How can such a poor page rank so well?

[johnnie]

Hello,

For a keyword I am competing for, I found a page ranking for #5 which has absolutely nothing going for it. It features next to no content, since its one of those 'startpages' with nothing but a handful of links. According to yahoo site explorer, its backlink profile is also quite poor; one sitewide link and several directory links.

How can a poor page like that rank so well for a reasonably competitive keyword?

[tedster]

One factor that can be very hard to detect is a 301 redirect from a url that has lots of backlinks. That can send lots of PR and query-specific link juice, but it's not easily discovered.

[johnnie]

Wouldn't that high-profile url show up in site explorer as one of the inbound links? Or does it ignore 301s?

[tedster]

A 301 redirect is not a link.