Top 3 actions I should immediately take.... ?
-
Site: bussongs.com
I have a fairly successful (400k visits/month, 1.2m PV/month) site which features a directory of kids songs.
kididdles.com is my archnemesis. Slight edge in PVs with better ranking on many long-tail KWs (song names mainly).
What are the top 3 things I should do to knock out my competitor? I feel I've nailed the on-page stuff - I have checked all the major items and produced superior content.
The big thing that shouts out to me is that my competitor just has many more backlinks, especially from unique domains and that's lifting up everything.
Thoughts? Can't wait to hear your ideas!
-
I'll also consider non link based ranking signals:
-
Social media presence
-
Improve website engagement - stuff like bounce, clickthrough rates, site speed etc
-
Look at your link-profile via OSE and see what's missing compared to top competitors or similar websites.
Need more high quality links? Then produce content or anything that the linking websites could use and start creating relationships with them. Better yet - pick up the phone and call them!
If in doubt, you can just focus on diversifying your link-profile, avoiding the "bad" types links ofcourse.
Qasim
-
-
Before you spend time buildling a widget, I'd do some research and find out if it's something that webmasters are likely to use (and how many of them would be interested!)
My advice would be to try and identity a "need" first and then come up with something that satisfies that need (and of course give you a backlink too)
What do you know about your visitors? What type of people are they and why are they visiting your site?
Who's currently linking to you and why?
On your website you say "created to help kids, parents, and teachers recall the words and lyrics to loved children songs"
Do you provide nice and easy ways these people can print the lyrics (with your branding and link of course). Getting traffic from off-line sources is still traffic!
Do you have a mailing list? You could offer the lyrics to a song every week. Might to sustain awareness of your site and increase returning visitors.
-
Great thoughts Doug.
Of course there's no quick and easy fix with this. I've dedicated very little to link building, so that's a clear area where I need to devote time now. And you're right - I need to understand the reasons why those links exist and replicate that high-level strategy rather than just chasing to get the same links.
I was considering building a widget that'd allow webmasters to embed lyrics on their site and then I could create a backlink within the display. I'd love to think of an incentive for link-building, but struggling so far to come up with creative ideas.
-
I think the obvious answer is that you need to build links. Can you think of any way you can give your visitors and incentive to link back to you? Getting your visitors to do your link building for you would be ideal!
Have you taken a look at not just the number of backlinks your competitor has, but where they are getting their backlinks from?
You can then try to get links from the same places (take a good look at why people are linking to your competitor though!)
Also try to get a feel for the kinds of sites, and the reasons why people are backlinking and then try to cast your net to capture all sites that match this profile.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
MOZ is showing that I have non- indexed blog tag posts are they supposed to be nonindexed. My articles are indexed just not the blog tags that take you to other similar articles do I need to fix this or is it ok?
MOZ is showing that my blog post tags are not indexed my question is should they be indexed? my articles are indexed just not the tags that take you to posts that are similar. Do I need to fix this or not? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tyler58910 -
New page not topping on results
Hi, We have created a new page on our website for same keyword in slug but the page is not showing up for same keyword even combined with website name: website.com/keyword is new page and not listing on top of results for exact search query "website keyword". This page is listing as 3rd result and other pages are making on top even they don't match with page title, h1 tags and URL. This new page is indexed. How long it'll take to Google to adopt this? I don't think it'll remain same forever. Is there anything we can do from our end?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How long for Panda 4.1 fixes to take affect?
Hi, If you have been hit by Panda 4.1 and now putting fixes in place, for this example lets say you remove a load of dup content (and that's what caused the problem) - how long would it take for that fix to take affect? Do you have to wait for the next Panda update? or will it be noticed on the next crawl? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | followuk0 -
3 Wordpress sites 1 Tumblr site coming under 1domain(4subdomains) WPMU: Proper Redirect?
Hey Guys, witnessSF.org (WP), witnessLA.org(Tumblr), witnessTO.com(WP), witnessHK.com(WP), and witnessSEOUL.com(new site no redirects needed) are being moved over to sf.ourwitness.com, la.ourwitness.com and so forth. All under on large Wordpress MU instance. Some have hundreds of articles/links others a bit less. What is the best method to take, I understand there are easy redirects, and the complete fully manual one link at a time approach. Even the WP to WP the permalinks are changing from domain.com/date/post-name to domain.com/post-name? Here are some options: Just redirect all previous witinessla.org/* to la.ourwitness.org/ (automatic direct all pages to home page deal) (easiest not the best)2) Download Google Analytics top redirected domains about 50 urls have significant ranking and traffic (in LA's sample) and just redirect those to custom links. (most bang for the buck for the articles that rank manually set up to the correct place) 3) Best of the both worlds may be possible? Automated perhaps?I prefer working with .htaccess vs a redirect plugin for speed issues. Please advise. Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmialik0 -
Is it ok to add rel=CANONICAL into the desktop version on top of the rel="alternate" Tag (Mobile vs Desktop version)
Hi mozzers, We launched a mobile site a couples months ago following the parallel mobile structure with a URL:m.example.com The week later my moz crawl detected thousands of dups which I resolved by implementing canonical tags on the mobile version and rel=alternate onto the desktop version. The problem here is that I still also got Dups from that got generated by the CMS. ?device=mobile ?device=desktop One of the options to resolve those is to add canonicals on the desktop versions as well on top of the rel=alternate tag we just implemented. So my question here: is it dangerous to add rel=canonical and rel=alternate tags on the desktop version of the site or not? will it disrupt the rel=canonical on mobile? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
What is the best way to allow content to be used on other sites for syndication without taking the chance of duplicate content filters
Cookstr appears to be syndicating content to shape.com and mensfitness.com a) They integrate their data into partner sites with an attribution back to their site and skinned it with the partners look. b) they link the image back to their image hosted on cookstr c) The page does not have microformats or as much data as their own page does so their own page is better SEO. Is this the best strategy or is there something better they could be doing to safely allow others to use our content, we don't want to share the content if we're going to get hit for a duplicate content filter or have another site out rank us with our own data. Thanks for your help in advance! their original content page: http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta their syndicated content pages: http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw
http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta0 -
Price Range: Top Notch Keyword Research
How many years would someone need to have to be experienced enough to provide a thorough job of providing me with keyword research? I am willing to pay for the best job but I don't want to be taken to the cleaners...especially by someone that may not be giving me the best effort or that is not qualified. ( I was just quoted $200 an hour from an 18 yr old today) We are getting ready to change our URL's and add keywords but I am not sure which terms to add and in what order. I have heard put the most important words first but I am not sure which are the most important. 🙂 By my research we only have about 5 keywords but I am not sure. (Excluding long tail)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Who does google require a 3 digit number for news URLs?
Here, google mentions that article URLs should contain a 3 digit number: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68323 Why is this? Also, do you think it is good to have both a news sitemap and 3 digits at the end of a URL? Or, will one do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0