I got real estate site with more than 400 unique posts with 100% unique content. I am using targeted keywords with high level of searches. But unfortunately my site is not being ranked.
When i did my competitor analysis (Which is being ranked on first page) i found out that they are continually creating back links and now they got more than 3000 back links in shape of comments, blog posts and they also got some back links from high authority sites.
Now i am confused…
Do i have to create more than 3000 back links to get my site ranked in search engine ?
If yes than will those back links going to be considered as white hat ?
And what are the best way to create back links ?
If you look around the Marketing section, you’ll find we have active discussions on these issues, which will probably answer most, if not all, of your questions.
Most forums, including this one, will mark any links created by members with the rel="nofollow" attribute, which means that search engines will ignore the links.
Also if a forum has a strict anti-spam policy, like this one has, the moderators are likely to remove such links or possibly ban someone for spamming or link dropping.
A forum full of spam posts is of no use or interest to anyone, so no decent forum would tolerate that kind of behaviour.
Using forums primarily with the intention of gaining backlinks is basically Spamming by another name. Forums are places for discussion; if you’re not posting with the main intention of contributing something new and meaningful to a discussion, you shouldn’t be posting at all. Trying to use a reputable forum for backlinks is more likely to result in a ban from the forum than an SEO boost.
As @felgall has already said, backlinks which you can place yourself are regarded pretty much as worthless by search engines. Indeed,
Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature
Reputable forums, such as this one, follow Google’s guidelines on user-submitted links, and mark such links as nofollow, rendering them useless as backlinks.
You will find numerous “SEO experts” on the Web posting lists of “Best dofollow forums” (note: I know that “dofollow” is not an attribute, but apparently these experts do not). SitePoint Forums still appears on many of these lists for 2016, despite external links here having been nofollow for at least the past five years. The kind of people who peddle this nonsense on the Internet apparently don’t care enough about facts either to check the information they’re parroting, or to read Google’s guidelines to check that they are giving sound advice.
So if anybody is thinking of posting such a forum list here - don’t.
Only Backlinks are not going to help you. You need to target “DoFollow Links”.
Websites are skeptic about giving out such links.
You must revisit those 400 posts on your site, update them and make them high quality with attractive, and relevant media content.
Do mention the top influencers in your niche if the content fits them.
Them, connect with them via email or Social media and let them know you have mentioned them and it would be worth sharing to their audience.
If they find it good, they’ll share it on their social profiles, and link to it from their website, thus earning you a backlink.
It’s a hard but very effective process (just one of many).
Google values Social shares, and time spent on a site as few top ranking factors.
@TechnoBear I agree with you.
Those experts need to update their posts with the right content.
However, even NoFollow links are useful to drive traffic to your webpages. I’d take that as a yes.
But again, we must post only the relevant links that would help the readers on the threads, or support your thoughts.
Most social media links are nofollow, and Matt Cutts has stated that Google does not use social signals in ranking. Social media may be great for traffic and exposure, but it will not directly help ranking.
As for “time spent on a site”, how would Google know? Again, Matt Cutts has stated quite clearly that their ranking algorithm does not use data from Analytics, so how could it gain this information?
“Do Follow” links from authority websites that are relevant for your business are still best thing for your website ranking, and they will remain one of the very important factors until Google build a robot/algorithm that can actually read the content on your website.
Getting “Do Follow” links form high rating websites is hard even for SEO expert and that’s why they want to shift focus to other SEO tactics that may or may not help you. They will not harm your SEO, but quality backlinks are still ruling in the SEO game.
I think that day has already arrived.[quote=“KyleConnor, post:12, topic:227158”]
I was reading through Neil Patel’s blog and he had mentioned this graph.
[/quote]
What is the source of this data? Does it come from Google, or from the imagination of a self proclaimed SEO expert?
It appears to contradict some of what Google’s own experts are telling us.
Links that are relevant, useful and add value to a post are allowed. Spam and self promotion will be removed.
I think we will know when that day arrives because a lot of websites that spin articles and post worthless would be severely penalized and they are still alive and well.
You’re allowed to link to relevant resources which add to the discussion, and if you quote content - such as this image - then we really like to have a link or URL to give proper attribution.
I know many people believe many different things about what Google does and does not use, but unless there is a Google source to confirm it, I tend to be sceptical - especially if it contradicts what Google has said.
So you don’t believe that Google’s crawlers actually read the content of websites?
It’s interesting to see there was some anomaly in the space/time continuum in 2008, regarding the importance of “On page optimization” whereby the line on the graph actually goes backward on the time axis.
Looks rather as if that line was creatively drawn in a paint program as opposed to being plotted from actual data in a charting program (where such a line direction would be impossible).
Also the absolutely vertical lines on the “Link building” and “Social sharing” lines, which would statistically represents two differing values on the (un-named unitless) vertical axis at the exact same point in the time axis.
Poor content coupled with unethical promotional techniques can still rank a site well in the short term, but it will plummet without trace when Google recognises it for what it is - and Google’s algorithms are getting better at that all the time.
We have had many members here over the years anxious to know how to recover from a Google penalty, because they wrongly believed they could ignore the guidelines and get away with it.
Admittedly I don’t know much about Neil Patel, but I am sceptical when people show iffy looking statistics proclaiming them as fact without backing it up with authoritative sources and evidence.
The graph seen in context with the article makes even less sense.
Links are still very important to Google. In fact, it’s almost impossible for
Google to determine the value of any web page if there are no links
pointing to it — no matter how useful, fresh, or in-depth the page
content might be.
He’s saying how important links still are, yet the graph says link building dropped suddenly to 0 (imaginary nu-named units) in 2013. Seems contradictory to me.
When alleged facts don’t add up, I disbelieve.
