The Ultimate Question

[vansy]

This is probably going to look bad, but Im  going to do it anyway.

Ive owned my own business for over twenty five years. Due to the economy and a health crisis, my business has come to an end.  Im left pretty much with nothing except my family, which is on shakey grounds as well.

anyway.

Ive been working on the IM, SEO thing for about two years. Ive made some money, but nothing that would make a difference to my situation.

I now have a site in a competitive niche. The site is rated A by the app here on seomoz. But my site is lacking in authority backlinks. I write my own posts, about two a day, and honestly, it is of much better quality than those ranking . My site stays right around #11. Every other day, the site goes to #7 or 8. When that happens, I make between 300-400 a day. Then it falls back to 11.

So the on site is good, rated A here.

My site is speedy

Not enough backlinks

The content is good

I was foolish enough to believe the G story about backlinks not being important. Concentrate on the content. All of that crapola. The sites that are ranking well have all the typical xrumer links. Totally not related links. Junk. And from what Ive seen, I believe the sites ranking 1-3 are making about $1000. a day.

So you can imagine what being this close, after losing so much is doing to me.

So....

Right now I am just writing content, pinging, social bookmarking and submitting rss feeds  daily.

Does anyone have any real information on how to bump my site up in rankings. Please, no stories about guest blogging, or attempts to sell me your SEO service

I know I would do it for someone else and I have many times in the past.

If you can help me, please reread, and contact me.  I wish you all the best. Sorry for the melodrama.

[LighthouseC]

I think it is very difficult to judge your own site objectively.  I tend to snap at my wife when she is critical of something on my website (although I am more tolerable with other people weirdly).  It sounds like you need fresh eyes on the situation.  I am no expert at SEO although I know enough to know when something is not right.  I am pretty new to SEOmoz so I am not sure what the rules area about sharing sites etc but if I have your web address I would be happy to give you feedback on your campaign at no charge (if this is allowed) and whether there are any obvious steps that could improve it.  I am not looking for SEO business so this is in no way going to lead to me selling you anything.  From what you are saying though it sounds like you need to divert some of your time from content creation and syndication to developing relationships with authoritative sites so that they link to you although without looking at your site etc it is hard to make any solid recommendations.

It sounds like you are in a situation where you could really benefit from a professional SEO but do not have the resources to fund one and I really feel for you with this.  If your assumptions are correct it is very easy to see how in as little as two months getting the right SEO expertise to add value to your efforts could really pay for itself many times over as if $1000 or $2000 a month makes you an extra $200 plus a day it very quickly pays for itself.

[Aran_Smithson]

You ask for no stories about guest posting, but at present I think this is one of the best weapons an SEO can bring to bear. I have had superb success with guest posting over the past 6-9 months which has resulted in top 3 rankings across all my main keywords.

If you shared your URL, we would be able to make some real critique that may uncover some underlying factors that are hindering our site.

Best of luck with which ever strategy you move forward with.

[MoosaHemani]

Justin my answer will be short and smile and i am pretty sure that you will not like it too much!

Now when you said you don’t have enough links, so you have two options left

1. Similar to others you can also order junk links
2. Or focus more on quality links pointing back to your website (that can and cannot be guest posting)

Move for option one will make your condition worst, you might even fall from #11 spot (dangerous option)

Moving for option two might take a bit of a time like (a month or more) but you will move to page one with stability and you will make more money from it.

The choice is always yours but keep yourself updated with the result of each option available.