Blogspot SEO Experiment: Update #1 (Our First Backlink & Google Setup)

We are five days into The Blogspot Experiment, and the "real" work has officially begun. It's one thing to have an idea, but it's another to actually start laying the bricks.

In my first post, I asked a simple, high-stakes question: Can a brand new, completely free Blogspot blog still rank on Google and make money in 2025/2026? The internet is full of "gurus" who say no. We're here to find out for ourselves.

You can't rank if you don't do any work, so I've spent the last few days laying the essential, non-negotiable foundation. This isn't the glamorous part of SEO—there's no traffic to show, no earnings to report. But it's the most critical. You can't just publish posts into the void and hope for the best. You have to build a foundation and, just as importantly, set up your tools to measure success. Here's exactly what I've done.

1. The First "Vote of Confidence" (Our First Backlink!)

In the world of SEO, a "backlink" is a link from another website to yours. Think of it as a "vote" or a "recommendation" in the eyes of Google. When another site links to you, it signals to Google that your content is worth paying attention to. Getting these links is a fundamental part of ranking.

So, to get the ball rolling and tell Google this blog exists, I've officially built our very first backlink.

I published an announcement post on my other website, trick47.com, letting my readers there know about this new experiment. That post links directly to this blog.

You can see the live post here: https://trick47.com/blogspot-seo-2025/

Now, let's be 100% transparent. Before you think trick47.com is some massive authority site, I want to be clear: it's also a very new website, not much older than this Blogspot experiment itself. So, this one link isn't a magic bullet that will make us rank #1 overnight. But it is a clean, relevant, high-quality link that serves several vital purposes. First, it's a massive, flashing sign for Google's crawlers that says, "Hey! This new blog at theblogspotexperiment.blogspot.com exists! Come and check it out!" This is critical for getting our pages indexed (meaning, added to Google's search results) in the first place.

Second, it passes a tiny, tiny bit of "authority" or "link juice." Because Google already trusts trick47.com (even as a new site), that link gives this new blog a slight head start—infinitely better than starting with zero links at all.

2. Plugging Into the "Google Matrix"

You can't win a game if you can't see the scoreboard. If I'm going to track this experiment properly and make data-driven decisions, I must plug this blog directly into Google's own free tools.

First, I set up Google Search Console (GSC).

Think of Search Console as our direct, private line of communication with Google's search engine. It's the technical dashboard that shows how Google sees our blog, flaws and all.

With GSC, I can now:

• Verify Ownership: I've proven to Google that I own this blog.

• Check for Errors: I can monitor the "Index Coverage" report to see if Google has any problems "crawling" (reading) the site or if any pages are blocked. I'll also be checking the "Mobile Usability" report, since most traffic is mobile.

• See Performance: This is the most important part. In the future, this is where I'll see what keywords people are searching for to find this blog, what our click-through-rate is, and which posts are gaining traction.

Right now, every report is just a flat line at zero. But that's our baseline.

Second, I set up Google Analytics (GA4).

If Search Console tells us how people find the blog, Analytics tells us what they do once they get here.

I've now connected this blog to a new Google Analytics property. This will let me track, in real-time:

• How many people are visiting (our traffic).

• Where they're coming from (e.g., the trick47.com backlink, social media, or... hopefully... Google Search).

• How long they stay and what posts they read (user engagement).

• What our "bounce rate" is (how many people leave after viewing just one page).

Setting up both GSC and GA is non-negotiable for any serious website, even an experiment. We now have our baseline. The goal from here on out is to make those "zero" dashboards start to move.

3. What's Next on the Agenda?

The foundation is laid. Now it's time to build on it. Here are my immediate next steps:

1. Optimize the Homepage (Meta Tags): My very next technical step is to add a proper meta title and meta description for the blog's homepage. Right now, it's just the default blog title. A good meta description is our "advertisement" on the Google search results page. It needs to be compelling and tell people why they should click on our experiment when they see it.

2. Expand to YouTube: My next big promotional push will be to create a YouTube video about this experiment. A video can reach a completely different audience—people who prefer watching over reading. Plus, I'll be able to drop a link to this blog in the video description. This will hopefully serve as another valuable, high-authority signal to Google and, more importantly, a new source of referral traffic.

3. Learn the "Bones" of Blogspot: I mentioned I want to learn "how to do index.html in Blogspot." In the Blogspot world, this really means diving into the theme's underlying XML/HTML code. I need to understand how the platform is built. Why? Because user experience and site speed are massive SEO factors. Google's "Core Web Vitals" (how fast a page loads and how stable it is) are a direct ranking factor. I'll be researching how to customize the theme to make sure it's as fast, clean, and mobile-friendly as possible.

Five days in, and it finally feels like the experiment is truly underway. We have our tracking systems online and our first "vote" from another site. The real test comes next: creating high-quality, keyword-focused content that people are actually searching for.

Thanks for following along. What do you think is more important for a new blog: getting more backlinks or writing more content? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.