My Site Now Sucks

Cesare

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So I heard about the big Luqman Khan Scholarship strategy about July 2016 and got right into it as newbie. By September I had built links from about 30 .edu domains and was waiting for my keywords and rankings to go up. One month... two months.... crickets........

By November I was convinced the links were worth jack, so I started building some PBN links and made my first $47 in December, $141 in January, and $150 in February. Now comes the kicker.

My scholarship deadline was on 28th February. Come March I started losing the scholarship links since I never posted anything on the page saying I was renewing the scholarship ( I was convinced they were not worth anything). So I started losing the scholarship links in March but my traffic was still on the up. Come the Fred update, and my traffic went up 40% for about three days and then it crashed,.(am thinking Google started to take into account the loss of links). At first I thought it was the update but no, I am now certain it is the loss of those links since the page that I built the PBN links to still ranks fine, while overall traffic to the site is down by half.

I am still losing the links though, but am now concentrating on PBNs.

Big lesson I got from this - all links have value (well except for the really spammy ones like GSA or anything auto generated), even if they do not seem to push the keywords you are targeting. I think I lost because of the loss of trust from the .edu links, but I got to keep on going, I still made $150 for March, despite the huge loss in traffic, and it can only get better once my PBN links kick in.
 
Consider this... what site naturally gets 30 EDU links before having 100's of other domains linking in? There is a balance. Those EDU links needed to be validated by other types of metrics, I suspect, before Google was willing to give you an insane boost. It's also likely that Google has devalued links from pages with lists of scholarships since it was heavily abused.

An example of the "validation" I'm talking about is once I had a site that I tested with all nofollow links, back around... maybe 2010. We're talking thousands. Nothing happened for months. Then I built a few dofollows, less than 5, and my traffic and rankings exploded. Was it the anchor text being allowed to come into effect? Or do nofollows have value when your site is proven to have editorial value?

Search algorithms work like a measuring scale, a balance. If it tips too far in one direction that's a sign you're likely manipulating.
 
GrindingTo10K said:
It sounds like the .edu links were boosting your site's DA (Domain Authority) and that loss has hurt. But are you sure it is not Fred?

Why not create another scholarship?
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I do not think it is Fred, most people that were hit by Fred are reporting higher traffic losses, something like 80% while mine is more like 40% and it went on longer than the Fred update was active.

As to creating scholarship links, I do not think I will be doing that anymore, the links hardly gave me a boost in the rankings, only trust. I believe I can achieve the same with DA Stacking. which is what I plan to do in the course of my PBN link building campaign

Ryuzaki said:
Consider this... what site naturally gets 30 EDU links before having 100's of other domains linking in? There is a balance. Those EDU links needed to be validated by other types of metrics, I suspect, before Google was willing to give you an insane boost. It's also likely that Google has devalued links from pages with lists of scholarships since it was heavily abused.

An example of the "validation" I'm talking about is once I had a site that I tested with all nofollow links, back around... maybe 2010. We're talking thousands. Nothing happened for months. Then I built a few dofollows, less than 5, and my traffic and rankings exploded. Was it the anchor text being allowed to come into effect? Or do nofollows have value when your site is proven to have editorial value?

Search algorithms work like a measuring scale, a balance. If it tips too far in one direction that's a sign you're likely manipulating.
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True about lack of other types of links, but I think am done with scholarship links now, likely too spammy and abused much.

I agree with you its about finding a balance, even the no follows and the now spammy scholarship links have their place if mixed in with other powerful links from relevant domains. So am going full out in building relevant linking domains (PBN is my thing for this) then do some DA stacking and maybe some guest posting in future. Will see how it goes.
 
GrindingTo10K said:
Will you use a Konker gig or try something yourself?
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For PBNs I do them myself, I tried konker gigs and they were either too expensive or the ones that were affordable were terrible. The sellers take too many orders and your gig will stay on the homepage for no more than a week meaning you will get very little juice for it. With my own PBN, all the juice is mine and the article stays on the homepage permanently.
 
GrindingTo10K said:
Do you use aged domains? Where do you get them?
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I was using dropped domains but have been shifted to aged never dropped domains since January. I get them from TBSolutions, they are on the marketplace on Builder Society
 
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