Question about outranking my competition?

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Okay, I've found a keyword I'd like to rank for and have just checked Market Samurai to see how many backlinks my competitors have. The site in the number one spot on Google only has 47 backlinks and the DMZ,YAH, Title,URL,Desc, & Head columns are all Y's but are all Yellow.

Would it be safe to say that if I was able to obtain more backlinks that this guy and get my site listed on the DMZ and Yahoo directories along with having all the keyword in my title, url, desc, and head, I'd be able to take over his spot?

I know it may be a bit difficult to get listed on DMZ and the Yahoo directories or may take some time, but if everything else is done properlly, I should be able to rank higher than where I am correct?

By the way, my website is not in the top 100 pages of Google yet and it is at least 1 week old.
#search engine optimization #competition #outranking #question
  • If you expand the website and click on 'PR Analysis', you should see the exact back links the site is getting. What kind of PR are they? If most of them are PR 0 and PR 1, then you can easily outrank them. If they are higher, you can still do it, but it will just take a bit more work that's all.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • This is great advice. And act now, or someone is going to beat you to it if the competition is that easy!
    • How do you expand the website to click on "PR Analysis"?

      When I check the SEO competition for the keyword I want to rank for and click on generate results, all the sites come up and the top site has 48 in the BLP section ( with external selected for type of backlink) and it has a PR of 0.

      Also, would you guys say that Market Samurai is more dependable when trying to determine the number of backlinks a site has?

      I also put the top site that is listed in Market Samurai into Open Site Explorer and 199 total backlinks are listed.

      I am thinking that the number of external links will be more important. Am I correct about that?
  • Sounds like you should be able to easily out rank the #1 spot. If their page rank is 3 or below, should be a piece of cake. Anything above a page rank of 3 is a little tougher, but with some quality content and and decent SEO you should be able to overtake them.
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    • 45 good backlinks won't take you to long to acquire. I say you should go for it. I have more backlinks than my competitors and I'm still not a the top.
  • Yes, you can... or you can't... only GETTING STARTED
    and getting those links can you know,

    But seriously - sometimes it takes more, and sometimes
    it takes less. Nothing is set in stone when it comes to
    the search engines, especially good old Google,

    Kingsley
  • Few things you need to bare in mind, it's not necessarily how many links your competitor has but the quality of them, if they have 50 PR5 links and you get 50 PR1 links then you probably won't outrank them.

    Also, don't bother with Yahoo & Dmoz, they won't make a big difference for the time/spend they'll cost you, my sites aren't listed in Dmoz or Yahoo yet they still rank at the top for various phrases, and also the same with client websites.
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    • Please remember: it ain't all about the PR.
  • If I were you I would have a crack at it. Looks pretty easy to me. Don't worry about it not being in the top 100 pages of Google yet. Just build quality links slowly and steady and you will soon know where you actually rank in the SE.
    • [1] reply

    • Thanks, that was actually the answer to my next question. I had been super worried that my site is not in the top 100 pages of Google yet.
  • Yeah definitely just have a crack at it. Remember though your site is only 1 week old, give it at least 1 month to rank
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  • Dont be worried, it won't be in the top 100 after only a week. It'll get there soon enough after you do a bit of work, sometimes sites don't appear at all for a particular keyword but then Google will pick them up and slot them in at say page 5 and then with a bit of additional work you move up to page 1 :-)
  • To get top position on search engines you need to have strong backlinking. So if you establish proper backlinking you will be to have top position on search engines. Try to have best backlinks. So you can get what actually you want. Cheers!!!
    • [1] reply
    • By best backlinks, you are referring to relevant backlinks correct?

      Or could I simply use Angela & Paul's backlinks to link from high PR sites to accomplish this?
  • I also had another question about backlinking. When I create profiles on forums, should I be backlinking to my home page? Or to a specific page within my site that has a keyword I am trying to rank for?

    When I social bookmark, I link directly to the article on my site with the keyword that I am trying to rank for. Is this what I should be doing when creating backlinks from forums?
  • Banned
    Probably. But it depends what his backlinks are.

    I've seen sites in the top spot for quite competitive search terms with only about 50 backlinks, but they're all context-relevant PR4/5/6 backlinks.

    Really PR4/5/6 backlinks - not "links on sites whose home page happens to be PR4/5/6", which are worthless by comparison.

    So you need to know how good his are.

    But looking encouraging.

    You should be linking to whichever page you want to rank. Probably your home page first.

    Unless they're relevant forums, those are terribly, terribly low-value backlinks. Your link will be on a PR-0 page, usually, and many may take forever to get indexed, and they're really about as low as you can get, by backlink standards.

    Relevant backlinks help. As in almost every area of internet marketing, quality will always trounce quantity.
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    • Okay, thanks. I think I have a way to see if his backlinks are releavant PR4/5/6 backlinks.

      Market Samurai lets you click on the BLP's and they open up in a separate window. All the backlinks are listed there. I could check those sites and then use the SEO Quake plugin to see what the PR equals for each backlink.

      This could get very time consuming, so I'll just use that time wisely and create my own backlinks.
      • [2] replies
  • It is not only about baclinks but the quality of the backlinks.What is the PR of the links on the other site?
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    • It appears that most of the links had a PR of 0, but they were relevant sites that he was linking from.
  • I'd start with some article marketing and blog commenting until your site gets farther up in the rankings, then you might want to blast it once a monthe for a few months with some profile links.

    But start with article marketing and blog comments first, that mightalso get you some traffic as well as link juice.

    Good Luck
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Maybe I missed it somewhere in this thread, but how many searches a month or a day is this keyword phrase getting? Exact search, not broad or phrase search. It sounds like extremely light competition, and there might be a reason for that.

    Not saying it is not a good niche or keyword to go after. It is just rare that you come across a good one where the top site only has 40 or so backlinks. That is something that always makes me stop and double check my research before proceeding.
    • [1] reply

    • Well, the exact match for this keyword is 5,400 searches per month. There are other keywords that I'd like to also rank for that only get 2,900 and 320 searches per month. All of these are local search results also. I have started trying to rank for the keyword with only 320 searches. Then, I plan to try to rank for the others after I can get in the first 3 pages of Google.
  • You can outrank ANY one... it just takes more work.
  • Banned
    You could also try commenting on high profile forums. These are frequently visited by the bots and indexing happens faster
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    Question about outranking my competition?

    Okay, I've found a keyword I'd like to rank for and have just checked Market Samurai to see how many backlinks my competitors have. The site in the number one spot on Google only has 47 backlinks and the DMZ,YAH, Title,URL,Desc, & Head columns are all Y's but are all Yellow. Would it be safe to say that if I was able to obtain more backlinks that this guy and get my site listed on the DMZ and Yahoo directories along with having all the keyword in my title, url, desc, and head, I'd be able to take over his spot?