generic google ranking question

[Magnus]

Because honestly there's not enough questions about this already(sarcasm). Still, I just wanted some feedback from vets.

From what I've read in the crash course, and seen in numerous seo vids on youtube, the days of getting an EMD and using some sketch program to go out and "build you hundreds of high quality backlinks" are over. Google is now giving the nod to "brands" as well as quality/unique content. k cool, got it.

my site isn't an EMD. I'm still working on the same project I started posting on this forum with. I'm approaching about a month and a half of consistent/quality posts. when should I expect to start ranking for the low competition long-tail keywords i'm targeting?

I understand google isn't the end-all be-all of my marketing efforts but to pretend it isn't a big one is dumb. I have been focusing on creating quality content, and i'm positive i'm still in the "google sandbox" stage... I guess my main questions are:

Would it be a poor return on investment looking into backlink building services while still in the sandbox?

I will continue to drip feed content to my forum, twitter, instagram platforms but will lack of backlinks prolong google ranking?

 

[CCarter]

The only way to get out of the "sandbox" is quality backlinks. But there is no sandbox TBH. You have a site that's brand new - less than 1 year old (doesn't matter the registration date, it matters WHEN Google first INDEXED the first page), and you want to outrank against websites that have been in your niche already?

Even if it is low competition long-tail keywords - In Google's eyes who the fuck are you? Why would they start giving you rankings? Since time isn't on your side, you'll need backlinks - twitter and instagram aren't going to do it mate. Most people don't even have a strong following on twitter and still use egg avatars and no header image, so that's worthless.

So the key is to go where there is traffic and get backlinks from there, cause if there is traffic you can assume Google is also sending traffic to that website and that particular page and therefore Google sees that page as valuable enough to send traffic and trustworthy. So not only does Google see you getting backlinks from a web page they already trust enough to send traffic to, you'll also get targeted referral traffic that you need NOW while you play the SEO waiting game.

 

[Magnus]

speaking of who the fuck are you, my first thought was "who the fuck are you?" when i read this post lol. haven't been on the forum in a week or so trying to make progress and didn't recognize the non-angelic face avi.

thanks for the insight though.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Sounds like you need some links. You don't have to buy them even remotely. There's a million you can get yourself that I mentioned in the Off-Page SEO day of the Crash Course.

Regarding what to expect and how long for it to kick in...

Let's say you spent a week building tons of links of all kinds. By the end of the week some will be indexed, most won't. You're keeping a log of them all so you can check later on. A month goes by, you've gotten more indexation on articles, forums, blog comments, etc... but profiles are taking much longer. That's okay. You're starting to see a tiny bit of response to the effort you made. It's annoying that it takes this long but it's how they combat spammers and inconsistent builders.

At this point you run an indexation check on pages you created like profiles and articles that weren't indexed in the first place like forum threads and blog posts that you commented on would have been. Maybe you take that list and find a cheap seller of high metric auto-approve blog comments and buy 5-10 comments aimed at each of these pages. It's not for the juice (but it's there), but the high metrics guarantee that Google is crawling those pages. 5-10 isn't enough to raise a flag and it's tier 2 at this point. What you're doing is guaranteeing that spiders find the pages and that those pages now have some validation that they are worth being indexed. Be smart on your anchors, using brand names or generics, and you'll have zero negative repercussions.

That's if you want to run around scoring and creating low and medium value links, which is definitely worth your time. But if you want to save that for later, your power move will be traffic leaking, getting guest posts, and getting such mass visibility for such an awesome piece of content that others run around creating the low-value links for you.