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[biswatch]

Hey all,

Coming across an issue when trying to judge competition and figure out why they take the first spot on Google. My general approach is to turn on SEOQuake and take a look at the amount of backlinks. The weird part is, it does not always seem like the most accurate approach. Sometimes the site on time has far fewer backlinks then the sites below it.

I understand that it may have something to do with the quality of backlinks, but it's often hard to judge the quality for me. For example, if you enter "7 day belly blast diet review" into Google the site that comes out on top is this one: mwsobgyn.org/7-day-belly-blast-diet.html

Yet that link only has 8 backlinks and from my understanding they are not so high quality. I entered the site into SEO Spyglass and the backlinks seem to all come from forums.

Can anyone give me a bit of insight on this? I want to accurately be able to judge my competition before I enter into a niche market but am finding some difficulty.

Thank you!
Steve

 

[michael025]

Hi biswatch,

I did a check on that website, but if I enter the search term "7 day belly blast diet review" in google, that website only appears in page 2 of the results....you see, google regularly changes its algorithms, and sometimes the rankings would suddenly change. So, the best thing I can suggest is to stick to the basics....build up high quality backlinks, and try to follow the lessons here on doing on page SEO....you'll see results slowly but surely....

Also, you can try to follow the website owner's examples and build backlinks from forums... if he was able to rank highly(albeit, for a short period of time only), then you should be able to do so as well....in addition to your other on page and off page SEO....

 

[biswatch]

Hi Michael,

Using Rank Tracker the site I listed comes up as number one. I do appreciate your advice though. I guess the best that can be done is to guesstimate the competition eh?

Steve

 

[jmpruitt]

SEO is 100% guesswork anyway. also, you do need quality backlinks to get and keep your rankings over time. more and more, google rankings are dependant on a good linking strategy.

 

[aveya marketing]

i agree with Michael high quality backlinks is important, also to add on what you have been doing with seo spy glass use your competitors links and comment in the forum or blogs, for some reason google likes there links so just follow the leader then take over. when using this technique its also good to try and find a high page rank within that site to comment or link to google will like that.

i hope this helps

Darren

 

[michellerana]

I used Traffic Travis and the results show that mwsobgyn.org/7-day-belly-blast-diet.html is on the second page (rank #16).

Search engines look at over 200 factors when ranking a page and they do not disclose their algorithms. It will not be accurate to only use backlinks to analyze a competitor's site. You have to look at a lot of factors such as the age of domain, DMOZ or Yahoo Directory listing, keywords in the meta tags (title, description, headings), anchor text, etc.

 

[biswatch]

All of your insight provides a whole lot of insight. Big thanks!

 

[mack45]

Great conversation on seo I Have been using seo for firefox as a page rank checker like seo quake it gives a lot of information on sites.but I tend to watch the google estimate of how hard to get also . I do this with the google external tool. I have Micro Niche finder bu t I do not trust it enough to just go ahead and do a campaign with the findings from there I always check the page rank of the competition and amount of back links and if the exact keyword is in url. I have tried just using traffic Travis and found myself 100 hours into a campaign I had no chance of ranking against the competition so I had a pro teach me a few things and checking the rank of competition and the backlinks and the url is what I do now.

 

[SethCzerepak]

Backlinking is good for getting to page one, but once the traffic starts flooding in it becomes more about behaviors...good bounce rate, lots of traffic clicking on your internal links etc. Behaviors are becoming more and more important for the search engines, especially when it comes to higher rankings.

 

[jcdean]

Backlinking is good for getting to page one, but once the traffic starts flooding in it becomes more about behaviors...good bounce rate, lots of traffic clicking on your internal links etc. Behaviors are becoming more and more important for the search engines, especially when it comes to higher rankings.

I agree one hundred percent with this. I think G is watching what we do we when go to a site and how long we stay, click around, and how we leave.

Can't prove it but I have seen some of my snipper sites with good click through rates climb from position as far down as 20 and climb to number one with no back links. The only reason I can figure that they are favored by Google is people stay awhile, scroll down, click through.