Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I am ranked in 5 th position on google for a particular keyword and I currently have a PR of 3.
One of my competitor has the exact keyword in its URL with a PR of 2 and always ranks first for this keyword and its synonyms.
I was wondering if there is any chance I can rank first in front of him or is he always going to be first see that he has got the keyword in its url ?
What can I do to get in front of him ?
Thank you,
So for me the keyword in the URL ( if you know how to rank well in google is extremely important )
In fact if you don't know how to rank on google it doesn't matter but if you have all keys ( or most of them ) I don't see how I can beat that domain name... even with a higher PR ?
any idea on how to beat that website other than buying the same domain name with - between - the- keywords - and redo all my SEO for this new site ?
Thanks,
Don't forget that websites don't have pr - only pages have pr. Study his back links and find the high pr backlink that is boosting the page. a high pr backlink is the primary way a low pr page and out rank a high pr page. Not all of that pr is passed. A link from a pr 6 page, doesn't mean a pr 2 page automatically becomes a higher pr, but it does mean it can rank higher.
a higher PR doesn't give a boost, the website that is ranked number 1 for the keyword I am a talking about has a PR of 2 and is in front of websites that have a PR of 4 and 5 !
So for me the keyword in the URL
Thus, to get rich it is more important to have blonde hair than be intelligent.
It is using a poor sample of data, focussing on the wrong thing then extrapolating data from the fallacy. Not good.
Instictively, I suggest his backlink profile is better than yours, and perhaps he gets a boost from anchor text of his domain automatically contains his keyword. Please note that a bunch of high-PR but low relevancy links can be worse than a few high-relevancy, mid-PR links.
As our great host suggests, keywords in URL is a vanashingly small boost, and PR is one of the most easily observed ranking factors.
I am ranked in 5 th position on google for a particular keyword and I currently have a PR of 3.
Could that be a 3.01?
One of my competitor has the exact keyword in its URL with a PR of 2 and always ranks first for this keyword and its synonyms.
Could that be a 2.99?
I mean, we could be splitting hairs here. And I'm with you, I feel an exact keyword matched URI will have a slight boost after you open the box, not out of the box. One link to that puppy is all it takes to start the process. And since they, your competitor, have the keyword matched URI, ah, you couldn't ask for anything better. SEO Nirvana. Everything happens naturally with a keyword matched domain. That has been my experience.
... but a PR 2 site about shrubs will rank better for the term "flowers" if it has some high PR flower sites linking to it with anchor "flowers"...
I would still dispute that, links are powerful, I think we need to be careful about giving them that much credit though, Google is still able to see what is on the page and I believe it is still very powerful within the algorithm.
Admittedly though if the shrubs site had a "flowers page" with those sort of links, you may have a higher ranking situation.
E.g. if I link to site www.keyword1-keyword2.com without using anchor text, the association to keywords is already made through URL, whereas the site www.nokeyword1-nokeyword2.com must have anchor text of keyword1-keyword2 to set this association.
One of factors where keyword in URL helps is with natural, organic linking which often use URL link without anchor text.
Or, a URI reference that is not linked at all. ;)
Ever do site:"example.com" searches and backtrack any of those unlinked URI references? Do you think there is any value in that type of scenario?
...keyword matched URI......Everything happens naturally with a keyword matched domain.
Anchor text has a much stronger effect, IMO, than a keyword in a URL. Regarding this, I feel that there are great differences between a keyword matched domain and a keyword matched URL.
A keyword domain is much more likely to be the name of the company or the brand, and a link to a keyword domain will therefore often naturally contain the keyword in its anchor text.
This is much less true, I feel, for a keyword in a page filename or in a folder name that's in the file path. I have ambiguous feelings about keywords in subdomains.
I think that click-throughs, though, are likely to be enhanced by highlighted keywords in pathnames that appear in serps... but that's not necessarily a ranking factor.
