Member Avatar for FarrisFahad

Imagine you have a brand new site, with no visitors. It's hard to get ranked in the search engines because you have 0 links. And without link your website will not rank, therefor have no visitors. And in order to build organic links you need visitors.

So here is what you first do. You build links to your site. And after a while you will rank for the keyword you are targeting. Then you will have visitors. Those visitors will convert as an organic links. Of course not all visitors will link to your site, but let's say some of them will.

This means the more traffic you have the easier you'll rank. But wait ...

If this theory is true, how can a brand new website over rank an established one? Since the established one is ranked on 1st place and gets a lot of visitors, how can the brand new site beat the established one? Can some one explain, or confirm theory?

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I think you have to wait for the #1 site to blink or crash. Example? Samsung. If you were a competitor, your rank will now rise against Sam.

Member Avatar for Dani

It depends who your visitors are. If your site, for example, targets housewives, what percentage of them are likely to have a website to link to?

The best way to build a link strategy is by doing something extraordinary ... something that will get bloggers to write about you; that will get people on social media talking about you; etc. If you have a lot of articles on your site, including social sharing widgets like 'share on facebook' or 'share on twitter' are also a great way to get links.

What I absolutely love about the web is the relatively low barrier to entry. Anyone with a good idea and some hard work can start their own website. With all these good ideas coming to fruitition, it keeps the established sites constantly on their toes. They can be dethroned anytime something better comes along.

commented: good point +10
Member Avatar for canadafred

The type of linking strategist the OP is refering to doesn't really perform any search engine optimization on a web site. They figure out ways to build links to web pages in hopes of the process of building links will increase ranking in the results pages for a desired set of keywords and keyword phrases. For some magical reason or for the shear lack of keyphrase competitors, the web pages may in fact rank well in the SERPs. But none of that is the result of good SEO. Links are but one factor that the search engines will consider when picking the best web pages to display in their results. Link building from one web page to another is considered on off-site ranking factor in a way similar to social media triggers, those are thiongs occuring off-site that can affect a webpage's ranking. But, web pages that have well optimized on-site ranking factors can often enhance a "good" link building strategy to propelk pages upward or in itself be the best web page for the search engine to pick. Some on-site things that can be optimized include important stuff like: the web page's content, its paragrah, <HEAD> tags, other tags and attributes such as <H> headings and use of textual <a> anchors, images, logically naming stuff, the internal linking structure (site navigation), the page's architecture, there's all kindsa' innovative little ways to emphasize keyphrases in order to make keyphrases appear important, without over-doing it and making the spider puke etc ...

Member Avatar for AssertNull

If this theory is true, how can a brand new website over rank an established one? Since the established one is ranked on 1st place and gets a lot of visitors, how can the brand new site beat the established one? Can some one explain, or confirm theory?

I'm not an SEO expert by any stretch of the imagination, nor even very knowledgeable, so I can't comment much on that angle (which is actually my point. Not a website or SEO expert, but still made it work), but my personal experience is "If you build it, they will come". There are a lot of variables of course, but it seems when you build a website offering a quality service performed by competent, relieable people, whatever that service might be, and you're not completely incompetent at making it known through word of mouth, trade shows, etc., people will check it out and if it's GOOD and you stick a few relevant keywords in there, somehow everything else seems to work out. I think lots of people try to over-game the system with tricks and neglect the bare-bones of whatever you are doing. If I am hiring a plumber, for example, that plumber might have been around for a while and spent a lot of time and money on a good website with good SEO. He would perhaps be the "established" or "1st place" link in your terminology, so he comes up above you (assume you are his competitor) in my search. So I click him first.

But if his website, for all its bling, shows me a guy who is not too impressive in his plumbing, I'm going to keep clicking and come to yours, which is perhaps a less flashy, less optimized website, but perhaps has some blogging on it that I read and it makes me think you know what you are doing, and your website shows your resume, the services you offer, others' feedback, prices, etc., I like what I see, I hire you and link you and spread the word around after you do a good job, they'll do the same, and pretty soon you've bumped off the "established" "1st place" guy who was all show and no go. This is all done by others with no extra effort on your part regarding the website.

You have to have a COMPETENT, good looking, functional website, with some good keywords in there, but I think that's enough if the substance is there to back it up. No need to have the BEST, most FLASHY, perfectly optimized website. Better to spend that time and money creating better content as opposed to great appearance, low-quality content.

Member Avatar for canadafred

AssertNull makes a good point. The highest ranked web site isn't necessarily the best web site for a searcher to visit. Often the high rankers in general industries have the least competent service to offer but can appear to be significant players in the industry. That's the illusion a web site can project, it is, however, a marketing strategy for the web site owner. To rank a web site that deserves to have high ranking because of its impecable services is not enough on its own merit. Yet, these great service providers can rank well and their keyword positions can be long lasting provided the web site owner is regularly evolving well-crafted content. Ideally, a great service has an excellent Internet marketing strategy and also well-optimizes the web site components then it is completely natural that the search engine will sooner rather than later, deem their web pages important results for keyphrase searches. The web pages will not only rank well but the targeted visitor will arrive at a meaningful, obviously important web site. |This is what makes the best conversions of all. This is what makes the telephone ring with new clients. It's both a sound Internet marketing strategy and good SEO. Link manipulation is the SEO weenie's way to help cast the illusion that a web page is important. Linking startegists are barely search engine optimisers at all. The ones that can actually rank web pages in meaningful keyphrase competitions are merely link building specialists, many of which can barely write in English. They require little skill other than basic copy/paste abilities.

Member Avatar for AssertNull

I want to clarify that I DO NOT believe that SEO and making a good looking website can be completely ignored. We've all gone to out-of-the-way restaurants that had some of the best food ever, great service, and where we were the only customer and two months later it was boarded up. Very often when I talk to the people running those restaurants (and like I said, they have plenty of time to talk to you because you are the only one there!), I find that they've put all their effort into their craft (cooking and great service), and they have done that very well, but they have no experience in business, marketing, public relations, dealing with vendors, real estate, etc., and that's what puts them out of business. The website and SEO component of that would be either not putting enough effort into website/SEO and it's obvious (ie cookie cutter free downloaded website skeleton complete with placeholder "lorem ipsum dolor" and "add links here" text that is never removed or replaced with actual content and remains visible on the published website!) or spending a lot of money hiring a whiz-bang snake-oil-salesman website designer that charges them five thousand dollars and throws a bunch of overly-technical SEO terms and formulas at them to make them think they are getting something cutting edge when they are in fact getting the low-level code monkey product that CanadaFred describes (though they are being CHARGED for a much higher quality product).

The result is, as mentioned, a boarded-up restaurant that used to serve great food. You need to give me a way to tell the world how great your restaurant is. I'm trying to help you. Let me! And I'm trying to find a great restaurant, so make it easy for me with a website where I can quickly find the address, hours, menu, and a decent map. You need to play the game enough to get a decent looking website out there and you have to do enough in the SEO/link game (whatever strategy you use) to get those search engines/robots to find you. What people forget is that those search engines/robots WANT to find you. You don't have to trick them into finding you, but you do have to do a little research on how they work.

You've already done 95% of what makes a great restaurant a great restaurant (great food, great environment, great service). Don't skimp on that remaining 5%. It's crucial. But don't overdo it either. The folks playing games by having needlessly fancy websites, adding hidden keywords that have nothing to do with their business, engaging in lame fake linking schemes, trying to trick google, etc., it's just like it is in real life. Their actual product is probably garbage and they need to con people. The website designers who tell you that you NEED to do that are conning YOU. If you're an honest, down-to-earth small business plumber or restaurant owner, hire an honest down-to-earth website designer (they ARE out there) who knows what he's doing, pay him a few hundred bucks, MAYBE a thousand, and you're good to go. No bling required, but you need to stick some keywords in there and get rid of the dead links, placeholder text, etc. If you are lazy with your website, it will be obvious. I assume someone who lacks the attention to detail to notice "lorem ipsum dolor" is still on the website is going to be equally lazy when it comes to cooking my food right or installing my circuit breaker with the right gauged wire. You wouldn't meet a prospective client without brushing your teeth or shaving, you wouldn't have trash scattered around in your reception area where you greet a prospective client, so don't have trash on your website because that's your "virtual reception area".

Member Avatar for AssertNull

Yikes. Just read my above post. Way too long. Gotta work on that. A lot. To sum up...

  1. No effort at all expended on SEO -- bad
  2. Using SEO as a large part of your business model -- in most businesses, bad
  3. Using SEO to compensate for an inferior product -- bad, and it usually won't work
  4. Using SEO to try to trick Google and others to send irrelevant and undeserved traffic to your site -- you're a spammer
  5. A little SEO goes a long way. Stick the right keywords in there and a few other targetted strategies and you'll probably do fine if the underlying content is good.
commented: Reading my mind. Professor X? +11
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