[Case Study] Why Majestic Topical TF Is Not Important

[Deleted member 877043]

Thanks for your post. Got a question for you.

My assumption is that the type of sites you’re referring to are the usual suspects: blogs, service sites (SaaS, PaaS, and so on.) or informational niche sites (i.e. the type of content that you can find on Brian’s or Neil’s site or the examples you supplied.)

The above typically have a good enough amount of content to attract backlinks, while the average e-commerce site hasn’t.

The latter needs to utilize different methods to create enough trust for the average target audience to get onboard. Think reviews (preferably real ones, both off- and on site.), a good enough conversation rate (measured via GA, which in my opinion definitely has influence on ranking, albeit a small one.), and like you mentioned: good, human readable content.

At the moment I got a couple of pages that rank fairly high for a certain niche. On the other hand I got a page that seems to have fallen from G’s good grace.

What puzzles me is that one page, a category page, sits around positions 2-4 and has way less text then what people advice and harp on about on the internets. At the same time this page has zero backlinks pointing to it, or at least non that I could find via the various available tools.

The other page has around 600’ish words of content, a shitload of backlinks from various quality, and WAS over-optimised in the exact match KW department and url structure. This page appears one day around position 25, the next day on page 1000, then moves back to page 5, ad infinitum.

To avoid any confusion: both are on the same domain, both are category pages and the domain has never received a warning from G. Still G behaves completely bipolar when it comes to these pages.

This all is a fairly long introduction that leads to my question: have you ever noticed a correlation between the amount of text on a page, the number, and quality, of backlinks and ranking for e-commerce pages?

From your conclusion content is definitely the Emperor, and with some quality backlinks you could achieve a good position in the Serps.

But combined with my experience it all leads me to conclude that on the other hand G prefers to “trust?!” a page with little to no content and zero backlinks over a page that was once overoptimised and still has a lot of backlinks.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[splishsplash]

Thanks for your post. Got a question for you.

My assumption is that the type of sites you’re referring to are the usual suspects: blogs, service sites (SaaS, PaaS, and so on.) or informational niche sites (i.e. the type of content that you can find on Brian’s or Neil’s site or the examples you supplied.)

The above typically have a good enough amount of content to attract backlinks, while the average e-commerce site hasn’t.

The latter needs to utilize different methods to create enough trust for the average target audience to get onboard. Think reviews (preferably real ones, both off- and on site.), a good enough conversation rate (measured via GA, which in my opinion definitely has influence on ranking, albeit a small one.), and like you mentioned: good, human readable content.

At the moment I got a couple of pages that rank fairly high for a certain niche. On the other hand I got a page that seems to have fallen from G’s good grace.

What puzzles me is that one page, a category page, sits around positions 2-4 and has way less text then what people advice and harp on about on the internets. At the same time this page has zero backlinks pointing to it, or at least non that I could find via the various available tools.

The other page has around 600’ish words of content, a shitload of backlinks from various quality, and WAS over-optimised in the exact match KW department and url structure. This page appears one day around position 25, the next day on page 1000, then moves back to page 5, ad infinitum.

To avoid any confusion: both are on the same domain, both are category pages and the domain has never received a warning from G. Still G behaves completely bipolar when it comes to these pages.

This all is a fairly long introduction that leads to my question: have you ever noticed a correlation between the amount of text on a page, the number, and quality, of backlinks and ranking for e-commerce pages?

From your conclusion content is definitely the Emperor, and with some quality backlinks you could achieve a good position in the Serps.

But combined with my experience it all leads me to conclude that on the other hand G prefers to “trust?!” a page with little to no content and zero backlinks over a page that was once overoptimised and still has a lot of backlinks.

What are your thoughts on this?

I'll write back some thoughts in an hour or so, but feel free to pm me your site and I can give you a more detailed answer in private. It's perfectly safe to disclose your site to me. I see 100's of clients money sites every month from the wolf and my agency.

 

[murahdonk]

almost never use TF from the beginning

because price of Majestic is ridiculous

i use moz.com (DA PA) for indicator and ahrefs.com for reverse engineering.

 

[PropertyGrow]

Thanks for your post. Got a question for you.

My assumption is that the type of sites you’re referring to are the usual suspects: blogs, service sites (SaaS, PaaS, and so on.) or informational niche sites (i.e. the type of content that you can find on Brian’s or Neil’s site or the examples you supplied.)

The above typically have a good enough amount of content to attract backlinks, while the average e-commerce site hasn’t.

The latter needs to utilize different methods to create enough trust for the average target audience to get onboard. Think reviews (preferably real ones, both off- and on site.), a good enough conversation rate (measured via GA, which in my opinion definitely has influence on ranking, albeit a small one.), and like you mentioned: good, human readable content.

At the moment I got a couple of pages that rank fairly high for a certain niche. On the other hand I got a page that seems to have fallen from G’s good grace.

What puzzles me is that one page, a category page, sits around positions 2-4 and has way less text then what people advice and harp on about on the internets. At the same time this page has zero backlinks pointing to it, or at least non that I could find via the various available tools.

The other page has around 600’ish words of content, a shitload of backlinks from various quality, and WAS over-optimised in the exact match KW department and url structure. This page appears one day around position 25, the next day on page 1000, then moves back to page 5, ad infinitum.

To avoid any confusion: both are on the same domain, both are category pages and the domain has never received a warning from G. Still G behaves completely bipolar when it comes to these pages.

This all is a fairly long introduction that leads to my question: have you ever noticed a correlation between the amount of text on a page, the number, and quality, of backlinks and ranking for e-commerce pages?

From your conclusion content is definitely the Emperor, and with some quality backlinks you could achieve a good position in the Serps.

But combined with my experience it all leads me to conclude that on the other hand G prefers to “trust?!” a page with little to no content and zero backlinks over a page that was once overoptimised and still has a lot of backlinks.

What are your thoughts on this?

I would guess that the page that has a shitload of links pointing to it has received an over-optimization penalty. However because it has so many links pointing to it, it spreads the link juice across your domain, so category page might be the second most optimized page for the keyword, hence it is ranking #2-4. You probably should add content to that category page, you might go up. Keyword overoptimization is no joke nowadays from my experience.