Link Building - Where to start and how long to see results

[oujipickle]

Been working a lot on on-page seo and it mistifies me to observe that when i get A's constantly for search terms for on page but im not on the first 10 pages of Google compared to a competitor on page 1 with on page reports of C, D and even E!

So, a lot of hard work "on page" does not equal to a lot of hard work which is obviously link building.

my domain and page authority is only 18 and 27 whereas the main competitors are 50's and 60's.

Is "link building" or lack of it my main issue?

Here is the site http://www.govisitthelakes.com

Very new to link building

Anyone know a good place to start?

Ive been working through open site explorer and starting to get some of my competitors links.

How long to see results from link building to improve domain and page authority? or is it just "how long is a piece of string" and be patient.

Thanks

Ouji

[matbennett]

Hi Ouji

You asked "Is "link building" or lack of it my main issue?". It certainly sounds like that is the case.

Good search results require that you page is both relevant and authoritative. Making changes on page can only effect how relevant that page is.  Sitewite changes can redirect what authority you have towards key pages, but you need to build authority to rank in competitive areas.

Building authority (largely) means building links. If Google doesn't know whether to trust your site is will never really be able to compete against those that it does trust.

However, having taken a (admittedly rather quick) look through your site I think that your site might be at a disadvantage in that you don't seem to have very much in the way of original content: Most of the section pages seem to recycle the same few snippets and then the detail pages seem to be largely empty.

There are certainly many ways to "punch above your weight" in the results. However the goal of search engines is to serve up the best page for any particular search. If your site is way off that mark you are always going to be swimming upstream.

I'd start by trying to write original text on every page then adding 1 really strong piece of content that other local sites will really want to link to (then make sure they know about it!).

[oujipickle]

Hi Mat

Oh really?

I honestly thought i had some good content. So are you saying on the section pages more and unique content and practically the same for the details page.

When you refer to having many ways to "punch above your weight" do you mean better on-page to get better rankings while hopefully getting the link building sorted out?

Thanks

Ouji

[stevefidelity]

Mat has made a lot of good points. I'll build on what he said a little bit...

When you're saying that you've started 'getting' some of your competitors links, that suggests to me that it may be various directory sites or industry-related sites that you're easily able to 'submit' your URL to, or you're able to make a simple request to get your site added.

Generally when a link is that easy to acquire, the value of that link is not going to be very significant, and you likely won't see significant (or any) increase in your domain authority.

What I see a lot of people miss when they talk about link building is that content is inextricably connected with the concept of link building. Search engines place value on in-bound links because to them it represents a 'vote' of sorts from site A to site B. Site A 'voted' for Site B by linking to their content, theoretically, because they felt that site B had content that would be useful to the user's of Site A.

So before undertaking a link building project, you first need to focus on your site's content.

[Gyi]

A lot of good advice here. Here's some actionable link building you might consider right now.

Go find sites/blogs that have good content on the subject of lakes generally and visiting lake communities specifically.

I just did a quick search and found: http://daviddempsey.typepad.com/

While this blog doesn't appear to be in action anymore (perhaps contact owner?), there are some decent lake blogs on the blog roll.

Start to build relationships/rapport with the bloggers/webmasters/etc at these sites. Perhaps they are in need of good content for their sites. Create something useful for them, and kindly request attribution (which may include a link).

I think this might be a good place to start. Good luck.