Top 3 actions I should immediately take.... ?
-
Site: bussongs.com
I have a fairly successful (400k visits/month, 1.2m PV/month) site which features a directory of kids songs.
kididdles.com is my archnemesis. Slight edge in PVs with better ranking on many long-tail KWs (song names mainly).
What are the top 3 things I should do to knock out my competitor? I feel I've nailed the on-page stuff - I have checked all the major items and produced superior content.
The big thing that shouts out to me is that my competitor just has many more backlinks, especially from unique domains and that's lifting up everything.
Thoughts? Can't wait to hear your ideas!
-
I'll also consider non link based ranking signals:
-
Social media presence
-
Improve website engagement - stuff like bounce, clickthrough rates, site speed etc
-
Look at your link-profile via OSE and see what's missing compared to top competitors or similar websites.
Need more high quality links? Then produce content or anything that the linking websites could use and start creating relationships with them. Better yet - pick up the phone and call them!
If in doubt, you can just focus on diversifying your link-profile, avoiding the "bad" types links ofcourse.
Qasim
-
-
Before you spend time buildling a widget, I'd do some research and find out if it's something that webmasters are likely to use (and how many of them would be interested!)
My advice would be to try and identity a "need" first and then come up with something that satisfies that need (and of course give you a backlink too)
What do you know about your visitors? What type of people are they and why are they visiting your site?
Who's currently linking to you and why?
On your website you say "created to help kids, parents, and teachers recall the words and lyrics to loved children songs"
Do you provide nice and easy ways these people can print the lyrics (with your branding and link of course). Getting traffic from off-line sources is still traffic!
Do you have a mailing list? You could offer the lyrics to a song every week. Might to sustain awareness of your site and increase returning visitors.
-
Great thoughts Doug.
Of course there's no quick and easy fix with this. I've dedicated very little to link building, so that's a clear area where I need to devote time now. And you're right - I need to understand the reasons why those links exist and replicate that high-level strategy rather than just chasing to get the same links.
I was considering building a widget that'd allow webmasters to embed lyrics on their site and then I could create a backlink within the display. I'd love to think of an incentive for link-building, but struggling so far to come up with creative ideas.
-
I think the obvious answer is that you need to build links. Can you think of any way you can give your visitors and incentive to link back to you? Getting your visitors to do your link building for you would be ideal!
Have you taken a look at not just the number of backlinks your competitor has, but where they are getting their backlinks from?
You can then try to get links from the same places (take a good look at why people are linking to your competitor though!)
Also try to get a feel for the kinds of sites, and the reasons why people are backlinking and then try to cast your net to capture all sites that match this profile.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Setting country specific top level domain as alias - will site benefit from TLDs authority?
I have a host of sites that follow a top level domain strategy. For each local site they will be on the top level domain but with their country-languages prefix as the subdirectory. Such as below: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gracejo
example.com/uk-en
example.com/sg-en
example.com/de-de Each local site being on the TLD will benefit them in terms of SEO and it makes it easier to have one strategy. My question however, if the Netherlands comes on board, they would generally have example.com/nl-en. However they want their primary domain as examplenetherlands.nl and the TLD (example.com/nl-en) set as an alias/secondary domain that redirects to the primary. Will they benefit from any SEO if the TLD is not the primary address?0 -
Hostage Taking by My Wordpress Developer
Since 2013 a Wordpress developer has coded my real estate website. Their hourly rate is $24 but the programmers take too long to perform tasks and the service has become prohibitively expensive. Examples of unreasonable time estimates below: | | 1. Change theme settings so posts/pages do not display a date. -> 7 hrs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2.Google search results are displaying the breadcrumb on the top of each page rather than the URL. Please correct so this does not display. -> 3 hrs
3. Install SSL certificate to www.metro-manhattan.com domain -> 8 hrs | | The above does not include 5-6 hours for testing. I am considering changing vendors. Potential programmers have asked how the site was developed and to what extent is it is customized. Ends up several plugins were built from scratch. My question is whether a new developer is going to be able to pick up a custom coded site. That without understanding how the site was built, any change will break the site. My concern is that current developer has made themselves indispensable, and created a situation where there is no alternative to using them and they can therefore charge any price they want.Any thoughts? Also below are questions I asked my developer about how the site was built and their answers: | 1. Was everything coded using a child theme?
No, is a custom theme. 2. Did you use any ready made theme or just plugins
We used the theme and and we've used plugins. Third party plugins and plugins builded from scratch 3. Can Wordpress and every one of the plugin be updated?
Wordpress can be updated, core files was never modified. If after an update something start to work wrong is due to some radical wordpress change or similar Can't be updated: FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin Created at xxx: Form Submissions Report Miscellaneous Hooks and Filters NYC Check memory usage NYC SEO listings NYC Slider Sitemap Updater 4. Were any of the plugins customized and if so, which ones?
Yes, this plugin "FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin" |0 -
Phantom 3 Update?
My site got demolished by this update and I really don't know why and would appreciate if any Mozzers could help me out to understand this. I just found out about this update that happened today and I am kind of shocked and at a loss on what happened. If someone would PM me, I would really appreciate it Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steve450580 -
Can Google penalize your site without sending you a Manual Spam Action?
I had a massive drop in traffic in Mid 2013, and a slow reduction since then. It has sort of leveled off now, but it's not exactly climbing I've never received a manual spam action. The answer to my question seems pretty obvious, now that I write it out... but have you heard of anyone getting penalized, without specifically receiving a warning? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
My site is always in the top 4 on google, and sometimes goes to #2\. But the site at #1 is always at #1 .. how can i beat them?
So i'm sure this is a very generic question.. of course everyone wants to be #1. We are an ecommerce web site. We have all sorts of products, user ratings, and are loved by our customers. We sell over 3 million a year. So let me give you some data.. First of all one of the sites that keeps taking the #2 or #3 spot is amazons category for what we sell.. (i'm not sure if I should say who we are here.. as I don't want the #1 spot to realize we are trying to take them over!) Amazon of course has a domain authority of 100. But they never take the #1 spot. The other site that takes the #2 and #3 spot is not even selling anything. Happens to be a technical term's with the same name wikipedia page! (i wish google would figure out people aren't looking for that!) Anyways.. every day we bouce back and forth between #4 and #2.. but #1 never changes.. Here are the stats of us verse #1 from moz: #1: Page Authority: 56.8, Root Domains Linking to page: 158, Domain Authority: 54.6: root domains linking to the root domain 1.42k my site: Page Authority: 60.6, Root domains linking to the page: 562, Domain Authority: 52.8: root domains linking to the root domain: 1.03k So they beat us in domain authority SLIGHTLY and in root domains linking to the root domain. So SEO masters.. what do I do to fix this? Get better backlinks? But how.... I can't just email GQ and ask them to write about us can I? I'm open to all things.. Maybe i'm not using moz data correctly.. We should at least be #2. We get #2 every other day.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 88mph0 -
Content question about 3 sites targeted at 3 different countries
I am new here, and this is my first question. I was hoping to get help with the following scenario: I am looking to launch 3 sites in 3 different countries, using 3 different domains. For example the.com for USA, the .co.uk for UK , and a slightly different .com for Australia, as I could not purchase .com.au as I am not a registered business in Australia. I am looking to set the Geographic Target on Google Webmaster. So for example, I have set the .com for USA only, with .co.uk I won't need to set anything, and I will set the other Australian .com to Australia. Now, initially the 3 site will be "brochure" websites explaining the service that we offer. I fear that at the beginning they will most likely have almost identical content. However, on the long term I am looking to publish unique content for each site, almost on a weekly basis. So over time they would have different content from each other. These are small sites to begin with. So each site in the "brochure" form will have around 10 pages. Over time it will have 100's of pages. My question or my worry is, will Google look at the fact that I have same content across 3 sites negatively even though they are specifically targeted to different countries? Will it penalise my sites negatively?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ryanetc0 -
Manual Action Email Notifications
Is it me or you don't get (and not supposed to) email notifications when your site gets a manual action penalty? I mean I can see it in the Google Webmaster Tools interface, but I never get notifications in my Inbox. Is that how it works or I just need to set it up somehow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VinceWicks0 -
How to get better URL description when ranking #3
OK, last question of the week. I promise. I'm doing something right. I distribute for manufacturers. For some of my less known manufactuers I am #3 or #2 rank. For my main product the manufacturer is #1,2 with some numerical code as the discription. The manufacture will sell direct. To get the customers attention I need to PPC, and luckily it's inexpensive. Is there any way to control what the content is of the listing?. I would like to state in my #3 rank " 10-10-PP, In stock, same day shipping, best pricing." Does Google choose what to display and if so is there some where on my site I can influece this? For you experts, perhaps this is the joke of the week.? Please do not have a heart attack when laughing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wales0