![](https://statstest.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/victoria-heath-MAGAXAYq_NE-unsplash-1024x612.jpg)
Content development is not an easy task and it is hard to stay motivated. There is still a significant amount of work for us to finish the methods and flow development and it is overwhelming sometimes.
On the bright side, we got our first few organic search traffic clicks! We got our first Google image click a few weeks ago, then our first Google content click last week, and finally another image click this week. We currently do not have any backlinks to our website (except for one I just created from my personal blog), so we are ranking and getting clicks on content alone right now.
Our average search position across all relevant keywords is around 70 right now, which isn’t bad considering we are still in content development mode. Once we finish content development we will start marketing in earnest.
In order to track our marketing efforts from an SEO perspective I have been researching top SEO back link tracking companies. They are all so expensive for an early stage side venture. We’re talking like $100-$200 per month. This is prohibitively expensive for me right now.
So, to track our backlinks I created a smart Google search query that will remove all irrelevant back links and leave the real ones. Here’s the query:
"statstest.com" -site:statstest.com -"ntptEventTag" -"TestConnectionCustomizer" -"Asanajmirsad" -"tangco.ruay765" -statstest123.com" -"blueshop" -"parking365" -"podemos" -"stattranscribe" -"szartest" -"povertyactionlab" -"simangarage"
Basically what this does is it looks for our domain, statstest.com, then filters out any pages on our site and the random spammy virus laden websites (at least they looked like they wanted to give me malware when I visited them), so only the true back link pages come through. This should be a viable solution for the next few months at least.
Web Stats Update (past year)
Back links: 1 (my own blog post for testing purposes)
Organic search clicks: 4
Average clickthrough rate: 1.9%
Impressions: 216
Google Search avg. position: 71.4
Image Stats Update (past year)
Back links: 1 (my own blog post for testing purposes)
Organic search clicks: 2
Average clickthrough rate: 0.7%
Impressions: 297
Google Search avg. position: 69.9