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But now the going is really tough, so i am looking at the sites above me. Some of them i can understand, as they've been around for years and have lots of relevence, lots of incoming links.
But the site in #3 is a mystery. The page has no header, no text, no alt on the image, no links . . . Beside this, there is little relevence to the site if you are searching "widget." The site is for a musical group that has the word "widget" in its name. That is the only connection.
HOW the heck is this site consistently in #3 place? Doesn't this contradict everything we know about Google?
The site probably has a high number of incoming links with relevant link text. I've experienced the same phenomenon you describe, and the page had tons of incoming links with my important keywords appearing in the link text, while the page itself was fairly worthless.
The only solution was to get more incoming links with better link text.
Jim
maybe he`s using some kind of redirection....is the url of the page you see the same as shown in the searchresult?(in green)...if it`s not you don`t see the indexed page but the page he wants you to see....
The page i am looking at in #3 has NO links visible. None. You click on the image and you enter the site. Of course i have no way to know how many incoming links there are.
twin65
There's no redirection i can see. URL is genuine. The URL ends: "blahblah.com/html/widget.html" When you click the image the URL for the next page is "blahblah.com/html/widget/index.htm" The title of each page is "Widget of Ecstasy," and that's it. Checked out every page on the site (5 total) Only one page has the text "widget" five times. that's it. This site has almost no text and no visible links leading off the site.
It's weird.
Of course i have no way to know how many incoming links there are
You can find the number of incoming links by seaching this in google:
link:http://www.blahblah.com/html/widget.html
Hope this helps.
Happy Holidays!
In google, the anchor text of incoming links can float a page in the serps. It's one of the problems with their algo (and one that is increasingly subject to manipulation). One of our members here showed me a page he had retired due to a domain dispute. The page had no title, no content (except a text "404"), i.e., nothing for the algos to use to determine relevancy. Yet this site ranked #3 out of 600k returns for a real estate term and remained in that position through 4 or more updates.
perhaps it's just one of those weird anomalies.
Using Google to try link:http://www.blahblah.com/html/widget.html for the page that is in #3 place tells me there is only 1 incoming link to that page. The incoming link is from the same domain.
Using Google (link) on MY page that is in sixth place i find there are 106 incoming links, 7 of them off-site.
None of this makes any sense to me.
I've doublechecked numerous DNS servers from other ISPs to make sure it wasnt a DNS error on our end - no entry.
BTW, Google has nothing more than the URL in its listing... www.TexasWidgets.com
Also, Google shows no pages linking to it at all...
Alexa though, shows 13 sites that supposedly link to it. In checking them, they either have an image link with no alt tag, or text link that simply has "Texas Widgets" as the link text.
None of the linking sites are high traffic, or even related to the same industry, so there isnt any other relevant info on the linking pages... simply a resources list (they are mostly link pages).
Traffic per Alexa on all of them is minimal if even registered at all... more than not, it returns "no traffic statistics" or figures near 2 million.
So... why is this site #4 for months now?
This is kinda odd... seems there are more and more results like this from what I'm finding, reading here and elsewhere.
What you are talking about here is far more common than you think. It seems that Google prefers smaller sites rather than large sites with many links to their home page and then having link value carry through.
What you need is many inbound keyword links to your page.
Just because a page does not show any backlinks does not mean they are not there. I have had to use many other search engines in an attempt to determine where a competitors incoming links were coming from. I have then had to obtain at least as many links with keywords in them.
One site we compete against is PR3 and has about 17 external incoming links.
Our page is PR4 and had at the last Google update two external links and 40 internal links, but this was still not enough, even though one external link is PR5 (but different language) and one internal link is PR5.
It seems that Google does not do an update or recalulation on all of these very low PR site in every update. It seems to only occur every three months or so.
Fresh bot may be fine in English where your sites have a higher PR, but in languages such as Japanese, you can say good bye to at least one PR value, the chances of being picked up in fresh bot are much lower. Thus movement up in position is much slower.
Google shows only one link, but when i did a search for "XXXX of ECXXXSY" i found many references to the exact page title, so i am presuming some of these sites have links pointing to the page, and Google simply doesn't recognize them.
Looks like the only solution is to painstakingly gather more incoming links.
so i am presuming some of these sites have links pointing to the page, and Google simply doesn't recognize them.
Google does recognize them, they're just not displayed. In general, a link check at Google only shows inbounds that are from pages with a PR4 or higher, but they still give PR credit for the undisplayed links.
A backlink check at AllTheWeb shows 27 sites linking to the page in question, and all of them have the keyword in the anchor text. (which is a very large factor in Google's current algo)
[edited by: ciml at 12:27 pm (utc) on Dec. 25, 2002]
[edit reason] just fixed display [/edit]
Right. You mentioned the site above you is about a band with the keyword in their name. Do a search on "stones" on Google. The top SERPs are dominated by sites about the Rolling Stones. Fans likely will link to a bands home page using the name of the band in the anchor text. Remember, a common word can have meanings in different contexts. You don't think of that word in relation to this band, but fans do.
Thanks for that great advice. Unfortunately, my Google-based visitors arrive on 2 different searches, both represented in my page title. If i switch the phrases in the title i will hurt the other search term (first part of the title), for which i am only #20, rather than #6. i think i'll have to leave the title for now and try another tact.
What i've been trying to do is raise the profile of 2 different pages, one targeted at each phrase. It's taking time, but i now have the fresh bot coming back every second day, so i think i'm on the right path.
There is the growing art form of linking off the radar.
