June is something that I decided to do a little different. I wanted to keep my article marketing to an absolute minimum and I wanted to go absolutely nuts with link building. Link building isn't something I really went nuts with before. I'd work on creating profitable income today and link building as a secondary. The value from hard work on link building doesn't really provide any value for months down the road. But the more I learn as a webmaster, I see much more value in this. I'm sick of writing articles.

I decided to go on a very aggressive link building campaign and measure the results. I have specific keywords I am targeting and positions over time. I won't be counting how many physical back links for specific keywords because that just seems like a waste of time. I don't really feel like doing that sort of back checking since all links weren't created equally and search results are all that matters.

I have 8 different keywords I am going after.

Competition = keyword in quotations<BR> Results = keyword in SE

Keyword 1: Competition - 124,000 Results - 1,230,000

Keyword 2: Competition - 210,000 Results - 1,280,000

Keyword 3: Competition - 18,600 Results - 466,000

Keyword 4: Competition - 420 Results - 5,850,000

Keyword 5: Competition - 21,500 Results - 165,000

Keyword 6: Competition - 18,000 Results - 747,000

Keyword 7: Competition - 19,100 Results - 2,820,000

Keyword 8: Competition - 310,000 Results - 57,400,000

Some of these keywords are actually quite competitive, even keyword 4.I don't expect to get the last keyword, but it doesn't hurt to try.

June 2

Keyword 1: Competitive Position: 55 - Actual Position: 144

Keyword 2: Competitive Position: 21 - Actual Position: 25

Keyword 3: Competitive Position: 67 - Actual Position: 500+

Keyword 4: Competitive Position: 25 - Actual Position: 500+

Keyword 5: Competitive Position: 98 - Actual Position: 500+

Keyword 6: Competitive Position: 25 - Actual Position: 72

Keyword 7: Competitive Position: 40 - Actual Position: 68

Keyword 8: Competitive Position: 500+ - Actual Position: 500+

Just note that I don't look for results beyond 500.

June 18

I decided not to measure things every week cause stuff just bounced around a lot. I wanted to share a few observations or at least opinions I had before I started this about the difficulty of the keywords and ranking for them.

Keyword 1: Hard

Keyword 2: Hard (I know it had a high position, but the day after I posted it was back at like 500+)

Keyword 3: Easy - Moderate

Keyword 4: Easy - Moderate

Keyword 5: Hard

Keyword 6: Moderate - Hard

Keyword 7: Hard

Keyword 8: Very VERY Hard

July 2nd

This is one month into the project from which I started. I thought this would be a better milestone to measure from since things vary too much from week to week. Surprisingly the numbers I'm showing you today for July 2nd are worse than they were 5 days earlier, but that is the nature of the game.

Keyword 1: Competitive Position: 13 - Actual Position: 10 (up 134)

Keyword 2: Competitive Position: 5 - Actual Position: 6 (up 19)

Keyword 3: Competitive Position: 18 - Actual Position: 82 (up 418+)

Keyword 4: Competitive Position: 7 - Actual Position: 292 (up 208+)

Keyword 5: Competitive Position: 130 - Actual Position: 239 (up 261+)

Keyword 6: Competitive Position: 8 - Actual Position: 14 (up 58)

Keyword 7: Competitive Position: 44 - Actual Position: 58 (up 10)

Keyword 8: Competitive Position: ~350 - Actual Position: 500+

There are some footnotes that need to be attached to this. Keyword 1 has to be about the most surprising for me. I never expected to get to the top 10. Typically I was at position 8-9 for a while. It just happened to be the day that I was on 10. I was upwards of position 6. Keyword 2 isn't as competitive as I thought it was. Keyword 3 is a funny one. It's just a matter of time before I over take that position. It's a really good keyword that has a site with zero backlinks ranking in the top 10. I picked it based on that merit. I guess the domain needs to age a little before I'll move up. Keyword 4 is an odd one. I used to have the top 10 for it with no backlinks lol and I lost it. Just another one of those scenarios where I have to wait for all the link juice to kick in. Keyword 5 is a harder version of keyword 4. Haven't had it, but I'd like to get it. Keyword 6 is something that I'll hopefully be able to grab soon. I'm hoping before the end of the month. Keyword 7 is something I've been struggling move. Google has seemed to not like this domain over the last few months. The domain is 2.5 years old. Keyword 8 is the toughie. Ahh, Throughout the month I was ranking 500+ for it with quotes. I ended up doing some on page optimization and got that 350 rank right in time to show improvement.

August 2nd

Hey, here is the breakdown of the keywords. First number will be “Keyword” in quotes and the second will just be keyword.

Keyword 1: 11, 10

Keyword 2: 3, 4

Keyword 3: 11, 71

Keyword 4: 1, 18

Keyword 5: 149, 139

Keyword 6: 2, 5

Keyword 7: 44, 60 (This domain isn't liked by Google over the last few months)

Keyword 8: 270, 370

All in all things are improving. The funny thing along the way is that you see other search terms show up in the stats and you try to get them too. For the next two months I'm going to let the links marinate and see what happens. I'm going to be moving on to the next SEO project, which I'll hope you'll pay attention too. You can read more here