Question about ranking and links
-
Hi,
Some back ground info first: My DA/PA is 42, the competitors who show up in the search engines for the term I am after have DA/PA 55/60.
I have been creating anchor text links which target the term im after through guest blogging usually blogs with DA/PA 40+, I did this consistently with a guest post every 3 days for about a month so that's around 10 guest posts.
And I also did some brand name blog comments, but these were no-follow and added sig to some forums.
This moved me from page 5 to page 1, position 4.
I then stopped and over the last 3 weeks it slipped to position 6 then to position 8.
The competition doesn't look to actively target this term looking at the data from opensite explorer there main anchor text is there brand names.
Why would I be slipping through the results? Not moaning just want to understand why so I can counter it.
I was thinking about going for social signals through a blog to help.
-
Sounds like that may be part of the issue but I wouldn't expect such high fluctutions. Keep on creating good content, share it and promote it, and keep away from using really anchor intensive keywords.
Best of luck!
-
Cheers.
1. Checked guest posts and all links are still active and do-follow.
2. Usually the blogs have DA/PA 40+ some have DA/PA 60/80 but I don't know if they have been hit by pen.
3. Yes they do move down and then off the homepage.
4. All 10 have same anchor text, so this may be it.
Looks like it could be #3 maybe even #4 but then I would expect to drop like a fly instead of a slow decline.
I imagine drop 1 was guest posts falling off homepage and drop 2 was even more posts falling off homepage.
-
I would say there's a couple of factors to consider here:
1. Are all of your guest posts still there / links still in place? Sometimes for whatever reasons these can disappear.
2. Where have you been posting? If you have posts on suspect sites you may find that these can be hit with a penalty / devalued and your links become less valuable.
3. Have your posts been moved from front page to lower pages on the site? If the full post was being displayed on the front page and then became relegated to a subpage this may affect the weight it passes.
4. Did you vary the anchor text? Especially with the penguin update, you need to be varying up your anchor text. If all of a sudden you are getting lots of exact match keywords that don't look natural this may have triggered alarm bells with Google.
Social signals are likely to help with the posts strength, you should be aiming to promote your content on social networks anyway as part of your SEO efforts.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinks Question
Hi all, i own a small business in an extremely competitive marketplace. I have also educated myself greatly about seo over the past 3 years and currently do my own. The one thing I cannot figure out, for the life of me, is how my two competitors keep beating me in rankings without backlinks. I mean, I have about 3K solid backlinks, mostly do follow, from top notch publications, sites, citations ect. In ahref, it shows that he has almost no backlinks. I cannot crack th third spot, but they dominate with zero backlinks, and the domains are only a bit older than mine. Thoughts on this?
Link Building | | ImeuOkou0 -
Google Ranking
I'm working on a page for couple of months now and try to rank for very competitive keyword. I have reached position 12 and it's 97% optimized, the sites keeps going up and down between position 10 & 13. I already changed content a couple of times and already created a few links with the targeted anchor tags. However I'm scared if I create more links it will be penalized. What do you suggest? Should I create more links with the targeted anchor tags or should combine the keyword in anchor tags with other words? Loading time, title, descriptions, content everything perfect optimized.
Link Building | | bill3690 -
Using sitewide links to improve link profile?
Hi Guys... When I look at my competitor's link profile, they often have thousands of backlinks. For example, one of our main competitor, he got 3,400 backlinks in total but only 80 referring domains. When I look at my link profile, I have around 50-60 referring domains, but hardly 80 backlinks. My question is, is it okay to get a few sitewide links (no-follow of course!) to get to the thousands backlinks? Or I will be able to achieve top rankings with my current link profile? Thanks!!
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Ecomerce: Would 4 link sections leak too much link juice?
Hello, In my content management for our ecomerce site, I've found that there are sometimes links to sites in our industry that have "helpful links" sections. Several strong sites link directly to these resource sections. There are 4 different topics that fit this trend in our industry. Would it leak too much link juice to make 4 comprehensive link sections and place a link to them on our "Useful Articles" page? Or should I stick to one comprehensive link section? Or perhaps a small link section? Or none at all? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Why aren't links to my site from YouTube showing up in my link reports?
Our company is paying for a service to create hundreds of videos/month for us with links back to our primary domain. If I go to YouTube I see the videos with the links, but YouTube does not show in my link reports. Why not?
Link Building | | jtroia0 -
"gimme links" = easy to fill out profile/personal reputation links that offer a do-follow anchor text flexible link
I'm doing some SEO for small niche service sites...and aside from niche directories and some light article marketing and local search directories (yelp, etc) there really isn't a budget for content generation. I really only have a budget for profile/submission links. What are some sites where you can quite easily fill out a personal profile with an anchor text variable link that may not be THAT juicy but will stick (i.e. not a spam/fake profile type of link, but something like Linkedin). I'll start with giving away 1 www.istockphoto.com Any others that aren't obvious?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
The Value Of A Link
Hi There, Let's say I am able to get a link from a very well trust worthy blog that writes abot things related to my business. Now my question is how much value does another link with the same anchor text, from the same blog has compared to the first link, or compared to a new link from a slightly less powerfull blog? Or in another words, if I got 1 link from this great website should I invest my time to find another website where I can get a link from or should I invest it in getting another link from the website I already got a link from ( which might be easier)?
Link Building | | liors0