I got a very interesting question in my inbox today.
I have an entertainment site targeted towards celebrity wallpaper and I am trying myself to rank higher in Google. I have tried everything I can to get links. I have tried link exchange, article submission, directory submissions, social media submission to Digg, reditt … and what not but I am not able to rank well in Google. Google does not like paid links and so what am I left with now apart from quitting. Awaiting your reply.
Let me first tell you that you are not alone and so quitting according to me is not an option at all. Read Biggest Challenge To New Bloggers. Are You Ready for it? It will be an inspiration for you.
The next thing you need to understand is your niche and plan accordingly. I will share with you hints of business plan I suggested to one of my friend Subhodeep for his Celebrity site but before I do that you have to understand couple of very important points about entertainment niche.
- Competition – It is like hell in this niche. No matter what keyword you select for any actor, actresses … and no matter what keyword you append or prepend it will be a competitive keyword only. You cannot escape the competition.
- Major players – You are not only competing in highly competitive niche but also with sites that have millions of dollars worth of advertising budget every year and are already an established player in the niche. Sites like IMDB, SantaBanta, AskMen and the list goes on …
The right approach in entertainment niche is target lesser searched and not so popular celebrities. Get them online on your site and then try getting links to those celebrities. This way you build on your traffic. After ranking well for lesser searched celebrities you should work on your internal links and start linking to your more searched celebrities from your high traffic pages.
The reason this really works is you not only build traffic to your site but you also get a decent Toolbar PR & Alexa ranking. Now when you email other fellow webmasters for link exchange they are more interested in getting links from your site because they only have 2 parameters to judge a site aka Google Toolbar PR and Alexa and you have already improved on both of them with those lesser celebrities.
This is a good strategy for entertainment niche and it is working for my friend.
Share your views and feedback on my strategy in comments below and if you have something different do not hesitate to share the same.
Now let me clarify few things about your second query on paid links. You did mention that Google does not like paid links but Google also does not like link exchanges and so if you can get yourself natural looking paid links I think you should be fine but remember that your budget may soon evaporate if you compete with those big players with paid links and so try getting your links to those lesser competitive celebrities where you already have some ranking and can rank better easily. Check out how you can Effectively Build Links to New Website.