Has anyone competed for a keyword (on Google) in which the number 1 spot site has "authority" site links? Have you knocked them into the number 2 position? I am working on 1 keyword phrase and got to the #3 spot. #1 spot is the site with 8 site links and they also have the #2 spot which is often the case when you are #1 with site links. Has anyone been in this situation and won? (got to #1) If so? any special tips or is it just keep getting those backlinks? Did it take many months? Or is it a losing battle if they have descent SEO? Thanks!
Yep... at one point I was #1 in Google for "western union", knocking westernunion.com down to #2. But that was years ago when Google was far easier to manipulate.
Yes I did it for a brief amount of time. I pushed Seagate site to #2 spot for the keyword "seagate free agent desk" I know its a long tail keyword but It is competitive. But it was for a month or two. Now I am at #11 for this keyword.
You can do it without many backlinks too. You need to post a quality article. At least in my case it was so.
I don't see sitelinks as an indication of authority but rather an indication of the structure of the site itself. As such, any site with sitelinks can easily be beaten in the SERPs if your quality/quantity of back links are superior and you've paid enough attention to on page factors.
Yes I have and won, but the #1 slot is not necessarily the best slot. I believe somewhere near the 3rd position is prime. The last study I read stated that many people try out the the first 3 results but remember best what they see last.
haha, that is pretty epic. Considering the domain name has so much weight I'm sure it can be done if the name isn't the same as the keyword you're targetting - for the guy asking about sitewide links. I think anyone can be "beat", just depends how bad you want it, amount of links your willing to obtain, free and paid. Sometimes a question is whether it is worth it or not, and because you are in 3rd position already I assume you already know you can do it.
Oh yeah... had another pretty good one. Was #1 (and #2) for "eharmony" for a week... But again... that was back in 2005, when it was easy to be #1 for anything you wanted if you were smart.
Sitelinks are not authority links. They have to do with how well the search engines read your site and if Google thinks the other pages may be of interest to the person searching (basically, Google wants to make sure that navigation will be easy if the site has a ton of relevant information). Most authoritative sites have sitelinks, but that's mostly because they are structured by good developers, and the seo is done by professionals, and the content is structured in an intelligent way. If you are a good SEO, you can beat out the #1 spot regardless if they have sitelinks or not.
Thanks, good stuff guys. Unfortunately the #1 spot I am talking about with the sitelinks has the 2 word keyword-phrase as its domain and is also a .org. I have the 2 keywords plus 1 other word in my domain and have been right under them at #3 spot for a few months. I would need to get much more aggressive to take them on, so we will see. Thanks!
Don't worry about that spot of #3 I have been in this situation myself for almost a year, but i didn't relent and kept building backlinks and did whatever i could Now since the last 1 1/2 years i m in the 1st position and the site with sitelinks as well as the exact keyword in the domain is 2nd, mine don't even have keywords in the domain, just that i developed an old domain which was lying idle with me So persist with your efforts and don't loose heart, google will not break your heart