The SEO Climb

Continue to build backlinks

A lot of clients we talk to have added links to there sites and seen little if any results, and simply just given up. Lets say for example client A comes to us and he want to rank on the term, “Home worker ” The sites that are on the front page may have 100s if not 100s of linkbacks pointing to there site, simply adding 10 – 50 linkbacks will have very little impact on search engine rankings, and then there is the issue of linkback quality.

Below is a quick brake down of how Google and the other major search engines view links

Level 1  High Authority site + Relevant

Level 2 High Authority + No Relevance

Level 3 Relevant + No Authority

Level 4 No Relevance + No Authority

The way that search engines rank sites changes frequently, Search engines have developed there own algorithms for how to rank websites. These algorithms are not shared in the public domain, its is the job of SEO professionals to research and test what are the current key ranking factors. Back links have always been an important part of SEO, however there was a time when any link was counted as important, With the latest update of the Google Search Engine (Google Caffeine or Google Instant ) the way in which linkbacks are counted has changed, Google is now placing more weight on links that are found higher up the page, it has also greatly devalued links that are found on links ,resources pages.

So going back to our example client looking to rank on the term  “home worker”, the sites that are on the front page may have 100s or 100os of links but these may mainly be  links that are no longer viewed with as much weight. There if client A was to go and build a level 1 links, they may climb the Google ranking very quickly, Imagine the Google search results as a kind of staircase, but instead of like normal staircase the stairs get steeper the higher you climb.

SEO Staircase

Google staircase

Top 100 easy and if your site has been contented properly should already be in the top 100

20th – 15th again this should be a relatively easy climb, domain age will play a part , it will be easier to reach this level with a properly contented site that is over say 6 months old.

14th – 11th This step can take longer to reach and is where most diy SEO ers get disillusioned and quit doing SEO

10th – 7th Front page breakthrough

First level of stairs will be usually very easy to climb, depending on how competitve the keyword is the first level of stpes may reach all the way to the sec0nd page of Google.Lets say we begin adding links on the first of January and by mid February we have added 15 – 25 level 1 back links and 20 – 30 level 2 back link, Total say 45 back links. The clients site has gone from being outside the top 100 to being 15th (mid way on page 2 ).

It could take another 5 weeks and 45 links to reach the 11th (top of page 2) only another 4 places higher.  The front page breakthrough week 12 120 – 130 backlinks added to the site and the client has just broke through to the front page of Google, usually we will see clients hover around 10th and 9th for a couple of weeks. Being so close to the bottom of the top page sites tend to see a drop back to the 2nd page at some point. We call this securing front page, at this point getting the site upto 7th to 5th is the main thing we are looking for in the serps.