Why is this site in front of mine for a keyword that does not appear

in his site...?

[HK_photo]

Hi I am looking for explanations as to why one of my competitors is ranking higher for a keyword that I target, but does not even show up in his site? The two keywords are "(location) example" which we both target, I am #1 and he is #2. The second keyword is "((Location) example" which I target and he does not.

Could it be that I am getting a penalty for too many keywords. My site is solid PR4 on all DCs, his is 3 on all DCs... I have Google 43 backlinks from quality sites. He has 12 mostly from directories.
I checked his site and he does not even have the word "example" in his Title, Metas or on the page...
I thought I knew a thing or two about SEO, this has got me miffed...

Thanks in advance for the help...

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 1:44 pm (utc) on Feb. 5, 2007]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

[Brett_Tabke]

> doesn't show on his site

Doesn't have to. You are who your links say you are. He has some inbound links that have the keywords in the anchor text and that is defining his page. His out ranks yours because the quality of the links - not the quantity.

[HK_photo]

Brett,
Thanks, but I doubt this. I just rechecked he only has 5 backlinks. All of which are directories and I am in the same directories as well.

His highest ranking backlink page is a 0... and the only anchor text says "Click to see website"...

This is only a recent occurance, the last update...

[centime]

hi there , how are you checking the back links, yahoo is the most complete usually.

Most web directories include a direct link the the listings website, always with descriptive anchor text, though sometimes description is restricted to the name of the site

[luckychucky]

I'm curious. Is there much competition for this keyword, and does it pick up a lot of searches each month?

[HK_photo]

Hi, it is a very niche market, the search term generates about 5 or 6 visitors a week... Location based searching... a few of these turn into paying customers.

Much of my traffic comes from very random terms mostly found in my blog...

[AndyA]

Didn't Google just undergo an algo change to put a stop to this? Most everyone knows the story behind the "miserable failure" search. So if there's a particular word or phrase in an anchor link, and the page it goes to has nothing to do with that word or phrase, but might be somehow similar or related, how can this be effective now?

In other words if anchor text says "Blue Widgets Site" and the destination site doesn't have those words on it, shouldn't this new algo change minimize the importance of those anchor words?

[HK_photo]

Yahoo shows me at 581 links... I write articles
He has 98 mostly forum posts and diretories

MSN shows 526 for me 21 for him

I have just changed the title of my blog to reflect the keyword phrase I am targeting, lets see if this does anything. I was really solid for all these keywords for the last 2 years before this recent update and then things got a little shakey... Thanks GOOG...

[HK_photo]

Just in case anyone was gonna say. The Keyword density for this term is .88%...

The Keyword in question "<example>" does not appear anywhere on the competitors page....

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 5:21 pm (utc) on Feb. 5, 2007]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

[Brett_Tabke]

note: we try to always leave specific kw's out of it because it just encourages promotion or spamming. It also isn't about the specifics, it is about the results.

> My site is solid PR4 on all DCs, his is 3

GFD. (Green Fairy Dust). That 3 or 4 could be based on previous indexes, or calced on indexes we haven't even seen yet. The backlinks showing may also be suspect. Like someone said - check alltheweb and msn to see what yahoo and microsoft have to say.

The words don't appear on the page, they appear in relation to the page some where. Google isn't just making up the rankings out of thin air.

[HK_photo]

Brett,
Ok thanks so, now the question is what do I do about it?

Publish more articles? Exchange more links? Add more quality content?

Work a little harder...

Cheers

[centime]

It virtually certain that google ranks his fewer links better than yours.

Compare your links to his, without prejudging the outcome

581 links versus 98 is a big gap, can you say whether a lot of your links are from the same websites, like , if you where to count how many wholly separate sites your links come from, would it still be close to 500+

[HK_photo]

Ok... I did this search on alltheweb link:myURL Example Keyword 1 & 2
For my site I got 564 results -

For competitor 83 - Most of these returns are scrapper directories...

Is this a valid search?

[Marcia]

Just as a matter of curiosity, is that keyword anyplace at all on the other guy's site, not necessarily the page in question that's ranking? And does he have synonyms for the search term on the pages?

[tedster]

Links are not a mere numbers game - they are more of a quality game. Don't forget that even from a quality page, the PR vote is divided by the total number of links on the page. There is also evidence that a backlink from within the content section of a page is more powerful than, say, a link in the footer. In addition, the importance of the anchor text as well.

Then there's the harder stuff to uncover -- the link pop tranferred through 301 redirects from other domains. Perhaps this is your competition's secret weapon.

So it takes a lot of study to understand just the backlinks part of the total picture. The raw link count is just the very tip of a pretty complex iceberg,

[victorP]

are you checking just the index page? is it possible that he has good links coming into to other pages of his site?

[sandpetra]

Maybe he has changed his page. Have you checked the cache in Google?