How to stay on top

[digic]

My article use to stay on top for a few days but after about 2 to 3 days it will dropped and days passed it will be at the bottom then on page 2 etc...

Similar article, of course new contents from a competitor will be on top 1. But he manages to stay there. How did he do that?

[bigcat1967]

Are you backlinking every day? - if not, I would do that. I found w/ our sites, that we would get to the top and then we stop backlinking, next thing I know, we lost our ranking.

That's through my experience though.

[tedster]

It sounds like your article (is it blog article?) is appearing on a search result for a keyword that Google has tagged as QDF (Query Deserves Freshness). In fact, it may be there BECAUSE of the freshness factor, rather than because it is organically outranking some of the other urls in the results.

Yes, fresh back links can help to hold on to the rankings longer - but only if they don't start to show Google a pattern of attempted manipulation. Google is really looking for "freely given, editorial" back links, not back links that the site owner can control.

[digic]

Tedster,
Its a blog about new widgets, new software for widgets etc... If it is QDF issue, then why is my competitors website got the top spot (moving me down) remains to stay there, fresh articles will be placed next to his articles.

When you say "pattern of attempted manipulation" does it mean back-linking regularly from the same site, rss aggregator, social networking etc... will not be given value?

Bigcat,
Yes I do backlinks but as Ive said with Tedster, Google may see a pattern for having backlinks from the same site everyday.

[edited by: tedster at 1:20 am (utc) on Sep. 9, 2009]

[tedster]

You know that your competitor has some advantage or other and you want to discover what that is. I'd start by comparing [my site vs. the competitor site] and [my article vs. the competitor article].

My first guess is that the difference is in the quality of back links, and just possibly in the quantity as well. Social media back links, for example, tend to lose their power rather soon, whereas other types of back links tend to grow a bit in their power over time.

You can use our Site Search [webmasterworld.com] as well as the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com] to become educated about what members here are saying about how links work on Google today.

Also, take a look at the site structure of your site and the competition. Is there some way that they are funneling more link juice to these articles than you do?