A month plus in ranking your site with less backlinks

This case studies and implementations was performed last February 2014 up to present.
For ranking a site’s domain, from 2nd page of GOOGLE to 1st page (#1) in just 1 month and a week.

Some of us believes that ranking your site in Google’s search results is possible, by throwing dozens and  thousands  of links to your site. Well probably it might be. But are those links are good enough to rank your site? Or maybe it may cause you to fall under penalty.

In this article, I will going to share you and give some insights on what i did to rank my site domain/brand (Plumber Davidson) from 2nd to 1st page in Google despite its competitiveness and without doing too much backlinking. In which I believe that there are still factors that can lift your sites ranking without putting too much effort in link building. So first things first, you must implement some Tests(A/B). See image below. And for a record, it gains some massive impressions.

 

Overview:

Top 3 Competitor’s  URL:

www.davidsonplumbing.com.au
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_%22the_plumber%22_Davidson
http://www.truelocal.com.au/business/platinum-plumbers/davidson

These sites are ranking Geographically (Google.com.au).

 

Note :

Even wikipedia and Truelocal was considered my top competitors since they are ranking on my keyword. The fact that they are ranking because, they gain authority and has rich meta data.

The Test Sites, were the sites that is ranking in different ways. And was a victim of my merciless test and strategies, LoL!. However we should involve tracking for better results and insights. As we are unsure in an every  sudden change in Google’s Algo from time to time.

Have you ever asked yourself if how I ranked the site Davidson with just a few backlinks? But before that, I’m gonna show you first its ranking before the implementation.

Before Implementation

After the consistent Implementation

In a ranking strategy campaign, you must first know your competitors sites

weakest point and make a checklist that is meant for SEO. By means of these,
you may be able to estimate on how much and what kind effort needed.

Strategies I Did : (was implemented  all on test A/plumber davidson)

 

• Keyword research
• Optimize Title and Meta Description
• Internal links distribution
• Optimize Header Tags
• Reverse engineering your competitors alt images
• Infographics submission
• Share through  facebook page/account with your targeted audience
• Consistent Email Outreach using VerticalResponse
• Creating and placing your keywords in Google maps/places + reviews
• Correlation between G+ (Personal Search) and Yelp Listing
• Sitespeed
• Authorship
• Authoritative Landing Page

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Keyword Research

                                                                                                                                           Test A

Who among you who doesn’t do  keyword research? Then you are really in big trouble. It is actually basic and one of the most important valuable in the search marketing field. In regards with our site, we dig deeper and did some in depth analysis regarding our desired keyword in which it can be seen in our domain, the “Plumber Davidson”. We found out that it has a low of searches and yet it has a competition of medium.

 

And for us it is actually a big deal. Because the important thing there is that, apart from the less searches/month it still has a good competition(bidders/marketers using it, in which they believe it has worth and so do I).

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Test B
The image in your right, is quite   competitive. However we still manage to rank in #1,with doing too much link building and uploading articles/week.

Note : The “competition” stated  in the image is not the competition for SEO, you can get that through New SemRush keyword Difficulty  and Moz’s keyword Difficulty Tool

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Optimize Title and Meta Description

 I optimized meta title and description for better and appealing results to be shown on Serps. As the new title tag guidelines or a redesigning has been implemented. I actually  took time analyzing and implementing  if this could  benefit my site. And yes indeed! it happens to gain some CTR and would attracts clickers though.

 

Why would it actually attracts?
Simple, they can see your site’s complete thought!

 

What’s with the change?

For some reasons, title tags that is more than 60 characters will be truncated in SERPS, so with the description that is more than 160 characters. And perhaps would believe that Google will gives more value to those sites following their changes.

 

See image below : 

Test A

Test B

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Internal links distribution

A site should have a proper internal linking structures, to ensure your visitors flow (hop-in page/referral), best example for this is Wikipedia.

How I do internal Linking?

I am pretty sure that best exposure of your target page is by linking (internally/externally). But in my case, i go on internal linking from pages that gains good impressions and have it pointed to my homepage (targeted page for ranking)

You can check it on your GWT “search queries > top pages”

Internal Links to my Homepage “Search traffic > Internal Links”

 

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Optimize Header
Tags

I indeed optimized header tags and set as to <H1> for my important pages like my homepage.

“Plus, search engine robots use the structure to add your Web pages to their indexes.”

HTML code :

IMO : Regarding my experiences, having H1 tags in your pages. Will be like a signal from your backlinks with rich anchor text pointing to your page. It actually helps search engines in recognizing.

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Reverse engineering your competitors “alt” images

As what I said earlier, we need to target our competitors weakest points. So basically optimizing images is one of my strategy, that i never seen on my competitors. So by placing the variations of your keywords in your “image” will slightly help you boost your pages visibility.

What’s with reverse engineering with “alt images”?
Check your competitor’s optimized images.

How I do it?
First, is to gather your top competitors links and search it on Google via “images”.

 

Should look like this:

P.S. I never include wikipedia since they don’t have images to be shown in SERPs,
however they have some factors why they rank.

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   Infographics   submission w/ Targeted Audience (AU)      +   Share through Facebook    Page       +   Consistent    Email Outreach using   VerticalResponse

I don’t actually do designing nor an artistic person. But however I made some infographics for my site. And was a “plumbing services” infograph.  Thanks to http://visual.ly/ and https://magic.piktochart.com/, and its extremely work efficient. All you have to do is drag and drop.

Having infographics itself is like a dead end of your campaign. So what I did, is I shared it to my circles (G+ and Facebook friends), knowing that this kind of infographics does exist.

But I actually won’t stop there. I also followed up with some email outreach to those prospected leads/targeted audience using VerticalResponse. It’s not actually an infographic site but  rather a competitive  email marketing platform, having good  graphics and image thoughts. Can even add some useful/referral links(where your  infographic links could be inserted)

 

Related : How to target your desired leads and audience?

What to expect :

• Direct and Referral traffic
• Targeted and Returning Visitor
• Perhaps conversion

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Creating and placing your keywords in Google maps/business + “reviews”

I even pull some of my
keyword signals from Google Places (see image in your right).

I’m pretty sure it is really quite effective for ranking locally.
Specially when having some interactions in your page (e,i. followers or some reviews).
However in doing this, should be keen to details and follow some local guidelines.
As it would affect your site’s visibility and behavior on SERPs

P.S. My local page can’t be seen along with my site (right side in Google’s Result Page) hence i never done so much local citations. However still manage to rank at

Page 1 (3 packs)

 Correlation between G+ (Personal Search) and Yelp Listing

With Google Plus

Indeed that I’m not the only one knows about Google’s Personal Search, right? If so then you might also took advantage on it. Well It is actually how Google delivers their bias results(When G+/Google Account has been logged in).

 

How bias search results works?

• Logged in with your Google account
• Interact with the one you followed in G+
• Your “in circles” (us/we) is being active on Google+ and  shares content.

Sample Below:

Note: though the keyword is too broad, that we certainly can’t handle to rank easily.
However in personalized search “nothing is impossible”.

 

And with YELP

Aside from yellow pages and truelocal. Yelp is one of the biggest growing local citation directory for your online servicing business. And if you haven’t tried yelp yet, you should! In fact that some directories (small/big) has being boosted and in favored with the latest pigeon update .

 

What is the correlation between G+ and Yelp?

As being said earlier, with the power of personalized search. It helps your  yelp business listing to be more visible if you have it shared to Google plus.

But before that, you must have a circle of friends first (targeted audience). From here, those friends in your circles that might searching your keywords(can be seen in your Google plus post e,i. links, content article, phrases, or status) will saw your G+ post on top of the results with the time the post is posted.

 

Sample Flow :

Related Article:

My guest blog on driving
Traffic from Yelp to Your Plumbing Website

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Site Speed

If you have thousands of images, java scripts codes, improper placing of CSS, etc. Then you probably might suffer a low site speed. However developers like Google has a solution and insights in regards your site speed problems.

 

Why site speed important?

Visitors of your page won’t spend too much time waiting your web pages to load, then might hit the back button. If this was the case then bounce rates occurs. Search Engines is into your sites performance as well, if how your users interacts your page.

 

P.S. We disabled/set aside our speed optimization  for our site for the meantime. Since we are focused on redesigning our page and found some conflicts with the speed optimization codes.

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Authorship

One of my favorite and was the best strategy I’ve done. Authorship(your website url with G+ image/name) is great for attracting

clickers . In which it happens to be more appealing than any other default results in SERPs. But so saddened when Google stopped showing authorship image last June, however the one that’s left is the name of your G+ associated with your site.

 

The worrying won’t stop there for  “Marketers that aims Organic results”,

until we finally losses one of our gems.
When John Mueller stated the removal for the
whole authorship markup on SERPs on August 28, 2014.

Impressions after the removal :

So my question goes something like this.
“Does Google really trying to remove some of the possible ways that can benefit organic results?”

 

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Authoritative Landing Page

Landing pages most often made for manipulative link building strategies(Blogs for link Networks). But a powerful one in driving traffic from different angle. However GOOGLE is smart enough to identify those. But still, there are landing pages that are worth the effort, especially when it drives massive traffic to your page.

 

Authoritative landing page – from the word itself. Has “authority” , “well known”.
A page which gains authority from clickers, users, visitors, readers and Google.

 

What kind of Lading Page I have :

Not on blog sites, PRs or even video. What I had is a google docs!. Yes you heard me. A docs from google really is amazing. Since google is really an authoritative site(don’t have doubt on that). But for some reason, it is not good for SEO since it is nowhere to be crawled by spiders. But the best part there is, it is owned by google in which we wanted to rank at. However I found it useful, and actually docs in google has some setting configuration that needs to be set up, in order your docs to be seen and visible on SERPs.

 

Landing Page Link: Sydney’s Local Plumbing Contractors

 

Disclaimer: Won’t claim that the above strategy and implementations is accurate. But with keen observation and in depth analysis, will leads to a successful output.

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After All the Efforts

Test A | impressions

Test B | impressions

• Planning ahead
• Being updated
• Never stuck in one strategy, think more!
• Analyze, Observe and implement
• Involve Tracking
• Patience
• Consistency on what you are doing is the key