Made it to page one, but 'stuck'. Need advice.

[honed]

So, I've been working on a keywords for a site and I've done well, with some help from warrior services to be fair, but I'm 'stuck' at 9-10 on page one for the top keyword.

I can't seem to budge from there. I'm working steadily over the past few months and now I am seemingly unable to go higher. I've got a diverse and good linking campaign going, but nothing has changed in 6 weeks. I've been stuck at the bottom of page one for 6 weeks.

The #1 site for the keyword is a beast and has 10's of thousands of backlinks, lots of great ones too, so I'm not realistically shooting for that, but top 5.

Anyone been in this situation? I'd appreciate thoughts and strategies you might have.

[iAmNameLess]

First, log out of your google account, and check again.

Secondly, maybe you just need more.. see what your competitors have done. How is your on page? Density? h1's and h2's? Alt tags?

Do you have google +1 button on your site? A few +1's couldn't hurt. What about other social bookmarking sites? digg? stumbleupon?

Link pryamids? What about press releases? A solid press release can generate thousands of links back to your site.

What all have you done for your site? let us know that and maybe we could better assist you.

[razorhound]

Things I've done to break through.

1. Vary anchor text, build links to LSI keywords.
2. Get links from other source.
3. Get high pr links.

It doesn't work for every site though, some keywords are just stubborn and I'll just let it sit.

[honed]

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

What all have you done for your site? let us know that and maybe we could better assist you.

I'm using Traffic Travis, so my ranks should be pretty good. The on page is tight as can be, with no appreciable room for improvement. The competitors pages range from excellent to sloppy, but some are 10+ years old and have a lot of great links from authority site, lots of .gov links, that are next to impossible to duplicate.

I've used Bookmarking Demon (probably poorly) several times and that seemed to help.

I've put the +! and had several people use it, but that's only been in the past 3-4 weeks. I have make a huge multi-tier link pyramid all with original content on the 1 and 2 levels.

The site has a PR firm and they are releasing press releases. I have done a few, but not a lot.

I've also done blog postings, relevant commenting, link pyramids and article postings.

Thanks of your reply!

[honed]

Originally Posted by razorhound

Things I've done to break through.

1. Vary anchor text, build links to LSI keywords.
2. Get links from other source.
3. Get high pr links.

It doesn't work for every site though, some keywords are just stubborn and I'll just let it sit.

I've been rotating the anchor text across 5 keywords. I'll have to try more LSI keywords though, as I haven't done that.

I'll look for more sources, though I tend to mix it up and my backlinks are from over 330 unique IPs and 340 unique domains.

I do need more high PR links. The competition has them from gov sites, with insane authority and PR, like several state atty general sites, colleges etc. I tried initially to get on there, but they have been there for years and I can't see a way to duplicate that. I'll have to take another road.

Thanks for your reply too.

[kaluuu]

From my experience, when i was stuck on certain position on 1# page i just continously builded backinks. One moment or another it will rank higher, it depends very much on your competition (especially if you have a competition that is very active also).

[markowe]

I have a similar situation and I have come to the same conclusion you probably have: even if it's not REALLY high competition, the top-ranking sites have been there a while and probably have a lot of authority with Google: aged backlinks, aged domain, aged page for that matter. I have also hovered around the #10 mark for the keyword I am talking about for a long time, but just the other day finally hit #8. I did it by very careful manual high-PR blog commenting (real comments on non-spammed pages PR3 and above) and I used a WSO service that chucks out a bunch of spun articles on different wiki-type sites (sites are owned by the provider, I believe).

But something I also think has helped me get that push was posting to PDF sharing sites. I used a Fiverr service to create a Powerpoint based on the page I am trying to rank, then also converted it to PDF with links embedded. I had already uploaded to the obvious sites - Scribd, Docstoc, Slideshare - but then I dug out a bunch of less well-known sharing sites (just Google "PDF sharing site" or whatever) and uploaded manually to those too.

These get indexed quite quickly and have good authority - I also believe that even with the Flash-based ones, Google DOES index the links (if you want evidence read this: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Improved Flash indexing). So this is well worth doing in my book.

These are just some things I have done that have helped that you might want to try. If this keyword was REALLY worth a lot then I would just subscribe to a good homepage backlinks service and finish the job - this is the budget approach

[Aaron Egan]

I was in your situation for a high competition keyword a few months ago.

No matter what I did I didn't budge from #10. I started to add more fresh articles to the site, ensuring quality internal linking, and also building links with varied anchor text from high PR blog networks.

Also did some stuff with forum profiles and social media for more links and what do ya know - the more I did it the more i climbed.

I went from #10, to #9 then jumped to #6, then was gone from page one (probably a dance) now i'm sitting at #5.

If you're up against tough competition it's going to take a sustained effort over a long period of time. Just continue what you're doing; 6 weeks isn't THAT long when you need to take down aged and trusted sites.

Good luck!

[Targeted Traffic]

start by looking at the site from the perspective of the user searching Google. Does your site provide the best, most relevant information for a given search term?

Google has one objective—to provide the highest quality, most relevant search results possible.

Focus on regular quality high quality content and links.

You may also try incorporating a blog into a website can have a huge impact on the overall website’s search engine rankings.

A blog does two important things in terms of the search engines:

* Adds naturally occurring, keyword-rich pages.
* Increases the potential for incoming links from high-quality websites.

[willyyard]

Hi honed,

In order to rank a website it is necessary to put good information on your website and get quality back links. If you are just building 10,000 back links just to rank on 1st page and quality of the links are not good then these ton of links is not going to help you out.

Also make sure to use ANCHOR text in your links so that keyword's ranking can be improved.

[supershoesclub]

I think the keywords you ranked are very competitive and many people focus on it to rank in a active seo works.even though you do seo work with your own ways to get backlinks.But i think the other people also do the same things,even they do harder and more than you.so Just try more sources and keep fresh content very often,I think you will see the better rank position in future.

[honed]

Originally Posted by markowe

But something I also think has helped me get that push was posting to PDF sharing sites. I used a Fiverr service to create a Powerpoint based on the page I am trying to rank, then also converted it to PDF with links embedded. I had already uploaded to the obvious sites - Scribd, Docstoc, Slideshare - but then I dug out a bunch of less well-known sharing sites (just Google "PDF sharing site" or whatever) and uploaded manually to those too.


These are just some things I have done that have helped that you might want to try. If this keyword was REALLY worth a lot then I would just subscribe to a good homepage backlinks service and finish the job - this is the budget approach

Yes, you hit it on the head, that's the situation. I'll give your suggestions a try. Thank you!

Originally Posted by Aaron Egan

I was in your situation for a high competition keyword a few months ago.


If you're up against tough competition it's going to take a sustained effort over a long period of time. Just continue what you're doing; 6 weeks isn't THAT long when you need to take down aged and trusted sites.

Good luck!

Thank you as well. I'm in for the long haul on this, I'm getting paid to do this and said from the beginning it wouldn't be fast. They are happy to be on page 1, but after 6 weeks, they want more, understandably.

Originally Posted by Targeted Traffic

start by looking at the site from the perspective of the user searching Google. Does your site provide the best, most relevant information for a given search term?

It's always great to be reminded of the fundamentals. Yes, this site does a very nice professional job and I did the on page quite well. The pages above are old, ranked, DMOZ, with high PR, DA, PA etc. One has 155,000 backlinks. That's where they win and I'll have to compete against. Thanks!

Originally Posted by willyyard

Hi honed,

In order to rank a website it is necessary to put good information on your website and get quality back links. If you are just building 10,000 back links just to rank on 1st page and quality of the links are not good then these ton of links is not going to help you out.

Also make sure to use ANCHOR text in your links so that keyword's ranking can be improved.

I use a wide variety of linking. When I post, it's relevant. When I comment, it's relevant. I have no spammy links that I made, unless you cound profile links.
The site is solid and relevant in the space. There are only 4,000 backlinks, but many more from link pyramids. I randomize the keywords and don't focus on the main keyword. I've worked hard to do this right, not fast. It's working, but as you all seem to agree, it will take more efforts and time.

Originally Posted by supershoesclub

I think the keywords you ranked are very competitive and many people focus on it to rank in a active seo works.even though you do seo work with your own ways to get backlinks.But i think the other people also do the same things,even they do harder and more than you.so Just try more sources and keep fresh content very often,I think you will see the better rank position in future.

Some are competitive, the main is quite competitive, 1.6M exact matches, if that helps. The higher sites are larger companies and certainly do focus on SEO/SEM, no question. I've gotten to a high enough point that the competition is much more intense, or seems so.

Thank you all. You've given me fresh ideas and perspective. I'm open to more ideas as long as they are above board.