Does linkbuilding really count that much? How can this happen? Difficult case :'(

Pan80

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It feels like Im struggling uphills.
Me and a friend started a webshop about one year ago in an general fashion niche.

After a couple of month did we see that we ranked good on some keyword in a smaller specific category we had (antique jewlery for example).
I guess because there is a lot of big brands in fashion in general, but not anyone specialised in that particular category.

So the competioner looked like:
#1 - A competitioner which have existed in 6-7 years, and have just that specific category of fashion.
#2 - Another competitior who had had pretty similar products as us, and had existed in about 5 years.

So we tried to go for the keyword in that specific category. We made a couple of articles, bought a couple of links. Made some banner to that specific category on the front page etc. And after some months, we finally managed to get just competitor #1 over us in organic search.
We bought some more link packages and single links, to expand that category (to almost similiar products). But then suddenly a new competitor (#3) arrived....

The new competitor was like competitor #1 just speciallised in that category.
And that competitor used all the tricks in the book to "trick" customers.
For example made a big "trusted/safe webshop" badge almost identical to a famous brand, just so the customer should belive that they was "proofed and safe".
Wrote how many thousands of customer they have served (even that they just opened the webshop so they couldnt have got any custoomer).
They wrote a lot of fake reviews on all theyre products, and installed an app (beeketing?) which came with pop up every 5-10 seconds, that showed that somebody have just bought a random item. Just so it should look like the page was very busy and to give the customer trust.
All the products had capital letters on them "IIN STOCK, WILL BE SHIPPED WITHIN 24 HOURS"
What they didnt write was that it would be shipped from china to scandinavia.. So it was actually just dropshipping (I tried order one cheap item, and I got it after 2 months).
So when no money on warehouse etc. did they use a lot of money on advertising..

So the problem is that they have existed in about 5 months, and we about 13 months.
They have outranked us on all the keywords in the category. I have checked monitor backlink, semrush etc. And we have about 250 backlink in total, they have 0(!!!!!)...

They doesnt have a singel backlink and they outrank us on everything..

They have used a lot on advertisement, and have about 8500 likes on fb, and we have about 1500..
Theyre page is ranked about as nr. 43.500 in our country, and we are nr 81.000, so they have nearly double our rank..

When I look at the traffic to competitor #2 and #3 and us..
Competitor #2 50%
Competitor #3 45%
Us 5%
So they have almost 10x our traffic..

So how can this happen when we have bought a couple of diversified link packages, have gotten links from real bloggers, have bought links from hig DA&TF sites, have longer history etc.?
Doesnt the link counts any thing? Can it be that they have a lot of advertising, which makes them a lot of traffic, so that give them better ranking on theyre keywords, since that maybe means they are more popular? Can another reason to they rank so well be that they have so much social likes, comments etc?

I have tried to ask these question to a couple of SEO guys, which both come with the brilliant solution to just buy more links from them, and then everything would be fine..

So any idea whats happening?
 
I have no idea.. I have checked in moz, monitorbacklinks, backlinkwatch, marketsamurai etc.. and all say 0.

So isnt it strange they have outmatched both us and competitor #2?
But can it be theyre massive ad campaigns which make a lot of traffic and social signals who do it? But that sounds unlikely also.
 
I have no idea.. I have checked in moz, monitorbacklinks, backlinkwatch, marketsamurai etc.. and all say 0.

So isnt it strange they have outmatched both us and competitor #2?
But can it be theyre massive ad campaigns which make a lot of traffic and social signals who do it? But that sounds unlikely also.

they probably have hidden links thats it
 
they probably have hidden links thats it
But isn't it strange I can't find a single backlink with any program? Is it so easy to hide all the backlinks? I have checked a lot of competitors, and all have a lot of them
 
But isn't it strange I can't find a single backlink with any program? Is it so easy to hide all the backlinks? I have checked a lot of competitors, and all have a lot of them
Yup, I too can hide all backlinks because they are using pbn, you need to blast pbn links to your site and do onpage perfectly
 
But will that say that you suggest that they only have PBN network and absolutely non real blogger links, catalogue links etc?
We have bought a lot of PBN links as well, and I think I see everyone in programs like backlinkmonitor..
And finally, do they really have to have any links? they cant manage to outrank everyone (exceot the competitor #1) with just traffic and social signs?
 
They've got stronger PBN links. Usual crawlers have been blocked. A link is a link regardless of whether it's "fake" or "real". If theirs are stronger, they win.
 
This is like trying to chop down a tree with a nail file, it has so little impact on anything - "We made a couple of articles, bought a couple of links."

Unless these were 2k+ word articles and the links were on Forbes and Huff Post, this means nothing in the scale of things.
 
This is like trying to chop down a tree with a nail file, it has so little impact on anything - "We made a couple of articles, bought a couple of links."

Unless these were 2k+ word articles and the links were on Forbes and Huff Post, this means nothing in the scale of things.

Yeah, that was when we first got the 2nd place in organic search. After that we have builded a lot of more links, about 250 links like I mentioned. Everything from buzzfeed, becomegorgeous, wikipedia (no follow), and ok real bloggers etc.
But if they have had any links from huff post, forbes etc, wouldnt we have found them in backlink monitor etc? Isnt it so that they just can hide the links if they are on "servers they controll"?

But it sounds like everyone here agree that they must have some backlinks right? Its not possible to outrank us just on traffic and ads? I know its possible if we have onpage SEO like zero, and they have very good. But I think we have atleast same quality on the on page SEO. We have bigger articles, but they have ofcourse more stuff in total. Since theyre site is only about that category.
 
In case study with my local website which is on page 2 google search.

Ranking will go up 2 bars.

Ranking influences the amount of incoming data and ip coming into your website.

Bounce rate.
And a social marker.

And how you do list building on your website.

My local site has entered in the order of 1-10 on the first page with 100 keywords

All my backlinks and branding do manual and research.

And buy backlinks and followers if I have money on it
 
That's called tranny linkbuilding. It's too
Good to be true
 
So even if we have bought some linkbuilding packages, and bought backlinks from real bloggers and some high DA&TF, the answer is still just continue to build links? Even if we cant find a single link for our competitor?
 
ur competitor block the crawler LUL...

Im sorry I think ure wrong ;)

I just got an report from my SEO agent.. and he had found some not important links by manual research. But he say also that they show up with 0 links in Majestic, Ahrefs, Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush, Monitorbacklink etc. And it looks like they dont have any hidden links to theyre page as well..
 
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