SEO is confusing me

[afam4eva]

I've made this concern known on this forum before and it's really bugging the life out of me.

I have a website and i currently have a little over 1000 backlinks to that website and i'm currently on the 4th page of google for searches based on my country of operation which is Nigeria. Most of the websites that are ahead of me have less backlinks. Someone told me that it's probably because my backlinks are not as powerful as theirs. I saw sense in that but i'm beginning to have a rethink because there's a website that has just 12 backlinks and most of their backlinks come from few websites that i also have more backlinks from and they are ahead of me. Please is there anyway that's possible?

[BacklinkExcellence]

Have you configured your site in google webmaster tools to be counted towards the country you're trying to rank it for? (Just because you're targeting some english term doesn't mean google understands you're trying to rank for that term in your country, not in the US, for example.)

On that note, is your site hosted on a server in the US or your country? (This shouldn't make too much of a difference if you configured your site in webmaster tools to target your country)

How old is your site? (The younger it is, the more it can possibly dance around or take time to rank, especially for competitive terms).

Does it have any kind of penalty for bad things you did onpage? (I guess that one is obvious. You can do a very very broad/general check for a penalty here: Penalty Checker)

Did you use your keyword as your anchor text for the backlinks you've built? (You have to do that in order to tell Google what the target site, yours, is about. So if you're targeting "blue widgets" with your site, you have to build links like this: blue widgets)

Are most of those 1000 links that are showing perhaps "nofollow"? (If they are you're just wasting time, they don't help your rankings.)

Is the keyword competitive? How long have most of the domains ahead of you been sitting there? (The longer sites have been sitting in their places and the more competitive a term is, the longer it could take you to outrank them.)

I hope that gives you a few ideas to check up on and catch something that could cause low rankings.

[rypher21]

Content is a big factor too, rich quality content

[BacklinkExcellence]

Originally Posted by rypher21

Content is a big factor too, rich quality content

I didn't find this to make so much of a difference. I have sites with crappy and barely readable content ranking highly, as well as sites with no content at all.

As long as you don't do anything fishy on your site like linking out to bad neighborhoods, using any malicious scripts, acting as a doorway page etc. you should be fine.

There is no way for an algorithm to determine if a piece of content is a masterpiece or just some fluffy and boring article.

[Rob Greco]

How exactly are you building links and what type of links does your competition have? In other words, if all your doing is buying backlinks on snippet sites and your competition is building links through press releases, this is not apples to apples.

[RealEcon]

Content is becoming more of a factor. How many people are putting up 400 to 500 word articles on their sites? Everyone is. To get some Google love create large amounts of text (1000-5000 word articles) and interlink all your pages well. If it works for Wiki, it can work for you;-)

Of course Backlinks are king, but hey if you can get large amounts of content it wouldnt hurt.

[iphonesupport]

i think link building is all about quality not quantity, do quality work on forums and article submissions, these will help you to get website high rank

[Terellk]

Make sure you use H1 tags and your Keyword density is good. Also quality backlinks are important from high PR sites. Make sure you use WOORank.com its free and it can determine how well your site is optimized.

Hope this helps

[afam4eva]

Thanks guys for the reply. Below are answeres to some questions you asked.

I used the google webmaster tool to geo target and I even submitted a site-map.

Like 80 percent of my baclinks are do-follow links and most of the are from websited with PR 3 and. above.

[xiro25]

I would run your website through a seo checker and to make sure your ON page seo is good.

Your site age will have difference in ranking. It will take some time for a newer site to outrank the older ones.

try and diversify your backlinks. Meaning try and get backlinks from articles, blog post, Comments, profiles, directories, forums etc....

[iAmNameLess]

What are you wanting to rank for? PM me the keywords I'll see if I can give you some pointers

[afam4eva]

I just sent you a PM.

[Spradle]

Originally Posted by BacklinkExcellence

Have you configured your site in google webmaster tools to be counted towards the country you're trying to rank it for? (Just because you're targeting some english term doesn't mean google understands you're trying to rank for that term in your country, not in the US, for example.)

On that note, is your site hosted on a server in the US or your country? (This shouldn't make too much of a difference if you configured your site in webmaster tools to target your country)

How old is your site? (The younger it is, the more it can possibly dance around or take time to rank, especially for competitive terms).

Does it have any kind of penalty for bad things you did onpage? (I guess that one is obvious. You can do a very very broad/general check for a penalty here: Penalty Checker)

Did you use your keyword as your anchor text for the backlinks you've built? (You have to do that in order to tell Google what the target site, yours, is about. So if you're targeting "blue widgets" with your site, you have to build links like this: blue widgets)

Are most of those 1000 links that are showing perhaps "nofollow"? (If they are you're just wasting time, they don't help your rankings.)

Is the keyword competitive? How long have most of the domains ahead of you been sitting there? (The longer sites have been sitting in their places and the more competitive a term is, the longer it could take you to outrank them.)

I hope that gives you a few ideas to check up on and catch something that could cause low rankings.

Very good and informative, thank you.