Credit: Derekwin

Every SEO has a strategy that builds the very foundation of optimizing any website's ranking in the SERPs. Beside the usual gamut of directory submissions, on-page optimization and blog commenting (tactics that *everyone* employs), you've got to have a couple of tricks up your sleeve in order to rank for highly competitive terms.

Credit: NYC Comet

Piggybacking off Authority Sites

If you've got a new site on your hands it can take a while to rank for primary terms due to the Google sandbox effect. While there is some heated debate over whether the sandbox actually exists or not, it is a known fact that Google gives priority to aged domains as part of its TrustRank algorithm. That said, how does one get targeted traffic to a client site or one's own site without resorting to expensive advertising, PPC, or paid reviews?

One of the plausible answer lies grabbing highly competitive terms from domains that allow ownership of various keyword phrases. Think Squidoo, Hubpages, Wikipedia, and PaidWikis. What about 2nd tier sites such as AboutUs.Org? All of these are established sites that can give a boost in traffic to your client site for their desired keyword phrases.

Of course, this technique is not quite as useful as it used to be in the past as there was mass manipulation of the SERPs in an unethical manner. Since then, Google has given less value to sites such as Squidoo but it still a value add to own competitive terms on such websites. Paid Wikis such as Wordhugger also show some promise if they are able to build up enough authority in the eyes of respected Search Engines.

The Process

1. Create a list of potential authority websites to piggyback off by scouring the web. The one's I've written about above are some of the major players, but there are others that allow the same features.
2. Register as many competitive terms as possible that relate to your own or client sites under each website. These may involve keywords such as "seo company", "seo firm", "texas seo" etc.
3. Populate your acquired pages with valuable content that is keyword rich and high quality. Think of these pages as the pre-sales page to the website you are persuading visitors to navigate to (your client's website). Make sure you have a targeted call to action repeated several times on this page.
4. Rinse and Repeat

This is strictly one of many little things an SEO can do to leverage significant results for ranking a website. It also falls within the realms of ethical SEO and can be used to leverage targeted traffic, and quality links from authority websites.

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6 gripping comments

[...] How To PiggyBack Off Authority Sites For Tier 1 Keywords (tags: seo sem keywords traffic) [...]

links for 2008-01-06 | a minor technicality  ^#

[...] over at SearchEnginePeople.com wrote an interesting article about How To PiggyBack Off Authority Sites For Tier 1 Keywords, which explains how you could leverage from authority sites, with some [...]

Link Love – Monday 01/07/2008  ^#

hmmm… an interesting article with a twist on tips for doing some SEO to my blog.. great post! I shall use some of the suggestions to better improve traffic to my site.. thanks!

androo  ^#

Nice post, I will have to test a few examples out…Thank you

NBN Group  ^#

Thanks for this. I have been using Squidoo, but I guess I haven't been utilizing it to the fullest. I will get right on it. I was not familiar with hubpages until reading this post.

Connie Ragen Green  ^#

Hi Dev,

I use Squidoo and it's certainly easy to get keywords there. The only downside is the maintenance -it's just another thing you need to do.

One I created was oriented around the UK Apprentice TV show and when the show finished my interest in the lens vanished. Although it does have keywords I use in my own business blog.

jim  ^#