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Just Been Analaysing A Competitors Backlinks-Can Someone Explain This.

by jamesbrands
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi

After researching a competing websites back-links Ive stumbled upon something ive never seen before (im a bit of a newbie)

The site in question has 100's of links from 1 site pages, with somewhat strange articles.

The various site's would be based around a topic eg Angelina Jolie, then a 700-1000 word article on that subject. The article then included keyword phrases, totally off topic with a link to the site I was analyzing.

Im a member of BMR and also understand the importance of building a blog network, to gain links back to money sites. But was under the impression the sites in my blog network, would contain articles based on a given topic with keywords and links to match.

Could anyone explain this to me? And if it is an effective SEO strategy?
#analaysing #backlinkscan #competitors #explain
  • Profile picture of the author pauley13
    I'm not sure I understand your question correctly, but I'll try to give you some insights for what they're worth.

    The sheer number of backlinks is secondary to the QUALITY of those backlinks. So, when analyzing your competition, you should look at what KIND of backlinks they're getting.

    If they're your usual run-of-the-mill profile links or links from some links farms, etc - you can pretty much heave a sigh of relief. They're only worth something until either (a) someone buys more such backlinks i.e. and endless game of wasting money on what is essentially spam, or (b) someone links their site to quality links in which case you can get a single GOOD link to outrank a few thousand poor links.

    To see some of this in action, install something like SEOquake in your Firefox and you'll see that sites with fewer links quite regularly outrank sites with lots of links. So - there's more to ranking than linking! lol

    That's because there's another story in play here and that's the quality of content of the sites in question.

    Broadly speaking, that quality is ascertained by Google by analyzing the semantic environment of a site and then according it a Trust Rank. There's a bit more to this, but knowing this should be enough to get you moving.

    So, to beat your competition, you need to first of all ensure that your content is solid. Next, make sure it's optimized in a way where Google's algorithm can recognize which keyword(s) is your main one. Ensure that this keyword is accompanied by well-indexed LSI keywords as well, in order to "double convince" Google that your claiming that keyword is legitimate.

    Also ensure that you tag your pages correctly.

    Up to this point, it's all on-page work.

    Then, ping your page generously, post its links to bookmarking sites, etc.

    And then - build quality links, one by one. One simple way to do so is to post RELEVANT comments on high authority blogs (if they let you leave a signature or URL). But there are many other ways too.

    If you can manage to resist the temptation to buy links in bulk, it will FEEL like you're working a lot more than you need to - until you start seeing results. If you buy links, best hire people who will do quality links for you. Better to have 10 great links than 10,000 poor ones.

    One last thing. Don't start with TOUGH keywords. Start with easy keywords and conquer your competitors on those first. Success breeds success: when you rank high on one keyword, it will be EASIER to rank on the next (easy) one. Keep it up for a few days/weeks, then increase keyword difficulty slightly. After a couple of months of that you will be able to tackle some really competitive keywords - and rank on them.

    Hope this helps

    cheers paul
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    • Profile picture of the author Kari1
      It sounds like they may have bought a bunch of blog posts from a link provider. That's if I'm understanding your description correctly... If thats the case, yes it works if the root domains have some PR.
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    • Profile picture of the author killerobotninja
      Originally Posted by pauley13 View Post


      One last thing. Don't start with TOUGH keywords. Start with easy keywords and conquer your competitors on those first. Success breeds success: when you rank high on one keyword, it will be EASIER to rank on the next (easy) one. Keep it up for a few days/weeks, then increase keyword difficulty slightly. After a couple of months of that you will be able to tackle some really competitive keywords - and rank on them.

      Hope this helps

      cheers paul
      Hi Paul. What do you consider tough keywords? High competition? High volume?

      I'm really trying to find the right keywords for my site, but I'm still clueless when it comes to getting ranked on the 1st page. Could you give examples of good and bad long-tail keywords? Would appreciate it.
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      • Profile picture of the author pauley13
        Hi there,
        A "tough" keyword is one with a lot of competition. There are a few levels on which you can look at a keyword's competitiveness.

        The most obvious one - but also the least accurate - is "broad" search results. That's when you type a keyword into Google search and it comes back with "X results out of XX pages"

        A better way is to put the keyword in quotes to get a "phrase match" - and this is the most common way of establishing your organic competition - which I would recommend.

        There's also an exact match (putting the kwd into square brackets), but it doesn't reflect as many competitors as the phrase match, simply because it omits all those who have optimized their pages more broadly.

        You can also use allintitle, but that too is limiting and can be misleading.

        So, the "safest" if not the most accurate way to establish your "organic competition" is by using phrase match in Google search. But you can further narrow that down by paging through the results. You'll be surprised to find that when Google says, for example, showing 10 results out of 30,000, if you keep clicking on "next page" a few times - suddenly the list ENDS. And it's not after 30,000 pages either! This happens very often. I'd say it actually happens ALL the time, lol. Typically it might be 30 or 40 pages down the line for smaller keywords, sometimes much earlier. And there is an observable correlation between that and the reported number or competitors!

        Still - because that would tremendously increase your research time, you CAN indeed use the phrase match as a "pretty good" indicator of your competition, and thus a measure of how "tough" a keyword is.

        If you assume 30,000 results as your MAXIMUM target in the first round, then you'll be reasonably safe. If you're just starting out, then I'd recommend much lower numbers - more like "under 1000"!

        But the problem is how to find them all quickly and easily. And there are many ways. One simple way is to go to Google Keyword Tool and type in your seed keywords, then sort the list of results from smallest to largest. Then, click on the smallest ones and modify the keyword in Google so that it includes the quote marks. Tedious - but it will work.

        You can further simplify that by using a program like Xtreme Keyword Research Tool (free), which will give you a whole list of phrase matches.

        Just remember that low monthly search volume as reported by Google Keyword Tool doesn't always mean that the competition is low. And the opposite is also true.

        So, you need to invest some time in keyword research methodologies or software. At the risk of sounding like I'm plugging myself (which I'm not, lol), my SEOlater methodology is pretty powerful. Other than that, MarketSamurai, Keyword Elite or IBP can also deliver pretty good information, albeit for much more money.

        But you can also do it manually along the lines I explained.

        Hope this helps p
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        • Profile picture of the author killerobotninja
          Originally Posted by pauley13 View Post


          Hope this helps p
          It does thanks. So phrase matching is more important than exact matching? Meaning I should be using keywords found in " "? A lot of the lesser searched/ low competition words for my niche don't really make sense for what I'm trying to sell. How do I get around this?
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          • Profile picture of the author pauley13
            Originally Posted by killerobotninja View Post

            It does thanks. So phrase matching is more important than exact matching? Meaning I should be using keywords found in " "? A lot of the lesser searched/ low competition words for my niche don't really make sense for what I'm trying to sell. How do I get around this?
            Use phrase match when in GOOGLE SEARCH, to get an idea of your organic competition.

            Use exact match when in GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL, to get a realistic idea of the potential yield from what people enter in search.

            But there are a few caveats in both of the above.

            Organic competition - Say Google tells you there are 20,000 results. This indicates that the keyword is "do-able" for most sites which do SEO. But is it REALLY 20,000? Well - it's actually an ESTIMATE. And some would say that it's a "grossly overstated" estimate! A more laborious but perhaps better way of establishing how many competitors you might ACTUALLY have here would be to keep PAGING THROUGH to the NEXT and NEXT and NEXT page... until Google STOPS reporting results! You'll find the "dead end" after 20, sometimes 10, sometimes 50 pages! This is a little known discovery. It can be interpreted as a "more realistic estimate".

            Exact search - While I use the exact search results in GKT as a means of predicting traffic, I don't take it too literally. BUT - it's a very good predictor of a "guaranteed minimum" of traffic, providing you rank. So, if you get to, say, #1 on a keyword whose [exact] traffic estimate is 100, then you can apply the statistical 40% to "expect" a 40 visits from that keyword. If you don't get this number of visits, it can be a reflection of your current Trust Rank.

            paul
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        • Profile picture of the author jamesbrands
          Originally Posted by pauley13 View Post

          Hi there,
          A "tough" keyword is one with a lot of competition. There are a few levels on which you can look at a keyword's competitiveness.

          The most obvious one - but also the least accurate - is "broad" search results. That's when you type a keyword into Google search and it comes back with "X results out of XX pages"

          A better way is to put the keyword in quotes to get a "phrase match" - and this is the most common way of establishing your organic competition - which I would recommend.

          There's also an exact match (putting the kwd into square brackets), but it doesn't reflect as many competitors as the phrase match, simply because it omits all those who have optimized their pages more broadly.

          You can also use allintitle, but that too is limiting and can be misleading.

          So, the "safest" if not the most accurate way to establish your "organic competition" is by using phrase match in Google search. But you can further narrow that down by paging through the results. You'll be surprised to find that when Google says, for example, showing 10 results out of 30,000, if you keep clicking on "next page" a few times - suddenly the list ENDS. And it's not after 30,000 pages either! This happens very often. I'd say it actually happens ALL the time, lol. Typically it might be 30 or 40 pages down the line for smaller keywords, sometimes much earlier. And there is an observable correlation between that and the reported number or competitors!

          Still - because that would tremendously increase your research time, you CAN indeed use the phrase match as a "pretty good" indicator of your competition, and thus a measure of how "tough" a keyword is.

          If you assume 30,000 results as your MAXIMUM target in the first round, then you'll be reasonably safe. If you're just starting out, then I'd recommend much lower numbers - more like "under 1000"!

          But the problem is how to find them all quickly and easily. And there are many ways. One simple way is to go to Google Keyword Tool and type in your seed keywords, then sort the list of results from smallest to largest. Then, click on the smallest ones and modify the keyword in Google so that it includes the quote marks. Tedious - but it will work.

          You can further simplify that by using a program like Xtreme Keyword Research Tool (free), which will give you a whole list of phrase matches.

          Just remember that low monthly search volume as reported by Google Keyword Tool doesn't always mean that the competition is low. And the opposite is also true.

          So, you need to invest some time in keyword research methodologies or software. At the risk of sounding like I'm plugging myself (which I'm not, lol), my SEOlater methodology is pretty powerful. Other than that, MarketSamurai, Keyword Elite or IBP can also deliver pretty good information, albeit for much more money.

          But you can also do it manually along the lines I explained.

          Hope this helps p
          Im sorry but some of this just isn't great advice. You talk about 30,000 results as a maximum search result for a given keyword, but what if the top 10 competing web pages in the 30,000 are all PR6 with thousands and thousands of high quality backlinks?

          The 30,000 then becomes completely irrelevant because you are going to have a very hard time ranking highly!

          Not once have you mentioned analyzing the competition with a programme such as SEO quake to get a real feel of what you are competing against.
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          • Profile picture of the author pauley13
            Originally Posted by jamesbrands View Post

            Im sorry but some of this just isn't great advice. You talk about 30,000 results as a maximum search result for a given keyword, but what if the top 10 competing web pages in the 30,000 are all PR6 with thousands and thousands of high quality backlinks?

            The 30,000 then becomes completely irrelevant because you are going to have a very hard time ranking highly!

            Not once have you mentioned analyzing the competition with a programme such as SEO quake to get a real feel of what you are competing against.
            If you read a bit higher up, I did in fact mention SEOquake in this context.

            There is, however, something which you can relatively easily confirm with some experimentation. The NUMBER of backlinks is secondary to the QUALITY of backlinks.

            So, if you have a site with, say 10,000 backlinks on a keyword which has, say 30,000 organic competition (as indicated by "phrase" match), you CAN conquer this keyword if (1) your semantic environment is well established, and (2) your backlinks are of high quality.

            Even a glance at SEOquake results will tell you that something like that is going on, because it's normal for sites with low numbers of backlinks to outrank sites with lots of them. When you start analyzing those sites, you quickly discover that the number of backlinks is only a part of the story.

            As for using the phrase match to give you an idea of what is a "possible" keyword - naturally, there's more to this than that, but it's a good rule of thumb. This said, as soon as you have developed a good trust rank with Google, you can throw that out the window as different considerations come into play. With a good trust rank you can tackle keywords with much greater phrase match results.

            And then there are also special cases where seemingly very low competition keywords are a nightmare to conquer. It's difficult to give a quick overview of the possible answers to that in a short comment here, but a SIMPLIFIED (but still workable) approach is: (1) use the phrase match as a rule of thumb to determine how difficult the keyword might be, then (2) check how many backlinks the competition has and try to establish what quality they are, and (3) analyze their semantic environment (that's the advanced part) to see how that compares to your site.

            Remember that PR6 or any PR is solely an indication of the NUMBER of backlinks - not their quality. This is why it's so easy to create lousy quality but high-PR sites and then flip them!
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  • Profile picture of the author patrich
    They are using a homepage backlink service. Most of those networks slap a poorly written article on the homepage and fill it with links to all of their customer sites, you will usually find around 40 links or so, per homepage.
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  • Profile picture of the author jamesbrands
    Thanks for your response guys, don't think I explained what I had found very well. Looks like it's a homepage backlink service.
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  • Profile picture of the author StoneWilson
    Using tools manages blogs and add off-topic backlinks into articles, more and more people do this nowadays. It's kind of BH, haven't tried it so I don't know whether it is effective.
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