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Wrong idea about SEO, it seems to be all about content and far less about backlinks?

by RedShifted
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
For some reason this never truely clicked in my head, untill I looked at my number 1 competitor and thoroughly analyzed their website.

I was blown away to notice 2 things.

1) The amount of content on their site is absolutely astonishing.
2) They barely have any backlinks at all, only 65 to the main page.

What specifically intrigued me, was this page:

link removed on the recommendation of yukon.

If you scan down to the bottom, they have literally every city and town in NJ listed.

Then I clicked on many of the towns, to find that all the content is the same, except for a couple of spun paragraphs. And they're not even spun well. Some of them read terribly.

But still, they rank #1 for a bunch of keywords I'm after. They are dominating those keywords really well.

So THIS IS MY QUESTION.

I seriously want to compete in the SEO world for small niche sites like this.
There is NO WAY in hell I can generate that much content, without spinning content like they did.

So I'm assuming this is perfectly ok right?

Also, how long do you think it would take to make all those localized town pages? Would I just make 1 page with the same pictures similar to how they did, then just insert my spun content with the specific towns in the content (as the keyword)?

If I do this all within a week, can I get in trouble for it? For adding "too much" content to my site too fast? Or is that only for backlinking?

I ranked a site for a more competitive keyword, with only 6 pages of content, but it took a long time to do and lots of backlinks. Seeing how this site has so much content, and so little backlinks, and the fact I never made it past position 6 on my last site (for a different niche), leads me to believe this is about 90% about content and 10% about backlinks.

Can someone please tell me if I'm wrong or right here?
I never understood how important content really was, but it seems like SEO is almost ALL ABOUT CONTENT and very little about backlinks.

???

-Red
#backlinks #content #idea #seo #wrong
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Lol, most people usually hide massive amounts of links like that (state, county, zip) in a drop down nav., it's less obvious.
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  • Profile picture of the author jedediahd
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    • Profile picture of the author LloydMS
      Not sure where you see only 65 backlinks but when I put their site into Majestic more than 1k backlinks show up - although many of them are quite poor.

      While they might be using some copy over and over, they are also doing a few things well in terms of on page SEO, utilization of images and video, etc. But then they're doing some things rather poorly.

      You can definitely compete with them if you do the right things, in my opinion.
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  • Profile picture of the author dennis09
    Holy sh%t that site belongs to one of my clients lol Nice find
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    • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
      Originally Posted by dennis09 View Post

      Holy sh%t that site belongs to one of my clients lol Nice find
      One of YOUR clients?

      Are you doing work for that site?
      TELL ME SOMETHING!

      Originally Posted by LloydMS View Post

      Not sure where you see only 65 backlinks but when I put their site into Majestic more than 1k backlinks show up - although many of them are quite poor.

      While they might be using some copy over and over, they are also doing a few things well in terms of on page SEO, utilization of images and video, etc. But then they're doing some things rather poorly.

      You can definitely compete with them if you do the right things, in my opinion.

      I used backlink watch. It said 65. Guess I will never use that tool again. I checked other pages as well but could only find links on the home page, and it said 65.

      I notice that they are using images/video, but they also happen to be using the same exact images/video on every page.

      You hear all these rules on here about having unique content, and it seems that 90% of that site is spun. Don't get me wrong, all the main pages are unique (in the sidebar), but all the clustered local pages are garbage.

      I would also like to know what this "MOAB" tool is. I searched for it and couldn't find anything. I have an indexing tool I use and if thats all that this tool does, then I guess I don't need it.

      What I'll do is just copy what they're doing then multiply it x3. It will take a long time but I'm a pretty patient person. =]
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      • Profile picture of the author dennis09
        Originally Posted by RedShifted View Post

        One of YOUR clients?

        Are you doing work for that site?
        TELL ME SOMETHING!
        I can tell you that I thought this person was an idiot for trying to rank with all of that spun content and advised against doing so. D*m was I wrong. But hey, content is still king...

        edit: Must be a small internet afterall lol
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        • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
          Originally Posted by dennis09 View Post

          I can tell you that I thought this person was an idiot for trying to rank with all of that spun content and advised against doing so. D*m was I wrong. But hey, content is still king...

          edit: Must be a small internet afterall lol
          Thats hilarious. I can't imagine how long it would take to write all those local pages without spinning them, but I will definitely try to do mine a little better. Maybe I'll make them a bit longer/more unique and see if there are any towns they missed.
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  • Profile picture of the author DouglasP
    1, They have a lot of internal links and link each other at the bottom. That same as wikipedia.

    2, the website has put their real contact number in the website, that's really high authority for google. Google may trust the website is commercial website, not personal website.

    3, the webpage text contents are more than 500 words. Consider as thick contents.

    That's why the page ranking very high.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
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      Originally Posted by DouglasP View Post

      3, the webpage text contents are more than 500 words. Consider as thick contents..

      Having 500 words on a page has nothing to do with SEO. Having the keywords & LSI on the page will defiantly help but there's not a magic text count number.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mogly
    It looks like they are using MOAB (Did I spell that right), to blow up their indexed pages and increase organic traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
    Originally Posted by RedShifted View Post

    I seriously want to compete in the SEO world for small niche sites like this.
    There is NO WAY in hell I can generate that much content, without spinning content like they did.
    Google says that this website has only 275 pages indexed.

    In the grand scheme of things, that really isn't that much content, especially considering each of the spun pages appears to only have maybe 300 words on it.
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    • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
      Originally Posted by Curtis2011 View Post

      Google says that this website has only 275 pages indexed.

      In the grand scheme of things, that really isn't that much content, especially considering each of their pages appears to only have maybe 300 words on it.
      Thanks for that. Thats actually great news.

      According to wikipedia, there are 565 boroughs, towns, cities and villages in NJ.

      So if I do a page for every one, thats almost double the content already.
      Then if I do 50 unique pages just about mold, maybe that will give me a nice headstart.

      It will take a few months but I'll outsource the SEO and just do all the content myself. Thanks for the help btw I appreciate it!

      -Red
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I guess you know that you gave your competition a free backlink (link in OP) from a page that includes some of their keywords (this thread/page). All they have to do is check their server logs to find this thread URL sent them some traffic. If that's really your competition you might not want to post your game plan on this thread or even this forum considering they now know your user name. Just saying you've made it easy for competition to track down what your planning to do with your site/keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
    Thanks Yukon you are right. I did realize I was giving them a backlink but didn't think about them doing any research on WF. I keep thinking that the internet is a massive place but I already have evidence in this thread to believe otherwise.

    So once again, thanks gentlemen. Link removed. =]
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