You keep asking for it!
So I’m doing this post for those of you who want to learn more about why your website is not ranking for your targeted keywords. I’ll also explain why some people say you need to build backlinks and others say you don’t.
And finally, I’ll update you on my experiment I started in July, 2013 where I built up search traffic without any backlinks at all.
Understanding Backlinks
By now, you’ve probably heard or read that if you want to rank on Google, you need backlinks.
A backlink is a link from one site to another. In Google’s eyes, backlinks are votes for your site.
How many you need for worthwhile traffic depends on how competitive the keywords are, the quality of the backlinks you receive and your site’s Domain Authority.
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that was developed by Moz, and it takes into account domain age, popularity, etc.
If your site’s DA is 90 (the max is 100), it will be much easier for you to rank for a medium or even highly competitive phrase, compared to a site that has a DA of a 30.
I use Long Tail Pro (affiliate link) to check DA because it shows you the values for the top 10 results for any keyword search. It helps you easily gauge how competitive a niche or keyword phrase is.
In the screenshot below, the keyword “healthy grocery list” gets a decent amount of searches per month, BUT look at how high the DAs are for the websites in the top 10. That would be a tough phrase for a new or unpopular site to rank for.
All the DAs are medium to high, and there are no websites ranked in the top 10 with a DA below 40.
You can also check the DA of individual domains for free using this site.
So the reason some of you are struggling with organic Google traffic is you are going after keywords you will never, ever be able to compete with because your site’s authority is too low and you’re targeting keywords that are too competitive.
Sean Has Had It and Is Now Building Backlinks
Now let’s talk about getting backlinks. Should you build them? What about earning them naturally over time?
Website Babble member, Seanguy is changing his approach. He’s tired of working hard on his content and seeing new competitors with lower quality content rise above him in the search results. He concluded through research that they are building links manually.
Building backlinks means you seek out ways to get people to link to your site instead of letting it naturally happen over time. This could mean you email other site owners and ask them for a link to your site on their research page or create an Infographic and ask other bloggers to link to it.
There are many ways people build links and Sean is on a mission.
So he created a very honest post on the forum back in August about how he is going to start building backlinks because he believes that’s the only way he is going to compete.
Many of you know I’m not a fan of this approach, but I can also understand why people resort to it. It’s super frustrating to see websites with lower quality content outranking you.
After all, the search engines are bots. They aren’t humans. So they will never get it 100% right with regards to ranking websites.
How many of you are frustrated with your competitors like Seanguy?
Choosing Long Tail Keywords Require Fewer/No Backlinks
I can tell you from experience that you can build traffic without manually building links if you go after long tail keywords.
It doesn’t work as well as it did years ago, but well enough to make what I call “passive side money” without building backlinks.
A long tail keyword is a very specific phrase that gets searched for much less than a more competitive one. So if you have a site about weight loss, a keyword like “how to lose weight” is too competitive due to the number of monthly searches and the big brands ranking in the top 10.
But a long tail keyword like “how to lose weight drinking tea” is more specific and less competitive. So the idea is you methodically write posts that target less competitive phrases.
I attended a webinar recently and one guy said he only goes after keywords that get searched for less than 100 times per month, and his site consistently gets 2,000 visits per day using this method.
So even though you may only get 5 visits per day from these keywords, they are much easier to rank for, and if you repeat the process across multiple keywords, the traffic adds up over time.
So that’s all fine and good, but the argument to this approach is many of these keywords you can rank for today are not “money keywords” – meaning they don’t generate traffic that easily converts into sales.
A valid argument indeed, but this strategy is still worth implementing.
I WOULD NOT SUGGEST BUILDING YOUR PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME THIS WAY.
My SEO Experiment With The Long Tail
You may remember my experiment I started back in July of 2013, where I was able to build traffic up to 500 uniques per day in about 6 months. I didn’t manually build backlinks. I just wrote keyword-focused content.
I made the site anonymous to keep the stats pure, and even created a separate Google Analytics account just to make sure the nothing I have currently done will influence the ranking in any way. (At the time, Google Authorship was still live and kickin so I wanted to make sure I didn’t have anything linked to my sites.) I didn’t even use AdSense.
It took me about 6 months to rank on page 1 (position #7) for my main seed word. The traffic peaked in January, 2015 at 800 visitors per day, but as you’ll see below, it didn’t last.
That traffic may not sound very impressive, but if you take into account that I put in a total of 10 hours (mostly in the first 2 months), it’s not too shabby. I just wish I had chosen a niche I was more interested in. The results would have probably been more impressive because I’d have more content.
I did outsource content for a few months on TextBroker just to keep traffic up, but stopped earlier this year.
That site still exists and is getting around 400 unique visitors per day, and still generating passive affiliate income. I only added one article this year, which is no doubt a reason for the big dip in traffic. Most of the content was added in 2013 and 2014.
Here’s a screenshot of the traffic to the site starting in July 2013 to now.
That surge in traffic you see at the very beginning of the graph in August 2013 was something I was trying with Pinterest and Pinwoot. DON’T GO TO PINWOOT. I just tried to pull it up and got a Norton warning. Yikes!
Since I wasn’t building backlinks I wanted to try something with social media just to get the site on the map. I earned credits on Pinwoot by sharing other people’s content on Pinterest. In return, other people shared mine. So the traffic was coming from that Pinwoot experiment.
As you can see it took a good 6-7 months (January 2014) for the Google traffic to pick up. That’s a lesson in why you don’t give up after 2-3 months. It takes time!
I will probably have my V.A. (virtual assistant) start updating the site regularly again because the income is worth keeping the site around. As you can imagine, the earnings have dropped off with the decrease in traffic.
This was the first site where I methodically created content with SEO in mind on every page. It felt a little weird and robotic because I normally choose content based on interest, not keywords, and let the ranking chips fall where they may.
I understand why people do keyword research before writing content, but geez it is incredibly tedious! I’ve never been a fan of doing all the research. I just want to write and forget about keywords! 🙂
But since this was an experiment, I decided to be more deliberate with my approach.
Why Link Building Stories & SEO Advice Varies So Much
You may have read stories about people (like me) building traffic without fussing with backlinks. On the flip side, some people will tell you that you MUST build them. It’s often an ongoing part of their site upkeep.
So why the inconsistent advice and suggestions across the Web about backlinks?
There are many reasons…
- Some people get lucky and have an interest in niches that don’t require as many backlinks due to low competition. So they take a topic and run with it.
- People get into a niche early before it gets too crowded.
- Some are just insanely creative/useful with their content, videos, social media, etc. and have no problem getting followers and links naturally. They don’t need to build backlinks.
- Others really take time to do the research and understand how the long tail works. They strategically choose niches and select keywords for each article very carefully.
And here’s a big reason link building stories vary: I’ve learned through my own experience that certain niches are more sharable.
What I mean is the people in the niche are on social media more and sharing happens more frequently. I’ve found this to be true with visual topics like hair, makeup, fashion, beauty, etc. It’s just the nature of the topics. Not all niches have that advantage.
The site in my experiment did not have that advantage, but when you choose the right keywords, you can rank without backlinks.
So yes, opinions vary for many different reasons. Someone like me is going to tell you to not to build backlinks because I’ve had moderate success. Obviously my opinion is greatly influenced by my own experiences.
Your Expectations & Goals Matter Too
How much traffic and income are you seeking and what do you define as success? This will also influence your outlook. Is 500 visits per day enough? Are you looking to live off the income?
I was very satisfied with my experiment results given the minimal time invested. I never expected to make a living with these kinds of sites in 2015.
So if you’re looking to make significant long-term income, then you may have a different perspective on all this.
Where Do You Stand?
I was wondering how many of you feel like Seanguy and have given up on the “build and they will come” philosophy for SEO? Or do you even care about SEO anymore?
I’m also posting this to gauge interest in videos on understanding how to use the long tail with Long Tail Pro (affiliate link). You don’t need this software for research, but it speeds up the research process for keyword selection.
When I make suggestions for products people need to make money online, I often categorize them in two ways: necessities and luxuries. Paid hosting, in my opinion, is a necessity. Long Tail Pro would fall in the Luxury category.
If you can afford it, grab it. If you can’t, use free tools like The Google Keyword Planner. You just won’t get the additional info about competition (domain authority, backlinks, etc).
I get the sense a lot of you have given up on SEO (search engine optimization) and have opted to focus more on diversification through podcasting, social media, live streaming, YouTube, etc. No doubt that’s the best approach for sustainable success, but some of you may still focus on SEO.
No matter how much I preach about traffic diversification, there are always people who simply want to focus on Google traffic.
That’s your right, and I get why it’s so desirable. It can lead to a lot of passive income, but it comes with huge risks if that’s the ONLY way you plan to build traffic.
Where do you stand with all this? Are you also frustrated with not being able to rank? Are you noticing your competitors building backlinks? Or have you moved away from SEO?
You can follow Seanguy’s backlink building journey on Website Babble.
well, my website is 6 mo old and has zero traffic lol .
I think backlink is important but for some keywords backlink are no needed, though we have to spend our time to do research to find it, and also by doing research for several cases, it could be wrong at all, I think its like guessing games based on same metric, such as, low PA DA easy to rank and bla bla, bla but from 100 kw I am sure not all of them are easy to enter, but more than 50% will works, so if we want to avoid competition or get easy rangking without backlink, they key is reasearch and write a lot!
so my suggestion is, before choosing any niche, make sure we know something about that niche, so we can produce unlimited content! but if we don’t understand it would hard to get first page!
Totally agree Harrist!
Long Tail pro works great, but you could do the same thing with Google keyword planner
but Long Tail pro give the detailed keyword with long keyword so that you can easy out rank competition… Very Good!
Raul
My Dear Lisa, Princess Guru Of Internet Marketing!
We’ve abandoned pleasing Google by doing SEO to rank on top of search results since they keep changing their algorithms and destroying all the hard work you do to get top ranking! Now we concentrate exclusively on using social media which yields more results and is easier than all the brain racking SEO you have to do only to have the great gorilla wipe out it out whenever they do an update!
Knowing how backlinks are one big factor to whether your site sits on the front page of Google or lingers in the shadows, I feel that backlinks are the blood of your site. Not just any links, you need the right ones (those relevant in your industry and have a high PR rank). If anything, I’d choose to focus on backlinks vs creating new content. I mean what’s the point of writing a great piece of content if nobody sees it, right?
On a different matter, I love how you broke down what backlinks are and why people do it. I especially like how you ended with an open-ended question to see what your readers think. Really sparks up the conversation. 🙂
Hi Lisa
Long Tail pro works great, but you could do the same thing with Google keyword planner
but Long Tail pro give the detailed keyword with long keyword so that you can easy out rank competition
I have used it and its no doubt best – but you just have to follow the tips how to use this tool and you can really rank your website good.
Thanks for sharing.
Robert
True! If you don’t want to spend money on software, you can make do with that too.
Hi lisa.
Great post. I would like to konw that will just creating back links is enough to get rank in Google. Does how much people follow those back link taken into count when Google rank your page.
My personal opinion is that backlinks are the most important factor in ranking your website on google. It does not matter if you are trying your self or not, over a cource of time backlinks will get built due to various factors and it will affect your rankings for sure.
Lisa
Any advice for moving companies as it is extremely competitive and at $30 a click it’s hard to keep up with a PPC campaign…..?
$30 per click?????????? Whoa!
Have you done research to try to compete for less competitive (long-tail) keywords? For example instead of bidding on “moving company in Chicago” bid on “insured moving companies in Chicago”. You can use the Google Keyword Planner to get keyword ideas if you haven’t already.
hii lisa
awesome reserach about get back links on blog but i have one question in my mind i have read that google did not concider the meta keywords to give page rank is it right?
Meta keywords are completely dead. You are correct. They have no weight at all anymore.
then which keywords is important in SEO and how can i use?
Your site’s popularity / backlinks matter most. Next is the content on the page and then finally the meta title and description can impact, but the other factors matter more. The title and description meta tags are more important for getting people’s attention and getting the click. They do influence SEO somewhat (provided you have content, popularity, etc.) but they aren’t as influential as before.
Thank you so much for helping me. if you can give me few minutes please visit my blog and give me some suggestion what can i do further. your suggestions are very important for me.
This is such a timely post for me. I have a couple of older blogs I rank very well for in SEO. Recently! Started a blog about being 40 something..
With the new “Google”, I wasn’t sure whether to keyword harvest, or chase clinics (like in the olden days). Now I have to figure out this thing called longtail keywords – it’s like a whole new world.
This article was so helpful. I guess I just need to keep posting around my keywords – which happen to be my interest- so I’m good. Thank you so much for your blog post and helping me navigate the new world of a SEO.
No problem Teri!
Hi Lisa,
I got a complete attitudinal shift reading your post when you said a certain guy said he never goes after any Keyword with more than 100 searches a day – WOW, that’s wisdom.
He can easily rank his site for these Keywords and scale easily, how come I never thought about this?
I guess most of us are hard-wired to want a piece of the Keywords with the thousands of searches a month.
Thanks for sharing, I’ll put this to practice immediately.
Cheers.
Dan
Yep! Everyone is always going after the same keywords for traffic but if you focus on those long tail keywords, it definitely works.
Well, I commented earlier on today and I guess something must of happened to it… Weird. I probably clicked something wrong. 🙂
Anyhow, great post! I never thought about using longtail pro in the way you described. I’ve had longtail pro for a couple of years and haven’t used it in over a year at least! I went ahead and re-downloaded and started looking at keywords in the way you described. I’m already ripe with new ideas!
I’ve also since a few days ago really started digging deeper into my site and have found that I’m not internally linking nearly as much as I need to be. A lot of my older posts are not linking to new relevant posts, and I imagine this is yet another smaller issue that might be effecting my site.
You want to hear something else really silly? I just realized the other day… Almost embarrassing really… that I’ve had my comment system upside down for three fricking years! I had the older comments up top and the newer ones at the bottom. Someone mentioned it to me by saying they thought it was too bad because it didn’t look like anyone was coming to the site anymore. Then they said they scrolled down and saw that in fact there were newer comments on the bottom.
Anyhow…uggg…. LOL . All I can do is work from this moment forward and I’ve definitely been humbled this last year and am learning loads of stuff in a short period of time it feels like.
Hopefully some of the people who read this comment and this article will hop on over to websitebabble.com and join the conversation. Could always use fresh perspective and more people exchanging ideas, what’s working, what’s not working etc. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for it in the thread you mentioned here!
Appreciate you highlighting the thread also, because I’ve already learned some new things from your comment thread here as well. 🙂
OMG Sean! Don’t feel bad. Would you believe I did the SAME thing just recently? Mine have been the other way around all this time too. I literally just switched them over this summer and a subby commented on how I finally changed it. So you’re not alone! Now I’m off to dig through spam to see what other comments have gone to spam by accident.
Lisa, I like your thoughts on backlinks and great to hear strategies that others are trying. Whatever strategy you follow it takes a lot of work and time unless you are in a niche where there isn’t any competition.
If you are in a highly competitive market you’ll have to think outside the box to get traffic because there are too many using the normal routes. That’s why articles like this are good to read because sometimes it sparks a new strategy.
Thanks for the article
So true, Brad. It’s a lot of work and I just want people to realize this is not 2010 anymore and people are often treating SEO as it is. It’s a different game if you want worthwhile traffic from Google. Thanks for coming by.
Lisa!
Great article! 🙂 I didn’t know about how you could check the whole domain authority thing with longtailpro. I’m going to be digging back into that right now!
I’m also going to have to read a bit more about the silo architecture that Eden mentioned above in the comments. I think I’m actually starting to do that because on top of backlink building I’m also really working on upping the quality of the site more.
I’ve just learned after digging deeply through my site that there are many older articles which should be linking to newer articles etc. I’ve got my work cut out for me, but seriously this article right here just gave me that little extra gold nugget that will help with the longtail keyword angle.
Hopefully many of you reading this article will come over to websitebabble.com and join in on the conversation over there! Fresh perspective never hurts and it’s good to be able to pick the brains of other people who are trying to get their website or blog to a better place, and especially those who already have such as Lisa Irby and other members.
Thanks Lisa,
I have been struggling for centuries to get 500 plus unique visitors a day to each of my sites. I know I am in very competitive areas. That’s my what I am interested box. Besides spend time.
I started a podcast
Done a Facebook Page
Published consistent content
Given I’m at the point of “is this worth it.” Backlinks are worth a try. My sites have fulfilled two goals, having fun and learning something. But I’d like to get money validation too.
Hi Lisa,
This is very informative article, It is very tough to rank targeted keyword on google 1st page, however, i didnt try LongtailPro keyword tool. I was using only google keyword planner tool and dint get any success.
After reading this article i think i have to move to the next level of marketing.
Thanks for this awesome writeup
Yeah LTP gives you the competition at a quick glance and that’s a nice feature.
Great post Lisa,
I agree with you that a lot of people just want to stay focused on Search Traffic no matter what and that is because of its huge benefits.
However, i can really relate to what Sean is saying because he is not alone on that i mean, a lot of us has had such an awkward experience where you puts all your efforts into a site trying to make it better and you will be seeing lots of mediocre sites outranking you, it can really be very discouraging.
However, there is a method i just learnt about building new sites that will be targeting search traffic and I’m set to try it on the new site I’m building.
Its all about performing good KW research as usual and choosing a good niche that gets at least, 50,000 monthly local searches but has a slight low competition.
Now, its not really compulsory that your main KW should have such number but if you can combine like 7 or more related keywords and gets to that 50,000, its still a no brainer. After you’ve decided on the niche and choosen your main keyword, you’re going to writing a pillar article targeting your main keyword together with those related keywords.
The article will be a go to guide on that keyword and if you do the work well and target all those lower competition keywords on this one pillar post, you will be able to start ranking for many of them in a short time.
The main idea here is not to like pay more attention on your main keyword that has lots of searches because we all know that it will take time for you to rank for such keyword but, the goal is to be able to rank for lots of the other related lower competition keywords on this one pillar post.
Always love hearing about what other people are doing. Thanks for sharing.
Is it possible to rank for keywords fairly quickly? I built a site about 4 months ago, and it’s already on the first page of google (positon 8) for my targeted keywords.
I know videos are really eye catching and so I have started to create explanatory videos as well (thanks Lisa, I learned about powtoon because of you!) and putting them on my site where it’s appropriate.
What’s weird is that after I deleted one of my videos from Youtube that linked back to my site (well, it was my ONLY video on YT at the time) my site totally fell off the radar! It went from being on page #2 at the time to just totally not showing up on google. I think deleting that one video totally messed it up because I don’t remember doing anything else. Anyhow, I ended up making a longer and better explanatory video and uploaded that, and withing a couple of weeks my site got ranked again.
I’ve been checking on different devices and even on friends laptops to see if my site comes up on their searches and yep, my site is coming up on that first page at around number 8 or 9. I’ve also felt the Yoast SEO plugin has helped a lot, and I’ve used it to optimize some of my pages. It’s a neat little tool!
Four months is possible. My experiment site took 6 so that’s definitely doable — especially if the competitiveness is low to medium. Not sure removing the video had to do with anything. Links on YouTube are nofollow, meaning they don’t count from an SEO standpoint. So it might be just a coincidence. Glad you’re making progress!
Hi Lisa,
This was a fun, informative read. I gave up on links, SEO and all that stuff. My portfolio is the only link I use (freelancing sites point back to my main site, where allowed.) I rely on my email communications to get whatever visitors may come.
Thanks to your explanations, when the time comes for me to actively market a website, I know that I can’t go wrong if I write for humans first and spiders second…
Cheers,
Mitch
It’s so much easier to focus on humans. I know people Spencer H make good money doing all this research but it’s too tedious for me. lol
Hi Lisa, this have been so helpful of me. Thank you for sharing with us such useful strategies
You’re welcome!
Good Day to You Lisa,
For a long time I have tried, failed, stopped, tried, failed…
For almost a year now I have had first a blog, now a website (same site) at WordPress.com, because all the technical stuff is just too much for me using a third party host.
I haven’t paid much attention to building content lately, and stopped blogging because the static pages that are intended will link to outside government websites.
On November 1st 2015 I am retiring.
Much of the time once spent on my full time job will be devoted to developing both my current site (perhaps turning it back into a blog, or at least attach a blog to it) and looking into other ways to supplement my income at home, using the web.
I too find trying to write, while focusing on SEO and keywords to be extremely tedious. I also feel much like Sean talks about in his thread at Website Babble, when he doesn’t feel comfortable asking for backlinks at the beginning of his thread.
After finishing this comment, I’m going to re-join Website Babble (again) with the intent of following the thread in this article. I’m not promising to become “active” by starting my own threads, but instead want to learn through observation, with some thread participation when it seems useful.
One thing I have done for a long time now (a few years), is continue to follow your blog posts. I remember when you first started your “experiment”.
Thank you for sharing what is happening with it now.
By the way…
I’m really glad you’re feeling better!!!
By Best to You
Arth
HI Lisa,
I agree with many points in your post. It can get frustrating and confusing trying to work out whats best and whats safe in back-linking.
I’ve recently 6-9 months taken an interest in Silo architecture. Essentially this style of website structure allows you to support your pages with quality posts and supporting articles to your posts.
These vertical structures will decrease the need for external back linking. In fact, so case studies have shown a decrease in up to 90% of back links required to rank a site.
There are place to get free Silo building plugins. I personally like the work from Network Empire. They have some very interesting discussions although be warned it can get quite technical.
Thanks again for the great post.
Best,
Eden
Hi Eden,
I’ve always been in support of the silo structure. It just makes sense. When you combine long tail keywords and interlink your pages while varying your anchor text (not using the same phrase you are targeting in your links) it still works very well. Yes indeed!
You’re absolutely right – the silo structure has a lot going for it. The search engines expect your site to be structured almost like an academic essay. What I mean is, you have your main pages with sub pages, and sub sub pages.
You can spreadsheets that help you structure your website. I create them when I build client websites because it lets you see exactly how the silo is structured, with colour coded rows representing each “level” of the silo.
Many sites just use the blog archive to serve up information, but older posts get pushed off the pages into the archives when you could just as easily create those silos.
Also, if you use WordPress, use the parent/child directory structure to make your URLs keyword rich. For example: http://www.mysite.com/whatever/whatever/page/
Because WordPress doesn’t have actual folder directories to create these subpage URLS, this is known as a “virtual” silo, while Lisa’s 2create main website is undoubtedly a physical silo.
Great stuff, Darren!