Newmania I think you're right about most of your points but not all. Ive been frustrated doing the article directories, link exchanges, blah blah blah for some time now and i dont even see benefits at all from them anymore.
The only thing I see benefit from (and it happens quickly) is getting great links from highly relevant sites. and I dont mean the lame link exchange page that has a terrible pagerank and dozens if not hundreds of links on it. Those are worthless if you are going for anything decently competitive. My keywords are very competitive and Im up against a bunch of other SEOs.
I happen to own about 8 domains all within the same niche (initially not for SEO purposes). The first 5 domains are all more than 2-3 years old with full websites on them, they are all almost real companies, with decent page ranks. When I began SEOing one site I did the typical crap just explained and nothing really happened. Maybe I moved up a touch here or there but nothing compared to the hours of work put into it. Then, I experimented with adding links from the other domains. I did them in-text with my desired anchor text and the results began to happen immediately. Then I would try a few more. The rankings jumped. Then I tried adding links directly on the home page (in the footer) with my anchor text. Rankings jumped again. Im now 1st page but floating in the 7-10 range for all the keywords.
Im at the point now where I feel that If I can add about 4-5 more relevant sites, I will be untouchable. All the while my competitors have hundreds and in some cases 1000's of links but most are from worthless link exchanges (if Google is on to link exchanges, then why the hell are these people still using that software and ranking #1).
The problem I have is when starting a new niche. I dont have the power I was lucky with in my example above. I dont have extra old domains with established PR websites and unique content. Now we all know its easy to create new websites with unique content but I need to know how to get them quickly ranked so that the backlinks will actually count for something. This is my challenge.
Can anyone advise on this?
Finally someone with some real story. Most of the link building mentioned here is worthless. Directories, pad, social bookmarks, articles, web2 properties are all useless if you want to be first in a halfway decent niche. They're good for a start, but all these hundreds or thousands of links can be outperformed by "5" worthy links.
I could go on and on about this, but lets get back to your issue Lakers. The way to be nr#1 without an arsenal of supporting domains is to get links on relevant quality websites. To get these you will usually need money. Search in google for your niche and contact start contacting the owners. If you're in acai berry you would start searching for "acai berry" and then related terms like "weight loss", "lose weight", "diet" and everything in between, top to bottom. Then you write down worthy domains and contact authors for buying a link on their homepage. Write a personalized message to everyone, don't just write a message and send it to 50 prospects.
You're surely trying to rank your root domain for more than just one keyword so be sure to use an anchor that won't directly compete with the owner. You'll have a higher chance of your anchor being accepted by that webmaster.
If the website has a blog or some kind of article section, you can also try guest authoring, but you'll need some good marketing and a very good article if you want such a high profile website to accept your "guest content". You can also pay them for a post, but be sure you're on a quality website (age, link profile, authority, PR)
You can't get better links than these are.
