Forum Moderators: martinibuster
However I am also hearing that in order to rank high on these major search engines its a good idea to have both, with more weight given to quality.
I have a newbie site about 6 months old and from day 1 I have been working my butt off to establish a link strategy that has both quality and quantity.
I have done very well in this area of obtaining the links necessary to rank well but yet I am nowhere to be found on my major keywords.
I have lots of indexed pages on these engines but yet no ranking not even on minor keywords.
Before you ask the question, the answer is yes this site is well optimized and is following all the "white hat" rules.
So my question is why no ranking yet? Is six months too early to expect results?
Things use to be much easier back in the day to get sites ranked. Now they appear nearly impossible.
Any comments or suggestions would be truly appreciated.
Thank You!
I don't think 6 months is too early. I did a new site recently and it took 3 months to get a good ranking in google. I didn't really do much link exchange with this, but the ones i did were all quality sites.
I see no point in the quantity argument. I think links from totally unrelated sites could be harmful. But i'm no expert.
Regards,
Tim
I think links from totally unrelated sites could be harmful.
There is no automated process that could make that decision. I have links coming in from completely unrelated sources, where my site content overlaps in theme to something else otherwise completely unrelated (if that makes sense!).
On a manual review, if it looked like a link-exchange purely to manipulate SERPS, then it would certainly be harmful.
All links are good in my experience, as long as they are genuine, and not a link-exchange for the sole benefit of a link-exchange. Currently, I see quantity overtaking quality, but both are highly important.
Keep it natural.
TJ
When you say "Keep It Natural" does placing an advertisement on a high PR site considered natural?
The point I am getting at is seeing that search engines for the most part are automated machine crawls, how can the engines tell the difference?
Seeing that these same high Quality, high traffic sites that provide advertising on their sites do advertising themselfs. Is this a bad form of inbound linking strategy?
I am not sure that it is. Take a look around at all the successful sites on the internet that rank high and get good traffic.
They all in some form are buying and selling advertised links.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
Looking at all domains in the areas we work in there was no domain that was registered after 2004 that is ranking. If you do have a site that ranks for a competetive search in google that is less than 6 months old please sticky me as I would like to have a look at the backlinks.
Basically I think G has said, well there are enough domains now that rank for these terms so why let any more in? All the oldies that have been round for ages are king. Thank god we started in 99 and have a sufficient bunch of domains with old backlinks to keep us in business. Now I get an unsandboxed site throw some content up, bung some links at it and it ranks in 3 months. Amazing what you can do with an established domain. Does not matter where the links come from, the domain is the important thing.
Only a few ways to rank with a new domain. One is do something viral and get a load of links from accross the internet spectrum.
Secondly is to have a site that many people will link to from old authority sites and more than one authority site for sure.
3rd have a friend at the plex who can put a pixel link on google's index page :)
An old trick that worked years ago. Basically it is a pixel on a page that has a link to your site that is not visible to the human eye. Hey, do people still do those?
I think links from totally unrelated sites could be harmful.
This rumor and the one about getting links from "bad neighborhoods" has been dead for a long time due to the simple way it could be abused by:
1. Making a spamtastic site
2. Getting it banned
3. Linking to your competition
I'm still of the mindset though that linking TO bad neighborhoods and banned sites can get you in trouble...
And yes a major spike in inbound links can throw up a red flag as well. Make your inbound linking strategy natural, steady and constant and no bad will come of it. Of course links from relevant sites will do more for you than links from unrelated sites. And I second the notion that you want to have keywords in the anchor text of your inbound links, not just your company name (though granted you probably want to rank well for your company name too).
As far as purchased links are concerned. I have had great success with this method. Any links that are put up as a result of payment you want to keep a tight leash on though. Always check for Javascript redirects and coverups, and check the source code for rel=nofollow. Other than that you are usually golden.
Sounds like the sandbox to me.
Rank will in MSN. Get some ranking in Yahoo and Nothing and I mean nothing in Google.
Whats the normal time frame for sandbox? Since launch it going on 6 months? When can I expect to get out?
My believe is that quality links are the basic need of a website. It helps in many ways like increase the popularity of your site as well as PR of site.
Cheers
P_P
Murdoch. Do you have a formula for buying links to rank? Is this on a new domain or old?
Old domain (circa 1998) and as far as a "formula" for buying links, there really isn't something set in stone. It all depends on your budget and theme I guess.
Granted I work for a large company so we throw nearly $1000 a month into link buys. If it was my own budget I think I would probably just submit to the dedicated directories to start. The links are permanent and sometimes you don't even have to pay for them (though to get them up quickly and consistently the average price is around $30)
Yes, I know what you're saying to yourself about directories, but the truth is that there are still some "authority" directories that G still places weight on (DMOZ being the first to spring to mind) so it's a good starting point.
Sugarrae makes some good points regarding link and anchor variation. The one I would like to second emphasis on is DEEP LINKING. It's pretty common knowledge these days that you should build a whole page around a term you want to rank for (or more than one if you want to get indented listings - something I will back all the way to the bank) and then get links to THAT page, rather than the homepage. Make sure all your pages have a link TO the homepage and sitemap though for PR purposes. This is where your internal linking will pay off.
Also something that seems to work well is creating a hyperlink on your homepage to a deep linked page using the title tag (or part of it) as the anchor text (which the title tag should already be optimized for the keywords you want to rank for). This will almost guarantee you an indented listing too.
Of course links to the homepage are still a good idea. Directory submissions pretty much force you to link to the homepage so focus your subdomain linking elsewhere. Make sure any links purchased are ON TOPIC to yours and never buy a link where you can't control the anchor text.
Nothing and I mean nothing in Google.
I know this is somewhat off topic from link development but have you submitted a sitemap yet? This is an excellent way to get a seemingly sandboxed domain into the spotlight.
Not I have not given that a try but maybe I should, at this point I will try anything to get out of the box.
Do you have any success stories to share regarding sitemap submittals?
Interesting idea. Has anyone else seen evidence that using Google's new site map submission tool might help reduce the "sandbox" effect (boost a new site in the SERPs despite having only new links, aka "in the sandbox"?
Everyone has their own point of view, but quantity over quality definitely seems to be the case with MSN and Yahoo. Some quality links get you in strikingn range, but to get to p 3 you need links and lots of them. (Yahoo seems to be individual domains, whereas MSN can be ROS).
Now just waiting to hear everyone tell my how I'm wrong and their experiences are very different ;-)
Best guess your in the sandbox. Some sites we work on are in for 9-12 months. The fact that you are link building from day one can also trigger this imo. Its possible that Google compares your site and the speed its attracting links compared to others in your sector?. Anoying as it is, its just a matter of time.
Also, imo the more expensive the keywords the more likey that you are sandboxed. The only sites we get involved in that excape the sandbox are in the lower priced keywords - thats just our experience of it.
One site we worked on sat outside the top 500 for every keyword and was ranking outside of sites that were not even on topic. Then bang after three updates (about 9 months) pages were flying in the serps. IMO this will likely be the case with your site having seen this so many times now on sites built after March 2004.
Anyway, onto a more possitive note, keep up the hard work, continue improving content and links and within the next couple of updates you will come out fighting.
All the best.
Rich.
P.S Ref Quality V Quantity, i think quality wins hands down, quantity can help Google establish what your sites about but you cant beat on topic high PR back links if you can get them.
