SEO, more backlinks, mete tags, keywords, content, relavent links. All importamt, granted, but is it an exact science? I want my site to be ranked #1 in Google using a given search term. So does everyone else ranked above and below me...but we all can't be #1. I'm concerned if what I am doing to optimize my site is right, is it enough. Obviously there is a lot to learn, but what I really want to know is what are the other sites doing ro get ranked above mine. I take a peek at the coding of a site and I see big time keyword spam. I see a site with 30 timne the links of mine ranked lower than me, and a site with 1/10 the links of mine ranked higher. I know....relevant liniks. Too general. The problem is that there is only so many relevant sites to get relevant links from. I get listed in the directories and I lose ground. I do a keyword change and I lose rank. It rains and I lose a pplace in the Google shuffle. It seems I've done everything I can to become the biggest loser, what are THEY doing to become a winner? I'm not that proud...I'm standing here with a black eye and it;s obvious I don't know what I'm doing or I would be #1. Right? Give a fella a break and tell me what they're doing that so right.
Excellent Statement! Backlinks are about quality not quantity. It's not uncommon to see this at all. You want natural one-way backlinks, they have far more value than link exchanges. I have a simple forumla: Time + Effort = Results The simple fact is your competitors are doing MORE than you are, you need to dedicate yourself to one process and stick with it, don't go about changing your keywords, design, content, etc if you don't see instant results.
Time is a big factor. Length of time your domain has been around, length of time your backlinks have been coming to your site, etc, etc. The strength you get from age across the board will help a lot. Just keep working continuously - and it will start paying off.
An old saying from drag racing "run what you brung...and make sure you brung enough" How do you know if you're on the right track? Going after the right type of backlinks? If your title/desc/keywords are right? Enough content? You look at a competitors site and it has thousands of links. Do you even try to go after the hot, high pr links they have? BTW....my site has beem up for about 9 years.
based on my websites on a scale of 1 to 10 i think age of the domain and website content gets about 4, so the longer your website is outhere the better. And you cant expect to rank a place forever as Search engines algorhythms change constantly to fight spam and improve the service so does your ranking change
if you don't want to get confused don't analyze things half way. if you look at backlink don't just look at the number but what kind of link, what is the PR etc. most of advice you can get thru forum is just the general ideas. you need to do research on your own based on that general ideas and see for yourself what is the algo.