Niche Market without impartial authority for links
-
We've had trouble with one of our brand websites for years now in SERP rankings.
When I first started working here 3 years ago I stated that the site lacks a content foundation to build on. A large number of our pages do not have proper text content or had duplicate content, there was no consideration of keyword usage in any title or body copy, and there was absolutely no reason for anyone to want to link to the site.
I'm not a copy writer so I've pushed to get one hired, if even just on a freelance basis, to at least get some kind of content on the pages that I could work our keywords into. I'm hoping that soon they will finally start listening to me and we'll get that content in place.
However, even with the content we have the problem of our market not having an impartial authority site that we could be linked from to help us build our own authority. The current authorities for our keywords are competitors. They've been doing a better job with their SEO and for a lot longer than us.
The nature of our business restricts us from displaying pricing on our site which I feel is another major strike against us when it comes to organic link backs. We do not sell direct, all of our sells are made through authorized dealers and each dealer has their own territory that does not compete with each other. Additionally we do not have a MSRP and even if we did our dealers would explode if we advertised it on the site since there is such a wide range of dealer pricing.
The only good thing we have going for our site currently is a new redesigned layout that makes it easier for users to navigate and get the information they need. I feel it is still to cluttered but I have to make the brand manager happy and that person insists on adding clutter that is not necessary.
Additionally we added a new tool to the website, a custom tool that uses javascript and canvas to allow visitors to build their own product and request a price from their local dealer.
The links we have to our site right now are from PR sites and sites that do not have any authority in regard to our target keywords. A while back we asked our dealers to help out by adding a link to our site from theirs. This was initiated by a third party company who had delusions of understanding SEO and so the links our dealers have work great for ranking us for our brand name but not so much in regard to the keywords we want to place for. Plus not every dealer is doing it.
Our top competitors have over 3x the links to their sites than we do so we have a lot of catching up to do in that respect. And when I look at the sites that are linking to them it's, again, news and PR sites mostly.
My line of thinking currently is to get our content issues under control and get all of our dealers linking to our site with properly constructed anchor text. I'm also trying to push to have more and more frequent press releases sent out to a wider range of sites than we currently target.
I want to submit the customizer tool we developed (6 months of work and improvements/additions to be done in the future, so we're kinda proud of it) to sites that like to link to such things but so far I've not been able to find any. I'm just not searching for the right thing to find them is my guess.
A few other ideas I've had is to reduce the page depth of many of our pages, mainly our product pages since they're 4 levels deep right now. I'm not sure if that's worthwhile though. How important is the url structure and keyword usage in them and how many levels should I try to keep from exceeding?
We have an infographic on our site that generated a few links, are things like that really worth the time and effort though? Would it be better to focus our attention on something else instead?
What I want to know is if my thinking is right and if there is anything else we should be doing that I haven't thought of yet. Or if I'm off base with all of this and we need to be focusing on something else entirely.
Thanks in advance for any help/insight!
-
We cannot market our product outside of residential use. I asked about that once before and I can't remember the details, I just remember that it's not an option. So we're restricted to individual consumers.
The other groups that I'm currently aware of would be groups interested in: then environment, child safety, redwood specifically, and child health. Not sure what else we could aim for. This has been gone over for the past three years now.
One of our competitors has links on their state government site having something to do with recycling. I've attempted to find something similar on our own state site but haven't had any luck yet.
But again, the root, I believe, of our problem is a lack of valuable text content on our pages. We're ranking #1 for a bunch of keyword phrases that are nice, but not widely searched. However, the pages that rank well are all pages that we have recently spent some time adding content to and are using those keywords well.
I can't help thinking that if we would fix the content issues with the site that we would be more "linkable" and would take care of this concern in the long run. Unfortunately they're looking for an instant fix which just doesn't exist.
Anyway, thanks for all the feedback and info!
-
Keep brainstorming! And show how this process is going to be the engine that moves you up the rankings to the rest of the team.
Think about audience groups. Swing sets for the house (ie individual consumers) ok sure, but how about playchools and similar? How about municipalities for parks and things like that? Brainstorm to expand your potential audience and why they would be interested in your information and products, then you have a number of different avenues in regards content creation, link building outreach and potential sites for cooperation on blogs etc. If your competition is mainly based on news and pr links, think what that could mean if you find even a few strong links that are not in that group!
If possible watch that video I mention above with the whole team, I think it is really relevant to your situation and will help a lot.
-
Thanks for the response!
I've looked through our competitors link profiles and the main difference between us is that they more links. The source types (if not the sources themselves) are the same.
The product is swing sets (wooden playsets, the big ones with all the different extras like climbing walls, monkey bars, various slides, etc...). It's a big purchase item which means that the consumer wants the best deal. That's one of my reasons for thinking that not having pricing hurts us. But out competitors also don't show pricing either so maybe it isn't, who knows.
As for guest blogging and blogs in general, we attempted that once before but had a terrible time finding a relevant blog and then finding one that was willing to help us out. The main source for links for us and our competitors is news and PR. From what I've read those sources aren't the best anyway but so far we've not found any other solutions.
Our brand uses US redwood which has a big list of benefits including sustainability. So I've been trying to find ways to use that to generate links.
We've had brainstorming sessions repeatedly to figure out how to handle the link back issue. Every time I repeat that we need content, good and valuable content that is worth linking to. And every time they wave that away like it's stupid and come back with "there's gotta be something we can do to move up higher in the search results".
We're out of ideas for sources for links and now I'm to the point of considering that we help improve our dealer's SEO so they rank higher and get more authority in some hope that it will in turn improve our own.
-
Hi,
In regards the links and authority sites, I am sure there are places you can find! Digging through the link profiles of your main competitors might flag up a couple of common sites that link to your type of content. Thinking creatively about who uses your products and in particular different user groups that would be interested in your products should also open up new ideas on potential sites that you could approach, The fact that there are no 'authority sites' beyond competitors in your niche does not mean there are not solid sites with relevant related content that you can approach for guest blog opportunities, links, social mentions etc. Your new tool that you mention could also be a good outreach subject, if you are proud of it then let that pride shine through!
Have a look at this recent mozinar (I really liked the bit on brainstorming for different audience segments, it is great stuff!).
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
-
link building
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
Link Building | | Tv2.ro
https://m.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://t.me/iv?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://cr.naver.com/redirect-notification?u=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://panchodeaonori.sakura.ne.jp/feed/aonori/feed2js.php?src=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/no_outbounds.php?o=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://optimize.viglink.com/page/pmv?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://hobby.idnes.cz/peruanske-palive-papricky-rocoto-dlz-/redir.aspx?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://redirects.tradedoubler.com/utm/td_redirect.php?td_keep_old_utm_value=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://www.kaskus.co.id/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://salesevents.madison.com/go.php?article_id=108164&dealer_id=60&ga_id&promo_id=25&source=promotion&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://bbs.pku.edu.cn/v2/jump-to.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://feeds.hanselman.com/~/t/0/0/scotthanselman/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://guru.sanook.com/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://keyscan.cn.edu/AuroraWeb/Account/SwitchView?returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://bukkit.org/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://nou-rau.uem.br/nou-rau/zeus/auth.php?back=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F&go=x&code=x&unit=x
https://redirect.camfrog.com/redirect/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://auth.she.com/logout/?callback=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro&client_id=8
https://bugcrowd.com/external_redirect?site=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://wikimapia.org/external_link?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://www.earth-policy.org/?URL=https://antena24.ro
https://m.ok.ru/dk?st.cmd=outLinkWarning&st.rfn=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://m.ok.ru/dk?st.cmd=outLinkWarning&st.rfn=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=hdorrh%2BHcDlQ%2BzUEnZU5qlfKZ1Cl53X6&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.fuzokubk.com/cgi-bin/LinkO.cgi?u=antena24.ro
https://ipv4.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://ditu.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://m.verywed.com/redirect.php?url=https://antena24.ro/
https://www.projekt-office.ch/?URL=https://antena24.ro
https://mobile.myprice74.ru/redirect.php?url=antena24.ro
https://www.libenar.it/?URL=https://antena24.ro/
https://feeds.osce.org/~/t/0/0/osceofficetajikistan/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://feeds.gty.org/~/t/0/0/gtyblog/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://feeds.marinsoftware.com/~/t/0/0/marininsights/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=60610D15439B4103A0BF4E1051EDCF8B&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F&c=12807976268214810202&mkt=en-us
https://maps.google.bj/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.google.bj/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.htcdev.com/?URL=antena24.ro
https://maps.google.mu/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/ebina/redirect.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://images.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://maps.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://results.dogpile.com/search/web?q=antena24.ro
https://www.ask.com/web?q=antena24.ro
https://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_chn=prt_bon&q=antena24.ro
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=antena24.ro&ia=web
https://www.bing.com/search?q=antena24.ro
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=antena24.ro
https://search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=antena24.ro1 -
I am looking for a software to keep track of the back links or link building
Hi Guys, I am very new hear. I just joined. I have a few websites that I need to manage. I am looking for a software that will allow me to manually add the links that I have been able to acquire. It would also be a bonus if it could search for the links to my site and to see if its still active. Because I have a freelancer working a few hours a week on link building and I need to keep track of the links. I am looking for something simple and good. Any suggestions? By the way, I used Raven Tools many years ago, and it had this feature. But since joining Moz, I don't want to be paying for 2 subscriptions. And I don't know if Raven still has this feature. Your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you. Ryan
Link Building | | RyanNewman0 -
Should I remove links that are not related to my niche and could be spammy?
Our site ranks #2 for our primary search term. Compared to our competition in position #1, we out score them in all of moz metrics except in Moz trust- which we only trail by .3. I've read a lot about Google reducing the impact of backlinks and specifically the influence of anchor text for keyword ranking. However, many state that to increase domain authority you need to get more quality backlinks. Here is my dilemma: Do we remove backlinks from our link profile that are not in our niche in an effort to increase our moz trust score. Some of our backlinks are from unrelated businesses that could be considered spammy like a poker site - even though the page still has a high page authority. Currently, we have a significantly higher number of linking domains compared to our competition. Would it be beneficial to "clean up" our link profile or do we risk losing domain authority from a reduced number of links?
Link Building | | ffreesr0 -
Old links
I am looking to remove some old directory links that now look spammy. Some years ago the site was redesigned. The links are all to the old pages url, which is 301 redirected to the new. If we remove the 301 and let the page 404, will that suffice in Googles eyes?
Link Building | | cottamg0 -
Link or Ad
I recently requested a link back from a site that is ranking 2nd for a term that i'm working on and they said they would gladly give me the link and remove my competitors but would also like me to have an ad on the same page for an annual fee that i could link to a landing page. I know that paying for links is no good and google can penalize you. so do i pay them and do a no follow to the landing page from the ad and call it a day? and how does google differentiate an ad from a link?
Link Building | | CHiP_RuN0 -
"Activating" Links - Do External Links Have to Be Clicked On to Really Have Value?
I heard an SEO talk about the concept of "activating" a link - meaning that if an external link to your site exists, but google doesn't detect that it has gotten any actual clicks, they will significantly discount or ignore the value of the link. Obviously between Chrome, toolbars, and GA, google does have a lot of ways to detect whether a link has gotten clicks. What is the SEOmoz take on this issue?
Link Building | | kbrake0 -
Link to those that link to you? Worthwhile?
We have thousands and thousands of sites that link to a domain we are working on, many with low page authority and high domain (bloggers, forum posts, etc). Has anyone experimented with linking to the pages that link to you (not from your site) but from other means in an effort to boost their quality? I'm not sure what method we would use, maybe some relevant blog comments or social votes. But curious if this could be an effective method.
Link Building | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Value of Inbound Links to Pages With a lot of Outbound Links
Suppose you have a resource page of the Top 50 Awesome Sites in your niche. Since there are about 50 outbound links, then I would think there will be less Page Rank being passed to internal pages from internal links on the resource page. Since you are getting less PR passed to internal pages, are there other ways the inbound links can be beneficial, such as increasing the diversity of links of your domain? Sites like SEO Optimise seem to create a lot of Top 30 Resources lists and I have read that they think it is a strong tactic.
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0