Site Removed: A web case study

In using and applying Search Engine Optimization to get more free traffic to any website, I am always testing new ideas and tools that are provided to help you get the work done faster.

In some cases theseservices border on what Google disapproves of.

Recently I got to try one of these tools out. It was not a free test but at $47.00 per month. The tool (or service really) was around the concept of 3 way linking. 3 way linking can be explained like this:

I have a 2 websites. (A and B) I want to get links to one of these websites. I want one way links to my site.

So I contact a webmaster (site C) and ask if will link to Website A, while I will link back to him from site B. Thus creating a one way to my site.

Many times, webmasters will set up a second site, just for this purpose. It’s not a new concept. There are few downfalls with this idea:

1. You may get a link from a junk site which has no traffic 2. Its hard to monitor 3. Its seen as linking purely for search engine results 4. It’s not hard for Google to find 5. It is time consuming to set up and monitor. 6. Most of the time the second site is just another domain on the same hosting which is not the best look (same IP address)

Recently a service was set up to cover these areas with 99% automation. The service allowed you to put one file on your site, and over the period of 3 months, 250 links would be generated from the other members of the service to your site. It also mixed up the link text too.

It would be humanly checked to ensure only quality sites would be included. It could be used on up to 50 of your own sites. The reason for the lag time for the links was to not ring any alarm bells from the site which had zero links one day and 250 links the next – making it look suspicious….

This service was provided and tested out with several beta testers. The site actually had a link to email all of the testers, so I contacted them to ask of what type of results they got- most were happy apart from a couple who didn’t like the customer service.

So I applied the files to one site over the 3-month period. The site had a ranking which was in the top 20 for it’s keyword, I just wanted to kick it up slightly ;) without doing the work.

It was doing well in Yahoo, just not so well in Google.

I applied the tool and uploaded the single page to my site. I also submitted a few sites of my own and had a couple rejected for not enough content.

I was happy that the human edited part was being applied. I watched as the sites were added to the new link page on my site.

After checking my stats a few days later, I found that my site have jumped up a little, not a lot but some. I was excited that I had maybe found a way of helping my site rank better

Then within 30 days later, I found my site had dropped out of Google. In giving the service a chance (and still getting sales from Yahoo)- I left it, while I worked on other projects.

At the 3 month point, I decide that this was not going to work, I removed the file from my site and all parts of the service was taken away. This was also around the same as a google update was going on ( I was watching another site jump up)

Within a few days my site again sat at Number 12 in Google. It was trial and error- you have to try out new ideas to see how they work out.

It may have been fine when it was first released however Google is constantly changing. The final point is that my page rank did not change but simply did not exist in the top 10 K results.

Now the site had no other changes made to it. Also part of the service was an article service tool, which I couldn’t get my head around how it worked.

In conclusion this was a test that had only one element applied to it, if I had made other changes then maybe the result may have been less than clear.

And what was the service?….. I can’t say exactly the name as I would rather not be directly attaching another business…if you search for “3 way links” you may find it.