Are backlinks EVERYTHING? One reason why your site isn't ranking high

[JeffLam]

Are backlinks ALL there is to Search Engine Optimization?

Are you sure..?

If you have that mentality, I believe you are sucked into the mainstream SEO pros.

You see, especially for newbies, backlinks isn't everything.

It's most of it.

So if you are building backlinks after backlinks and have yet to see your site ranking high or raising in the SERPs, this may be a possible reason:

Lack of On Site SEO. Or as what most would say, site optimization.

How many of you here actually take much details into site optimization? How many of you simply throw up a site, and just load it with backlinks after backlinks?

True story:
I onced created a site promoting as an affiliate for a product 45 days (1 and half month) before the launch day of the product.

I made a nice sales page outta it, adding nice graphics, putting in my sales copy, thinking up of awesome offers and bonuses.

Being so early in the competition, AND it being such a niche product, competition being very low, I easily dominated the search engines.

However, as the days come counting down, more and more affiliates stepped up and did the same thing.

Weird thing is, I been building my backlinks consistently and steadily through the days.

I stil remained the #1 position of page 1 for the keyword..but then one day, another competitior rose above me.

Fine, I accept. Perhaps that guy has better backlinks than me or something.

Then something ridiculous happened.

Some wordpress site, with it's BASIC wordpress theme, which I had NEVER seen it in the search engines before ever, suddenly outranked me.

Whaaaaaaaaaatt??

There I was, early in the competition and doing my good SEO backlink building, suddenly losing out to a seemingly NEWLY created wordpress site that simply mentions the keywords with a simple article promoting the product!

I don't get it.

I told myself that it will not last. That it is merely Google's way of introducing the new website into the search engines. That it is doing the Google "Think" - thinking of where to rank this oh-so-awful site.

But days passed. One week..two weeks..

It still ranked higher than me.

...
Guys, do you know what is the moral of the story?

On Site SEO aka site optimization is as important as Off Site SEO aka backlink building!

YES! On Site SEO is as important as Off Site SEO!

Without the foundation upon which your site is built upon, promoting it with backlinks has a lesser diminished effect on the search engine robots that scans your sites for all the info and ranks it accordingly!

And that is why the wordpress blog easily defeated me: Wordpress has 'auto' site optimization in the sense that it has fields in which it prompts YOU, the user, to type in.

For example, you know you wanna type in the title of the blog in the 'title' field. You wanna type the description in the 'description' field. You know to use headers in your blog posts and pages because it simply has the header function in the message editor.

But for other site users, you gotta meddle with the html a little.

So okay, now you know you need to do On Site SEO optimization.

But what are they?

Here you go:

On Site SEO
- Title Tags
- Meta Tags
- Header Tags
- Bold and Strong Tags
- Keyword Density
- Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
- Intra Page Linking Network
- Terms of Reference, Privacy Policy, Contact Us, Copyright, Legal Issues,
Earnings Disclaimer, etc etc..
- Google Webmaster Tool, Sitemaps, Robots.txt

Do you have all the above covered? Check your site again!

Now..if you want to read a little more detail into each of the above sections..

*This is where I throw in my blatant marketing:*
To read more about the above sections to carry out your On Site SEO optimization correctly, plus learn abit more about Off Site SEO too, sign up to get my FREE SEO Techniques Report at SEOmated - Your SEO, Automated!

I'll upload videos on SEO too, FREE, when you subscribe to the mailing list.

Useful, especially to newbies.

Cheers
Jeff Lam

[JMac]

Tried your link, everywhere I click I just get a pop-up telling me to enter my information. I put in my name and went to click in the email box and a pop-up comes telling me to put my info in, a bit annoying.

I put my info in and hit submit but only got the pop-up again.

[JeffLam]

J-Mac,

Hmm, I have tried the site and it has been running for quite a while now but I do not seem to have any problems related to pop-ups and subscription.

Perhaps you can drop me a PM to tell me the site problem in detail?

As a gesture of appreciation, I have simply PMed you the link to the report.

Thank you!
Jeff Lam

[euhlir]

I'd say exact domain name is the "most" important, especially for ranking a brand new site. Then on-site SEO, backlinks, etc.

[JeffLam]

Yes, domain name is important too. I was thinking about that heavily for awhile, BUT I have ranked many a site without the keyword even in the domain name at all, hence I believe it is NOT as important a factor.

I will be doing more in depth research into that field.

Btw, has fixed the website. It has errors only on IE and Chrome and not on Firefox for some reason.

Cheers!
Jeff Lam

[Mike Anthony]

No doubt about it Jefflam. Even though I am deeply involved in backlinks I refuse to tell people that backlinking is everything. On page is so much more in your control . It just makes sense to optimize your pages.

[JeffLam]

Hey Mike,

Yes, that is correct. But look around - I honestly believe more people are simply throwing up a site and bombarding links after links.

Have they actually covered their fundamentals first?

[4morereferrals]

Hrmmm ... well I guess it depends on whether or not you believe in an overwhelming amount of backlinks superseding On Page Optimization.

2 words ... CLICK HERE [ toss that into google and see what ya get.]

Please point me to the on page seo adobe did ON THAT PAGE to get it to #1.

Your mileage may vary.

[Mike Anthony]

Well I think what happens is that you have so many things you are doing (writing copy. developing products etc) is that you never remember to go back when everything is finished and SEO your page before launch.

Good timing to be reminded for me. Just about there now

[JeffLam]

4morereferrals,

Actually, I wanted to bring that example up to say reflect that site domain names isn't important in that case.

I guess yes, when you have half the internet whose website runs on flash and has backlinks to it with 'click here'..there is no need for any SEO techniques yeah?

Mike,

Great to be of reminder

[nextdayflyers]

Yeah if you are doing a small niche site i think its better to have keyword sin your domain if your site is new. This can really help you rank fast compared to having some weird brand friendly domain name.

Also your website or product needs to be top-notch or all the seo in the world won't even matter in the long run.

[Ken Durham]

I believe on site SEO is crucial for new sites.
Not only that but making sure your code is clean and validates helps.
I have noted marked SERP improvements when I got my pages to validate:
The W3C Markup Validation Service

I believe the spiders run into some bad code that throws them off or causes them to stop their crawl. Google, well, Matt Cutts also mentions that good coding standards can help.

[JeffLam]

Originally Posted by nextdayflyers

Yeah if you are doing a small niche site i think its better to have keyword sin your domain if your site is new. This can really help you rank fast compared to having some weird brand friendly domain name.

Also your website or product needs to be top-notch or all the seo in the world won't even matter in the long run.

Yes, you are right in that if your website is very specifically targeted, say, promoting an affiliate product heavily, then yes, it would be much advantageous for you to have your keyword in your domain name.

As exact as possible too, best without any hypens or periods in between:

mykeywords.com
vs
www.my.keywordscom
and
www.my-keywords.com

The first would be the best.

Another point to note is that I have noticed .org and .net are equally as powerful as .com in terms of authority sites as seen by Google. In my mini tests where I ran, .org and .net sites rises especially fast in the rankings.

Originally Posted by HomeComputerGames

I believe on site SEO is crucial for new sites.
Not only that but making sure your code is clean and validates helps.
I have noted marked SERP improvements when I got my pages to validate:
The W3C Markup Validation Service

I believe the spiders run into some bad code that throws them off or causes them to stop their crawl. Google, well, Matt Cutts also mentions that good coding standards can help.

Thanks for that link! I'll definitely check it out.

And YES, optimization is simply making sure the code is clean and crisp for the search engine robots reading. It is, afterall, the robots that LOOK through your code and try to categorize your site into a certain category.

Bad optimization = Bad code = Robots Can't Categorize your Site properly = Cannot compete for your specific keyword in SERPs.

Now on another point,

I guess the only time it is okay for a site to have domain names that are different from your keywords would be if you are doing a really huge site that has reviews and/or lots of articles of various/multiple products or services. As such, it will give you internal pages linking which also contributes to SEO (I also covered this in my report, and how small sites can easily take advantage of this without building a large site database).

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Hrmmm ... well I guess it depends on whether or not you believe in an overwhelming amount of backlinks superseding On Page Optimization.

2 words ... CLICK HERE [ toss that into google and see what ya get.]

Please point me to the on page seo adobe did ON THAT PAGE to get it to #1.

Your mileage may vary.

Short answer is yes, but if you do proper on page, building 1000 backlinks would like 2000!

I find it extremely easy to rank with on page optimization, it seems to "amplify" the backlinks effect.