Cash for gold fails to hit the jackpot

[Nightwing]

Buon giorno from 10 degrees C wetherby Uk...

This page http://www.ramsdensforcash.co.uk/cash-for-gold/ has languished in the backwaters of the SERPS for target term "Cash for Gold" for too long (6 months).

Heres what ive done so far:

On page markup optimized - tick
Internally linked - tick
Checked and resolved duplicate contnet - tick

Today i took a close look at how a competitor sites performs for targetted content and ramsdens is not far behind. So the only thing ive got left is internal & externall link building. SO i guess i'm asking..."Is link building the only tactic left?"

Grazie tanto,

David

[irvingw]

The homepage is your most important page, most PR, naturally linked to most, TLD etc.

If "cash for gold" is your most important target for your site you should target your homepage for that term if it is a highly competitive term and i'm sure it is.

[leatcristian]

Yep, you need to generate some "votes" towards that page, basically in that niche if they have any boutiques opened in any commercial mall in UK you can easily ask a link back from them(supposing that the mall has a website).

I'm working in the same niche but targeting another country and I must say that reputed business listing websites like yellow pages helped. New boutique opening, or any other information that could be newsworthy then you should definitely consider some press releases distribution(consider that a press release from Apple is generating 5k+ backlinks towards their website) .

[MattJanaway]

I wouldn't say it is the only tactic left but it should be the most important - Assuming that all on-site optimization is complete at least.

Other things to think about which might help are image optimization (Alt tags, file names etc) and social work. Also make sure the content is as good as possible and update it regularly.

Make sure if you start a link building campaign that you don't go crazy on anchor text. For every 10 links built, I would make 6 branded (mydomain.com or something similar), 2 natural anchor text (click here etc), 1 long tail anchor with inclusion of the main keyword ("great prices on cash for gold" or something similar) and finally maybe 1 link with exact match anchor text (cash for gold). There is no way of knowing for sure the correct amounts of each so you will have to test as you go along but the above formula should help

Matt

EDIT: I knew I saw an article recently about building a natural link profile and I have just found it. Clicky me!

I might even write my own version of the above link at some point soon showing some of my findings after some extensive testing.