301 Redirect Always necessary?

Hey guys, I am ranked pretty low for the main keyword that I am optimizing for. It seems as if it would not be that tough to do. I have yet to buy a link. The site is 1 year and 3 months old and I have been reading about 301 redirects. I have not done that yet. I also have a pointer domain that is easier to remember. I have been lingering on page 6, 5, 4, and now back to 6 for my most competitive keyword. The question is, would a redirect help my serps? Should I do a redirect regardless? What links would you recommend buying while getting my site off the ground competing with 7 and 9 year old sites with 80 links or so? I just started adding content about 2 weeks ago. A page a day. I thought maybe I would start getting more hits to my "new landing pages" but I guess google has not indexed them??? I know they show up when I do the site:// but again the pages have only been up for a couple of weeks. I submitted ONE article in the last month or so. What would you do??

Any help would be better than me running around in circles. I spend most of my time selling condos (which is what I want to do) but I also set a goal for myself to be #1 for my most competitive keyword (oxford ms rael etasse) the last two words are "real estate". I am getting a lot of traffic from a lot of other keywords just not that one, and that drives the most traffic.

I still get a lot of leads online, just not from the main source (my most competitive keyword)

Sorry for the vent but I think I am beating myself at this game. Any REAL advice would be helpful!

301 redirect is not used to get good SERP positions.

You are inserting content these days, keep on doing so. And add one article per week.

So are you saying submit one article per week?? To how many directories in different forms?

301s are used when you permanently move a page from, say, www.x.com/wiki/articles/abc.htm to www.x.com/wiki/abc.htm. In this case, a 301 redirect would take all visitors that go to the previous location to the new location. Since search engine spiders will also be led to the new location, you will retain most of your link juice.

As for ranking higher, I don't consider it a very good strategy to submit your content to article directories. I'd rather suggest you add them to your own site (maybe in the form of a blog). The time you spend churning out low-grade content and submitting it to loads of article sites can be better spent creating useful and interesting articles, and promoting them from your own site.

From the sounds of it you don't have any requirement to do a 301 redirect.

The reason for implementing a 301 redirect is when you move a URL. That is why it is called a 301 which is server response code - "File Moved Permanently".

That being said if you bought the site that was ranking number 1 for your main kewyrod and 301 redirected it to your site that would be benneficial. So to say a 301 redirect does not help SERPs is not entirely accurate.

Adding relevant content is always good. That will help you build links naturally.

You say the new pages are not indexed but show up when you do a site: command. That means that they are indexed. The fact that you can see the URL in Google means they are indexed.
The fact that they are not ranking means they have little authority.

Also, you mention you are competing with sites that have 80 backlinks. Bear in mind if you are getting your back link data from Google it is very innaccurate and much lower than the real number. Yahoo is much mroe accurate for this. Google deliberately gives bad information in its link: command.

Vuying links is also against search engine terms of service and can be detrimental in the long run.

Write good quality content and it will naturally get linked.

If it does not get indexed quickly I would suggest adding an XML sitemap to help it along.

Great information Tolber. I didn't know much abou the 301 redirect except for the fact that everyone asks about it so I thought it MUST be important, and now I see where it is in certain cituations.

As for the information you gave me after that. I hate to say, I already knew it, I was just hoping for the get there quick scheme, and I know that that is not a smart but high risk strategy if I wanted to do so.

Thanks again! I'll just have to keep churning out quality content.

301 redirect is used when you are willing to redirect the present domain permanently to a different one. But this is not a good technique to improve the rankings. Yes the PR of the present domain would be directed to the new domain.

To get good ranking you have to concentrate on link building, as the top SEOs here keep on saying. On-page optimization along with off-page optimization is the only way to get good ranking. Try to get links from other related sites, since Google will not consider links from sites which are not related to the theme of your site, obviously this is valid only when you get links to improve rankings.

301 redirect can help your SERPs if you have recently converted lot of dynamic URLs into keyword rich static looking URLs through mod rewrite and have applied 301. This is specially useful for forums and e-commerce sites.

its not been index for more than 1 year?! Wow! Did you already generate a site map and submit it to google?How do you optimize your site? If you want to redirect your site to another url make sure the url you will use should your site to be rank well, like placing keywords in the url. I'm not good in redirecting but I thing you don't need it! You just need to optimized your site well. Create good content and build quality links . . .

no dude, the site has been indexed or I wouldnt know that I am on page six. I am saying that the pages I just added 2 weeks ago have not been indexed but was corrected when I said it shows up on the site:// feature on google which means they are directed.