Sharing A Small Link List Success Story
 

This post was a reply in this thread over in the SEO forum, but I thought I'd share it with everyone :)

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I don't know if this means anything or not, but here it goes...

In July of 2010 I opened Real Sexy Girlfriends. I did this site because, at the time, girlfriend sites were just starting to pop & I'm still a big fan of real amateur pics/vids. Also, I had a SHITLOAD of girlfriend free sites, so I could populate the categories with my own sites before it opened so that the pages would not look bare.

Now, please note that NONE of those girlfriend free sites that I had already built linked back to the new link list - and they still don't. (of course, new free sites that I build do link back to the index) To get links flowing into the site, I asked for a lot of trades - most of which did not reciprocate :( But, my links to them remain on the pages because I'm lazy :D

I also made up some table/text "ads" that I slapped around my hubs. Some were niche specific (see http://www.liveamateurlesbians.com/) and some were general & linked to each category (see http://www.adultwebsex.com/) I linked to each category page from all of my other link lists.

I did as much as I could with my own traffic/sites - with the exception of all those free sites - that'd be WAY to much work & upload time to add a link to each of those.

In October 2011 I joined Linkspun. In 5 months, I've set up 300+ inbound trades, most (if not all) coming off other girlfriend sites or amateurs & niche specific pages. The trades go to the main page as well as the category pages. I have no proof, but I do feel that this has helped out a great deal.

So, a little over 1-1/2 years later where am I? I'd say it's doing good. It gets about 500 hits a day (50% referral traffic from inbound links & 40% search engine) I'm in the top 10 for many of the keywords that I targeted, the best being "sexy girlfriends"

My analytics look like complete SHIT when you think about what a site should be:
2.17 Pages/Visit
00:01:37 Avg. Time on Site
64.28% Bounce Rate

But, I am making sales off the ads/text on the category pages. I'm not gonna get rich off them, but YTD it's about 15 sales (4 with 1 program that's paying $45/signup in Feb |thumb)

Also, there is NOTHING else on this domain - no free sites or galleries of blogs - nothing.

I did use some basic HTML5 tags on the pages, like:

Thanks for an actual business post. I think it just shows once again that hard work pays off! (Working hard and smart using some of today's standard SEO tactics.)

It is good to know, that not only the tubes, but also estabilished link sites are able to ranking on top. Congratulations! After reading this post I'm seriously considering my registration at LinkSpun. :)

I signed up for LinkSpun a while back, but Greenie has inspired me to actually use it...:). One thing I am distilling from all this info is that recips on freesites are nice for a few hits here and there, but really hold very little value for SEO and traffic building in general.

Nice post. It made me log in into linkspun just to find out my account was set to "invisible to other users" since 10/31/2011 because I was inactive for too long :)
Cleaning up my trades now.

I might focus on one site now and try to get a whole bunch of backlinks to it.

Good idea, that's what I'm trying to do. But I suck at focusing...:(

If I remember correctly, it took me about 2 weeks to build the site. Now it's just checking submits & linking - maybe 30 min a week?

Not a bad trade off for time/money :)

Man I need to pick up on that html5

also, Greenie do use html5 on your LL linkorama?

thinking of redoing my LL, but the prossess isn't easy..

I think I have some basic HTML5 on LOR, but not that much.

Linkspun, they keep sending me reminders and I've never really looked at it. Thanks for the prompt and I'll go check it out.

Nice!

This is motivating for Links Lists and submitters too :)

Sales happen when people hit your site from Google!

Well just got my hand on a html5 book... :D

Btw, do you take into account the old browsers?

Since not all support html5?

The HTML5 that I use is VERY basic.

Been using Linkspun myself. It works well once you get a good "blocked" list going. There are lots of users on there with crappy sites they want you to link to. Once you find users with nice sites that you want to trade links with, it works really well.

I've been using it for three months now. I'm putting some time there setting up trades but I'm already having a small traffic increase (which is good these days!) and a bunch of pages moved from PR1 to PR2 (which is also good). If I will ever be able to get a PR3 in one of my internal pages, that would be an EXCELLENT result. I will let you know if that happen....

Overall, I think it is well spent time. I've set up some good trades, found some new good sponsors and made some news friends too. If you've not tried it, I would recommend at least to give it a try, to see if it can help your business...

I see... I got the book to see what is the new concept and what's new about it!

it is a interesting sharing.........