The Missing Piece Of The SEO Puzzle

[Mesa SEO Solutions]

This thread is meant for those who are struggling with SEO. It is not about how to build a website.

I visit and use a whole big bunch of SEO related forums and everyone of them have some sort of "How to do SEO" thread.

Many of these are poorly written and often mention out of date or obsolete SEO techniques.

Then there are those that actually provide useful and up to date information.

Almost universally they both fail to mention the most important aspect of SEO, once you know what your keywords are going to be, is the competitive review.

When everything is said and done SEO is about doing certain things On and Off Page better than your competitors.

This requires that you know what your competition has done and what they are currently doing if you want to be successful.

Not doing a competitive review is like playing the lottery. You might win but the odds are not very good.

This is where all good SEO's start.

What say you?

 

[nielsencl]

I think competitive review is over-rated for the most part. We only do it to see if there are keywords we should also be using. Sometimes that can help, but most of the time the sites are poorly optimized and it seems the only keyword research that was done was in the web designer's mind.

From our perspective, SEO is pretty easy and just involves putting on your site those things that people are searching for and getting some links. After that you need to have a good site, but having a good site is not SEO.

 

[itsallwhite]

I agree with both points of view, there is a real trend now towards on-page optimization and I do think thats good. It is clear that a few simple on page tweaks and obviously quality keyword research helps, but that won't get you to number 1. To get to number 1 you need to build links - and without quality and quantity links you simply won't achieve top Google rankings.

 

[nielsencl]

#1 rankings are nice, but we almost never do SEO with that in mind. Aside from taking too much work, they often don't last. General optimization which targets many long-tail keywords works well for us. We do get links took but mostly from directories and search engines.

 

[mohithanche]

Yeah I agree with all of you...

 

[Mesa SEO Solutions]

#1 rankings are nice, but we almost never do SEO with that in mind. Aside from taking too much work, they often don't last. General optimization which targets many long-tail keywords works well for us. We do get links took but mostly from directories and search engines.

I also target long tail keyword phrases and I happen to rank # 1 for over 213 of them. Since about 55% of searchers click on the first result I am very comfortable being there. Most of these are not difficult to maintain.

And it all started with a competitive review that includes both on and off page SEO.

 

[nielsencl]

It sounds like you are checking rankings if you know you are #1 for 213. That's ok, but we almost never check rankings. We only look at the traffic a site is getting and what keywords are bringing people to the site. To us, traffic is the only thing that really matters to keep clients happy.

 

[webdevelopement]

I agree with you mate regarding this suggestion. Competitors backlink and page rank plays vital role in business.