My philosophy on SEO is that it is one-part art, one-part science. A strategy that works well for one client in one market, may not work well for a different client in a different market. For arguments sake, assume that both markets have an equal amount of competition.
What if I told you a website that continues to hold the #1 spot in Google for a couple of different search terms that represent a multi-billion dollar industry has done it through:
- a blog website with a total of twelve posts since 2006; none of the posts were compelling, they were simply self promoting
- the last blog entry was February, 2009
- there is very little meta information
- has approximately 100 backlinks from sites with a PR mix from 2-5
- of the 100 backlinks, every single one has the exact same anchor text; let me emphasize EXACT aka they are using one term and one term only with no variation. And remember, the anchor text they are using is a search term that is competitive - not something like "chickens who grow more than ten feet tall in a day."
I recently was hired to do competitive analysis for a company and after doing the research, the above is what I found. And it is not only the website in the #1 spot, six out of ten sites on page one of Google are all using the exact same strategy; this strategy is continued through for about 50% of the competition on pages 2 - 10.
So are you surprised at all by what I've uncovered? And if everyone at the top is utilizing the same strategy, which is to focus EXCLUSIVELY on quality backlinks, would you adopt the same strategy?