Top 3 actions I should immediately take.... ?

[kmander]

Site: bussongs.com

I have a fairly successful (400k visits/month, 1.2m PV/month) site which features a directory of kids songs.

kididdles.com is my archnemesis. Slight edge in PVs with better ranking on many long-tail KWs (song names mainly).

What are the top 3 things I should do to knock out my competitor? I feel I've nailed the on-page stuff - I have checked all the major items and produced superior content.

The big thing that shouts out to me is that my competitor just has many more backlinks, especially from unique domains and that's lifting up everything.

Thoughts? Can't wait to hear your ideas!

[DougRoberts]

I think the obvious answer is that you need to build links. Can you think of any way you can give your visitors and incentive to link back to you? Getting your visitors to do your link building for you would be ideal!

Have you taken a look at not just the number of backlinks your competitor has, but where they are getting their backlinks from?

You can then try to get links from the same places (take a good look at why people are linking to your competitor though!)

Also try to get a feel for the kinds of sites, and the reasons why people are backlinking and then try to cast your net to capture all sites that match this profile.

Hope this helps.

[kmander]

Great thoughts Doug.

Of course there's no quick and easy fix with this. I've dedicated very little to link building, so that's a clear area where I need to devote time now. And you're right - I need to understand the reasons why those links exist and replicate that high-level strategy rather than just chasing to get the same links.

I was considering building a widget that'd allow webmasters to embed lyrics on their site and then I could create a backlink within the display. I'd love to think of an incentive for link-building, but struggling so far to come up with creative ideas.

[DougRoberts]

Before you spend time buildling a widget, I'd do some research and find out if it's something that webmasters are likely to use (and how many of them would be interested!)

My advice would be to try and identity a "need" first and then come up with something that satisfies that need (and of course give you a backlink too)

What do you know about your visitors? What type of people are they and why are they visiting your site?

Who's currently linking to you and why?

On your website you say "created to help kids, parents, and teachers recall the words and lyrics to loved children songs"

Do you provide nice and easy ways these people can print the lyrics (with your branding and link of course). Getting traffic from off-line sources is still traffic!

Do you have a mailing list? You could offer the lyrics to a song every week. Might to sustain awareness of your site and increase returning visitors.

[Qasim_IMG]

I'll also consider non link based ranking signals:

1. Social media presence

2. Improve website engagement - stuff like bounce, clickthrough rates, site speed etc

3. Look at your link-profile via OSE and see what's missing compared to top competitors or similar websites.

Need more high quality links? Then produce content or anything that the linking websites could use and start creating relationships with them. Better yet - pick up the phone and call them!

If in doubt, you can just focus on diversifying your link-profile, avoiding the "bad" types links ofcourse.

Qasim