Quick update: Make no mistake, building PBNs & SEO tactics still work. However after the big G started cracking down on PBNs, we started to focus more on businesses that don’t only depend on SEO for traffic.
What ?
I will try to determine if link Thirst is higher on Google.fr than on Google.com.
I’ll be running this experiment on two different websites :
- An already existing website that currently isn’t ranking for its main keywords
- A brand new website that we’ll start on a new domain.
Why ?
The competition level on Google.com continues to rise, and it’s not gonna get easier. Same goes with most English SERPs.
This means that websites now require much more links than before to get good rankings and thus to become profitable.
This is bad news for us: requiring more links to get the same results as before implies that our ROI on links we build or buy (we call it Thirst) has gone down.
A solution that has been expressed by many could be to create websites on foreign, less competitive SERPs, in order to get better Thirst on our linkbuilding.
Google.fr is a great place to try this theory out:
- It is definitely less competitive than Google.com
- France has a similar income level with the US, which means we can objectively compare the profitabilty of websites on both markets.
- I am French and very familiar with the market, which will make it easier to run this first experiment
How
I’ll be running this experiment on two different sites.
Existing site / Expired domain
Content
I’ll add 15000-20000 words of content over the course of 4 weeks
Linkbuilding
Number of links: 15-20
New domain
The idea here is to build a PTC-style authority site, possibly on a niche known to be competitive on the US market.
Content
Around 8000 words the first month then 3000 new words every months.
Link Building
10 links/month until we’re out of the sandbox
Then 15 links /month
Who
For this experiment, I will hire native-French speaking content writers that I have already worked with in the past.
Cost
- Content for older site : The average price for content will be 1.5 euros per 100 words, so we’ll spend around 250 euros ($334)
- Content for new domain : 120 euros for the first 30 days , then 45/month for the 5 following months : 165 euros ($220)
- Buying a new domain : 20$
- Get a VA to help us during 1/5 of his working hours (considering that the first month will require much more work): 100$/month
Total: $1035
When
Existing site / Expired domain
Individual objective after 1 month:
(note that this is niche dependent – objectives may vary depending on the difficulty level of the niche)
- Enter 1st page for main keywords
- Reach top 3 for several solid & relevant longtail keywords
- At least triple current traffic
- Significantly increase the current income (if any) by the end of the month
New domain
Individual objective after 6 months:
- Reach Top 5 for main keywords before we hit the 6 months mark
- Make over
Success criteria for the Experiment
We’ll look at the results for the two sites we’ll run the experiment on, mostly focusing on rankings and $$ made. We will then compare them with similar sites we own on the US market and try to determine if, in fact, Thirst is higher on Google.fr than on Google.com.
How to scale if the experiment is a success
- Create more French sites (from expired or new domains , TBD depending on the results) and carry on adding content to the successful ones.
- Start a beta internship on the French Market with 10 French-speaking interns, then expand.
- Grow our French PBN
- Start similar experiments and apply the same model on markets for which we already have PBN’s (Italian, Spanish, German).