1st Page for a Very Competitive Term - How Long?

[dailypress]

Roughly how long do you think showing up on the first page will take for a term with 60,000,000 results on Google.

Here are some stats:
I have the non-.com version of that popular term and almost all other extensions including the .com is parked. That helps a bit in SEO by eliminating some competitors.
I have around 230 links to my site according to Google Webmaster Tools and the site is almost a year old.
So far only 100 images have been indexed when I do a Google Image search for site:example.TLD.
The site gets almost 200 visitors/day through Google.

I understand there are many other factors involved however if you can share some stats, and knowledge based on your experience, I think I can get a rough idea whether I need to wait a few more months/years or decades.

[tedster]

Can you give some other information that will help evaluate your question:

1. Using the AdWords Keyword Tool at [adwords.google.com...] - what do you get for search volumes and advertiser competition level? This is more of a clue to competition than the total number of results.

2. The current #1 and #10 URLs show what PR and how many backlinks on Yahoo Site Explorer?

[dailypress]

KeywordToolExternal: Match Type=Exact shows:

Competition Level is Full Bar = Very High Competition Level
Local Search Volume: 50,000
Global monthly Search Volume: 135,000

Home page PR for my site is 4/10

Yahoo shows: Wikipedia/ site first and the 10th link is Wiktionary/

Wikipedia is PR9 and for Wiktionary is PR7
Total backlinks for Wikipedia is 818,641 and for Wiktionary it's 2,354,557

[edited by: dailypress at 7:42 pm (utc) on June 17, 2009]

[tedster]

I'd say you need to work on attracting some more VERY high quality backlinks to compete on that first page, ever. It's probably not a competition you can win just on your own ability to place backlinks that you control.

You say you are currently getting 200 Google visitors a day. Do any of those query terms include the keyword or keywords you are targeting (as part of a longer search phrase)? That would be a positive sign. I would consider any existing traffic first, and work on improving how you rank on those phrases by enhancing that content.

[dailypress]

thanks Tedster for your response.

Yes, most of that 200 visitors/day comes from compound words, the popular term being the first word such as:

example+keyword2
example+keyword3
and so on....

and the following pages show up for those searches:
example.tld/keyword2
example.tld/keyword3

I figured since the domain I have itself is the keyword I have a better chance on ranking for "example" but the last time I checked it wasnt even on the 40th page of SERP's. I gave up checking the rest of the pages.

[imnotadoctor]

Seems to me you are on the right track.

How well do you feel the on page optimization of this site is?

Also, what type of link building have you been doing?

6 to 8 months bottom line with an aggressive SEO campaign.

[MLHmptn]

How old is the domain and when was the first day it was cached by Google? How old are your backlinks (and more importantly are they relevant)? Keyword in domain IS weighted heaviliy in Google (I don't care who on here tells you it's not because it is). Also write up a quality tidbit on your site in AboutUs and request a nofollow link for doing such. Get a BBB listing, get listed in the prominent directories, sign up for scanalert if your e-commerce based (not only for it's daily scan but for the directory listing) and I think you'll be pleasantly surpised within 6-12 months.

Also if you have the option of donating to a charity that has a website, trade the donation for a quality link!

[internetheaven]

Is the search term informational or commercial?

[tangor]

How does it show up in Bing?

[dailypress]

thanks guys, here are my answers:

1)Page optimization: fairly well although I still have to add ALT and Title tags to many images. I am using Drupal as the CMS and made a pretty clean and professional site with little ads and distraction.
I havent done any link building or never submitted the link to directories other than DMOZ which hasnt included it yet.

2)The site is about a year old. If I remember correctly it was cached last Sept 2 weeks after the site went live and I added backlinks from my other sites. The backlinks are fairly relevant, most of them coming from forums or my partner/friends websites. (I havent and dont plan to do link exchanges but returned my friends favors through my other sites)

3) AboutUs and request a nofollow link for doing such.

A NoFollow link?

4)I would say its informational.

5)I show up on the front page 4th in Bing searching the term 'example' Wow. I didnt notice that cause less than 1% of my traffic is from Bing. But its still cool to see that im on the front page.

6)The domain is less than a year old.

[MLHmptn]

Forum links wont do you a bit of good so don't count any of those, cached sept 2 so your approaching the sandbox time delay and how old are your inbound links?

And yes, I meant "index,follow" not no,follow like I posted above. Glad you caught that. Bad on my part.

I think you need to acquire some better links and more because you should be noticing something by now if the links were good enough.

[dailypress]

thanks MLHmptn, so would you say I could expect a higher slope on my google analytics traffic within a few months? or year?

inbound links started within a few weeks of the site back in Sept. but I am continuously getting links from forums mostly.

What is the sandbox time delay. How long does that usually go for?

Also, how many times do you guys submit to directories?

[tedster]

There is no set sandbox time delay - it all depends on trust and natural link acquisition.

[MLHmptn]

Just as tedster says, there is no exact time frame. It could be 2 months, it could be 18 months. Get some great links and the time frame will be less, get not so great links and it's going to take longer, get into a spammy neighborhood and well it could take till 2099. Evaluate your links to the best of your abilities. If you think the link is poor be rest assured that Google will think it's worthless as well. I have always pretty much summed it up as the harder the link is to acquire the better the link. If you can find some .org, .edu, .mil(good luck), links all the better. Remember your building TRUST and the age/quality of your links will build that trust.

I wish you well.

btw..where do you sit in the rankings with the allin operators (allinoperators being allinanchor, allintitle, allinurl, allintext)? This will pretty much give you an idea of where you stand at present and if your being sandboxed. You will show in the ranking on allin's but not in the regular SERP's.

[edited by: MLHmptn at 9:59 pm (utc) on June 19, 2009]

[willybfriendly]

Forum links wont do you a bit of good so don't count any of those...

Not so sure about this. I have seen evidence that these still have some influence, particularly for anchor text.

[fom2001uk]

I'm in agreement with the above statement. Forum links may not help with PR, but they do help with anchor text and they also help your link profile (if they're from relevant forums).