SEO Question - Backlinking.

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Hi guys,

Im a little confused. When I type in a an extremely competitive search term in my niche number 2 in google has only 2 backlinks, Number 1 has about 2000 backlinks. It is a big site, very well developed and has lots of product pages but how does it rank so well with only 2 backlinks?

I understand that backlinking isnt the only piece of the SEO puzzle but how can a website rank number 2 for a stupidly competitive search term with just 2 backlinks??

Any input would be very gratefully received!

Thanks,

Martin
#search engine optimization #backlinking #backlinks #question #seo
  • If you're cool with actually giving the example, I'm sure I could tell you why.

    But without seeing it at all, kind of hard to tell - as you said, backlinking is only a part of the puzzle.

    In the meantime, I'll leave you with this - If you're checking backlinks in Google, that's part of the problem. Google will only show a random sampling of the known links for a page. Try Y! Site Explorer, instead.
    • [1] reply
    • Hey Fender,

      Many thanks for the reply, I made a little mistake actually, it has 264. I used a free service from seopro.com to check the backlinks and it usually does a nice job. Most of the top dogs in this niche have thousands of backlinks, one has 11,000. The backlinks from the site in question, which is yeomansoutdoorsdotcodotuk arent of any real quality either (mostly PR0).

      Like I said, im aware of the other factors contributing to SEO but backlinking must surely be one of the most important factors to a site like this?

      Thanks again,

      Martin
      • [1] reply

  • Hi Martin, the thing to remember is that Google hides it's algorithms as best it can. So if you are looking at the visible backlinks via software packages you may well only see 2 backlinks. But, one old fashioned method still works!!

    Simply go to a google search box and using purely the internal page name ie NO www and NO .com type in their name using '' at either end so you get for example 'counciltenantsmortgages' which is one of my sites. Now, you may well get a number of sites come up with the same middle name that are .co.uk or .org, so you will have to work on that aspect. But once you find their visible links you too can link there.

    Edit, I just did mine and it shows 1.5 million back links LOL

    1 - 10 of about 1,530,000 for 'counciltenantsmortgages'.
  • Just concentrate on unique content and relevant link building. Yahoo may disclose every blogger/webmasters statistics, but Google are very strict with privacy and will only show your true links within webmaster tools.
  • Is it really that a site ranks as #2 for a highly competitive keyword? It makes me believe that the keyword is not that competitive as it sounds, or at least that the number of backlinks is not correct. It is true that old (well established) and trusted can rank much easier than new ones (even with inner pages) but only 2 incoming links?! I kinda doubt that.

    Can you give us the example please? (like keyword and the site that is #2?) I would be glad to take a look.
  • Google ranks sites off a wide array of factors, and outbound links (backlinks) are not top on the list, or even top two if I remember correctly. Ah, here it is:

    APRIL 2nd, 2007 - Top SEO Factors (SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors )
    1.Keyword Use in Title Tag
    2.Anchor Text of Inbound Link
    3.Global Link Popularity of Site
    4.Age of Site
    5.Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
    6.Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
    7.Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
    8.Keyword Use in Body Text
    9.Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
    10.Topical Relationship of Linking Page


    There are lots of factors that affect SEO, and a website with excellent internal optimization can beat out one with great outbound links and poor on-page optimization in many cases. Hope this helps, also there's a post on my blog for building links - feel free to take a peek if you need some ideas.

    Cheers,
    Kris
  • I agree with Dburks. Great points! A high quality link is worth more than thousands of low quality links. If you can't research out links thoroughly you should use a rule of thumb and obtain links on high PR pages, popular pages, or obtain links from cached Google pages with good alexa rankings.
  • Kris,
    Re: "and outbound links (backlinks)" - confusing here.....the site you referenced talks a lot about linkpopularity and link text......
    • [1] reply
    • Hi guys,

      Thanks for all the responses and tips guys, very insightful! The site I was actually referring to is the site I mentioned in the second post (I havent enough posts to post links).

      The keyword is "tents" number two is the site I am analyzing. I kind of understand that backlink checkers have their limits and obviously wont display all of a websites backlinks. I do have a couple of questions though and again, thanks for your input guys, I really appreciate it.

      1) Am I right in presuming that an e-commerce site must employ the same SEO tactics as a non e-commerce site?

      2) Again, on e-commerce sites like the one I have mentioned, would it be better to structure a site with products getting their own pages (with detailed, keyword rich descriptions) or on one page with all the products one after the other seperated by a dividing line?

      My instincts tell me that a product deserves its own page and is necessary to rank for product specific searches. In fact I would deem this very important. The reason I ask is that I have seen some competitor sites which have a link to "Running Shoes" and when you get there, all the running shoes are on the same massive page (surely not providing SE anything to serve up.

      Sorry for that, didnt think it would be so long. I gotta say, as confusing as SEO is and as vunerable I feel to algorithms, it does make for some dam good discussions!

      Thanks again everyone,

      Martin.
      • [1] reply
  • Backlinks are for page rank, not necessarily SERP's. How old is the #2 site? How deep is it?
    • [1] reply
    • How about seo spy glass tool guys, ever used it before, it says the tool is able to spies competitor link strategies very deep, here's the site link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/index.html. Please give me anye feedback if any of you have used it
  • abibakar,

    I use SEO Spyglass for my clients. It automates getting the backlinks from Yahoo SiteExplorer, etc. (you can get them from alot of sources) and analyzing the backlinks (pagerank, anchor text, page titles, etc.).

    I really like it. I had tested SEO Elite, but just liked the SEO Spyglass interface better.

    To tell you the truth, I use it more for tracking backlinks TO my sites rather than checking backlinks of competitors.
    • [1] reply
    • Thank you very much for the response Kposs
  • Use Site Explorer (Yahoo) for checking back links. Google will not show all back links.

  • The higher ranking site would have more backlinks from quality sites that are in the same niche and more backlinks that contain "tent" in the anchor text. Anchor text is huge when it comes to ranking for a specific keyword.
    • [1] reply
  • Yeah, one good backlink could be worth many thousand weak ones.
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    SEO Question - Backlinking.

    Hi guys, Im a little confused. When I type in a an extremely competitive search term in my niche number 2 in google has only 2 backlinks, Number 1 has about 2000 backlinks. It is a big site, very well developed and has lots of product pages but how does it rank so well with only 2 backlinks?