Quality backlinks have been at the core of my SEO strategy. I consider quality backlinks to be: high PR; from relevant pages; with relevant anchor text; dofollow; and never purchased! Anyway, this gets me good PRbut my SERPs for the keywords I want are always hanging out between #8 and #15. I add new articles with related topics and keywords - I get more quality backlinks to the new content and I start that process all over again. Today, after about a week of absolutely no movement on the most watched (and previously most unstable) keyword ranking, I dropped a spot! Of course, I have to see what my competition is up to - and half the sites on the top ten are incredibly thin on the content and the backlinks! The guy who just moved above me has about 10 social bookmark links and half of them are nofollow. The guy at the top has one single backlink from a non-related 0 PR blog! So what am I supposed to do to keep moving up? Based on what is currently at the top I should cut my content down by 80% and put it on a new domain that has a terrible link profile. What's the deal? Why am I building links and Pagerank while the AFK webmaster rakes in the cash because his site is from 2006?
One of the things you may need to check is the domain age of your competition. And the change in positions can be just a fluctuation. I think you have to observe it for a longer time before you make your conclusion.
This fluctuation could keep happening for a while. There's one keyword for which my ranking fluctuates between 3-8. It changes by the hour. My strategy is to keep pushing and adding more links, article submissions etc, till my ranking stabilizes at 3. Btw, do you guys know what is the best way to find out the most accurate number of links a site has? I use SEO Spyglass to see all the sites that link to me and to competition but this tool shows only up to 1000 links. Google command link:mysite.com does not show accurate results.
Try advanced link manager - I think the address is advancedlinkmanager.com it's a quick tool to see what's being picked up not just for your backlinks but your competitors and breaks it down by search engine and growth evolution
traffic and conversion is more important than quality of your links - you could still be making more money than your competitors so don't get too hung-up on it. Good luck, Cheers, p.
How are you finding out how many backlinks your competitors have? If you are using Yahoo or Google then these are not accurate ways of reading this. I have had sites with over 30 backlinks and Yahoo has displayed like 2-4 and Google would display 0. These services do not update in real time and there can be massive delays between getting the backlinks and Yahoo recording that you have the backlinks.
Search Engine Rankings depends on so many factors, none of which can be discounted. If you are losing rankings, the search engine algorithms is considering your website less relevant to other websites for the searched term. Apart from quality links (using relevant anchor text), analyze your competitors website with respect to your on other ranking parameters (both on page and off page). This analysis may help you gauge the reason for your website's drop in ranking.
After getting ur keyword position in to top 10/20, u have to concentrate on the click-through's. Bcoz, it is very imp. U increase ur circle, fans, and share ur favorites, and tri to get the click through's to ur keywords. Then u can easily come into top.
Is it possible that you are getting your backlinks from websites hosted on some other region/country and you are checking the SERPs from some other country. I have seen many US based sites getting UK backlinks and hoping to see improvement in SERPs when searched in US What you describe certainly looks like your link building is not working as expected.
Your SERP positions have nothing to do with your back links. The quality of the on-page SEO is causing the position change. Your competition is altering their on-page SEO with better results. In most cases, back links go to the home page and help the "keyword phrase" of the home page. But SERPs also come from internal pages that do not have back links. You need to focus on your on-page seo.
they are useful if relevant to your site & helpful to your viewers. Be patient, I'm sure your site will pick up mate
Answering a few questions: I usually use Yahoo siteexplorer and backlinkwatch.com to see backlinks. I'm sure its not a complete picture, but you can kind of tell when one person has four backlinks to the top ranking URL and I've got 300 according to the same tool. Its possible that I'm sending ranking to SERPs in other countries, but I think that would show some conversions anyway. Well, I will have to be patient. I have the youngest site on the top 10 so maybe I'm not completely off-track, it is just very frustrating to even see small fluctuations downward when it looks like I'm the only one in the niche working on backlinks.