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How easy to rank above pages of authority sites?

by sentient
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
For a lot of niches, you see authority sites like about.com taking the first couple of spots on google with pages, rather than their homepage.

Would you apply the normal methods of assessing it as competition i.e. in title, URL, backlinks for that page etc, or would you assume that because it is a page of an authority site that you are unlikely to be able to?

I know that I can rank a site above an Ezine article, but wasn't sure about this type of site.
#authority #easy #pages #rank #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Jeff S
    Authority sites are much harder to outrank then article/web 2.0 pages. If I see an authority site in the top 1-2 spots, or two in the top 5, I tend to think of a longer tail keyword. It doesn't mean it can't be done, but you'd need an aged domain, a healthy amount of backlinks, some PR on your site or page, and a bit of time (or a friend at google
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  • Profile picture of the author InternetMarketingIQ
    Look at the PageRank... yes the rank of the Page you are trying to beat and use that as a guideline. In competitive niches the same old Titles, back links, etc are important. But you have to consider all the other factors - time on site, entrance/exit pages. Google has so many things they measure and can use once the competition tightens up.

    If you have Google Analytics you can see all the things Google is tracking and the possibilities for these to potentially swing a ranking.

    I've had sites drop in rankings after completing linking campaigns for specific phrases. I've had sites I haven't worked on in years ranking on the first page with bigger players.

    How is Google really determining relevance? Figure that out and you win.
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  • Profile picture of the author sentient
    Thanks for the replies. I agree that it would seem unlikely that you could outrank these type of sites, although I think it's worth an experiment with a keyword rich domain name against an authority site that has a page ranking in the top ten, but where that page doesn't have decent PR or links. I'll give it a go with a couple of sites and see how I get on.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bob Monie
    Google ranks pages not sites. Each page is ranked individually. If you be patient and work hard you can outrank any page. Its all about page title, and good backlinks with your targeted keyword anchor text.
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    Will be the next authority article directory. Come take a look around. Submit and Publish your own articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author sentient
    Thanks everyone for their responses. Bob and Steve - that confirms what I'd suspected.

    The sites I'm setting up at the moment are only chasing low search volume keywords so I'm not going to be putting huge efforts into them, so may not target the authority sites with these.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Roach
      I have to agree with InternetMarketingIQ.

      All of the on-page and off-page SEO is important, titles are important, domain age is important, but things like bounce rate and time on site are going to play a pretty big roll.

      If people are spending more time on your site than on the authority site, Google is going to see that as your site being far more relevant to that particular search term.

      Remember, Google is all about providing relevant search results for their users. Authority sites generally don't go into great detail. They cover topics broadly because they cover a lot of topics. If you can comb through the authority sites and find the questions they aren't answering, you stand a much better chance of outranking them on the relevance factor.

      Just remember that this only works if you've done all your other SEO properly and it still takes a great deal of time. But if you're willing to knuckle down and put the reader first, you should be able to pass the authority sites, given enough time and backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author ShopZipCode
    I too have learned so much from this thread. Now i understand how this thing works.
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  • Profile picture of the author Louise Green
    Yes it can be done.

    Research the pages that you're trying to over take, analyse them (everything, inc backlinks), find the weak spots - most pages have weak spots, and make sure your page 'fixes' them,
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    IMPORTANT MESSAGE: I'm currently on vacation & will answer all messages when I return - Happy Holidays!!
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  • Profile picture of the author nettech
    Become an authority yourself! :-)
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    Thanks
    Zaheer

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