Need some advice. I have been stuck on #8 - #10 for my moderately difficult keywords (500k + searches per month). Today G kicked me back to #11, no big deal I have been here before. I need some advice on breaking out of this rut. My thoughts are that I need to obtain a few high quality backlinks. For some reason though, my confidence has been shaken. I want #1 and am prepared to do what it takes to get there. Any thoughts. Thank you
You probably have already done this, but you should check the backlinks of all the websites ranked above you. You should be able to copy some of those links to take away some of the advantage that these websites have over you. Also check how they use those keywords in their title, meta description, headers, text, etc. To gain ground you need quality backlinks. Forum signatures or social bookmarking likely won't cut it. You need to find a way to get on high PR pages. You should also look for links from very relevant pages...pages with your keywords in the url, title or in their backlinks. Even if you can't find high quality links, keep up with other link building strategies on a consistent basis. If you can't beat them with quality, you might be able to beat them with quantity.
Apparently your competition is better at this than you. Everyone can't be Kobe Bryant not matter how bad they want to be.
for competitive terms, constant link building is the key as your competitors are doing it. you are right about the need of high quality backlinks in your situation. if you cannot get that quality backlinks from relevant pages linking back to your site, then create them yourself. there are plenty of social media and web 2.0 sites where you can setup mini pages with the article of your choice and link back to your main site. squidoo, hubpages, etc are examples. setup those pages as many as you can and then promote those pages as well which will do wonder. also search for relevant blogs and make comments on them (check to make sure they are not using nofollow attribute for external links). at the same time, keep up with typical link building practice
Sorry but don't do this... it will tend to hurt you more then them. But the ending statement is 110% true
WHAT......explain how replicating a link pattern will hurt you... unless they have linked to bad neighborhoods, but then you would not link there...
Yeah I love how people dispute something but give no evidence to back up their claim. There is nothing at all wrong with checking the backlinks of your competitors. You would be foolish to not do this. It would not hurt you in any way at all. The only circumstance where this would be bad is if you very closely copied another website's entire link profile and you had no other links. Then you may get penalized for having a similar linking pattern. If you copy several links from each of your competitors, where is the harm? one9host if I wasn't trying to build up my own rep, I would give you a -rep for your unhelpful response.