SEO noob needs some guidance

[KindNoob]

Hello everyone!
Amazing to see such responsive and knowledgeable people around!
I'm a noob learning SEO to rank my page, hope this maybe helps someone to skip stepping on some rakes as well.
I have a small store in a niche and want to rank higher than my main competitor (2-5th result, I'm not fighting the big selling platforms like Amazon for my niche).
I've optimized my keywords, my urls are SEO friendly, SEO checks show good results. There's no point of blogs or other posts for my store.

• So far, I've bought bad PBN backlinks (tip for noobs, upload backlinks in semrush to check for toxic markers), positions were slowly but surely tanking, I disavowed them all and they started to slowly raise.
• I bought 40 manual backlinks on high DA sites that link my website in some profile pages, after 1.5 months only 2 of them can be seen in Google search console. For the last month I've seen visible improvements on the rankings, but still 1-2nd page and only couple have been found by Google. The traffic is low so being high is crucial.
• My DA was 4 so I bought DA boost, little did I know Google redirects are not good (found this forum by trying to find information about it) and since the redirect kicked in, I'm seeing slow decline in rankings like with PBN links. It's only been 3 days, but I believe it might not be a coincidence.

Before the DA boost my DA was 4, MT 2, OS 49%. My DR is 0.3 and main competitor has DR 6

Although my product descriptions are much better and not repetitive or empty like my main competitor's, they're not being indexed, I'm not much concerned about it.
I feel like I need a small boost (why I bought DA boost) to rank higher, but after buying the 40 link gig and not seeing them indexed or DA boost being a scam, I just don't know what to buy. I'm also on a small budget and don't believe I need anything major although you're the smart people here. I don't know what to look for when buying backlinks or boosts to finally have the desired effect. Based on my current experience 90% of fiverr gigs seem to be a scam.
Please guide me!

 

[MisterF]

Welcome.

This is why DA is crap compared to Ahrefs DR. DA 46 people would think looks a decent site, but Ahrefs gives a more realistic viewpoint; My DR is 0.3 .
Also having 100% do-follow links isn't natural.

 

[PHPInjected]

So, you’re gonna want a few things:

- Strong, foundational links. In my opinion, for this you’re gonna want guest posts on a high DR website that’s also relevant to your niche. PBN links can be extremely helpful. @tiiberius provides these exceptionally well in that regard.
- You’ll want to vary your link sources along with referring domains.
- all of this, while also getting each link that comes your way, as you’ve already done.

There’s also a decent thread in the marketplace that is known for providing SEO to online stores specifically I believe. I can’t find it currently, but search the marketplace for it.

 

[chiefoccupy]

Hello everyone!
Amazing to see such responsive and knowledgeable people around!
I'm a noob learning SEO to rank my page, hope this maybe helps someone to skip stepping on some rakes as well.
I have a small store in a niche and want to rank higher than my main competitor (2-5th result, I'm not fighting the big selling platforms like Amazon for my niche).
I've optimized my keywords, my urls are SEO friendly, SEO checks show good results. There's no point of blogs or other posts for my store.

• So far, I've bought bad PBN backlinks (tip for noobs, upload backlinks in semrush to check for toxic markers), positions were slowly but surely tanking, I disavowed them all and they started to slowly raise.
• I bought 40 manual backlinks on high DA sites that link my website in some profile pages, after 1.5 months only 2 of them can be seen in Google search console. For the last month I've seen visible improvements on the rankings, but still 1-2nd page and only couple have been found by Google. The traffic is low so being high is crucial.
• My DA was 4 so I bought DA boost, little did I know Google redirects are not good (found this forum by trying to find information about it) and since the redirect kicked in, I'm seeing slow decline in rankings like with PBN links. It's only been 3 days, but I believe it might not be a coincidence.

Before the DA boost my DA was 4, MT 2, OS 49%. My DR is 0.3 and main competitor has DR 6
View attachment 208475
Although my product descriptions are much better and not repetitive or empty like my main competitor's, they're not being indexed, I'm not much concerned about it.
I feel like I need a small boost (why I bought DA boost) to rank higher, but after buying the 40 link gig and not seeing them indexed or DA boost being a scam, I just don't know what to buy. I'm also on a small budget and don't believe I need anything major although you're the smart people here. I don't know what to look for when buying backlinks or boosts to finally have the desired effect. Based on my current experience 90% of fiverr gigs seem to be a scam.
Please guide me!

Welcome to the forum

 

[KindNoob]

Thank you for the responses!
All the 100% do-follow links are the PBN purchase that went wrong and are disavowed. The manual backlinks I bought had a natural follow no-follow ratio but they're not getting indexed by google.
My niche is not really guest post friendly and the site will be taken down in 1 year as it will have lost it's relevancy.
Should I go for more high DR backlinks or maybe just DR boost service? I don't know what to look for buying the DR service as I'm afraid of the quality of links they use but it looks like more surefire way as previous backlinks didn't get indexed. All I need is to rank higher than my competitor that has DR 6, DA 11 and 4 years old website.

 

[Zomiseo]

Hello everyone!
Amazing to see such responsive and knowledgeable people around!
I'm a noob learning SEO to rank my page, hope this maybe helps someone to skip stepping on some rakes as well.
I have a small store in a niche and want to rank higher than my main competitor (2-5th result, I'm not fighting the big selling platforms like Amazon for my niche).
I've optimized my keywords, my urls are SEO friendly, SEO checks show good results. There's no point of blogs or other posts for my store.

• So far, I've bought bad PBN backlinks (tip for noobs, upload backlinks in semrush to check for toxic markers), positions were slowly but surely tanking, I disavowed them all and they started to slowly raise.
• I bought 40 manual backlinks on high DA sites that link my website in some profile pages, after 1.5 months only 2 of them can be seen in Google search console. For the last month I've seen visible improvements on the rankings, but still 1-2nd page and only couple have been found by Google. The traffic is low so being high is crucial.
• My DA was 4 so I bought DA boost, little did I know Google redirects are not good (found this forum by trying to find information about it) and since the redirect kicked in, I'm seeing slow decline in rankings like with PBN links. It's only been 3 days, but I believe it might not be a coincidence.

Before the DA boost my DA was 4, MT 2, OS 49%. My DR is 0.3 and main competitor has DR 6
View attachment 208475
Although my product descriptions are much better and not repetitive or empty like my main competitor's, they're not being indexed, I'm not much concerned about it.
I feel like I need a small boost (why I bought DA boost) to rank higher, but after buying the 40 link gig and not seeing them indexed or DA boost being a scam, I just don't know what to buy. I'm also on a small budget and don't believe I need anything major although you're the smart people here. I don't know what to look for when buying backlinks or boosts to finally have the desired effect. Based on my current experience 90% of fiverr gigs seem to be a scam.
Please guide me!

I think i can help you to decrease Alexa rank

 

[KindNoob]

Oh it just jumped again and backlink count increased by ~250 although I don't see any new links in Semrush or GSC

 

[Zomiseo]

Oh it just jumped again and backlink count increased by ~250 although I don't see any new links in Semrush or GSC
View attachment 208521

All good but 28% spam scoree (SS) is too high and also Alexa is also high you should do somthing,

 

[awesomewebsites]

Happy to have you here.

 

[KindNoob]

All good but 28% spam scoree (SS) is too high and also Alexa is also high you should do somthing,

Mine is the middle one. Google says Alexa takes in the amount of visitors to calculate the rank so it's not a surprise that 3-9 visits (not unique people) per day doesn't rank me high by Alexa. My niche is small 70-170 monthly searches for main keywords in US, that's why I want to rank before the other sites - if 30% of people scroll down to see my page in search results, it's only 21-51 impressions per month.
I'm not greedy to rank the 1st in everything, just higher than the main competitor that doesn't seem to care about SEO at all yet somehow ranks high in all keywords.

 

[Zomiseo]

Mine is the middle one. Google says Alexa takes in the amount of visitors to calculate the rank so it's not a surprise that 3-9 visits (not unique people) per day doesn't rank me high by Alexa. My niche is small 70-170 monthly searches for main keywords in US, that's why I want to rank before the other sites - if 30% of people scroll down to see my page in search results, it's only 21-51 impressions per month.
I'm not greedy to rank the 1st in everything, just higher than the main competitor that doesn't seem to care about SEO at all yet somehow ranks high in all keywords.

Nice thought but what if i will offer you i will rank your alexa 1-2Million in just $50

 

[megstar]

Just wanted to say hi and welcome. You seem to know more about me about what you're doing so best of luck. I think you'll be able to find backlinks and PBNs on here if you look around.

 

[KindNoob]

I'm just trying to find out what do I need to rank before my competitor. It's hard to buy things blindly and wait 1 month to see the effect. I wish someone knew what exactly or approximately I need and in what amount as I've wasted a couple of months already and my niche will be dead in 1 year.
Like "you need this metric around this number and you will outrank him", "you need to buy this amount of this kind of backlinks", "when buying this, you need to check for these things not being present and these things must be mentioned for quality purchase". I'm a beginner, if this wasn't time sensitive I'd just go on with trial and error but have limited time so I thought maybe someone will be amazing enough to show me the way.

 

[KindNoob]

Just wanted to say hi and welcome. You seem to know more about me about what you're doing so best of luck. I think you'll be able to find backlinks and PBNs on here if you look around.

Hey! Thank you!
Nowadays backlinks and PBNs are everywhere, it's hard to judge as a beginner which are good and which are bad as I've already experienced the bad effects of PBNs. I bought 400 PBNs, the seller delivered 1600 from bunch of different domains but 4 IPs so my rankings started to tank. Based on the fact that all reviews for this seller were good, there are so many clueless people around not knowing how things are working and being happy while getting scammed. I'm sure with time we both will be educated enough to help other beginners who are willing to learn! I know I'm already passing my knowledge to my boss for his side gig and he's also kind of person who likes to share knowledge

 

[warriorsam53]

The biggest issue for you right now is the age of your site. The crappy links you bought are unlikely to have any effect either way. You can ignore all the metrics from Moz. The redirects you created for the DA boost aren't indexed by Google so they won't affect your rankings.

Are you trying to rank for product terms or category terms?

 

[KindNoob]

The biggest issue for you right now is the age of your site. The crappy links you bought are unlikely to have any effect either way. You can ignore all the metrics from Moz. The redirects you created for the DA boost aren't indexed by Google so they won't affect your rankings.

Are you trying to rank for product terms or category terms?

If I understand correctly, it's by category terms.
I'm trying to rank my main page for keywords people would google to find websites in my niche. It's general and by category like "buy t-shits", "buy t-shirts for women", "buy t-shits for men" etc. all set up for the home page and the home page is ranking for all categories.
I had issues setting up Google ads for 1 of the categories I chose to promote - as the traffic is so low, despite adding 20+ keywords I needed to add generalized ones that I didn't want to promote because the search traffic was too low, for example, I needed to use "buy t-shirts for men" instead of "buy plus sized t-shirts for men" just for google to allow the campaign to run.
Most people search "buy t-shits", "t-shirts for sale", "t-shit store" which is my priority to rank in, categories seem to rank better than the general search terms, probably because of the lack of search volume and optimization for keywords in competitor sites. My product pages are discovered/crawled and not indexed so there's no hope to rank by products as they are.
Obviously I'm not selling t-shirts and it's just taken as an example.

 

[warriorsam53]

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, but your homepage shouldn't be ranking for all your categories. There's something wrong there. Taking the t-shirt example, your structure needs to be something like this:

Homepage: buy t-shirts online
-Category1: men's tshirts
- product 1
- product 2
-Category 2: women's tshirts
- product 1
- product 2
-Category 3: kid's tshirts
- product 1
- product 2

So your homepage should rank for the head term "buy t-shirts online" (or whatever else you like) and each category page should rank for the category term. This of course is a very simplified structure. You can have multiple categories and subcategories.

Are you following a similar structure?

 

[KindNoob]

That is the structure of my page, but homepage is ranking for all keywords
There are links to each category on homepage so Google is taking those as keywords for the categories and homepage is ranking for all keywords.
The PA for category pages is lower so I'd guess Google is taking the home page as the one to display for the keywords.
Honestly I don't mind having home page to be displayed for "men's tshirts", buttons to click on each categories is the 1st thing visible after opening the site - it's categories, then about us, reviews (self written for keyword purposes), contact form.

 

[KindNoob]

I'm clueless here what should be next steps, I'm checking more backlinks but I'm scared to buy bad/inefficient ones again.