Backlink pro needed. Competitor has 1000+ backlinks, me 310. How can I improve?

EDIT: Can someone please move this to the "Link Development" forum please?


Hi,

One of my friends has a website that I have been giving him a bit of a hand with. His onsite SEO is much better now I have improved it (about 5 months ago) however he is still in position 11 of google for his key search phrase.

I have compared his site to his competitors and the only weakness I can find is that he has only 310 inlinks whereas his competitors above him range from 550+ and the No.1 in google has 1404 backlinks! I used yahoo to check the backlinks.

I have used the usual recommended SEO directories and got his site listed in approx 190 of those, with carefully selected anchor text.

I have also got him to write 2 articles in the past which have gained him an extra hundred or so backlinks.

What I want to know is what is the next stage to get the backlinks up?

The No.1 google competitor and some of the others are part of a big linking strategy, where they link to unrelated websites in a link-exchange scheme.

I don't really want to do this incase the google algorithm changes and I find that I get him penalized - as far as I am concerned it also isn't the *right* way to do it, I'm more of an honest SEO person and only want quality links to the website from relevant linkers!

What good methods of sustainable backlinks can I use to help get me to over the 1000+ threshold (hoping that this will drive the site up the serps)? I'm happy to work for it ...

....or do I have to do as he has done

Calling all experts - I would really appreciate your input

Thanks in advance

Stuey

 

Well, that's good for you. That means that their links are less valuable than they would otherwise be.

Try submitting more articles to directories. Try out Isnare.

Start doing link exchanges!

~Adam

 

Adam, thanks for your reply and I'm glad you said that, about iSnare - I've just opened an account with them (yesterday) to see if they are any good and submitted 2 articles (I bought 5 credits $10 - so still have 3 left) - I could have used your referrer ID - not to worry I can use it next time (if that's any help to you???).

I am trying iSnare it on a domain without any backlinks to monitor if it's any good first. Just waiting for the articles to be approved first. How long 'til they get backlinked? ... would 2 weeks seem fair before I start seeing the backlink in yahoo/msn?

Link exchanges - This is what the competitor is doing - but my friends website sells high end widgets (I'm concerned that a link-exchange) will devalue the site, or make it look cheap - am I wrong here?

Regards

Stuey

 

Well, that is something to consider. You can "hide" your links directory with a very small footer link leading to it. This will make it unlikely that his website visitors will ever see it. The SE's can still find it easily, though. Or, try 3-way link exchanges.

~Adam

 

For proof that Isnare.com is awesome, see http://www.google.com/search?q="Nut...ient=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official (an article I submitted through them on 3/8/06)

 

simple buy some lol

 

Adam, that page is showing 128 pages in google & I've notice that you've got nearly 4000+ links for one of your domains ..... wow!

S

 

Not sure if that is such a wise idea, eh? Why do you think I should do that?
Is it worth it?

S

 

Keep submitting articles. I find that I can get 120 links within a few days showing up on MSN. Never used iSnare but they probably do something similar.

Try linkbaiting - make something really good on your site and hopefully people will link to it. Most ecommerce sites don't get natural links unless they are an absolute market leader.

Keep submitting to directorys.

Write news related to the products you sell and people will link to it. Use an xml feed for the news to allow other sites to syndicate snippets of the content.

Buy links on related sites. Make sure they look as natural as possible (steer clear of sitewide footer links).

 

hi, slightly off topic but i weas thinking of using Isnare.com, so i checked them out on google. Isnare.com has zero page rank and no listing on google, it looks like their have been banned.

Thoughts?

 

They claim to have messed up a robots.txt file or banned googlebot using htaccess or something.

That was a while ago so you would expect it would be sorted by now...........

 

yes i did read something about that, sounds like an excuss to me. The "mess up" was supposed to have happened a month or so ago, so yes i think they be back in google by now, especially considering how many back links they have got.

 

Is there a huge difference between the free and paid versions of article submitting. I know there must be a difference, but not how large the difference is.

 

Thanks for the tip on Isnare ADAM... expect a commission from your link

 

Well, essentially there is no difference - your articles can get on the same sites either way. The difference is whether you submit the articles to 200 article sites yourself, or pay someone or a piece of software to do it for you.

~Adam

 

There is a good thread from the people at Isnare here http://forums.isnare.com/viewtopic.php?t=85

On the other hand... If it is true that you get banned from getting links from sites penalized by google then by now all of those sites where links are found in all of Isnare.com articles should have been banned already, but from the looks of it I think it is not true.

Just heard a rumor...