This is a small-scale case study with no control group involved. The aim of the test was to see if a small number of links from relevant sites and pages can impact rankings and traffic of a page with a low volume of traffic and low competition terms.
Experiment Start: October 2019
Experiment End: June 2020
Relevant Links: 4
Domain: .com.au
Impact on Rankings: None
Impact on Traffic: None
On the site-wide level, there appears to be a boost on the 1st of April correlating with a known algorithmic event in Australia.
Another rank and traffic boost happened exactly during the May 2020 Core Update:
Source: https://algoroo.com/
While the introduction of a small number of relevant links failed to impact rankings of the linked page, the newly acquired links didn’t prevent the boost of the whole site during Google’s ongoing algorithm tweaks. Arguably they may have even helped, considering no other links were added to the test domain during the experiment period.
This case study was made possible thanks to our volunteers. If you’d like to contribute to future tests or run a follow-up to this one, please let us know.
Dan Petrovic, the managing director of DEJAN, is Australia’s best-known name in the field of search engine optimisation. Dan is a web author, innovator and a highly regarded search industry event speaker.
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6886-3211
