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After you get top positions on Google.... what do you do?

I have one site on #2 position on Google, I think it's the maximum I can get, because #1 is really a strong site.
For me it's perfect, I'm getting adsense clicks so my only desire is that page stay there forever :-)

But.. what to do now?

Keeping building some backlinks or better don't do nothing?

I'm afraid to loose that position if I do something wrong, but maybe if I don't keep creating new backlinks I can loose that position.

What's your advise?

Comments

  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    Smoke a cigar and drink a bottle of something expensive :D

    You should keep building links to maintain a positive or neutral link velocity, Or you risk losing those rankings.
  • What @gooner says, plus you should keep adding content too.  Depending on what sort of site / niche, add articles, blog comments, reviews etc as long as it is updated frequently.

  • edited January 2014
    If you're only using SER change the priority down to - or -- from + so it gets 'some' backlinking. Obviously what you've been doing has worked and there is no reason the 'strong' site should stay at #1. If it was my site I'd be chasing #1 because I'm competitive as hell and I'd keep blasting. Throw in some social signals, do whatever the #1 site isn't doing or is doing and do it better.
  • Look at your top advertisers on Adsense - do they (or their competitors) offer an affiliate program? Can you join it and make more money than through Google?
    Look at ad placement / calls to action (for affiliate schemes) - can you boost click through or conversion rates?
    Are there other keywords you could be targetting?
    Can you improve your title or meta description to increase the attractiveness of your site in the search results to boost clicks through to your site? Perhaps there is some schema that is relevant that would add stars, photos or similar to your listing?
    A lot of these things are irrelevant on page 2+ but once you have some traffic to play with you should test to see how to squeeze more out of your website
  • Thanks all for your really interesting answers!

    @gooner Your answer is the right one strectly connected to my question. Probably I have to keep building links at a slower link velocity, but I'm still afraid because I'm new with GSA. As sooner I have more confidence with this "Monster" tool, i will start again to create backlinks (now that project is stopped!)

    @davbel Yes, I think this is something I can do without any fear, just manually added content is the safest way to maintain my position. Thanks!

    @JudderMan The #1 site on google on my niche is a governamental website, .gov, that have some page where it talks of the same micro-niche. It's a PR5, very high autority, but few backlinks, not social sharing.... maybe it's not impossible, in the future probably I will try to rank the #1 (I was # for 1 day!), but at the moment I'm just enjoying #2 position, also because I think I have a more actractive title so maybe many people is clicking more my site than that site

    @namdas I'm pretty new to IM, and for the beginning I'm focused to monetize only with adsense (easyer), but if I take a look af ALL my competitors, no one of them is using adsense, almost ALL of them are using affiliate programs..... Probably it means that for this niche the affiliate programs can pay more than adsense.
    Actually Adsense pay me for every click (around $2-3), the affiliate programs pay me ONLY for sales (around $7-8), so I'm keeping using Adsense. I think there is more people that only read and click than people that really buy. What do you think?


    Anyway the main topic was if to keep building links or not. For the moment  I stopped... I wait a little time to see if something change.
  • 2Take22Take2 UK
    edited January 2014
    Keep building links at the same speed, not slower.

    ....Just don't break the golden rule and start fiddling with the site, except maybe to add more content.

    I know this from first hand experience when I got greedy and changed the title tags on a well performing site, which subsequently tanked it in the rankings (took about 1 month to come back to where it was after I changed them back to how they were before).

    Ouch!
  • goonergooner SERLists.com
    Yea you have to be really careful with things like that, for me i never touch a site once it is ranked in top 3 - Just continue building links. Then when profit/rankings drop that is the time to tweak it or sell it.

    I always take the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kinda philosophy. But you could maybe milk more profit if you think it's worth the risk.
  • ^^^ Agree totally.  

    Apart from optimising for conversions, sometimes it's also worth researching and adding new secondary keywords to your link building campaign, in order to rank for other terms and mop up more traffic.
  • Do it again :)
  • edited January 2014
    99% chance you will lose your #1 rankings if you stop building links. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month, maybe not 3 months, but eventually you will accrue enough link loss and reduction in domain authority that someone will overtake you. 

    Remember, everyone is fighting for the #1 spot because its the most profitable. If you relax the lions will come ;) You could reduce your link velocity at this point to maintain your rank. Just don't get too comfortable and do nothing for an extended period of time. SEO is an all out war. Lock and load soldier :)


  • never got top positon on GG, 
  • Very interesting question. I have relevant question too. How do you keep adding more backlinks at same speed quantity if you already out of targets in SER(I know you could scrape new lists etc.. but this don't bring you much targets quick), also what if you use filters like pr 2 or pr 3, contextual links only, ser reaches 30 - 50 verified backlinks at first tier & stops/or very slow down. What to do next? Should I blast to same sites(that I have alredy backlinks)  again?
  • edited January 2014
    in my own experience, you stop or slow down link building, you lose ranking. so agree with above.
    but for safest consider, you can try stop/slow down for some time, rank dropping could be re-gained in this case, way much easier than tanked site.
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