Why am I outranked when I...

14 years ago

This could be a lot of factors,

What is your on page optimisation like, ? do you have your keyword in your h1 tags meta descrption, keywords, Included in your text for the keyword your trying to rank for?

Also what anchor text are the sites using to link back to you,

There is so many things it could be,

Mikey

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NKelly

14 years ago

Hey the teach
Also bear in mind that the age of you site could have a role to play in how your site is ranked. If the sites that you are tying to rank against have been around for a while they may take another few months ranked better than them. Keep going tho, about a year ago i try'd to rank for a long tail keyword. I achieved this and with out any additional work ranked for the root keyword but this took time. So just keep working and you will get there in the end.
hope this helps

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nichecloner 14 years ago

Are you regularly adding content? Even though you have hundreds of articles, if your content is not new, the rankings will fall.

All the best,
Derek
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theteach

14 years ago

Thanks everyone.

Yes, all my tags, meta, and keywords are appropriate.
Perhaps my site's age is a bit of a factor.
And yes, I am continuously adding content.

Here's the kicker.

As I said though, what puzzles me most is that my competitors have NO content and very few links! Half of them are quite a bit older than I am while some are about the same age.

Thanks

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jasonmorgan

14 years ago

well, if it's your tutoring site... those backlinks aren't so hot. A couple of AngelaE packets aren't going to change the world - especially if your competition has stronger non-spammy backlinks.

Also, a lot of your blog commenting is on sites that are nofollow so they aren't going to pack as much punch.

I also noticed that a large percentage of your anchor texts are urls's , not your keywords.

If your outsourcing... they are sucking.

while all of those methods are fine, you need to find a couple of backlinks that really pack some punch to make your site stand out.

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Agoge Warrior

14 years ago

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

well, if it's your tutoring site... those backlinks aren't so hot. A couple of AngelaE packets aren't going to change the world - especially if your competition has stronger non-spammy backlinks.

Also, a lot of your blog commenting is on sites that are nofollow so they aren't going to pack as much punch.

I also noticed that a large percentage of your anchor texts are urls's , not your keywords.

If your outsourcing... they are sucking.

while all of those methods are fine, you need to find a couple of backlinks that really pack some punch to make your site stand out.

What is the best way to find sites, or what type of sites, are the best to set up do-follow backlinks that pack that punch?

Thanks,

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jasonmorgan

14 years ago

btw... content is overrated when it comes to ranking and SE bots. It's only effective for selling to humans.

I know you writer types don't want to hear it but it doesn't make much difference if my cat walks across the keyboard or I hire Herta Müller to write my copy. As long as my keywords are in place and onpage seo is tight - google is going to show me love.

Thanks

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theteach

14 years ago

Jason,

Thanks a lot for your input. I'll try to get some quality backlinks.

As for content, I think my site proves your point.

Thanks
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Barry Unruh 14 years ago

One other factor which you might not be seeing is their incoming "no-follow" links. Those will not be reported, but they may have 100's of them.

While they may not weigh as heavily for ranking, they do give more relevance than no links.

Especially if their no-follow links are all using proper anchor text, and your links are not.

Then if those links happen to be coming from very relevant sites, in the same niche...

Not all factors can easily be seen. I'd recommend you keep building links from relevant sites, making sure your are using the keywords you are targeting for the anchor text.
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- Killer Joe 14 years ago
  
  Something else you need to keep in mind is now that Google is moving more and more towards personalized results, the keywords you think you rank highly for can be skewed in your favor when you search from your computer.
  
  In other words, Google will serve up sites that it knows you like and those can be your own sites you keep checking keywords for.
  
  So while it looks on your browser that you rank high on the first page for a given keyword, on everyone else' browser you might not even rank at all.
  
  A good way to find out if this is the case is to ask a friend or relative to check the keywords for you on their computer. Or you can use a proxy like PageWash and check your keywords by going to Google through the proxy.
  
  The bottom line is you need to understand that the mere act of checking keywords will skew your personal results in Google. You would be amazed how many folks find out they don't rank for the keywords they thought they did once they check using another computer/isp than they one they use daily.
  
  KJ
  
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  jasonboom 14 years ago
  
  @Killer Joe: While it's true that your results are skewed towards your locale/preferences Google's webmaster tools tell the honest ranking in the search results.
  
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freudianslip27

14 years ago

If other sites are ranking above you without keyword focused pages, it makes me wonder how you would do if you through up a youtube video or ezinearticle. You could like to your own site and give that a boost in addition to having a shot for ranking on the article or video as well.

Matt

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Lawrh

14 years ago

One thing many people fail to recognize is the use of 301 redirects for backlinks. Make your backlinks to a TLD and redirect it. The links do not show in Yahoo Link Domain or any of the standard backlink checkers. Your competitions crappy sites may have 50,000 backlinks generated by what ever tool they want to use. You can't tell and they won't tell.

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reapr

14 years ago

Originally Posted by theteach

I am ranked anywhere from the 2nd line in google to 3/4 of the way down page 3 for some specific keyword searches in my niche.

I've only had my site for 1 year now, but I have over 250 articles and about 1500 backlinks.

Most of the competitiors who rank higher than me in google have under 100 backlinks and little to NO content!

Why are they still ranking higher than me?

Have you done a PR check on their links and yours? No tool will report this 100% but it will give you an idea of what you may need to do for a boost. All your competitors may have higher dofollow PR back links pointing to their domain.

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theteach

14 years ago

Thanks everyone.

What irks me most about this issue is that I've been busting my behind with articles, which, apparently hasn't helped much.

I will take everyone's advice. Thanks

Thanks
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reapr 14 years ago

I am assuming you have submitted your site to rss feeds, ping sites social bookmarking sites?

I am hoping you have taken articles that have been indexed and submitted those to social bookmarking sites to give them a boost.

Do you use an article spinner? If you do spin above 50%...

If you use wordpress do you use these essential plugins ...
Google XML Sitemaps
All in one SEO

One I like that does bring some traffic is WP to Twitter ...

My favorite research tool is market samurai.

Some of my favorite submission tools, socialbot,rssbot and directorybot along with others.

Just some ideas and thoughts to help you out.
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w3bmast3r

14 years ago

THere's so many reasons that they could be beating you out.
Here's a maybe list worth checking off:
* Quality and PR of back links - 5 links from PR7 sites are better that 1000 PR1 sites
* Anchor text - Do you have enough anchor text to the pages you want to rank high for
* On Page SEO - THings like h1, h2 headers, page summaries for ease of use, % of keyword on pages etc.

In fact I'll tell you about a really cool tool to check your page's SEO, i'm reasoanbvle new here so i cant give you a,link but check out "traffic travis" dotcom I use this free tool all the time, it points out some really simple tweaks and gives you a score like you had at high school. i.e. a+ or F

hope taht helps mate

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