Keyword cloud and effect on Google ranking

[member22]

Hello,

I just got quick question about our good friend google ;)

I have a competitor who is ranked first a keyword and doesn't even have it in its keywords cloud ? How can he ran so high ?

I noticed he has his phone number at the bottom of everypage and the phone number is a 1800 number with the keyword in it , could it be the reason why ? i read that google give a lot of importance to the phone number ? it sounds bizzard to me but o well...

Thank you,

[tedster]

In this case, the phone number is a possible factor because it does put the text on the page, but it is probably not the deciding factor. There are many relevance metrics in play today, including backlink anchor text, backlink page titles, semantic relationships -- even the effect of 301 redirects from previously ranking domains.

[member22]

Tedster,

Thank you for the explanation, I got everything almost right for my site. However I am about to change my site and would like to know more about redirect 301 ? should I do a redirect for my homepage or just my subpages ?

Thanks,

[tedster]

There is no reason to use a 301 redirect unless you are changing the urls for your site from urls that have already been indexed. Using a 301 redirect is only second best. The best is getting a url indexed and sticking with just that address indefinitely.