My blog is now 4th place on Google for the 2-word keyphrase I’m optimizing it for. I’ve beaten all the other sites, now all I have to do is beat the big boys. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place are: 1) an article on Ezine Articles, 2) a page on Wikipedia, 3) a book on Amazon. I think these pages are beating me not because of page authority as much as because of site authority. So, how do I beat the big boy sites with a lot of authority and outrank them?
Good work with the website. Looks like you're getting plenty of backlinks. You're site just may need some more time. Looks like its taken a leap from #9 to #4. Give it another month or two and you should be jumping right over those. As far as tips to improve the seo : -I would bump your main keyword density up from 1.8% to around 5%. -You want to get your main keyword phrase into your h1 tags which may mean including it in your article titles more often. -Personally, with your background, I would add something worthy from your site to the wikipedia page and reference your site. -Now that your site has some legitimacy, your offers to guest blog on other big time Personal Development websites will be taken more seriously. Use this as a source of traffic as well as a quality backlink. Keep up the good work, it will pay off. Best of luck!
I think you need a different approach than just building links. Something like creating a buzz, link bait so thousands of people would link to your site naturally.
Analyse the seo metrics of the first 3 and mimic them, it should help getting to par with them at least, if not beating them, because you have some link building.
In my opinion, the competitor analysis would be of great help here. Just see what the people at spot 1,2 and 3 are doing in terms of getting backlinks and using strategies. Then try to modify your strategy and I am sure, it will certainly work. I am impressed with your progress and best wishes for future pursuits as well.
lucky Adam is right. Just check the competitors to see what they have done and do the same if possible. If theirs site are much older than yours, then you must wait for some time. Maybe long time...
A great effort overall. I think you can easily beat Amazon and Ezine by continuing what you're doing, but I think Wiki is going to be the hard one as it ranks very good for almost even the best of the best sites. But even so - #2 isn't bad at all.
Wikipedia and amazon you cannot beat as simple as that. However you can try to combat against ezinearticles
With a quality website and proper optimization, you most certainly can beat amazon as well as wikipedia. It may take some time and will surely take some dedication, but it is very very doable.
Linkbaiting is the way forward, you need to come up with an article/blog post that is either very informative and useful, controversial or funny. Build up a hype about it, share it around everywhere you can online, get people putting on their websites, linking to it etc. If enough time, and thought is put into the planning of a linkbait piece, the you can get 1000's of natural links back