How Do I Climb Those Last Few Spots

rothschild

rothschild

Joined
Nov 29, 2015
Messages
58
Likes
60
Degree
0
My site seems to be performing pretty well - I have a few 1st page rankings for my 'best' guides but now I have a bit of a problem - my site seems stuck between results 5-8.

The way I see it I have 2 choices - more internal links to the page or more external links to the page... what's the best/safest way to climb these final few spots?
 
more of both, is probably what I would do and remember the higher the autority of sites you get your external links from the better.
 
Match and exceed.

Do they have more backlinks? Do they have better backlinks? Whatever it is, get more than they have. Don't just blindly build links, look at what your competitors have/are doing.
 
Do nothing.

Are you sure what you already isn't enough to get you to top 1-3?

Problem I see is SEO people are too impatient. How do you know 1 of the top 5 wont vanish tomorrow due to an algo shit or a auto-penalty getting you to 4th or 3rd?

How do you know that the delayed reaction times the algo has isn't fulled played out? What if Google right nos is 20 days behind in credited you 3rd place and you go and shoot off 300 more links and that actually sends a red flag to auto-penalize you before you even have been credited the 3rd place you might have gotten.

Time is the best weapon Google has put out to deter SEOs from gaming the system. It pretty much does a lot of work for them right now.
 
Assuming we're talking about non-spam...

As always, more links from relevant external pages.

Look for opportunities to increase your on-page SEO and add more content and types of content (images, lists, videos, etc.).

You can start publishing posts on your site that are about the same topic and link back to the one you want to rank. And then try to get links to those posts as well.

If the page is legitly useful / entertaining, spend a little cash to try to generate some social signals to it (Facebook is your best bet, I think, for quicker results).

Drop it on Reddit and with enough upvotes it'll become a do-follow link. Comment on the post and reply to others, try to get a conversation going. The more people that comment, the more internal Reddit links you'll have going to it. Helps with indexing and juice.

Start profiles on relevant forums and post around for 10-20 posts across the span of a week. Disarm everyone, then drop the link in a way that creates conversation and doesn't let them know you created it. If it's getting engagement, moderators are going to be far less willing to delete it or worry about it.

A gigantic pain in the butt outreach campaign that nets you a solid 10 contextual links would definitely help move the dial.

See if you can work on your title tag and meta description to get more CTR in the SERPs.
726 x 663​
 
you might also want to look at the exif data on pics and videos, it is one of the most overlooked things to optimise, and it is a killer thing to start doing, naturally it works best with image search but still it should do some even for your rankings.
Exif data if you don't know is when you right click your images/videos and go to the properties and start editing as much as you can but still dont make it spammy but natural and like somone who actually cares that the right data is in those images
 
lion can you support this with evidence? I know optimising file name and alt tag is great for images but does EXIF data have any relevance on seo?
 
It does have relevance on seo, but not a lot of relevance, I just do it for the little extra it gives plus for the hughe bennifit from image search.
 
Few things I do when I'm stuck;

1. Wait it out - more action and fiddling isn't always the best way to take. Focus on optimizing the traffic you are getting by reducing bounce rate and increasing time on site, etc. All that stuff. You don't necessarily need to be adding MORE links if you are already on the first page.

2. Speed up load time - run all your images through kraken.io and check what's loading slowest with gtmetrix.com. I see big improvements in load time optimization, however I do local exclusively so it might be an easier algo to manipulate.

3. Optimize the exif data as mentioned above - this is one of the little things that can make a difference.

Hope that helps!
 
Without going too overboard I have to agree with JB and wait it out. Build more great content on your site and interlink when relevant and try and add relevant updates to the page.
 
If you wanted to you can try usage metrics, as in boosting your CTR artificially. This helped me with a few product rankings on page one get into the top 3. You can use software (pandabot or serpify) or pay people on micro workers sites. If its local just get friends and family to do it from their own IP. Make note of when you start and watch the results in a few days time! Just be careful if it is a low LMS keyword you don't want to be exceeding it.

Tucky said:
lion can you support this with evidence? I know optimising file name and alt tag is great for images but does EXIF data have any relevance on seo?
Click to expand...

I have not personally done an experiment to back this up but I know a lot of local lead gen guys that use this in their site building formula. There is a tool they use to inject the data into any image before publishing. Any case studies around please share!
 
What's the best way? External link
What's the safest way? Internal links

If you're worried about getting over-optimized for the anchor text on the Best Guides page, then create a new blog post and link internally from the new blog post to your Guides page (using whatever keyword you're trying to boost). Then build external link(s) to the new blog post with natural or random anchors. The juice should still pass through to your target page, avoid anchor text optimization, and add contextual relevancy along the way.
 
On these cases your site already has the authority it needs to be on Page 1. The route I always prefer is the On Site SEO route. As @ddasilva comments, a good strategy is to silo blogposts behind the page you want to push upwards. Meaning, link from authoritative already ranking pages back to those stubborn ones, and create 5-10 new blog posts about the subject, linking back to the page you want to push. Adding some Schema or JSON LD has helped me in the past, since you're feeding more relevant rich content into the algorithm without having to do a ton of work on the site.
 
Is your schema.org implementation in order? Does it exist?
 
My recommendation would be to wait it out and keep adding links as time goes by... It's also good to add social signals to the mix if you're link volume grows.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back