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How does mediocre a site with 0 backlinks get !st place in Google?

by pepper81 Banned
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have been researching a particular niche that I would like to get into as an affiliate for Clickbank products and i have noticed that the No. 1 position in Google is a very average looking site with about 14 pages of very average content (content is just bland, rehashed information found on other sites).

This particular site is outranking sites targeting the same keywords with pr 4's and upwards and tons of backlinks. It has been positioned No.1 for the past couple of months.

Can someone explain how this is possible?

Thanks.
#backlinks #google #mediocre #place #site
  • Profile picture of the author Kung Fu Backlinks
    Perhaps the onpage SEO is just that good.

    Is the structure of the site really well done? Nice intuitive structure scores high with Google.
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    • Profile picture of the author pepper81
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Kung Fu Backlinks View Post

      Perhaps the onpage SEO is just that good.

      Is the structure of the site really well done? Nice intuitive structure scores high with Google.
      Not sure what you mean by structure but it is a fairly average site with a sidebar which has about 6 different categories and about 2 posts in each category.

      It also has a column in the sidebar selling 6 different amazon books related to the topic.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kung Fu Backlinks
        Originally Posted by pepper81 View Post

        Not sure what you mean by structure but it is a fairly average site with a sidebar which has about 6 different categories and about 2 posts in each category.

        It also has a column in the sidebar selling 6 different amazon books related to the topic.
        I mean a couple of things:

        1) Is the information organized in a logical way consistent with good information architecture?

        2) Is the physical placement of that information intuitive?

        Matt Cutts talks about it often... site structure / information architecture counts for a lot. Good architecture will also mean that traffic clicks deep into the site and spends a good amount of time on each page to read... these are all signals to Google that the information is worth of a first spot ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author cashtree
    Check domain age, google cares more about age then content or backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author pepper81
      Banned
      Originally Posted by cashtree View Post

      Check domain age, google cares more about age then content or backlinks.
      It has a N/A on the domain age and the sites below have all been around for about 5 years.
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      • Profile picture of the author cashtree
        Originally Posted by pepper81 View Post

        It has a N/A on the domain age and the sites below have all been around for about 5 years.
        use whois, if you have linux whois whatever.com or for windows get cygwin then get the whois for that. Lot of websites whos focus is whois, are horrible and aren't effective. Or if you want post domain here and i'll look it up for you.
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        • Profile picture of the author pepper81
          Banned
          Originally Posted by cashtree View Post

          use whois, if you have linux whois whatever.com or for windows get cygwin then get the whois for that. Lot of websites whos focus is whois, are horrible and aren't effective. Or if you want post domain here and i'll look it up for you.
          The domain is only 1 1/2 years old. Why would it be outranking sites that are 4,5,6 years old with 10 times the amount of content (content is much better than site in question), heaps of backlinks, and pr 4's, 5's and 6.
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        • Profile picture of the author Brandon Tanner
          You wouldn't be using Google's or Yahoo's backlink checker, would you? I've seen quite a few instances where a site would have plenty of backlinks, but the Google and Yahoo tools would show 0 backlinks for the site, for some reason.

          Tools like Market Samurai and Traffic Travis seem to be a lot more realistic about the # of backlinks pointing to a site. Not entirely accurate, but at least in the general ballpark.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by cashtree View Post

      Check domain age, google cares more about age then content or backlinks.
      Is that a joke? Or is that what you really believe?!?!?!?!?!?
      If it is, man, I dunno. Something got lost in translation...

      This thread ranks #1, #2, and #3 for
      How does mediocre a site with 0 backlinks get !st place in Google?

      People believe a whole lot of nonsense when it comes
      to what makes a site #1.

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author ephame
    Perhaps that particular site is just better targeted to the search, even if it's crappy content people may still re-read and give it good feedback to the search engines.
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  • Profile picture of the author ishuvonet
    Besides backlinks Google also put importance on proper on-page SEO,Content,relevancy and the quality amount of backlinks to rank a site higher.May be your backlink checking tool did not show some quality backlinks that this site have.May be his competitors don't have quality back links or perfectly optimized for search engines.
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  • Profile picture of the author Elmar
    Try different sources for backlinks. You may find that they have thousands and thousands of backlinks that your tool is not picking up.

    Try ahrefs.com
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  • Profile picture of the author kamperman
    Not only the on page SEO may be superior, but it's also possible that it's outranking the other site on less competitive keywords. I believe, that by creating a superior number of backlinks for inferior keywords (meaning less competitive), that you can move up in the rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Domain age has nothing to do with ranking a page, you rank pages, not domains.

    In fact it's so silly I don't even feel like debating the subject.
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