Need advice on search listings and link building

[AhmadS]

Search results on my keyword (engraved wedding glasses) produces several pages of linked domains.  (My domain is giftthings.net) Some are good.  And admittedly, some are not so good.  My question then is simply, why does seomoz link analysis show such a small number of links?  And the second part of my question is, "Is there some sort of "magic number", some sort of thresh hold that triggers Google's interest?  With a link list that is small but growing, am I missing something in my concern that I'm not moving up in the search listings? I've written a few articles, continuing my work on link building but I remain buried in the search results.

[SEOKeith]

Hey Ahmad,

OSE (open site explorer) only shows links from the more reputable sites and does not show links from low quality sources another reason could simply be that Roger (the SEOMoz crawler bot) has not yet crawled sites with your links on.

You should attempt to build an organic (looking) link profile... If all your links are anchor text for "engraved wedding glasses" it looks unnatural and spammy.

There is no golden number of links that triggers googles algo, but don't build stupid amounts in one go, a few per day should be fine I'd say no more than 20 and ideally gradually increase more per day as your site authority grows.

If you are asking why your ranking has not increased... My answer would be due to the quality of your inbound links, most are from low quality forums, directories or low authority sites.

The quality of the inbound link matters greatly.

[Greg_Gifford]

Ahmad -

I would definitely suggest working on your overall SEO strategy. A quick look at OSE shows that you only have 6 domains linking to you, and one of those is just a comment on a blog post that's not related to anything wedding. Also, other than the items on your site, your site has almost no content. You don't have the phrase "engraved wedding glasses" on your home page anywhere except the single text link... and on the page for "engraved wedding glasses" you have it in the title tag (good), at the end of your H1 (it'd be better if it were first), and a single time in the page text (which is only a few short sentences).

If your goal is to sell a ton of engraved wedding glasses, you need to create a lot more content on your site about engraved wedding glasses. If it's your biggest push, you should definitely optimize your home page for that term as well.

As far as links go, you'll need to work on getting more links, and if you're going to stick with the current strategy, those links should point to the "engraved wedding glasses" page instead of your home page.

I see you've got a blog - you might want to consider setting up your blog to be on your primary domain name - that way, any links you get will count towards your primary URL instead of a completely separate one. Also, you need to write some posts about "engraved wedding glasses" and why people need them (and why they should buy yours). Currently, your blog doesn't even have data in OSE, which leads me to guess that there aren't any quality inbound links there either. Linking from your blog to your site won't matter if the blog doesn't have any authority or relevance.

[benjaminspak]

Hi Ahmad,

1. I would go out on a limb and say OSE crawls just like Google, so if your links aren't counted in OSE they, are not being counted by Google.

2. "Is there some sort of "magic number"

No.

Watch this video, it is what you need to focus on to rank well!

Full Length Sample Video

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/2012-mozcon-videos-are-here

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Ben,

Just to clarify, our bot is not identical to Google. We don't crawl as many pages as Google does, and don't have the server farm that they do. We crawl in a similar manner, but we may see some links Google doesn't index/count, and Google certainly indexes and counts links we don't see.

[AhmadS]

Wow.  Thanks everyone.  Looks like I've been wasting a lot of time.  Not giving up but I see I needed direction.  Again, I appreciate the responses.

[AhmadS]

Could you please explain a little about organic (looking) link profiles.  I really thought my anchor text should match my keywords.

[AhmadS]

I see what you're saying Greg.  And I agree. Actually, I had thought about making the blog the home page already.  My only concern is that that name "personally engraved gifts" has no search volume, no traffic.

So you're saying just focus on developing the blog? And do links to the store?

[Greg_Gifford]

well... sorta...

your best bet is to move the blog over so it's on the same domain name as the store... that way, as you build useful content, if/when that content gets links, they're coming to the same root domain.

and i wouldn't really suggest making the blog the home page of the main URL. You need more content there, but that's not the solution.

either way, you definitely need to work on the content on your site. Do your keyword research, figure out what you're targeting, and optimize the site for your terms. Doesn't really matter that the business name doesn't have search volume, you'll be targeting terms that DO have volume.

and if your blog is all on the same domain, you can send all your traffic to the same root domain - instead of sending traffic to your blog, that's not necessarily going to continue over to your site.

[AhmadS]

Ok.  I'll get to work on it.  Thanks again.