Three years ago, I started a travel affiliate website as a hobby. I had no advertising budget to speak of, so I became heavily entrenched in SEO forums and the like. I worked steadily and developed content, tailored keywords, anchor text etc. I was actually starting to get unique visitors. One year ago I gave up the site and let the domain expire, because I simply didn't have the time with college. Someone else snapped up the domain, and a quick check still shows over 1500 good back links that the new owner didn't lift a finger to get. :evil:
Ok, enough history, on to the reflections:
-When I google the site to this day, the first two full pages of links is from Press Release websites...but I only submitted to one. It was a "Grand Opening" article with an embedded hyperlink I wrote and submitted to Prweb (I think). Clearly these articles are traded as a commodity, and end up everywhere. These articles are defunct, but I am amazed that they are still out there.
-I should have given more thought to holding onto this domain, or to leveraging it's popularity to sell it for a profit (it had the word Travel in it) even if I didn't intend to use it. I had done considerable site promotion, and I basically just gave it all away for free.
-Conversely, I now keep my eyes open for domains that have an irrational amount of backlinks to them. Could be that there is some joker out there like myself who just didn't realize the value of their own site promotion efforts.