SEO, A fair algorithm

but fairer to some than to others!

[triangulum]

Just been checking the competition;

For a given keyphrase, site 'A' in positions 1 and 2 has the following;

page rank - 0
keyphrase in title - 1
keyphrase in 1st paragraph - 1
keyphrase in meta tags - 3
keyphrase in images - 1
keyphrase in links - 1
keyphrase in remainder of content - 1

site 'B' in 3rd position has the following;

page rank - 5
keyphrase in title - 1
keyphrase in 1st paragraph - 1
keyphrase in meta tags - 3
keyphrase in images - 3
keyphrase in links - 4
keyphrase in remainder of content - 3

From everything you can learn on seo site B should be miles ahead in search results and is a much better site (The PR5 suggests that google agrees).

Interestingly Site A is top for ppc listings and site B doesn't appear. (I know this is not supposed to make a difference, completely different indexes and all that, but how else can it be explained?)

[jomaxx]

Two possibilities: Either Google is gaming their results to suit their advertisers, or your analysis is incomplete.

I'll choose option B; that keyword-count stuff doesn't begin to describe the myriad of factors that Google takes into account.