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Google Keyword Search Positions

by Charles Goodnight
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
So my website is tied to a specific niche I've been working in for the last 4.5 years. According to Semrush, my site has been running between 1000-1100 individual keywords that hold positions for the last 6 months.

I have about 10.6K pages indexed by Google.

Here's my question. I want to get more keywords positioned and writing new content is no problem. One of my main competitors is about a year older than my site, but has positions for nearly 6.5K keywords. I deliver far more content than he does, but he has been running a a free directory which gives him 50k pages indexed by Google.

Would you say it's time to start my own directory or stick to writing new content? If I want to start narrowing the margin between our two sites?

He regularly ranks around 50,000 on Alexa and I've ranked around 65-70K for the last 6 months.

Anywho, love to hear your thoughts.

-CG
#google #keyword #positions #search
  • Profile picture of the author awj888
    if you want to rank for more keywords I would build the authority of your sites - add some high value backlinks, writing content is great, but you need the links to push it up. increasing the domain authority will push up everything a decent amount - maybe do some more reasearch from webmaster tools keywords and see if theres some good opportunities in there - i bet theres 100s

    You can make a directory if you think that your users / readers will get benefit from that - but adding something like that just because of alexa rankings or seo probably isnt the right motivation.
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    :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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    • Profile picture of the author Charles Goodnight
      Here's the thing, I've got a single site. In my niche, my site is the authority site in regards to actual content (I actually wrote the "for Dummies" book for my niche). The competitor I am speaking of is known for their directory.

      There are very few sites within our niche, and but we are the top 2. I believe he ranks a higher in most reporting sites because he gets more of his traffic from the US where I get roughly 65% of my traffic from the states.

      To date, all of my links have been completely earned, but I have not gone out looking to add more up to this point (my link total floats between 340 and 350).

      Now I do know that his traffic has increased in the past year, which just so happens to be the time he did a huge Adwords campaign. After a couple of months of Adwords ads, his traffic numbers do keep increasing.

      Thanks for the help.
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      • Profile picture of the author joeho
        Have you tried social media?
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        10 SNEAKY SEO TRICKS TO INCREASE YOUR RANKING
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        • Profile picture of the author Charles Goodnight
          I sure have. Twitter and Facebook are my primary platforms. I seem to get more traffic from Facebook (7k likes) than from Twitter (23k followers).

          I do engage with my audience (high 60's on Klout) and provide new content 5 days a week (not weekends).

          -CG
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      • Profile picture of the author awj888
        Originally Posted by Charles Goodnight View Post

        Here's the thing, I've got a single site. In my niche, my site is the authority site in regards to actual content (I actually wrote the "for Dummies" book for my niche). The competitor I am speaking of is known for their directory.

        There are very few sites within our niche, and but we are the top 2. I believe he ranks a higher in most reporting sites because he gets more of his traffic from the US where I get roughly 65% of my traffic from the states.

        To date, all of my links have been completely earned, but I have not gone out looking to add more up to this point (my link total floats between 340 and 350).

        Now I do know that his traffic has increased in the past year, which just so happens to be the time he did a huge Adwords campaign. After a couple of months of Adwords ads, his traffic numbers do keep increasing.

        Thanks for the help.
        Well Charles, it sounds like you have a nice authority site, heres my additional feedback but base things on the reason you want to outrank based on reporting sites etc - if youre trying to boost your site stats because you want to sell then theres some pretty cheap ways to gain alexa rankings without spending much. but I am assuming you want more traffic because of generating real visitors and therefore revenue:

        1. If you know your competitor had success with Adwords then I would suggest getting some reasearch (semrush or others) into which ads they used, keywords targetted etc and then copy it - if it worked for them, it could work for you - increase your stats and hopefully get the right kind of visitors and boost to the bottom line

        2. if you know that a directory is one of the USPs that the competitor site has that yours doesn't and that could be a good thing to add then add it - it would build out the site content in a different way from adding articles, and if you maintain a good level of quality I don't see anything wrong in it.

        3. social media marketing could help to drive new visitors, doing some outreach to popular figures related to your niche - you can even pay them to mention you - (neil patel has a casestudy about this and instagram might be worth a read What Spending $57,000 on Instagram Taught Me)

        4. I think you said it yourself - 65% traffic from the US, if that is the right market for you - then it suggests you have some untapped opportunity. You can increase the authority of your domain from good link building - its great having your earned links however 350 links when you have several 1000 pages on the site sounds like very few - on what is presumably a pretty aged domain - look into building high authority links, making an outreach to bloggers, including into quality edited or even paid directories etc, and participating in forums related to the topic.

        5. if you don't already you can also create a discussion forum, they are notoriously good for having tons of traffic so long as you have the users for it, and help with returning traffic, so long as theres lots to talk about - (you see its hard to give direct advice without knowing the niche or site )

        6. looka t your google webmaster tools, maybe you can easily boost some big keywords to higher positions and pull in extra visitors, you might have a lot of pages on page 2 when they can quickly move to page 1 and position top 5 rankings accross the board.

        7. add some good widgets or a referral program to encourage social sharing and referrals on your site from the current traffic, start an email marketing list, or affiliate program to sell that book

        8. if you want some more specific suggestions shoot me a pm im happy to have a look!


        some useless advice:

        1. if you just want the stats up for ego, then you can buy alexa traffic and USA alexa traffic and boost your stats, ultimately will do nothing other than show a better alexa ranking but won't help with sales/revenue social shares etc -



        ps. im dyslexic and lost track of my other points im sure I can think of some other things later

        cheers
        Alex
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        :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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  • Profile picture of the author Charles Goodnight
    awj888 thanks for the write up and suggestions. Many of the your suggestions I have implemented, but probably haven't spent enough time marketing.

    I look at my site more as a trade industry magazine for this niche and thus why I feel Wiley approached me to write the "for Dummies" book.

    In the last 2 months I actually started monetizing the site with adsense as well as some applications that will help bring in some cash flow. In the next couple of months I will be adding a couple more (daily deals and crowdfunding). Once I get those up and running on the site, I think I will start an affiliate program to help drive traffic to the money sections of the site.

    In the mean time, we're hitting the slow time of the year for the niche, so I figured I would try to do some catch up with the competition. Not to mention that in the last year, a very big name in the IM world has entered the niche so I have to keep them at bay as well.

    PS: I'm in this niche for the passion I have for it, ego really doesn't play much of a part into it, it's more on the business aspect I want to catch up.

    -CG
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