Just wondeirng if anyone is till using GSA to rank their sites in 2015. If yes can you post some updates on this on how much has changed in past few months?
It all depends from the competitiveness of the niche, but yes, you are still able to rank only with GSA. Well organized campaigns and lists will finish the job.
instead of sarcastics replies just give some hint to the OP he's asking because none can deny that this year things changed a lot, and what used to be rankable with gsa ser alone is not anymore so helps other or keep your precious words to yourself
to the OP : don't expect too much from the forum, just keep testing and testing to find what works, that's what i'm doing right now
Things are different now. You need different strategy currently... before it was very easy. Now it takes longer time to rank, especially for high volume keywords.
You can thank that idiot that mocked Matt Cutts when ranking in payday loans.
What a damn moron that guy was, ruined it for everybody else. Why would you publicly show google you can easily manipulate serps instead of banking hard before they fixed loophole? His actions only forced google take action sooner than later.
@jpvr90 - IIRC, didn't he / they release a blog network service or something off the back of that or something?
WRT the OP's question, I think it really depends on the niche to a certain degree, but I'm still doing pretty much the same thing I've always done with SER, and like others on this forum I'm ranking fairly quickly, and consistently.
That said, I do normally chuck in a sprinkle of SAPE or PBN for good measure...
@banel - It depends, normally around 2 weeks to see the bottom half of page 1, and a further couple of weeks to hit somewhere in the top 5. Sometimes it's a bit quicker, and sometimes it takes slightly longer.
However, as I said, it's important to remember that it probably won't work for every niche, or even every group of keywords within every niche.
SER is just a tool to help you rank by building links, you need to know how to use it and how to do other aspects of SEO. So yes, I am able to rank using SER, will you be able to rank?
That depends on if you know how to rank a website...
@2take2 You said you are able to rank fairly quickly and consistently. What is the difficulty of keywords you are trying to target? Roughly how many exact match searches do these keywords have?
I'm tired of such threads that borns consistently on many forums. Are you able to rank into %datetime-yyyy%? Or even is {seo|linkbuilding|email marketing|article marketing} dead? Yes it is dead for those who don't want to learn.
Dont listen to anyone who says they rank easily with SER only, unless its a keyword with the lowest competition ever or a keyword that has no searches whatsoever,then yes,you can rank with GSA only, otherwise,you cant rank with SER only, i dont care even if u build 5million tier2,3,still its IMPOSSIBLE to rank with SER only,THINGS HAVE CHANGED GUYS,and you need to adapt to the change,nowadays,you need more than just SER Links. Ser is a great tool to build a diverse anchor text profile,but not to rank profitable keywords. Anyone who thinks am wrong,feel free to share your REAL experience. \m/
Similar experience for me to the latest post... Ranking with nothing but SER is close to impossible in the big niches. Can SER help? For sure. Will you rank with a 3 tier setup and nothing else? I don't think so. Not because it's impossible, but because your competition will spend way more on different, more powerful tier1 links than SER can build.
Take SER as an addition to other links, not as your only source of links.
@SuperSeo - The number of searches that a KW has is a bit of a red herring really, as it has no bearing on the amount of competition, or how hard it will be to rank. For example, there's groups of keywords where the main term has 100k - 200k monthly searches that I'm all over in some niches, but in others there's 1k KWs that I can't get anywhere near, at least not spamming them with SER anyway.
WRT how competitive they are, well that really depends on how good you are at SEO in the first place. I would class the keywords that I'm ranking as medium comp (some big brands sitting on page1, and the CPC in adwords is between $1.50 - $5 ), but you might class them as easy or hard, depending on your skill level, I don't know.
Also, I think that @RuffCut makes a good point about SER not being a substitute for SEO knowledge. I mean, even with the best will (and strategy) in the world, you're still going to struggle to rank if you can't build and optimise a web page properly, along with all the other things that go with it.
@Yurium - I agree, but I also think that sometimes when people are struggling with their SEO and have maybe hit a bit of a wall, it proabably helps for them to come and ask on forums if others are having the same problem, if for no other reason than to keep their motivation to soldier on and get the results they want? I know I've been in that situation myself before now. I agree that people need to take the time to learn and test things for themselves though.
@young_gooner, I can see your point, and I agree that out of the box SER isn't as effective as it once was. However, there's still plenty of niches where it does work, and also plenty of profitable niches with decent traffic that aren't high competition, and don't have everyone beating the hell out of them. Sometimes it will get you where you want to be, and as you say, sometimes you'll need to add a bit of extra fire power or take a completely different approach altogether.
ranking with ser alone is close to impossible from my testing even tiered/only contextual/filtred campaign are worthless gsa ser post mainly on not moderated platforms on deep pages that don't pass any link power so that have no weight in google's eyes strongest links are homepage or at most 1 or 2 clicks from it that's my opinion
I have a theory that contextual engines in particular absolutely NEED tiers or an indexing service pointing to it. It has nothing to do with Google not wanting to index those links unless they have links pointing to them, but they just can't see them for a very long time. As you said they're often on deep pages and are surrounded by hundreds or thousands of articles of other SER users. Now if you know how Google applies it's crawl budget (*), you'll see that it's very hard to actually crawl your contextual links because a)the link juice/authority of the domain itself is crap and b)there are way too many pages (from other SER blasters) on it.
I don't know if you played the directory game a few years back, but if you still have links on them you'll see that sometimes those pages only get crawled two or three times a year (using Google catch data as a proxy measurement). So if you don't "force" Google to crawl those pages (tiers/indexing service) you can't get the link juice either.
I havent used SER for anything other than diluting anchors in a long time / or some diversification of links .Ranking with only SER is not going to happen unless you are on some really low competition niche .
I haven't been able to rank anything worthwhile with only SER, but it can help pump up some tiers and increase link diversity.
I rank sites in the US for medium+ competitive keywords. It takes A LONG time to get to mid page one. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I watch page one for my keywords. There are NO NEW SITES popping onto page one, and there hasn't been since the May updates. A site may pop to the bottom of page one then quickly disappear.
If you want to rank for medium plus comp. keywords put some lengthy good quality content on a site (preferably aged). Point a dozen PBN or other high quality static links. Drip some content over time to the site. Make some decent Tier 1 - if you can afford real guest posts or PBN good, if not use aged web 2.0 using something link fcsnetworker. Then build a TON of contextuals to the Tier 1 with SER. You can do a Tier 3 if you like, but I think that's a waste of time. Make sure you index those Tier 2 links.
It takes time, but after a month you'll see if you're headed in the right direction. I've built multiple sites with extremely similar content, similar linking in the exact same niche. Some G will like, some they won't. It is hit and miss, and with my limited resources I really don't see why G would rank one site and not others when they are nearly identical in content, structure and links, but they do...
Yes and yes and no two yes, 1 no. Basically you can when you have the right tools and knowledge. There are tons of pro here that share their piece and downfalls and success stories. Just take their advice or my advice keep reading you'll learn what's working and not working this days.
Years don't count but what counts is the time you put into effort on what make works.
Gsa really work like charms if you think of it as to its a very complex tool combined with other seo tools it will be a wonderful toy inside your magic box.
Well, I wouldn't point my finger to GSA SER but towards the sites that are being spammed to death that don't have any/less link juice. If you are enable to scrape some not spammed high quality sites using scrapebox then you shouldn't be worried I suppose.
@SuperSEO - Given the choice I'd probably opt for a new page on an old domain with plenty of authority, but at the moment I'm (successfully) using newly registered EMDs as they're a better fit for the project.
Can I be the one to start this thread in 2016 please?
There are too many variables to try to pinpoint why you aren't ranking. I am ranking number 1 sometimes 2 for a massive KW currently, 95% of the links to it were built with SER. The other 5% from a PBN. And I spent most of 2014 and half of 2013 ranking in number 1 for it... The only reason I hadn't ranked in the past few months is/was because Google is manually checking my niche.
I really think a lot of the "I can't rank anything" threads are due to a shitty website and/or trying to target a massive niche. If only I could show some of you guys the ranks I can get with SER alone, without outing my niche, you'd be amazed.
Comments
Well organized campaigns and lists will finish the job.
he's asking because none can deny that this year things changed a lot, and what used to be rankable with gsa ser alone is not anymore
so helps other or keep your precious words to yourself
to the OP : don't expect too much from the forum, just keep testing and testing to find what works, that's what i'm doing right now
You can thank that idiot that mocked Matt Cutts when ranking in payday loans.
What a damn moron that guy was, ruined it for everybody else. Why would you publicly show google you can easily manipulate serps instead of banking hard before they fixed loophole? His actions only forced google take action sooner than later.
WRT the OP's question, I think it really depends on the niche to a certain degree, but I'm still doing pretty much the same thing I've always done with SER, and like others on this forum I'm ranking fairly quickly, and consistently.
That said, I do normally chuck in a sprinkle of SAPE or PBN for good measure...
Thanks.
However, as I said, it's important to remember that it probably won't work for every niche, or even every group of keywords within every niche.
Take SER as an addition to other links, not as your only source of links.
WRT how competitive they are, well that really depends on how good you are at SEO in the first place. I would class the keywords that I'm ranking as medium comp (some big brands sitting on page1, and the CPC in adwords is between $1.50 - $5 ), but you might class them as easy or hard, depending on your skill level, I don't know.
Also, I think that @RuffCut makes a good point about SER not being a substitute for SEO knowledge. I mean, even with the best will (and strategy) in the world, you're still going to struggle to rank if you can't build and optimise a web page properly, along with all the other things that go with it.
@Yurium - I agree, but I also think that sometimes when people are struggling with their SEO and have maybe hit a bit of a wall, it proabably helps for them to come and ask on forums if others are having the same problem, if for no other reason than to keep their motivation to soldier on and get the results they want? I know I've been in that situation myself before now. I agree that people need to take the time to learn and test things for themselves though.
@young_gooner, I can see your point, and I agree that out of the box SER isn't as effective as it once was.
However, there's still plenty of niches where it does work, and also plenty of profitable niches with decent traffic that aren't high competition, and don't have everyone beating the hell out of them. Sometimes it will get you where you want to be, and as you say, sometimes you'll need to add a bit of extra fire power or take a completely different approach altogether.
from my testing even tiered/only contextual/filtred campaign are worthless
gsa ser post mainly on not moderated platforms on deep pages that don't pass any link power so that have no weight in google's eyes
strongest links are homepage or at most 1 or 2 clicks from it
that's my opinion
I rank sites in the US for medium+ competitive keywords. It takes A LONG time to get to mid page one. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I watch page one for my keywords. There are NO NEW SITES popping onto page one, and there hasn't been since the May updates. A site may pop to the bottom of page one then quickly disappear.
If you want to rank for medium plus comp. keywords put some lengthy good quality content on a site (preferably aged). Point a dozen PBN or other high quality static links. Drip some content over time to the site. Make some decent Tier 1 - if you can afford real guest posts or PBN good, if not use aged web 2.0 using something link fcsnetworker. Then build a TON of contextuals to the Tier 1 with SER. You can do a Tier 3 if you like, but I think that's a waste of time. Make sure you index those Tier 2 links.
It takes time, but after a month you'll see if you're headed in the right direction. I've built multiple sites with extremely similar content, similar linking in the exact same niche. Some G will like, some they won't. It is hit and miss, and with my limited resources I really don't see why G would rank one site and not others when they are nearly identical in content, structure and links, but they do...
Years don't count but what counts is the time you put into effort on what make works.
Gsa really work like charms if you think of it as to its a very complex tool combined with other seo tools it will be a wonderful toy inside your magic box.
Is there a minimum PR that you look for in PBN's?
i'm using expressindexer, and google know about my links and index them
but no serps improvement
When you say you rank fairly quickly, is that for new registered domains or aged domains?
There are too many variables to try to pinpoint why you aren't ranking. I am ranking number 1 sometimes 2 for a massive KW currently, 95% of the links to it were built with SER. The other 5% from a PBN. And I spent most of 2014 and half of 2013 ranking in number 1 for it... The only reason I hadn't ranked in the past few months is/was because Google is manually checking my niche.
I really think a lot of the "I can't rank anything" threads are due to a shitty website and/or trying to target a massive niche. If only I could show some of you guys the ranks I can get with SER alone, without outing my niche, you'd be amazed.