Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Test Results
A couple of weeks ago I told you I had started a month-long marketing test and would share my results when I finished.

I decided to end that test halfway through because it was pretty clear how the results were turning out. I tested two different approaches to commenting on blogs.

On one day, I commented on higher traffic blogs that typically add a "nofollow" tag to blog comments. The nofollow tag lets readers click through to visit my site, but effectively blocks search engine spiders from giving credit to my site for those links.

On alternate days, I commented on blogs that aren't as well trafficked, but that pass credit for links. I wanted to see whether visitors from high traffic sites would outweigh visitors from increased search engine rankings due to increased links.

I ended my test early because I simply couldn't find enough "dofollow" blogs in my niche. I could easily post to 5 nofollow blogs in an hour, but couldn't find more than two an hour of the dofollow blogs.

I was disappointed at the difficulty in finding dofollow blogs, because I had used the dofollow strategy with great success for clients. It just goes to show, though, that you can't assume that just because a strategy works in one niche it will automatically work in every niche. You always need to test.

I'm adding at least a month to the nofollow half of that test. Results have been pretty much as expected so far: low traffic but definitely building momentum. I want to see how that momentum grows over a longer stretch of time. And I'll report how it turns out.

Whatever the results, though, I'll have learned a bit more and be able to plan from experience. And that's the best marketing training you can get.

Jeff

Labels: case studies