Beating the file sharing sites in SERPs - Can it be done and how?

[Martin_S]

Hi all,

A new client of mine is an online music retailer (CD, vinyls, DVD etc) who is struggling against file sharing sites that are taking precedence over the client's results for searches like "tropic of cancer end of things cd"

If a site a legal retailer trying to make an honest living who's then having to go up against the death knell of the music industry - torrents etc. If you think about it, with all the penalties Google is fond of dealing out, we shouldn't even be getting a whiff of file sharing sites in SERPs, right?  How is it that file sharing sites are still dominating? Is it simply because of the enormous amounts of traffic they receive? Does traffic determine ranking?

How can you go up against torrents and download sites in this case. You can work on the onsite stuff, get bloggers to mention the client's pages for particular album reviews, artist profiles etc, but what else could you suggest I do?

Thanks,

[lethal0r]

what kind of backlinks do the file sharing sites get? maybe you can get some of the better backlinks pointing to your clients site too. perhaps the file sharing sites also have dubious links and you can report them to big G? although I expect thats already been tried.

how about concentrating more on the social angle like facebook and twitter?

[Martin_S]

Ye, working on better backlinks is a definite for the client - they have none for that particular page/album - but if I compare backlinks for the client's page and the filesharing page using OSE, the filesharing page has 1 backlink over no backlinks for the client page.

I don't think it's simply a case of backlinks. I suspect it's more related to who has more traffic - more people want to download music illegally than buy the CD, right?  The client has decent on-page optimisation. What else could it be?

Of course linking is important (as we're so often told) but...

[lethal0r]

i dont think it will be down to popularity, more like stronger links to the homepage.

have you done a site report on your clients site from seomoz? does it get an 'A' grade? does it have good meta descriptions? if you can't beat them in the SERPS you can still write some great copy for your search listing.