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My site has a pr7.
Did you get your PR7 by attaining a couple of great links (PR8+ pages) or by a whack of good links (PR5+ pages)..?
Occasionally, a PR5 with a substantial amount of PR5+ links can out perform a PR7 with a few PR8+ links.
Just a thought...
- Chad
2) IMHO internal linking structure (which you didn't mention) can be crucial. Do all of your internal pages link back to your homepage with the keyword? Don't funnel lots of pr to other worthless pages like terms and conditions, privacy policies, about us, etc.
3) When things are really competitive, you have to worry about all the little things like is the keyword at the beggining or the end of the title tag, is the relevent content high enough on the page, are you using Hx tags in a way that makes sense.
4) Also if the SERP is really that competitive, and you are ranking so low with a PR7 and optimized pages, some of your competitors might be spamming. I don't want to restart the ethics debate on spam reports, but some sites do get removed.
Most importantly of all, keep studying the top-10. I am sure that threre is something the majority of them are doing that you are not.
i have not cared about pr for years. all my websites list on number one if it's a german keyword (even if it's the name of a city or whatever) without any thought on pr or exessive ranking marketing. i don't know why it is that way, but it is. then even one of my bigger babies list on place 3 or 4 in international comparision with a very often used and written name (all over the world). no tricks, no gimmicks, just the normal webmaster stuff. the site has a pr of 5 i realized some days ago after joining the pr counting community in this forum, which is not that high.
i would say what count is well made linkage in your own meaning: i want this site to link me, because that would be good for my site and not: for my ranking. maybe this is the clue. the more people are looking on ranking only, they forget that the web with it's hyperlinks works sometimes even better and finer than a search engine.?! don't know in science but maybe is... my 2c
- hakre
IMO a one-word search is generally unfocused; the more specific the search phrase, the better targeted the resulting traffic is and the better it will convert.
I started to optimize my site for the keyword, worked hard on it, added it wherever it made sense, improved density, title-ed it, meta-ed it, etc.
And might have overdone it. Are you designing your site for a person or google? Google would prefer that you design it for a person.
Instead of using your keyword every place possible, try replacing a few of those with pronouns so it reads better.
And like figment88 said, concentrate on the other keyphrases. They are easier targets and will likely help your ranking on the big keyword while driving more traffic to your site.
I have a PR7 which is number 2 (out of 2.3 million) in the serps for one keyword but I don't care very much about that keyword. For another single keyword which more aptly describes my space, I'm like 150th or worse (out of 10.7 million).
I've got this second keyword in high density not just on my home page but on every page. But the first keyword is included in my domain name and the second isn't. Part of the trouble is that everyone who links to me uses the domain name.
Say you sell fluorescent widgets and marketing sense tells you that you want a highly brandable name that will stick out in the crowd, you might choose something like "BrightGears.com" as opposed to "FluorescentWidgets.com." Google might have you number one or two for "Bright" or "Gears" and way further down for "widgets" or "fluorescent."
But notice that Google.com comes up first for a the term "search engine" yet the term appears nowhere on the page!
- but -
We usually sit in the #7 or #8 spot for a major one word "broad" keyword. That's our gold. We receive more traffic from this one keyword, that returns about 6,000,000 results than all the other combined and multiplied by 5.
Regardless of traffic, if only 10% of the visitors that use this keyword to find us are "target customers", that number exceeds all other minor keywords 10 fold. Hands down.
We just happen to be in a industry that begs us to focus on the one word keyword. Widgets. That's it. That is what thousands of folks type into search engines daily, to find companies like ours.
Sorry to get off topic, but I don't think changing keywords to a more targeted keywords is the approach I would take.
..but perhaps that's just me :)
Cheers,
- Chad
The difference is that you are at #7, not #50. There is a huge difference. I'm guessing that each of those lesser keywords that you mention draw more traffic than having the #50 spot on the main keyword.
An advantage to concentrating on some of the other keyphrases is that it makes it easier for you to generate more, relevant, content. This gives you more pages to generate good links, and take advantage of whatever theming there is, even if it is only anchor text. If there is more theming than that going on, it's even better for you.
SlyGuy, i don't think that this was what figment88's suggested. I guess he didn't mean changing your keywords. I can confirm that if you theme your site, use keywords in your title, headings and page content hierarchically, it's a great possibility to reach very good positions. Start with the most common keyword(s) and build subpages that target different phrases, highly targeted words, use different spellings and even misspelling etc.
These sub sites drive a lot of additional traffic to your site and may also boost your site's single word ranking in the future, if you link your pages wisely. IMHO.
<added>Ok, ya know, i'm dead slow ... BigDave, that's what i mean - themeing, content, anchor texts ....</added>
Sure it's great to be highly ranked on some 1-word phrases, but if you can't obtain this goal sometimes it is better to stop hittting your head against the wall and go for 2-word phrases.
Besides these two goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm just saying sometimes priorities have to be adjusted.
On one of my sites, I originally targeted a 3-word phrase - keyword1 keyword2 keyword3. After a couple of months, I got to be number 1 which allowed me to generate some traffic and get some better quality in-bound links. Now I'm targeting keyword2 keyword3, and am in the 9th position. Once this gets higher, I may target keyword 3 by itself (keyword 2 is completely irrelevent out of context), but I doubt it.
Sorry, perhaps that I was a little longwinded in getting to my point!
It seems that Flex55 is looking for answers about improving his ranking on a major keyword (6,200,000 results). I was trying to convey that in addition to focusing on minor keywords and diversifying out, spend an equal amount of time figuring out what is misfiring on the major keyword.
Cheers,
Chad
<added> Perhaps I got a lot off topic there! Apologies, initially I was planning to start a new thread concerning the subject..que sera</added>
Getting top 10 for a keyword with 6.2M results ain't easy. For that, you'll need to do EVERYTHING right.
ok, i relativized my comment. you're right, the size i quoted was only about 192k - so you can laugh.
but what about this: site went online 1. january this year, main keyword matches 4,200,000 sites overall, was submitted to google last week, is cross-linked with one website and ranks place #31. pr not rated yet.
the website is in beta-state i.e. the code is not 100% rounded up and content is not key word optimized because it is a news site. i won't stop here, it's not in the odp. and wasn't even submitted yet.
anything goes? don't ask me why, as i told. i was just making a website since christmas.
so if i can make some proposals whats a big plus, then i would say: topkeyword in domain, in title, in description in keywords and in headline / maybe a logo with it as alt text. standard, plain xhtml, the links you think they are a need and a submission to the odp.
like in title and the H1
I probably haven't clarified that well enough, but my keyword is a 2 word phrase (I guess I should refer to it as keyphrase..)
I guess, at a first look, climbing up the serps looks like a pure technical and deterministic challenge, while at a second, deeper look it seems like there's so much mysticism (or is it just pure luck..) involved in that..
flex.
Which one would be more important- have the keyphrase on the inbound link's anchor text or have the page from which the inbound link densed with the keyphrase? I guess, of course idealy both should be considered, but if you had to choose?
Also, given that (hypothetically) in/outbound links won't change, is there any reason to expect any improvement in the next dance (ie, because of some google "digesting" process or so)?
flex.
Ask those other webmasters to update your link to include your kw phrase in the anchor text. Are you using kw phrases for your internal links?
Just for kicks, do a search on Google for "welcome" without quotes and look at the cached pages.
Off-page criteria trumps all. [webmasterworld.com]
IMO, other than the anchor text of the link, my belief is the content of the rest of the page is totally irrelevant. I don't believe Google considers this.
Do you think this actually makes a difference? I've actually done exactly this on my sites on the hope that it might help. All links back to the home page for example have the 2 critical keywords in the anchor text. I must admit I am doing very well on Google with these keywords. Dunno if this is doing any good, but I'm leaving well enough alone. ;)
