Have you ever experienced something like this? Your strategies are all sound, but you can’t seem to get through page one. Your on-page SEO is perfect, and your anchor text is correctly varied.
The majority of the time, I see this because the site has a very different off-site SEO record than the other pages on the first list. The “Black Sheep Effect,” we can term it.
The Black Sheep Effect
Examine the top ten results for your keyword and the number of links on the ranking pages (use mozbar to make this a lot easier).
If everyone in the top 10 is ranked with up to 20 links, and you’re trying to get into page 1 with 75+ links, Google will identify you as different, and you’ll have a difficult time ranking.
When you’re in a niche dominated by authority pages, this is a common occurrence.
If you’re in the fitness niche and want to promote an affiliate’s latest supplement, the first page would most likely include WebMD, Wikipedia, and the Centers for Disease Control. Since these sites usually have a high domain authority (DA) of 90 or higher, ranking them requires just a few links. Sometimes none at all.
When one of your non-intended pages ranks higher than the one you intended to rank, is another example of the Black Sheep Effect.
Assume you have a homepage dedicated to Product ABC. You’ve thrown a lot of links at it to get it to rank, but for whatever reason, a non-important product inner page is ranked higher than the homepage.
What’s going on is that you’ve either over-optimized the homepage anchors or have too many links pointing to it in contrast to everyone else.
How to Beat it
You may be thinking, you don’t have a DA 90 site, so you will need a lot of links to rank for your difficult keyword.
But hold on! Reverse siloing is a simple solution.
What you need to do is build inner pages that are supporting articles for the target keyword of your key page. Then, using a variant of the target keyword or something generic like “Return to Homepage,” create a contextual link to the homepage.
When you send links to an inner page, the link juice is transferred to the key page using a targeted anchor to establish relevance.
This works perfectly.
So, before you go for a keyword with zeal, take a look at the competition. Look at what they’re doing to rank and try to imitate it. Send your most strong links to your key page, as usual, and use inner pages to provide the extra link juice you need to get to the top.
Are there any Other Black Sheep Scenarios?
Quite simply… absolutely.
In a variety of cases, standing out from the crowd and being different from your peers in the SERPs can make things more difficult for you…
As a general concept, the only way to boost your Google ranking is to “blend in” but “do it better.”
Here are a few illustrations…
Word Count
When people assume that longer articles often outperform shorter articles, they are making a common mistake.
Take, for example, local SEO.
Will having a 4000-word homepage make sense if you’re trying to rank your plumber client? To sell plumbing in India, how much content is needed?
This is something Google is well aware of. They are aware that certain sales-oriented sites (as well as e-commerce) do not necessitate a large amount of content to rank.
You’ll need to do the same when your SERP is full of short content sales pages.
Domain Age
Analyze the domain age of the sites on page 1 if you’re contemplating whether or not to enter a new niche.
You’ll have a rough time breaking into the niche if the competitors are all 4+ years old.
So, what’s the solution?
Is it as simple as waiting for your new website to age?
Certainly not.
Remember that as the site ages, so does the competition. You have a one-year-old platform, but the competition is now five years old.
One choice is to create new pages on existing domains. I’d stick to non-dropped domains, such as those available from TB Solutions.
The 301 redirect is another alternative.
As you redirect, the receiving site inherits the redirected domain’s age, as well as other factors including anchor text and link juice (minus some fudge factor).
I’ve skated in 301s in the sandbox and to imitate artificial age, but I try to stay away from them as much as possible. 301s add a level of unpredictability to the ranking mechanism, which I like to retain.
Locally Relevant Link Diversity
This is something that SEO firms are familiar with.
Google expects local links when ranking in niches locally.
You’ll be facing an uphill struggle if you’re attempting to rank for “plastic surgeon Beverly Hills” with 100% PBNs.
Looking at the competitors’ websites will quickly expose a long list of locally related link sources, such as local business citations or guest posts by local bloggers.
Use local links, such as citations, for getting relevance quickly and cheaply.
Being Bottom-Heavy
When you have the following site architecture, you’ll find yourself in this condition…
You have a homepage that acts as a gateway to different silo pages. Your homepage doesn’t seek to rank for anything in particular, but your silo pages do.
If you have a national dentist directory, here is an example.
You wouldn’t bother about ranking the website and no one searches for a “dentist in India.” However, you are concerned with the ranking of your internal pages with terms such as “dentist in Gandhinagar” and similar terms.
When you’re distributing links to the site’s pages, you’ll run into a challenge.
Another black sheep case occurs where there is an abnormally high ratio of inner-page links to homepage links (concerning the competition).
You must link to the homepage to avoid this from happening.