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It only takes a few good links from some high PR pages to get decent PR. Look at these factors to see if any of these are common to those pages ranking ahead of you. Try to get a link from these pages that are linking to your competitors if you can. One of my competitors had a PR7 with only 12 backlinks, one was from a PR8 page in a major directory.
PageRank is a specific formula applied to sites by Google.
High placement in the search results does not equal "high PR" by definition.
PageRank is only one of many [webmasterworld.com] factors in Google's ranking methodology.
You can learn more about this by reading WebmasterWorld's Google Knowledge Base [webmasterworld.com].
In many cases the overlooked factor is the anchor text of the inbound links pointing to a given page.
You might try doing an allinanchor: [webmasterworld.com] search at Google for your keywords. If the sites you are curious about turn up you can be sure that the inbound anchor text is a contributing factor to their high rankings.
Dante_Maure: interestingly, I did an allinanchor: search on my top competitor and nothing came up on them at all...
The key to using the allinanchor: command is to search for the keywords themselves not the competitor.
For example...
If your site Widget-O-Rama.com is targeting "Fuzzy Widgets" and your number one competitor is WidgetWorld.com, you would do a search at Google like this...
allinanchor: fuzzy widgets
This will show you the pages which have "fuzzy widgets" anchor text pointing to them.
If your competitor is listed in the results, it means they've got "fuzzy widgets" inbound links.
We set the title to any uncompetitive keyword pair and rank number 1 for that pair, and we have only pagerank 6.
People talk about the hundreds of factors google uses in the algorithm, but in actual fact only a few really matter.
Any advice on inbound links other than high PR, and anchor text KWs?
Checked the cached page, it'll will show you the following:
These search terms have been highlighted: fuzzy
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: widgets
>>there's no way brand new me is gonna rank number one for those keywords the minute I am indexed
It is possible....
Sorry to disappoint you, but it takes a while for the pagerank to flow through even after the links are indexed. Up to 3 or 4 months.
But, be patient and follow the rules and you will succeed. Unless of course you have 10 competitors who also do the same but have been around longer.
So outbound links with good anchor text scores you points even if it's a one way outbound link (not reciprocal)?
Also, In Brett's "Building a great site in Google" thread, for every new page you create, I know that Brett recommends linking (with good anchor text) to a couple of high PR sites that are themed similar to your new page. So Google really likes that even though you're giving away PR and not receiving any? I'm a little confused.
Pagerank is only one factor. The other is relevance. A lot of people believe that linking to relevant sites helps to establish your relevance.
Googleguy has spoken of "Pagerank hoarding", and you can understand that Google would not want to encourage popular sites to become prima donnas that are only linked to but never link back. I think it makes sense to assume that Google would reward sites that link to other relevant sites.
Google likes random walk links. It's how they find all the pages out there.
I personally don't do the reciprocal link thing. Many of my links turn out to be reciprocal, but that is because the 2 sites like each other's content.
Link to good pages that your surfers will be interested in. Keep your surfers' needs in mind and you will rarely go wrong with google.
And if you do a good job setting up your internal linking structure, you will only be giving away a small percentage of your sites PR, and you will be making your site a much better experience for the end user.
