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- it is focused on a competitve niche with plenty of people searching for laterally related terms.
- the site is 'sandboxed' as it is brand new.
- I am not renting any links.
- I do not buy any PPC traffic.
- I have a significant number of reciprocal links and some one way links from related sites in my network.
- submitted to several directories.
- submitted unique articles to various article repositories (one of which has been picked up by well over 100 people inside 4 days).
- submitted a free press release to PRWeb.
- the site has plenty of original content.
- spidered and included in the top 3 search engines.
Traffic comes mostly from highly targetted 3 and 4 word phrases. The largest referrer is MSN, followed by Yahoo and Google. (However, Google referrals have recently been picking up.) I also get a steady stream of visits from the backlinks I have built up on related sites within the industry.
I have used the .htaccess I found in a WebmasterWorld thread that disallows all the well-known spambots. I've got a rock solid robots.txt to back this up. I have 301'ed all non-www traffic to the full www address. I have also 301'ed all traffic from www.site.com/index.php to www.site.com/ to further consolidate and canonize the domain. The site is clean as a whistle, and the spiders from the main search engines seemingly can't get enough of it.
OK ... so after all that, my issue is this ... how can a site in this position get to the next level?
I have considered a forum - this particular site is focussed on product maintenance / troubleshooting etc. I have also thought of a store directory listing distributors by state / country. Another idea was to set up an affiliate store using a datafeed.
Do you have any suggestions that will take this from being 'another' site to being 'the' authority site in this niche? I'm up against a lot of competition who use black hat techniques ... any suggestions would be warmly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Andy
I have considered a forum - this particular site is focussed on product maintenance / troubleshooting etc. I have also thought of a store directory listing distributors by state / country. Another idea was to set up an affiliate store using a datafeed.Do you have any suggestions that will take this from being 'another' site to being 'the' authority site in this niche? I'm up against a lot of competition who use black hat techniques ... any suggestions would be warmly appreciated.
I'm not sure that I understand exactly what question you're asking, but if your real goal is to become more of an authority site, then I would focus my efforts on strategies and tactics on that one objective for now. And BTW, if you're up against a lot of black hats (i.e., very clever webmasters), then becoming an authority in your niche is one very good strategy.
Authority sites become authority sites by virtue of lots of other sites, especially relevant sites/pages, linking to them. So, what would cause others in your niche to link to you by choice, without requiring recip links? Of the three options you noted, a quality forum might help a lot. Forums and blogs offer a path to becoming an authority sites (just ask WW). ;-)
What other things might cause webmasters to link to you without even being asked? ;-)
Recently I've noticed a few strings like "widgets ny 10721" ... surely offering an SE friendly directory of stores (which hasn't really been done properly in this industry) would be a big benefit?
From what I have seen, directories work well to improve rank. Allow folks to sign up for free and then upgrade their listing for a fee. Can you offer a directory on something besides retailers? How about schools or a calendar of events?
Sometimes you can use the implied results of others' hard work and research to your own benefit. ;-)
