Backlink Experiment: Before & After

As mentioned in my past few posts, I've been busy backlinking my niche sites and blogs and eHow articles to improve their placement in the search engine result pages (SERPs), increase traffic and ultimately to earn more through ad clicks and affiliate purchases.

One of the eHow articles I backlinked showed a dramatic increase in views and earnings that can't be attributed to seasonal factors as it is one of those "evergreen" articles not particularly affected by the time of year. In fact, its previous best month was in the spring.

Here's what How to Get Applications for Free Personal Government Grants looked like at the end of October, before the backlink:

And here's how it's doing today, with views jumping by 2,000 in less than two months and earnings nearly quadrupling:

After a decent first two months when it was initially published, the article had nosedived for the next three months until I gave it a good article database backlink on Oct. 29, 2010. From that point, it took off:

I found this little one-article example very interesting -- crazy how one simple back-link (albeit from a very well-ranked source) could have such a profound effect so quickly.

Have I convinced you yet about the power of a good backlink? If not, I'll follow up shortly with an update on my affiliate earnings in recent months and how backlinks have contributed to that success, too.