Sites with No Backlinks Beating Mine

[robruno]

Anybody have any theories? I have about 50 backlinks built to my site and from what I can tell the sites in front of me have much less. I've been checking them for at least a month using multiple tools. The #1 site shows zero links but ranks higher than mine.

What are they doing that I'm not?

[rosetrees]

Most of the backlink tools that I've come across are unreliable, to say the least. Have you checked your own backlinks using them to see how many show up?

Often social bookmarks, forum comments, blogs comments simply don't show at all.

Also, they have better onsite seo.

[robruno]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I've checked mine. The 50 that show are valid. I agree, I most likely have many more than 50, but I realize that a good majority won't show up.

I looked at their onsite SEO Vs. mine and nothing on their site strikes me as being better for the key words that I'm targeting.

[Reed7]

I see these in many cases and have to sort through each piece of the puzzle , where the other site is given more credit possibly, and work it from there.

1. SEO I'd say is the most important all around.
2. Social bookmarks may not showup; however get scored-I use Social Monkee
3. Feed fresh content -regular basis
4. Back Links- BMR works, a pain for articles- just keep a few going , and it works

I find I usually have fewer back links, but higher quality and out rank others

[robruno]

Maybe I need to run another audit of the site. Maybe there is something in the structure that isn't sitting well with Google.

My Client likes to fiddle with the pages occasionally so perhaps he has hosed something up that I'm not seeing.

[Kierkegaard]

The sites are out-rankng yours because Google deems them more relevant to the search terms. The answer will be found in their content and your backlink strategy. Google hates, more than anything else, webmasters doing anything other than basic onsite SEO in an attempt to manipulate the rankings.

[Jacob Cuculiza]

Make your on-page perfect and then start gettings BLs. 50 is nothing. Get 10 good/relevent BLs everyday for 3 month and you will see.

[yragcom1]

You'd be surprised the number of things you miss when you think you've got it all down in terms of SEO. When I build a page, I always check it in Firefox with the SEODoctor add-on. And if you have the SEOpressor plug-in (if your site is a WordPress site), then you're going to be golden as far as on-page SEO.

But I suggest getting that SEODoctor add on for Firefox and checking your page against his.

\\prelovac.com/vladimir/browser-addons/seo-doctor

P.S. When you add BLs, mix it up. Get some .edu, articles, press releases, etc. Having BL's from one source is something that Google doesn't necessarily like.

[PatrickP]

Google intentionally does not make SEO in a logical way.

I don't know when people will finally realize Google ONLY makes money when people purchase ads and pay for clicks. They have NO incentive to properly explain their search logic.

They have every incentive in the world to frustrate internet marketers who then give up on SEO and pay for clicks to Google.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by robruno

Anybody have any theories?

I think no "theory" is needed to explain this, honestly.

SEO these days is increasingly about relevance and quality. Numbers of backlinks and page-ranks have very little to do with it, in terms of your own site's ranking and the value of incoming backlinks you have.

One can see this from both (a) how common it is for lower-PR pages with fewer backlinks to outrank higher-PR pages with far more backlinks, and (b) everything Google and Matt Cutts say about SEO on their blogs, on videos, and so on, and the effects of the algorithm changes they're coming up with.

Of course, people selling "backlinking tools/service" which produce mass, non-context-relevant links from low quality pages hate this being said, but that doesn't stop it from being true.

[murtuza]

are you only looking at the backlinks to their internal page? Have you seen the backlinks they have put up on their entire domain name. Also how many pages of these sites are indexed in google. What is the PR of the site? what is the age of the site? Is the keyword included in their domain name? There are many factors that count that gets the site to page1, it's not only backlinks...

[FileRev]

Quality over quantity...

Also, aren't .edu/.gov links having more importance over regular backlinks a myth?

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by FileRev

aren't .edu/.gov links having more importance over regular backlinks a myth?

Yes and no. It's not a myth regarding the ones that are also authority sites in your own niche. But apart from that, it's a myth. It's explained in much more detail in this post.

[Fernando Veloso]

Errrr... I was going to share my opinion, but not so sure people want to know about it.



Anywayz, Google is always pushing "marketing stunts" - but in the end, it's always the same JUICE thats gets you going to the top:

Content - Good, Unique, RELEVANT
+
Backlinks - Good, Unique, RELEVANT

Backlinks... Let's see if we can agree on some facts:

Good Backlinks: anything beside spammy profiles, spammy blog comments, spammy web 2.0 properties ???
Unique Backlinks: from a lot of places (different IP's) with related content ??
Relevant Backlinks: from authority sites from your niche (usually high PR) ??

Can we agree on that?

Good.

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Cause thats EXACTLY what bluefarts use to game Google:

Good PAID Backlinks
Unique PAID Backlinks
Relevant PAID Backlinks

Thats why folks with big pockets can rank what they want, in all the niches they want. Why? Cause lots of money buy:

Good, Unique, RELEVANT Content

+

Good, Unique, RELEVANT Backlinks

Game over. They win.

You can discuss whatever you want, but this is my strongest opinion based on years of experiences, observations and reverse engineering top websites.

Fernando

[nicoledeal]

I have very few backlinks, but rank first page for my keywords. A lot depends on the market competition, not backlinks. there are sites with millions of backlinks that I compete against, but not for the same keywords.

[robruno]

Their PageRank is 0, but.....the key words are all contained in their domain name. Is that alone enough to push them to #1 with no backlinks? If so can you overcome that?

[BarryWheeler]

Not all links are visible.

Have you tried to do a website analysis on it using SEO Powersuite? That seems to pick up links not shown otherwise!

[LinkVariety]

Originally Posted by robruno

What are they doing that I'm not?

They have age and more trust both of which carry a lot of weight. You will just have to be patient, and resist the urge to go beserk with the link building, take it slow if your site is new.

[robruno]

Thanks for the advice all. Yeah, I've been using PowerSuite. Both for links analysis and for website audit. I did find some things that my client hosed up. We'll see if that helps.

I'll try to be patient

[yukon]

Originally Posted by robruno

Anybody have any theories? I have about 50 backlinks built to my site and from what I can tell the sites in front of me have much less. I've been checking them for at least a month using multiple tools. The #1 site shows zero links but ranks higher than mine.

What are they doing that I'm not?

Do you realize that when you check backlinks, that www & non-www are not treated as the same sites for tools like yahoo explorer?

Check both www & non-www, see what you get.

[Seleyna]

quality over quantity

[warrich]

Having only backlinks can just increase the number of links that come to your site, if you want to rank better for some keywords then you should make sure that those keywords are present in your site as well. Have someone to look at your On Page SEO and then they would be able to judge what is wrong and if you have that many backlinks as you say then you should rank above your competitors.

[rcritchett]

So I agree largely with most of what everyone else said. Quality, good links and consistency. Ultimately, I think that the "manipulation" part of it, is really just competition so if I were you, I'd continue to build links in moderation, and if it fits, create content.

[tjkirgin]

I don't know if this is way too simple/standard to even say, but get your page title, description, and keywords in the page settings all jiving with the keywords you are trying to rank for. you can go to widexl.com and put your url in and it will tell you if you are doing a good job of correlating all of those things.

Or maybe that doesn't help that much?

[36burrows]

There are other factors to consider such as on page SEO and domain age as well

[JamesGw]

They're older and more established. Keep building backlinks. You'll beat them out eventually.

[JSProjects]

Google & other engines make it pretty hard to get a true look at your competitions backlinks. So they may have more / higher quality links than what you're seeing.

Also, make sure your on-page SEO is perfect for the keywords you're targeting. This + some decent backlinks should help you move up. People often overlook the on-page SEO part.

[John Moore]

You probably can't see all the backlinks pointing at the site that's beating you, that and you may have negative on page factors against their positive on page factors.

[xnice]

Some page with large of inner backlinks can beat your site, it is a game and we are gamers .

[Egrove Systems]

Google SERP not only consider the backlinks, It also consists of on-page SEO, CTR and etc. Based on that they will provide SERP.

[dagaul101]

They could have more backlinks than yours but in a link wheel, so it would be very hard for the tools you are using to find their links, the SEO game is a very competitive, you would be surprised just how much backlinking and unique content everyone above is doing

[willyyard]

There are end no. of back link tool checker but most of them will never show original back links, instead of that use google webmaster that will show you the actual crawled back links. Try to analyze their website, you can take Yahoo explorer help, cheers.

[beauxesprits]

That is the power of SMO and Refferal traffic dear.

[neil_patmore]

My Client likes to fiddle with the pages occasionally

That's the problem right there. Get your on-page SEO spot on and then leave the page alone!

[Srinagarhouseboats]

Might that site is using only link wheel or getting to any other site and redirected another site to this site

[diyakapoor]

Google doesn't provide rankings only based on the back links. There are different things which are considered for rankings, like domain age, on page optimization of the website, content of website, quality of links coming from high PR/authority sites.

[mikelray031]

You'd be surprised the number of things you miss when you think you've got it all down in terms of SEO. When I build a page, I always check it in Firefox with the SEODoctor add-on. And if you have the SEOpressor plug-in (if your site is a WordPress site), then you're going to be golden as far as on-page SEO.

[josephlobo072]

I am really surprised to find that the sites with no back link have got more traffic than mine. IS it that Google does not pay importance to back links.

[gaofan]

Chage links with others' sites.

[domain name]

This should be very promising for you. Focus on creating some good quality content with great onpage SEO and then get a hand full of quality links and it will probably be easier for you to beat them out with time.

[sadieb]

Well why wouldn't the main site show up better than a subdomain..
Aren't you running a subdomain against you own full domain or am I seeing something wrong?

[sadieb]

One other thing i noticed is that bobcattechnology.com when you do a site:mydomain.com is getting credit for the subdomain blog. meaning it gets credit for all its page plus the blog pages... however when you do site:blog.mydomain.com the blog gets credit of course for only the blog. pages... so its even possible that blog. is being called dupe content and credit given to the main domain.

Also if you want to make the main domian move ever higher use htaccess to make it a w_w_w. site or a non w_w_w. site and the pr will go up one more. Right now pr is split between the w_w_w. and the non w_w_w.

The underscore w_w_w was used since I cannot post links yet... not enought posts..

[jimmy69]

Some backlink might not be shown.

[TheFBGuy]

Lol, it's not about how many back links you have. Most of my sites have less than 100 back links and they are beating out sites with way more back links.

[RevSEO]

The most important question, how are you checking your backlinks?

[frndelavega]

on-page optimization, or better links.

you've got only 50 links? optimize your on-page seo and build some more links.

[RoyalServiceTeam]

May be the first page has a EMD ( exact match domain)

[mrjonman]

Originally Posted by frndelavega

on-page optimization, or better links.

you've got only 50 links? optimize your on-page seo and build some more links.

I agree. Get your OnPage SEO done right first, so your website is built on a good "foundation" and then build backlinks, backlinks and more backlinks.

John