickly. | |
| . | |
As of this writing here are the statistics for these three sites:
Site #1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date URL purchased: 04/07/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date toolbar submitted to shareware repository: 04/19/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of first backlink: None yet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of backlinks (as of 04/19/2008): 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/19/2008): 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/19/2008): | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
* Robots shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts. Numbers after + are successful hits on “robots.txt” files | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Site #2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date URL purchased: 04/07/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date toolbar submitted to shareware repository: 04/19/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date toolbar submitted to 30 software directories: 04/19/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of first backlink: None yet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of backlinks (as of 04/19/2008): 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/19/2008): 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/19/2008): | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
* Robots shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts. Numbers after + are successful hits on “robots.txt” files | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Site #3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date URL purchased: 04/13/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date toolbar submitted to shareware repository: 04/19/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date toolbar submitted to 800+ software directories: 04/19/2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of first backlink: None yet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of backlinks (as of 04/19/2008): 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of site pages indexed in Google (as of 04/19/2008): 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Statistics for robots/spiders from Awstat (as of 04/19/2008): | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
* Robots shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts. Numbers after + are successful hits on “robots.txt” files | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.v | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As soon as I post this on my blog I will submit information about two of the three toolbars I created to software directories as described above. I’ll post again tomorrow with the results from just one day.
Rochelle
Hi Rochelle
This is such a cool idea. If all BANSters did this we could have a reveiw of all the traffic generators and then have a better idea of what to get and what to leave alone. Keep up with this as I’m sure it will be helpful.I looked at it a little while ago but the cynic in me said no. I am interested to see if you prove me wrong.Best wishes
Hi Rochelle,
Great trial I am intrigued to know how the three sites are performing in comparison to each other, do you have any updates.
kind regards
Dave
David,
You can read the posts I’ve written up to today’s date at (in no particular order):
http://www.nichestorestrategie.....backlinks/
http://www.nichestorestrategie.....your-site/
http://www.nichestorestrategie.....backlinks/
http://www.nichestorestrategie.....backlinks/
http://www.nichestorestrategie.....inks-test/
Rochelle
So, you didn’t update this or the other pages, and it shows “0″ backlinks.. Does this mean 30 day backlinks is a scam, and doesn’t work?
0 backlinks is pretty bad! And the fact you didn’t update the blogs with any future updates, shows it must of not worked!
Actually, I think 30 Minute Backlinks works exactly as it should. But it isn’t the only thing you should do to promote a site. In my case, my house was flooded by Tropical Storm Fay in August, and I’ve done basically nothing with any of my niche stores since then (I’ve been too busy working on getting us back in our house, which, as of this writing, has not yet happened).
If anything, this shows that five months of no work is a great way to lose any backlinks your site might have had. If, however, I had continued with the actions shown in 30 Minute Backlinks, as well as other promotional methods, that my sites would be in much better shape right about now as far as backlinks go.
Rochelle