I'm kind of looking for some "yard-sticks" (for newbies like myself) as to what you do to achieve what PR or traffic. For example: I submitted 200 articles, submitted to 100 dirs, bought a pr7 link for X amount of money/mo, etc. and achieved PR X / traffic X in two months. Just looking for the basics. no need to expose any link building secrets you have
if you try to do this in two months, G will put you in sandbox. G will not allow you to grow so fast. build backlinks slowly
Was just giving an example. What I'm doing is asking people (to give newbies such as myself some guidelines) as to what they do to achieve what PR or traffic in what amount of time. So let's hear how about many dirs, articles, etc. you submit to and what results you achieve. Also, how long it took.
Over a 3 year span... probably submitted to over 5,000 directories but this really is a crap shoot and probably only 1/5 of those directories are still in business. With directories it's just a volume game... submit and forget about it... some will pay off but most won't. The real juice for SEO is on anchor text links from other types of sites with content closely related to yours. This is the hardest to do but if you build content that is useful, the links will come. Article submissions are not really that helpfull anymore... save the content for your own site... it will be of more value.
Add useful and unique content to your site. Get it stumbled / bookmarked and promote on other forums related to your niche. You should start seeing a steady amount of traffic from this effort. If people really like your site and its contents, this will also fetch you somd quality links which will help you a long way. Also, as emmaonline already mentioned, also focus on Anchor Texts for your links.
Checked the site on your avatar with PR 4. Still looking for more input from others. Definately looking for numbers as I think this will help people get an "gauge" of what it takes to get a PR X or Traffic X. I know there is alot variability here. Content, market/niche type, "luck," etc. But knowing what kind of results people get would help
I would say ignore PR and focus on SERPS. For me I'd rather have A pr2 site receiving 3000 uniques per day over a site that was PR 7 that got only 200 uniques per day. It's not as simple as get this many links get this pr or this much traffic, as yoou rightly say there are so many variables. I would say just try and befriend as many webmasters in your niche as possible, comment on their blogs and forums, exchange links with them, if you have some cash buy a few, submit to directories and write articles and distribute them. Couple this with adding good useful content that can be dug/bookmarked and you are well on your way to creating a useful site that people want to visit. Emarketing is a long slog, but the rewards are excellent if you stick with it! just my 2cents
PR doesn't mean much on your page as you can rank well without a PR7 or 8 but it does mean a lot on the pages you are getting the links from... a good anchor text link with one of your keywords from a PR7 or PR8 site will give you more juice than the same link from a PR3 or 4 site. For a site just focused on selling stuff it is hard to get over a PR 5 or 6 as you don't have enough Unique content to attract the links from the big PR sites.
Goes without saying conversion rate is KING. After that traffic. After that..SERP placement. Whew! Anyway, what I'm after (as the thread title says) is what kinda results do you see? I'm looking for quantifiable "numbers" so newbies (such as myself) get some idea of a "yard-stick" to reach for. Ie. what did you do (quantifiable:dir sub,articles,etc.), to achieve result (quantifiableR/traffic)? This ---> was totally on-track for what I'm trying to get outta this. I know there are tons of variables. There are other threads to express "why content is best," "why you should use Adwords, or Yahoo," "why PR isn't important, and theorys surrounding that," etc.
Ok... 1) 0 bought links 2) I probably have about 2,500 backlinks but get a lot from sites with similar subject matter which helps make up for the lack of quantity. 3) 2 Article submissions (back in 2005) 4) 1 Blog wich I actively maintain 5) Reciprical links = 4
emma this is great. I also never focus on paid/bought links for my site(s). However, can you please tell if the 2,500 backlinks is the number of total links to the site or the ones counted by Google? Thanks.