Strategies to compete with a new domain/site
-
Hi all,
What would be ( highlights ) your strategy in order to rank and compete with a new domain against competitors that have an average of 50% domain authority and around 2000 root domain linking to them, if you would start with a completely new website/domain?
How long would you estimate the new site to be competitive?
In the retail area.
Working on it a month full time
I would go with
- On page SEO off course, detailling each products and building the internal link structure
- Get back links, backlinks, backlinks and... backlinks...
- Build the social media network
- feed a blog
Thanks for your input
Considering working on the site for a month full time, I would estimate a ranking after a month or 2 although the competitions very high. Your thoughts ?
-
Hi Derek,
Sorry for reviving a very old thread but I was wondering how did it go with this project?
Thanks
Ricardo
-
Ok thanks
-
If you look at the wikipedia article for Philadelphia you will find something very similar to what we produce. (but ours would look a lot better)
-
Nice. Would you mind showing me one live article that you produced.
-
Right, our goal is to beat their content and then use it as a weapon to beat their links.
-
Ok thanks for the clarification. Those would effectively be best-on-the-web articles.
-
In a couple of months (two people working) we would produce perhaps six to eight articles, each with a few thousand words, many photos, data tables, references, graphs/art and more.
We are not going for "high quality". We are going for "best-on-the-web" for their topic. That is what you need to get the links to YOUR article.
-
Thanks for the input EGOL. Question: How many content are you looking at to say "couple of month or more" ? I mean that's a lot of content.
I have a good feeling that a kick start with around 50 high quality 1000 words articles all well optimized, each one targeting one specific keyword and interlinked would be a good starter for the content. And forward on the link building afterward.
-
I like to attack with high quality content that will pull natural links continuously over time.
So, for a retail site I would be looking to produce great content in the same topic niche as the products. That content has to be useful to your visitors and be high enough in quality to attract natural links. The goal would be to have best-on-the-web content for those topics. For a niche retail site like you describe producing this content could take a couple months or more of full time work. Then you need to get a few links to get the ball rolling. At first this would contribute very little to the strength of your site but if you have done a great job on selecting the right content and preparing it superbly the strength of your site will grow steadily over time. And, most important, the growth rate of the strength will accelerate over time as your rankings climb and your traffic increases.
-
Thanks for this input. I going in the same path as your first phrase. Making all the page perfect for the choosing keyword. In fact, pretty much of the competition are ranking due to
- Domain Authority
- High number of links ( internal, external, etc )
Most of the description for the "product" are short and more on a "specifications" style. I think that several good article/spec pages ( like 50 to begins with ) all very well optimise would give an edge putting some "content" up.
"Find the keywords that provide the best traffic (your competitors will be using them) and focus on the best 2-3 word phrases" -> yes, I prefer since a long time now to work with 2-3 and 4 word phrase even more.
Thanks for the input again.
-
Thanks for your input Gordon
-
I would look at getting all the on page perfect for the chosen keywords.
Making sure the urls target those keywords and all the canonical tags are set up to avoid losing juice to upper/lower case issues.
Having good human appreciated headings but still using keywords without overuse.
Get the links and blogs rolling with good anchor text.
See where you competitors are making errors in these areas and just do it better.
Find the keywords that provide the best traffic (your competitors will be using them) and focus on the best 2-3 word phrases.
Most of all keep it white-hat, or the hard work will be short lived.
Our business www.oznappies.com is ranking on page 1 & 2 for the main keywords within 2 months using that strategy and following reports and tools on SEOMoz. We have an SEO doing the links and blogs and I am doing the on-page work.
-
Hello,
As you probably know with a brand new site it is difficult to rank for competitive keywords within the first few months. I suggest create 2 lists of keywords - one keyword list that should contain keywords that are competitive and should be seen as longer term goals. The other keyword list should be less competitive keywords(possibly longer tail), that you can rank for in the short term.
Regards,
Gordon
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
-
Why does my old brand name still show up on organic search but as my new brand name and domain?
Hello mozers! I have quite the conundrum. My client used to have the unfortunate brand name "Meetoo" - which by the way they had before the movement happened! So naturally, they rebranded to the name Vevox in March 2019 to avoid confusion to users. However, when you search for their old brand name "Meetoo" the first organic link that pops up is their domain www.vevox.com. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, however it is when any #MeToo news appears in the media and we get a sudden influx or wrong traffic. I've searched the HTML and content for the term "Meetoo" but can only find one trace of this name through a widget. Not enough to hold an organic spot. My only other thinking is that www.vevox.com is redirected from www.meetoo.com. So I'm assuming this is why Vevox appear under the search term "Meetoo". How can I remove the homepage www.vevox.com from appearing for the search term "meetoo"? Can anyone help? AvGGYBc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz3 -
Looking for opinions on structuring meta title tags/page title/menu title/H1
Hi everyone I am hoping a few of you can share your opinions. I have been having conversations (okay, healthy debates) about how to write/structure meta title tag and how to compliment them with the H1, page title, menu name. To help explain the thought processes I will use a pretend keyword. How about "screwdriver". Case: (I made this up) we are redesigning a website for a construction tools manufacturing company (pretend name: ABC Tools) targeting OEMs who are interested in purchasing large quantities of tools. The product categories (to become main menu items) are Screwdrivers, Nails, Drills, and Hammers. (bear with me .... this is just an example I am making up on the fly) K. Circling back to screwdrivers - let's say we have one landing page (a primary category page and in the main menu) listing products and great details about screwdrivers. Focus keywords are screwdriver manufacturer, screwdriver supplier, construction screwdrivers Below are questions being debated. If you are willing ... how would you address these questions? And, can you explain WHY? QUESTION ONE: How would you structure the meta title tag (feel free to write one of your own) Screwdriver Manufacturer - Construction Screwdriver | ABC Tools ABC Tools - US-based Screwdriver Manufacturer Supplier Near You High-Quality Screwdrivers for Construction with ABC Tools QUESTION TWO: how would you write the H1 on the page? Would it match the meta tag? OR, would you write something different using the primary keyword? QUESTION THREE Remembering this is not a blog post ... it is a primary landing page linked to the main navigation. What would the menu title be? (remember the product categories above are how the main menu items are bucketed) Screwdrivers Screwdriver Manufacturer Typically in WordPress, the H1 and the menu title is auto-populated using the page title (not the title tag)... So, if we use Screwdrivers as the page title but we want the H1 to match the meta title tag, would we manually change the H1? Or, have the page title and title tag match, but manually change the menu item?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brenda.Haines1 -
Redirecting Domain / Maintaining Keyword Ranking
Right now we have two sites: "our-company.com" and "cool-widgets.com." We rank high for "cool widgets" searches due to our keyword-friendly URL, but we're merging everything into our newly-redesigned company site. Should we redirect the old "cool-widgets.com" homepage to "our-company.com" (to directly transfer the old PR and links), or would it be more prudent to redirect the old homepage to "our-company.com/cool-widgets" to keep the "cool widgets" keyword in the URL? This option seems like it would be good for maintaining organic search results, but it wouldn't pass the strong link backbone to the new site's homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | versare0 -
Why does old "Free" site ranks better than new "Optimized" site?
My client has a "free" site he set-up years ago - www.montclairbariatricsurgery.com (We'll call this the old site) that consistently outranks his current "optimized" (new) website - http://www.njbariatricsurgery.com/ The client doesn't want to get rid of his old site, which is now a competitor, because it ranks so much better. But he's invested so much in the new site with no results. A bit of background: We recently discovered the content on the new site was a direct copy of content on the old site. We had all copy on new site rewritten. This was back in April. The domain of the new site was changed on July 8th from www.Bariatrx.com to what you see now - www.njbariatricsurgery.com. Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhatUpHud0 -
Starting Over with a new site - Do's and Don'ts?
After six months, we've decided to start over with a new website. Here's what I'm thinking. Please offer any constructive Do's or Don'ts if you see that I'm about to make a mistake. Our original site,(call it mysite.com ) we have come to the conclusion, is never going to make a come back on Google. It seems to us a better investment to start over, then to to simply keep hoping. Quite honestly, we're freakin' tired of trying to fix this. We don't want to screw with it any more. We are creative people, and would much rather be building a new race car rather than trying to overhaul the engine in the old one. We have the matching .net domain, mysite.net, which has been aged about 6 years with some fairly general content on a single page. There are zero links to mysite.net, and it was really only used by us for FTP traffic -- nothing in the SERPS for mysite.net. Mysite.NET will be a complete redesign. All content and images will be totally redone. Content will be new, excellent writing, unique, and targeted. Although the subject matter will be similar to mysite.COM, the content, descriptions, keywords, images -- all will be brand spankin' new. We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.We will put in the time, and bite the bullet until mysite.NET rules Google once again. We'll change the URL in all of our Adwords campaigns mysite.net. My questions are: 1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go? 2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html ? Does the "bad link juice" get passed on to the clean site? It would be a better experience for users who know our URL if they could be redirected to the new site. 3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block? Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help 4. What have I forgotten? Cheers, all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarrenX0 -
New links not showing in site explorer ?
I have built links to my site this past month that I know are live and in place and some do follow and some no follow ... Are the no follow links just not going to show up in my site explorer data ? And the others - why would they not be showing up yet ? SeoMoz updated thier link data aug 1st , my site has been crawled since then , but this new work I have done for link building have not shown up - None of them ? Its like I did not do any work ? how long could it take for them to show up and affect my site trust ect ? Also is there anything I vould be doing to speed the process up of having the new links found ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Clone sites at new company
I just came in house to our company for SEO. We have one main site and 182 that are exact duplicates and almost exact clones of the main site. It's no surprise that half of these clones are deindexed already. The meta tags are just the domain name URL. I want to add unique text on the home page to each site, fix the meta tags and switch them up so they aren't clones. Other than a huge rewrite of the code for each site, I'm not sure what else to do to prevent the rest from getting deindexed. Is there any way to prevent the rest from getting deindexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Our site is recieving traffic for both .com/page and .com/page/ with the trailing slash.
Our site is recieving traffic for both .com/page and .com/page/ with the trailing slash. Should we rewrite to just the trailing slash or without because of duplicates. The other question is, if we do a rewrite, google has indexed some pages with the slash and some without - i am assuming we will lose rank for one of them once we do the rewrite, correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero0