Do you think sites like Squidoo, Ezine, Hubpages or others can climb on top of search engines for a competitive keyword, like 100k pages in quotes? Is it just the matter of backlinks? I am thinking that Google won't simply rank Ezine, for example, as the first result just because it has more backlinks, than the other site, which is 100% related to the keyword, that you are trying to rank for.... Let me give you an example, what I am talking about. Suppose a keyword is "weight loss". You write an article for that keyword and submit to Ezine. Then start sending backlinks to it. Let's say the first site at the moment for that keyword is www.losingfat.com with 300 backlinks, which is a website dedicated to helping people lose fat, find a good diet, weight loss exercises, etc. Basically, a perfect website related to the keyword. So what I am trying to understand is, if I get more than 300 backlinks for my Ezine article or whereever my article is, will it beat the losingfat.com or not? I got my own opinion on this, but first I want to see what you are thinking. Thanks
Remember that relevancy, keyword density, content, and quality, are a few other amongst many determining factors in which google decides where to rank your site.
Blackman i was thinking the same thing. It would be easier for ezine to outrank others with backlinks than your own site with similar links... that's only my opinion. I would like to see what others said about this.
Well, those are obvious things and I understand that, but looking at my example above, what would be your answer?
I doubt an Ezine article page would beat a website full of weight loss information that was an authority site because it at some point it would be up for human review under those type of high traffic keywords. You wouldn't get demoted because it was on Ezine but you wouldn't make the top either imho. http://www.seobook.com/will-your-website-pass-google-review
my thoughts ... i *think* that the losing fat site, as long as it was a site and not just a landing page, would win ... in particular, if it had relevant links coming in and out from other weight loss sites ... it would be an interesting experiment though, giving the article and the site the same backlinks from the same sites ...
That's exactly what I am thinking. Certainly all these sites, like Ezine, Squidoo and others rank well in search engines, but when it comes to ranking for really competitive keywords, then Google gives priority to more relevant sites. Like a website about a specific topic, rather than a lens or an article.... Probably that's how it is, because if you a search on any competitive keyword, only proper websites come up. You don't usually see any web 2.0 stuff or article directories.
Hmmmm... You can get some rankings for hubpages... but like anything it depends on who you are competing against! Consider them as part of the mix, rather than a panacea! -and go for L O N G chain terms ;-)
LONG chain terms can easily be dominated using web 2.0, but long tails get searched only few times a day....That's the problem. Unless you have a huge number of articles, long tails won't really do anything.
Plus the fact you wouldn't want to spend all that time and money on building links to somebody else's site I've seen the human review effect on several of my sites in the past and know it has prevented at least one of my sites from getting to number one under a competitive term due mainly I think to the fact that other sites were more authoritative than mine, whereas mine were better SEO optimized and had more relevant links.
Yeah, I'm trying a different approach now, not using Squidoo or Ezinearticles, I just write the articles based on a keyword and put them in my blog(which I host on a domain I've bought). Yeah, you won't get much traffic at first, but with time, and as you build links for the site, you slowly start to rank up for the keywords, if if it's a PR0, for some uncompetitive once you can still rank at page 1. So I guess this approach is better in the long run. Because you've got full control, it's your own site. And If you get ranked for a lot of keyword high on Google, I bet they will be very stable, and stay fairly long. The downside to this over ezinearticles is that you get immediate traffic from ezine and get ranked immediately after writing the article. Tho, it's a good idea to still write an article or two from Ezine just for the backlinks
That's probably what I will do in the future. Do you use Wordpress or Blogger as your site, or you have some custom template website? I think WP would be better and quicker solution both rankings and management. Also do you have affiliate links on that site or you direct traffic to a separate landing page?
What I'm doing is this: The main page of my domain (index.html) is a landing page and I have a subpage which is a blog , see the Ecopoweredhome website and blog in my signature to get the idea. I have installed wordpress for my blog from my own hosting. It's installed from within the hosting meaning I'm not using a third-party service. You have a lot of free plugins with which you could easily optimize your blog for SEO. I like the idea that I have full control over everything, and not depend on anyone. On my blog, after each post, I recommend the user to visit the Earth For Energy website using my affilaite link. I could also send them to the landing page, but I think recommending E4E does the job just fine.
Hmm, sounds good. Anyway, what I've figured out is that you must have your own website, if you are going to rank for a competitive keyword. Wordpress is definitely a good solution.
Yes, that's what I'm saying, don't create a blog on wordpress.com or blogspot. Get a domain, and just install wordpress, it takes 3 clicks to install wordpress in the cpanel of my hosting service.