Certainty or Uncertainty of SEO / Link Building
-
Hey there
I'm new to both SEO and Seomoz. I have this personal site I've been working on SEO wise (slowly since I started learning from 0) and I have reached a point where the only missing thing for me to do is build links. However, the competitors for my site have thousands of links.
From all I've read on the web regarding SEO&LinkBuilding, including articles in this site...the old method of spamming links wherever/whenever possible is now being penalized while the practice of manual/hand-built links of higher quality and lesser quantity is rewarded.
So I went ahead and approached several linkbuilding companies and one thing that struck me was the level of uncertainty regarding the chances of getting a site to get to the first page.
I understand there's factors you cannot predict or control, such as what your competitors are doing on the SEO front...but ultimately, I'm curious as to how do you effectively gauge the possibility of getting to the top page of any keyword combination?
Especially when dealing with clients... since apparently whoever 'guarantees' you anything is a fraud or uses blackhat techniques...how do you pitch the 'uncertainty' to the client?
Likewise...how do you know if you can make it to the top page or viceversa?
Cheers
-
This is very true. Money makes the Web go round.
-
Yes, you can replicate your competitor's links provided you have sufficient resources and skills. There is no magic, well maybe a little bit.
-
German,
The site explorer tool here on SEOMoz provides the data necessary to deconstruct the quality, type and amount of links going to your competitors pages. Within a reasonable degree of error you should be able to predict where your site will rank after you generate those links.
There are lots of variables like age of incoming links and on page seo, but if you do your research - it's not magic, it's just math.
-
I can't guarantee first page rankings for my own sites. So, how can I guarantee anything to you?
-
All a matter of risk, weighed against resources. If you had sufficient resources, I could get you to #1 with 99.99% certainty. However very few businesses have the level of resource to create that level of certainty
Instead people will try do what they can with only a few thousands $$ a month and hope they get to the top one day
Most linkbuidling companies pitch based on competitive research for the number of links they think they will need to build + their track record of building those links and hitting those positions for other clients
S
-
I personally never give a guarantee of 1st page rank or #1 rank, and most people would tell you if you're paying for SEO and someone guarantees you 1st page rank or #1 rank they are lying.
The is no 'surefire' way of getting top ranks, well not for me anyways, I battle it out with my top competitors everyday for the top position and some days I win and some days I lose. The only way of dealing with clients in terms of ranking positions is your past work. I usually show my clients analytic reports of how my work has played a major contribution to sales, traffic and conversations. I also prove to them that what I'm doing is increasing their sales figures on the organic level.
Don't play the card where you say I'm going to get all your top keywords to the top, WRONG, because at the end of the day you don't need to rank #1 for the biggest keywords in your industry, you need to rank #1 for 1000s of the small 'low hanging fruit' keywords with 10%-50% conversation rates. That's the real skill and results that my clients want to see.
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
-
# of links and how it impacts ranking
Hi everyone I was running a competitor analysis in Moz Pro of my site and 3 competitors that are ranked above me. One of the things I noticed is that my # of total links is very high compared to 2 of my competitors(please see attachment). Other seo tools are telling me the same. This is mainly due to a few affiliate sites that have us in their footer. I was wondering if this could impact our ranking if some of these sites have very low domain authority and have thousands of backlinks to our site? I am looking into starting the disavowing process. Walau
Competitive Research | | wdsguy0 -
Does link equity still count after an expired domain is purchased?
Hi guys, We've recently noticed a (very) minor competitor competing with us, as well as some of our industry's biggest names, in the Google SERPs - and the reason why has us absolutely stumped. Aside from an awful website from an aesthetic/UX point of view, their on-site content is horribly over-optimised, with keywords on the homepage even STRONG TAGGED for crying out loud! A backlink check using OSE and Ahrefs found 19 linking domains - most of which were just trash - but there were 5 that boasted some decent DA, the highest being 43. The thing is, these 5 sites are all very generic industry-relevant "blogs" that provide exceptionally poor quality content. The thing is, they have some very high quality backlinks (the BBC, the Guardian and CNN to name just three) acquired when the websites were something different entirely. The competitor has basically bought expired domains, turned them into basic websites related to our industry and linked them to their main domain. My question then is: is this competitor benefiting from the very high quality links that are pointing at sites that are then linked to their main domain? I found an article from 2009 that suggested old links stop counting after being purchased by someone else, but we are stumped as to why they could be otherwise. Thanks in advance everyone! John
Competitive Research | | NAHL-14300 -
Abnormally high number of root domains linking to root domains
My client runs a very small business hiring out space in a single warehouse and rarely adds content to his incredibly badly optimised wordpress site. Can anyone make any wild guesses as to why my client has 2.9 million root domains linking to root domains? He also has a domain authority of 100. Strange when the number one competitor in warehouse space in this part of the world is Gumtree (equivalent of Craig's List) and that only has 9.25k root domains linking to root domains and site authority of 80. Is there any way of finding out where these links are coming from via Moz? Thanks
Competitive Research | | SocialStreets.Co0 -
Are aboutus.org links good?
Greetings Mozzers, I've posted several clients on aboutus.org sometime ago and it doesn't look like it is showing up on OSE. Its been well over 5 weeks. I have looked on their profile and none of the links are rel="nofollow" is there another thing I can check that would take all the juice away from them? Or does someone know if this is a good place to use? Thanks for any advice and clarification!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Is there a way to establish how old a link to a site is?
I wonder if anyone has any insight on the above question.
Competitive Research | | InTouchMarketing560 -
Best Way to Consolidate Domains/Rankings After Purchase of Competitor
One of my customers is buying a competitor. The competitor has a site that usually ranks just 1-2 spots below the main site that we manage for them (our site has been up for about a year, and their's is 15-years old). I am wondering what is the best way to consolidate the rankings/websites to take advantage of the purchase of the competitor's web assets. I would love to leave both sites up and just get 2 top-25 links to our products, but with no more marketing being done under the competitor's name, I assume their rankings will degrade. Would a basic 301 re-direct on a page-by-page basis be enough to 'steal' all of the juice their domain name/site has built? Is there some other method of using an older domain to boost the rankings of a newer one (I am assuming they only rank as well as we do because of how long they've been active - all of our metrics are better than theirs across the board). Thanks for any help/advice the community here can provide!
Competitive Research | | dschapira0 -
Pre-Launch SEO?
We are currently building a brand new site that should launch in the next 6 to 8 months. Obviously we have zero backlinks, zero mentions anywhere, etc. My plan is to set up a landing page with contact info, links to social network, mailing list signup, the usual. I'll be doing keyword research and gathering leads for potential links but should i start and active linkbuilding campaign? What kind of SEO work would you recommend while the site is in development?
Competitive Research | | AaronParrish0 -
How to select appropriate keywords to optimize for SEO?
I have an e-learning website called www.graduatetestprep.com and we provide university students preparation for the GRE examination. This is an entrance exam required for admittance to graduate school across the US. I was wondering what is the best way to find the best keywords focus on to optimize on google and the other search engines. I feel I can't use "on-page" on pro-dashboard properly unless I have the right keywords to focus on. Thanks
Competitive Research | | anuraag0