OK, let's imagine you can be simplistic and split climbing the rankings for Google into three 'phases'... 1. Getting out of the Sandbox, and ranking within the top 100 (or so?) for your most competitive keyword. 2. Getting from that position onto the front page (top 10) of Google for that term. 3. Getting from the front page to being the number 1 result on Google for that term. Which of these would you say is the hardest. Is it all downhill from phase 1? Or does it get harder and harder? My situation: It seems I just got out of the sandbox and I'm appearing in google SERPs for my major key word phrase. Not sure how competitive it is in comparison to other phrases, but wordtracker says 630 searches a day, and overture says 1,150 a day, which sounds like quite a fair amount to me. (And there are quite a few other closely related search terms I should rank for that have almost as many searches a day). I have appeared in Google at number 21 for this term, which is higher than I thought I would, and without all that much work - let's just say I got quite lucky with a link bait that got me a few great high power links. Do you think it will take more work than I already have done to get onto the first page and then to the number 1 position in Google, or do you think the relative ease that I got to number 21 with means that it should not take too much effort to achieve these goals? Or will it take more effort as you get closer to the top of Google? Does anyone have any insight on this? I am wondering if most of the journey is over, or if there is a long hard trip still ahead of me! All advice welcomed
for me no:3 is the hardest have done the sandbox thing just kept building links whilst i was in it and flew into page 4 when i was released from the box. Getting to number has now become the biggest challenge.
thanks for letting me in on your experience interesting...so maybe it gets a lot harder to move up each position the higher you get up the rankings. of course, i knew it would get harder, but i am not sure HOW MUCH harder it is, or even if that is possible to quantify. If I told you that a Wikipedia article is currently holding the top spot for my main search term, would that make you think that maybe it is not such a competitive niche?
for me it's a lot harder to get onto the first page simply because the competition to get there is a lot harsher than for a top 100 spot
1. Getting out of the Sandbox, and ranking within the top 100 (or so?) for your most competitive keyword. very hard to get out if your in deep.
It truly depends on the term in question. You have to look at the top sites you are competing against to get an idea how 'hard' it will be There is no 'rule of thumb'
You can always generalize. It may not be completely correct to do so, but without generalizing, humans would have problems communicating.
not really there are far to many factors that affect the competitiveness of various terms I had one pop up at #2 on Google yesterday on a competitive term (probably some link maturity kicking in) and have other terms that are struggling in the top 30 on less competitive terms. It is not the BULK results for a term but the true competitive nature of a given targeted term I have a seen terms that have only 2 non .govs in the top ten and others with none... you have to manually inspect the competition to understand how 'hard' it is going to be... it is one of the scineces of SEO, Keyword/Phrase research and tergeting. This should be done before the program so you already KNOW how 'tough' getting the 1st page will be... If there were a 'simple' answer, I'd be out of the SEO business by now
I have an idea how tough the keyword phrase I am targeting is. However, I am new to this game and was trying to assess which phase of climbing the Google rankings is the hardest. Really, I was looking for people to give me insight as to which phase was hardest for them on the way to the top. I am not saying it will apply to my case, I am just interested in people's past experiences in their particular cases. And if I get enough people respond in this manner, I might be able to draw out a useful generalization. Who knows, I am new to this game...
Like I said there is no 'generalization. Somtimes they creep and crawl up.. some times they POP up... I had a phrase jump into #2 from no where... others creep up... Where am I going wrong? I tried to explain it already 4 U...... No one else is answering because there IS NO generalization..honest M8
I didn't want a generalization from you, or from anyone else. I just wanted someone to post their specific past experience/s. But then, I guess I am always on to a loser if I am trying to get some specific information out of anyone on a public SEO forum
Well, don't get upset now..there are some 24 Billion pages and they move around all the time. I fail to see what a handfull of peoples experiences is going to give you I was merely trying to encourage you to move on to more functional SEO activities... you're not a loser... just chasing meaningless answers maybe.. if I was after mis information on a public forum, I wouldn't have advised you with THE TRUTH
Don't worry, I'm not upset. I guess the winking emoticon didn't convey that very well. If you asked a group of marathon runners "which is the hardest part of the marathon", I bet you would get a load of different SPECIFIC answers along with completely different explanations why. But, you could take a sample of these answers and maybe come up with a generalization. Some people find this useful, or at the very least, interesting. And I didn't say "I am a loser". I said "on to a loser".
Yes... the 3rd point is surely the toughest. Offsite optimizations sometimes enables us to reach stage 1... but then it is an up and down road....
I can generalize about many things in SEO, just not the rate at which sites rise and move… that is not a stable equation… I CAN generally tell you not to worry about PR.. I CAN generally say you need to build quality ‘targeted’ back links…. Many things I CAN generalize…just not this one. So it is not the state of SEO… it is the state of the desired output… a generalization where none exists If you want one.. NEW sites generally are the toughest.. but even that can vary depending on the level of SEO expertise and the competitiveness of the term….
Well who the heck would U be talking to... just us here in this post and we keep bumping it with mindless chit chat and still no love... dunno... At least I bumped it one more time
Well, it's nice to have a little argument of sorts from time to time Seriously though, its not that I wasn't talking to you. I just don't want a generalisation from you, or anyone. Want I wanted was some specific past experiences about this topic from different people, from which I might be able to draw a general conclusion myself. And some people did provide me with a little insight - probably thanks to our mindless chit chat bumping it up!
OK, to me this entire thread is an oddity. Perhaps I'm lucky..perhaps I'm just doing something a little differently. I recently began a new site (online on 11/4) and on 11/7 began receiving visitors from Google, to the tune of about 230/day and growing about 10% from that ever since. There has been absolutely no advertising what-so-ever... no black hat, nothing. simply building the site. I rank (and have ranked) no lower than the top 7 or 8 (and more often than not, I rank #1) for any given keyword related to me site. Since this seems to be an anomally, I will post here what exactly I am doing so hopefully anyone having difficulties will be able to avoid sandbox or whatever pitfalls others seem to be having. 1) Brand new domain name, never registered (and no, it isn't djshgjkdfn.xm). it is a .com and a two word domain that is relevant to the field/industry. 2) I personally use E107 cms( www.e107.org ), perhaps the way e107 backends itself to the SE's has something to do with it. 3) each and every article has the key word title in the link to read it and is also partially reproduced on the front page of the site with a "read more..." to the rest of the article in case visitors havent clicked the properlly worded link. 4) While not ideal, the URL's in my site are NOT SEO'd. they look like this: http://www.******.com/news.php?item.41.8 so perhaps that has changed for SEO in google, who knows. but now I question the wisdom of changing that seeing as it has been so succesful in the 3 weeks the site went online. 5) Meta tags, Meta Tags, Meta Tags. 6) Ensure you view your content with adsense ads on it IMMEDIATLY after creating it to ensure it gets indexed by google asap. 7) I use pictures also, word relevant titles in them (e.g.; for a recent mustang article, I titled the images ../mustang_rear.jpg, etc. do this with all relevant pictures/images you use for content. 8) Oddly enough, I've been experimenting with allowing hotlinking in the thought that just perhaps that hotlinked image will bring potentially more link pop, and further more, more SE relevance. While to early to say either way, it certainly has not hurt as to this point that others have hotlinked my images.