How do you rank a site in a very competitive market?
-
Do you focus on article submission, social media backlinks or what?
-
Hi Shauna!
I agree with everyone here, and I'd encourage you to specifically not focus on the practices you've mentioned. I'd also like to suggest two specific resources for you—Cyrus Shepard's "How to Rank" post and ebook, and our Beginner's Guide to Link Building.
-
Building links is important for SEO but if you're just starting out on a fresh site, I don't suggest starting there. Spend the time improving the website's onsite factors and overall user experience so it's a place users want to go.
It can be difficult to build legitimate backlinks if your site is very thin on content and hard to use because, quite simply, it doesn't look trustworthy.
We've had great success in competitive industries by starting almost exclusively with onsite elements then steadily shifting the focus toward building genuine links. Below are just some of the more important elements we work on in the early days, regardless of industry. These are in no particular order:
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Headings
- Nav structure and layout
- URL structure
- Landing page content (my recommendation is 1500+ words of uniquely valuable content per landing page though this figure is anecdotal - better to have 1000 words of good content than to pad it out with rubbish for the sake of an arbitrary word count)
- Site speed
- Call to action
- Overall user experience - how easy is it for users to satisfy their intent on your site?
There are certainly plenty more things to consider which Moz and Backlinko cover quite well. The important thing to remember here is that you're not jumping through arbitrary hoops to "improve rankings", you're building a trustworthy, more helpful website for users. The early ranking improvements are really just a side-benefit in the short term.
The concept of article submissions is thankfully quite dead these days. There are some instances where it makes sense but very rarely. Just like everything else in SEO, if done with the right intent (providing a helpful resource, not just building a backlink) then it can be done with reasonable success but there are better ways to spend your time.
Also, backlinks from social media are quite different to a link from another website. These "social mentions" are important because while they may or may not directly improve your rankings, they do work to build a stronger image for your brand; "146,000 people follow this brand on Facebook, they're obviously quite a strong company!".
I hope at least some of this proves helpful! Don't forget to do some thorough competitor analysis to see what your competition is up to as well. You'll never beat someone by copying them but their tactics might spark some great ideas.
-
As you can see from Egol's response, you need to take a big picture approach to optimization. There aren't any quick fixes anymore, especially in competitive markets.
Rather than focusing on article submissions or social media backlinks (which sound like you're emphasizing link growth first), take a step back and come up with a strategy that's going to work long-term for your website, industry and specific target market. There are a ton of good resources on the site to help you do that. This query surfaces helpful Q&A and articles from the last year alone. I suggest you start there.
Then, come back here with more questions. The more specific you can be, the better the answers you'll get. There are a lot of people who are willing to share their lessons learned and past experiences here.
Good luck!
-
How do you rank a site in a very competitive market?
-
Spend time learning about the market, its products, their uses, their problems, their customers, maintain this effort as long as you are working this industry.
-
Concurrently, be working on a website that shares all that you are learning about the products, their uses, the problems that they can solve and the problems that come with them. Share what people want to know, share what they need to know but don't know that they need know.
-
Plan to be on this journey for at least several years.
-
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
-
old posts / delete or update Big Site with more than 6000 articles
Hi, my site is related to education and i published more than 6000 articles from last 10 years, i naver delete but frequently update the Good Articles but some old articles that is not giving visitors, i did not update and some of them are short articles. i started in year 2021 and many articles in year 2012 to 2023 i write. please check my site and advise can i delete old out dated articles ? and countinue writing new articles with same topics, actuly from last month of August 2023 my site visitors lost with time from more than 70 percent.
Content Development | | bedah
thank so much for advise.
can i delete out dated content?
some of my contents are not ranking even i update before it was on top position but now even after update still other website is ranking more than me in current year.
#old Content ?
#update or delete?0 -
Any recommendations on a Content Marketing Firm?
I have used several and had some good results. Am wondering if I can find one that is more cost effective than who I am using now, as they just doubled their prices.
Content Development | | RoxBrock0 -
B2b services site, deep long tail services or flat and broad
Hi all, i have a small internet agency with services in several area's.
Content Development | | mdkay
Currently i structud my services in 2 different area's.
General services and specialized products with services underneath. like so:
domain.com/services
domain.com/services/service1
domain.com/services/service2
and so on. domain.com/product
domain.com/product/service1
domain.com/product/service2 domain.com/product2
domain.com/product2/service1
domain.com/product2/service2 But now im thinking of create loads of different services i provide,
there are some overlapping content of course, but all services are still individual.
But i can write a lot of unique content about all the services. But is it smarter to make just a few big pages with the services more bundled.
Or really long tail. Now i have around 15 services pages.
when i make it a lot deeper im talking about 40 pages. Currently my complete website is around 35 pages.0 -
Can You Get Better Ranking/Conversion by Reducing the Number of Pages?
I am seriously considering reducing the number of pages in a section of our website. We currently have 39 webpages. I'm considering reducing it to 6. The site architecture would make more sense giving recent design changes. And we could focus more attention on improving conversions from these 6 new pages. But I'm considering doing this mainly because I think it'll help us do a better job of communicating to and converting our audience. The new pages would be longish. The existing 39 pages are by no means stubs, but these new pages would be longer. Anyway, what I want to put out for discussion is the SEO impact. What are the good SEO reasons for reducing the number of pages? Can 6 well-done pages out perform 39 pretty-well-done pages? How many queries can one page rank for well? Is this SEO suicide? Honestly, there's a part of me that cannot believe I'm saying this, but I think my heart is in the right place.
Content Development | | justin-brock1 -
Site Content Review Please!
I m looking for someone who can review my site and let me about quality of content on my site. Can anyone suggest / know who I can talk to about this ? Nick
Content Development | | orion680 -
Getting an image to rank in blended search
Hi Mozzers, Has anyone got any good tips to get an image to rank in blended search when a user searches for a specific company name. I'm not talking about image search - I'm talking about the regular SERPs that sometimes contain images (normally logos) when you search for 'Coca Cola' for example - any ideas. Thanks Gareth
Content Development | | Bush_JSM0 -
Are there quality blog sites allowing guest blogging ?
hi can someone guide me the right direction for guest blogging ? i m looking for quality blog sites that allow guest blogging especially for ecommerce related sites. Thank you Nick
Content Development | | orion680 -
How can I rank using translated content?
My friend has a website with similar content to mine, in a different language however. He has allowed me to translate his content if I link to it every post (can be nofollow). Does Google penalize me for clearly translated content? How can I make sure it ranks well? BTW, if I convince him that I don't link to him, is it better SEO-wise? Best,
Content Development | | kikocherman
Cherman0