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How much work does it really take to rank for a keyword?

by ncloud
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I know some keywords are going to be easier to rank for than others, and obviously you want to go for keywords that you actually stand a chance of ranking for.

I also understand that you need to get information about the top 10 results in the search engines that are ranking for your keyword to determine how easy it will be to rank for it yourself. Whether you're gathering the information yourself (the long way) or using a program that gets the information for you (fast way), you need info on the top 10 sites like their page rank and the number of backlinks they have going to their site, whether they have the keyword in their title, etc.

I have been using a program that gathers that information for me and gives me an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for a keyword. And what I've noticed is that a lot of the time the keywords that are the easiest to rank for are the ones that have a page rank of 3 or less, and around 30 backlinks or less. Anything with a pagerank of 4 or more is usually a little more difficult to rank for. I'm guessing 30 - 50 backlinks is probably the mid range, and anything over 50 is getting more difficult to rank for. Not to say that you can't rank for it, it's just that it will take a lot more time.

I've heard people say that it can take up to 6 months before people starting seeing any results with ranking for keywords. And I'm guessing that's because you have to go out and build a LOT of backlinks to each page. My question is, if the top 10 results ranking for your keyword have an average of 50 backlinks, does that mean you have to get about that many backlinks to your page also to stand a chance of ranking for your keyword?
#keyword #rank #work
  • Profile picture of the author ChrisNosal
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    Originally Posted by ncloud View Post

    I know some keywords are going to be easier to rank for than others, and obviously you want to go for keywords that you actually stand a chance of ranking for.

    I also understand that you need to get information about the top 10 results in the search engines that are ranking for your keyword to determine how easy it will be to rank for it yourself. Whether you're gathering the information yourself (the long way) or using a program that gets the information for you (fast way), you need info on the top 10 sites like their page rank and the number of backlinks they have going to their site, whether they have the keyword in their title, etc.

    I have been using a program that gathers that information for me and gives me an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for a keyword. And what I've noticed is that a lot of the time the keywords that are the easiest to rank for are the ones that have a page rank of 3 or less, and around 30 backlinks or less. Anything with a pagerank of 4 or more is usually a little more difficult to rank for. I'm guessing 30 - 50 backlinks is probably the mid range, and anything over 50 is getting more difficult to rank for. Not to say that you can't rank for it, it's just that it will take a lot more time.

    I've heard people say that it can take up to 6 months before people starting seeing any results with ranking for keywords. And I'm guessing that's because you have to go out and build a LOT of backlinks to each page. My question is, if the top 10 results ranking for your keyword have an average of 50 backlinks, does that mean you have to get about that many backlinks to your page also to stand a chance of ranking for your keyword?
    You need to look at Pagerank, domain authority, the keyword anchor text, and a lot of other factors not just to rank, but control what keywords you rank for.
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  • Profile picture of the author ncloud
    I thought the Google pagerank was the indicator of the domain authority, or do you mean the age of the domain?
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by ncloud View Post

      I thought the Google pagerank was the indicator of the domain authority, or do you mean the age of the domain?
      Pagerank is an indicator of the page "authority", hence the name. However, Google does not update the publicly visible pagerank any more. The pagerank you see in different tools shows the situation in late 2013 or something like that.

      There's several 3rd party tools with their own datasets, proprietary algorithms, and incompatible metrics.

      As others have said, everything depends on everything. There's no simple universal answers in SEO. That six months figure you quote is probably someone's rule of thumb, but it may or may not fit your scenario. Quality backlinks are much more "powerful" than average or poor, which is why there's no absolute number to give to you.

      Originally Posted by ncloud

      And then if you finally do eventually get to where you're on the first page for a keyword you have to maintain your position - when someone moves above you, you have to get more backlinks to rise back up. I don't mean to sound like a complainer, but is all of this work really worth it? It seems like some of the other traffic methods would be better and less of a pain.
      The picture you draw is very simplistic. It's not only about backlinks although they're important.

      However, it's possible that SEO is not the right tool. It might not be worth it. Google is not the only game in town. I know companies that get most of their sales from Facebook, for example.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author johnben1444
    Originally Posted by ncloud View Post

    My question is, if the top 10 results ranking for your keyword have an average of 50 backlinks, does that mean you have to get about that many backlinks to your page also to stand a chance of ranking for your keyword?
    If the 50 backlinks is on a sub domain that could be pretty tough.

    I don't know what type of tool you are using but it's always
    advisable you apply a bit of manual review otherwise you
    can't get a realistic idea of what your true competition are.

    A good tool i recommend is Traffic Travis and of course
    you competitors are just the top 10 result because that's where
    the traffic/money is.

    Other things you can look at to ascertain the competition of a keyword
    is the age of site, PR, establishment, quality inbound links among others.

    You may want to get a copy of SEOSpyGlass for this as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author AntonioSeegars1
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    • Profile picture of the author ncloud
      A few to me is 4 or 5 - is that what you mean by a few? How do rank on the first page with just a few backlinks if everybody else has 50 backlinks on average? Or do they have less than that?
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      • Profile picture of the author AntonioSeegars1
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        • Profile picture of the author mminhajuddin
          Originally Posted by AntonioSeegars1 View Post

          I target extremely longtail keywords, and I don't generally have much competition for them, so I don't need a lot of backlinks to rank for them. I can rank for many of the keywords I target just by getting my pages indexed.
          Thanks!
          How can i consider it is long tail keyword and has low competitive? Example please!
          IF i have a keyword is how to add meta keywords it has over 800000 pages search results, is it possible to bid them easily without creating much backlink?
          Waiting for your Reply!
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          Internet Marketer since 3 years. Love to learn always and prefer to share knowledge with others!

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  • Profile picture of the author alvinchua91
    YOUR QUESTION: My question is, if the top 10 results ranking for your keyword have an average of 50 backlinks, does that mean you have to get about that many backlinks to your page also to stand a chance of ranking for your keyword?

    MY ANSWER: Assuming those backlinks to your competitors' sites are all already highly relevant (meaning value-added) and quality links from related and authority sites, then YES, you need to get approximately the same number of backlinks to rank. To make your life easier, get more social media signals (e.g. promote your Fb page e.t.c. get people to talk about your company on Facebook/Twitter/e.t.c.). These helps SEO results too.

    Everything in SEO is relative. Nothing is absolute. If your competitors does 9/10 in terms of quality SEO work, you need to be pretty damn sure you do 10/10 quality SEO work to beat them.
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  • Profile picture of the author ncloud
    Why does anybody even bother with this method of traffic, seriously? I mean really, it takes an ENORMOUS amount of time. First I find a bunch keywords, then I put them all in a spreadsheet. Then I use a program to gather more information about the keywords to see which ones will be easier to rank for. If you didn't use a program it would take even longer - a lot longer. I can't imagine. And that's just for one article. Going to have to do all of that again for all my other articles.

    At this point, I've already spend a few hours of my time. And it really sucked, it was tedious and monotonous. Then I have to spend a few hours more getting keywords into my articles. Then when all of that is done, you still have to build backlinks to each page. And that means going to different places on the web and creating more content.

    And then if you finally do eventually get to where you're on the first page for a keyword you have to maintain your position - when someone moves above you, you have to get more backlinks to rise back up. I don't mean to sound like a complainer, but is all of this work really worth it? It seems like some of the other traffic methods would be better and less of a pain.
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  • Profile picture of the author lord diamond
    What if the OP just "went for it" and picked 5 different long-tail keyphrases that no one or maybe only 2 or 3 other sites were targeting and or ranking for and just sprinkled the 5 articles with some wise keywords / keyphrases, waited a day or so for Google to crawl the content and then checked the SERP afterwards to see what was happening?
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  • Profile picture of the author a2hosting
    For all intents and purposes, Google doesn't really want you to link build anymore so your best bet is to generate interesting, unique content for link baiting purposes. You may also want to look at Barnacle SEO for those larger keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author danielmav
    Only backlink will not help you to get Google first page ranking. You need to see and review your competitors website- Page rank, domain age, site trust and authority etc.

    Build quality backlinks from related niche and make sure it's natural. Do social media promotion.
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