About to give up - shall I buy links?
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So I have been at this for years! I cannot get Google to improve the rank on my travel site. The site has great relevant content that is constantly updated, it's optimized, has good page speed, active on social media. I have added backlinks where I could. I changed domain name about 4 years ago which probably impacted my rankings at the time. MOZ just did a walk through with me and couldn't really suggest any improvements. I remain with a low domain authority and consistently place under my competitor on Google.
Last resort is to buy backlinks through fiverr. Is that a big mistake?
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Not an SEO expert myself, but wouldn't suggest that. The backlinks you can purchase probably won't be of good quality, with little to no effect on your search rankings. In fact, they might actually have a negative impact if Google blacklists these websites you are getting paid links from.
It appear you've exhausted many options trying to rank ahead of your competitor, but I think there are still a couple of opportunities you can consider:
1. Aim for "position zero" on SERP by optimizing for Featured Snippets
2. Optimize for image or voice search, rather than purely focusing on text results
Hope this helps a little!
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