How is it that I'm not #1 for this keyword?

There are many factors besides building backlinks. Your on site seo and age of website can play a major role in your rankings.

 

I see you do not have your "home page" set in your profile page here in DP. Adding the Famous photographers page in your profile here would give you a few more links to that page... and may even help to move it up a spot in google.

 

I agree re the onsite SEO thing but have discoved through 3 of my sites age of site must have become less of a factor, here is an example >

Pick a London Borough (Anyone you like!) They include Knightsbridge - Chelsea - Kensington - Fulham - Westminster - Hammersmith - Ealing - Brent - London City - Camden - Tower Hamlets - Southwark - Barnet - Wandsworth - Greenwich - Ealing - Harrow - Haringey - Islington - Hounslow - Richmond Upon Thames - Lewisham - Southwark - Hackney - Waltham Forest - Enfield - Newham - Sutton - Croydon - Knightsbridge - Dagenham - Redbridge - Merton - Bromley - Bexley - Havering - Hillingdon

Add to any one of those London Borough's the acronym "SEO" and you will most likely find one of my websites in position 1 on page 1 of Google.

They have been there since 2 weeks after I laoded the pages and the site/domain name was less than a month old and they results are still there now and the site is less than 3 months old.

I have 2 other sites that have achieved similar page 1 or number results for search terms and that are both less than a year old and achieved their results within days of adding the content and have remained in their poistions for months with no drop in rankings.

 

erm, so keyword density is my problem?

 

lots of people say keyword density doesn't matter, but i know for a fact that it does. if you haven't focused on keyword density already, you should implement it right away and it will most likely boost your ranking.

 

It isn't about links only or page rank of links for google, it has to do with relevancy. You must do bookmarking, articles, niche links,social site links:facebook,myspace etc. And more. It is not only about directory links but about how you use them. Anchor text, descriptions and tags. The biggest trend I have been seeing is angela/paul links, link wheels and niche links are beating all other efforts. This will give you boost you need. Try doing some articles at ezinearticles.com if not on goarticles.com. Remember niche links are worth sometimes up to more than 10x the link value of a normal link. So, check out your competitors back links. I like to use backlinkwatch.com Google is about relevancy, News and press releases help dramatically. Hope it helps.

 

looks like most of your links are coming from photography-on-the.net forums. is it possible that since most of the links are from one source that they are somehow diminished? really, more of a question than an answer but it is something to think about.

 

Check the quality of your competitors backlinks with software such as SEO spy glass, this will let you arrange all their backlinks in order of PR rating, these will be their most significant links. You can then go on to those sites and either post your link or request a link exchange.
Also try to get quality 'in-context' links to your site from high pr related sites. e.g. for more information on digital photography visit >>your link<<<

 

yeah your right, 10 quality links would be better than 100 from the same site

 

if you mean "better" as in more helpful, then yes. but it doesn't matter who links to your site or how many links from the same site, a backlink is always good.

as a rule, SEs don't penalize you for other people linking to you, that is not in your control.

 

W3bmaster has one of the better responses here...as he mentioned, it all comes down to quality. Furthermore, I haven't researched your backlinks for lack of time, but my guess is that you may have a disproportionate amount of sitewide backlinks versus single backlinks from various websites. Sitewide backlinks, on average, aren't as valuable as the same number of backlinks spread across various websites. Asking the following questions, amongst others, can assist you in determining the quality of your backlinks:

1. Are the sites linking back considered "authority" websites?
2. How long have the sites been indexed in Google?
3. Do the linking sites have PR gray bars, duplicate/useless content, spammy, etc.
4. How many quality backlinks do the sites linking to yours have?
5. Are the sites in the same niche or relevant to your site?
6. Have the pages linking back been cached or found by Google? Yes, they may have been found by Yahoo but that doesn't always mean Google has found them yet.
7. How often are the sites/pages crawled by Google?

 

I really dont understand why there is so much emphasis on back-links. The main factor in SERP is your content and how it is formatted. Keywords within your copy. Bolded keywords, H-1 tags, Image alt text, meta data, this is where your main SERP factors are.

Dont get me wrong, back-links are important, but many of you seem to thing that they are the determining factor and this is not true. Back-links mean nothing without quality content.

 

In order to rank that Keyword "famous photograph", Go with one Article and Blog and just promote it but make sure that in Both the way, you have to use same key phrase to optimize, I think that within 15 Days, you are on top of Google for that keyword.

 

3 years and no PR thats weird

I see you at #3 for the term famous photographers. you wont beat wikipedia who was #2 and #1 has been quality links

 

erm, it's PR3 site actually.

 

my bad the page u had was 0 your site is a 3

what are you complaining about than

 

pr has nothing to do with ranking.

 

Well said, very little to do with it indeed.

I have number 1 SERPS on many sites with Zero PR.

Check out how many threads in the "SEO Forum" keep harping on about "build backlinks" and all will be good

Personally I don't even regard backlinks as SEO per se as it is a superflous thing that is one small factor amongst hundreds

I seem to regularly take a lof of stick for stating this though

example >

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1654690

 

The on-page optimization your referring to makes a huge impact for less competitive keywords. For instance, this thread ranks #3 for "how is it that im not #1 for this keyword". Why? Because its in the page title and its a long tail, less competitive keyword. However, open up a test thread on DP with a title such as "seo tips" and I doubt you'd ever be able to rank it #1 without any backlinks. More competitive keywords will simply not rank using on-page seo alone.

Solid, quality content is what builds backlinks (by serving as linkbait) after your site has already been discovered. You can have the best content in the world, but if you don't have any initial back links it may never get found or noticed. Don't get me wrong...quality content is great, but content and backlinks go together like a fat kid and cake. They are simply made for each other.

 

Granted, now correct me if im wrong please, but, quality backlinks show Google, yahoo, God himself, that your sites important, but how would they know where to list you, if it were not for on page SEO. If your site is about cookies, and you only mention the word once, I don't care if you have a billion links on Microsoft, AOL, adobe, and other major sites, i seriously doubt you will be listed for the terms you wish to be listed for. But again, i could be wrong. Truth is its a mystery that's forever changing. Truth is its the combination of everything, that really shows the best results.