You can throw your SEO software at the garbage...

nice... what is wonderwheel? is it free? i always hope trying to create great content will eventually pay off.. thanks for posting this!

Hi, sounds interesting,how many links is a handful?

wonderwheel.... i heard it from you now. hows this software? is it better than others?

You can use Wonder Wheel right from Google, you dont need software.
What it does, it shows highly related keywords to your keyword.

You then make a site covering those keywords too (in addition to your main keyword), categories,articles etc.

The result is that you will automatically build an authority site that way, covering everything what Google sees as RELEVANT to a subject.

And sooner or later you WILL rank for the keyword(s).

As far as i remember, i only had about 10 or so links for that site. This for a keyword which has 60.000 DAILY searches and i dont know how many MILLIONS of competing pages. THOSE NUMBERS ARE UTTERLY IRRELEVANT. <---- All it does when you use MS or similar software is to scare you off from a keyword or niche because it makes you believe its hopeless to rank!!

Use Wordpress, good content, good site structure. Take time and write (or let write) GOOD content. Submit steadily. GET HIGH QUALITY LINKS from subject related web pages. ---> PROFIT!

Instead of blasting garbage links, put articles on blog networks. That's what i did.

I know that the weight loss niche is TOUGH, make no mistake. But with my other sites/niches i never had a situation where i "bounced back" significantly after i gained a position. (Less the incidence where one site once got a penalty, but it came back after 3 months).

Hmmmm....

We have probably grabbed more page one rankings than any other Warrior in 2010 and let me tell you...sometimes it takes a boat load of backlinks to get a site ranked to page one even when the sites contain great original content.

Grabbing a first page ranking for a single keyword is one thing...but we grabbed well over 1000 of them last year.

We did this by using Traffic Travis's "seo competition" feature to gauge the strength of the top 20 ranking sites.

If I were to follow your advice and throw away our tools away we'd be out of business in a New York Minute.

You're singing a tune I've sung for a long time.
All that I would add, is a handful of links from as high PR, and as
authoritative as possible.

Paul

Good to read about your success, keep it up!

Quick comment about competition - I do think too many people focus on the wrong aspect when doing their research. It's not about the overall number of competing pages / results in google. That number (for the most part) is meaningless, IMO.

Rather, concentrate on the sites that are on the first page already. The question isn't whether you KW has 10,000 results in google, 100,000, or 10 million. What *does* matter is whether you can beat any of the first 10.

Look at it like this - when an elite distance runner is preparing for the Boston Marathon, does he care that tens of thousands of people will run it, or does he concentrate on how fast the top 15-20 guys are?

i think it is all a matter of purpose....some people go for volume .... say 100 niche sites and they all have to attain page 1 with minimal fuss

He thinks about the tens of thousands of people right?

Good analogy!

I REALLY appreciate this thread. I am new but full of ideas---and a potentially prolific content creator, I believe. What I need to do (as per much good advice I've heard) is to simplify and/or delegate everything not related to my strengths. You all have helped me enormously on this thread by helping to demystify SEO. I am in information overload so this is one less thing I have to over-complicate.

You should never even look at your competition and think you cant do it. If your committed and determined you can do it if you do it. The main thing is that you know what your doing. If you dont be prepared to work hard and learn alot at the same time

This part I don't get. Ok I know you don't need hundreds of backlinks to outrank your competitors, quality is what counts...but what is quality backlinks?

In that case, may I ask you where you've gotten your backlinks?
Was it article directories, forum profiles, guestposting, blog comments, web 2.0 sites?? What off-page SEO really gave you that boost in rankings? That's of course if you don't mind sharing. Or just PM me... I can keep a secret. :p

I didnt do anything with the site for about 7 months. I try to remember i had some articles on networks like Seolinkvine and articleranks. And i submitted a few articles to ezine articles (if i can remember).
The rest is a mix of all of those, blog comments, article marketing, just RECENTLY i added a squido lens..but nothing "extreme". I did not use SEO software or anything "advanced", and i just recently started with more extensive article marketing (with AMR)...to boost the site even more up.
I think PRIMARY its to provide "ok to good" content and a good site structure with related keywords..and slowly trying to make an authority site for a subject. Then the off-site SEO becomes easy and doesnt need to be crazy (aka xrumer etc..)..the rest is TIME and waiting

Edit: "Quality Backlink" would be a backlink on the home page of a site in the same niche one-way linking to you. Hard to get

I am using AMR in my link building, together with other stuff. But i cant attribute a ranking *exactly* to AMR since i only see the whole picture, the sum of all of it .)

As of right now, the database of AMR has 3900, many of them PR0 (which i usually ignore)..and about 1000 PR1 and up. If i do a full blast i get about 1300ish successful submissions.

To be honest, i know that MANY SEOs have an exact and sophisticated plan - but then they also contradict themselves by saying it is best to do all in a random fashion.

What i do....i blast parts contaning links to my money page, then articles to my squidoo lens, and other articles link to other articles, like to EZA or Articlesbase....and those again link to my main site

This more in a random fashion.

As for articleranks, i am a "pay as you go" customer but have to admit i didnt use articleranks in the last week(s). The reason is that i am with another network right now which i can use "for free" so to speak because i put a bunch of high PR blogs into it for credit. I would VERY much like to use articleranks again (it has very good reviews!!) but the problem is my paypal doesnt allow subscriptions, otherwise it would be a no-brainer. (Otherwise the articleranks price if you are NOT with their monthly subscription is silly, $4 per submission. A little too high in my opinion. But $39/month for unlimited is very good)

Short: You can NOT go wrong with both, AMR and articleranks. They are both GOOD.

Hi George,
You said somthing of having Good site structure for your perhaps authority site. Now what is the best way of having a good authorithy site structure?

Enwereuzo

For how long have you been in Page 2?
Have you considered using Scrapebox? It's amazing to find related keywods (Google Sugest scraper + Wonder Wheel)

Regards

Another stunningly bad piece of advice. Think about it people. If your friend goes down to Florida, has no plan to get a job, doesn't find out where the jobs are, hands out his nice resumes to a few friends and some guys at Burger King, spends the rest of the time on the beach and lands a Job as a clerk at Disney......

Is this now the way to get a Job paying good money?

You can get a page 2 position in ANY niche given the right keywords. Page 2 still gives you little to no traffic and does NOTHING, NADA, NYET to indicate you will ever crack the top five position where the traffic really is at.

Great content is well - Great and it should be part of your plan to get ranked but to claim that you should just forget about having any other plan that sizes up the competition and analyzes how easy or hard it would be to rank for a term is just total and ABSOLUTE nonsense. No you don't have to buy software to do it. Install SEOQuake. Use Link diagnosis to check backlinks. BOTH FREE. But RUN AWAY FAST from anyone that tells you to ignore the strength of the first page for your keywords.

You don't build a house, Look for a job, start an offline business even (we hope) marry someone without knowing what the alternatives are, whats involved where the difficulties are going to be. Don't buy into the nonsense that IM is different and you should just ignore the realities of real life


especially not because of a page 2 rank that gets no traffic to speak of. Its fools gold.

People use software to rank? :0

I don't look at competition when trying to rank. The bottom line is the number is the same in ANY niche, and that number is 10. I am up against the 10 sites on page one, period. Whether it be 10 links, or 10,000 I need, that just determines the amount of work I have to do.

Thanks for a great post. What you are doing seems really good for compliance with Google's new algorithm change. Quality content on sites that are not thin seems to be the way to go.

I also think this type of site will outlast any future changes in the Google algorithm, because the point of theses changes is to insure that the searcher gets useful results, which is what a site with quality content is all about.

It doesn't have to be harder. But I have used and am also using some SEO softwares and it can help you a lot.

Many do, and MANY do it actually the wrong way, simply looking at COMPETING PAGES and make some idiotic assumption based on it.

Heck, if you really want to you can use your SEO software, but then look rather at the "phrases in title" number....and VERY IMPORTANT you need to analyze the top 10, their page rank, age, backlinks, this is the most important thing.

Unless you use Market Samurai and do this manually, all other software DOES NOT DO THIS..you should know what a nonsense this is! Heck you can have some ridiculous low number of alleged "competing pages" but still very strong sites to compete on page #1. I don't need to tell you that! (Of course, the same is also valid the other way around).

It seems you "enjoy" arguing against what is being said just for the sake of it...i just PROVED with one site that any such numbers mean squat...55.000 competing pages, 5 million competing pages...i don't care.
If your site meets certain quality criteria you would be fool to look at the numbers and NOT attempt to go for the keyword(s) simply because you see a very high number of competing pages.
This is not some theoretical brabble i pulled out of my *** but it's right there in front of my eyes when i see my rankings for my weight loss site. So why are you always arguing against what i am saying?

Just a 'handful' of links...huh? Wish it was that easy!