How far ahead am i?

and how do I stay there?

[Powdork]

When a site goes to number one is it possible to find out how far ahead of number two it is? It seems firmly entrenched although its only been there a month.
allinanchor-1
allintext-1
allintitle-1
PR-Dropped to four from five with significant new links, both one way and recips. Other sites in serps are PR 5 and 6.
What else should I look for to see whos on my heels? What other tricks do you guys and gals have for staying number one when the variables I check are no longer changing (fingers crossed).

I'm specifically looking for number one here for this keyword since its the one all potential clients check to see who they should list with.

I know I should also be
Adding new content to focus on more related searches.
Adding new services so i can add yet new content and more related searches.
Adding traffic from various other sources bot se's and non se's.
Improving user friendliness and retention
etc

[Dolemite]

Maybe you should be giving us advice. ;)

[marttali]

How the hell did you achieve pr 4 in a month? I think you should educate us!

[trillianjedi]

How the hell did you achieve pr 4 in a month? I think you should educate us!

Timing - getting a link from a PR5 site just as google starts to freshdeepcrawl.

We had the same with one of our new sites - PR4 in about 4 weeks from the off. It's just luck.

TJ

[Powdork]

Everything I know I learned here and previously at Group:google.public.support.general, spider-food.net and others. But mostly here.
Its all relative to the search anyway.;)

[Powdork]

How the hell did you achieve pr 4 in a month? I think you should educate us!

I meant it had only been at #1 for a month. The site is about 8 months old. Although it did start out at pr 4, back in November. I don't care too much about pr anymore. That's the main thing I came out of Dominic and Esmeralda with (definitely not toolbar PR anyway).

[percentages]

How do you define #1 is my question?

I have the top site for the keyword stated as most common for one of my sites by wordtracker, Overture and as far as I can tell Google Adwords.......but it still only represents 3% of all SE traffic to that site....so is it really #1 in popularity......beats me!

Seems like all SEO's are obsessed with a keyword, phrase or five......ask a stranger in the street what they would type and see how often it matches what you are optimising for.

Never mind the quality.....feel the width!

Go for quality only when you have the maximum reach.....nice thing about that philosophy is that you will never know when you have the maximum reach and therefore need never get side tracked by the one/two keyword "quality" term.

Powdork, based upon my research you have a 97% chance of being behind.......I wouldn't waste too much time on keeping your lead ;)

[Chndru]

feel the width!

very good one, percentages. ty

[g1smd]

Having looked at the site logs, I am absolutely amazed at what some people arriving at the site have typed in to Google to get there. It makes you think very hard about what other very similar words should be included in the web pages for the other potential visitors that never get to see your site in their SERPs for whatever kewords that they have typed in for their search. You only get to see the visitors that matched exactly, not the ones that didn't quite make it.

[percentages]

g1smd,

That is sooooo true.....looking at logs is the best form of understanding what you might be missing. The next step is to develop a few (thousand) pages that cover those topics and then let the puppy rip.......after that the term "primary keywords" will be a thing of the past.

Here's $100 that says WebmasterWorld.com doesn't have a single phrase, other than webmasterworld, that generates more than 5% of its SE traffic.

Brett, tell me it ain't so and I'll happily pay up;)

[mil2k]

If you want to remain on tops for that most imp KW of yours keep adding Keyword rich anchor text inbound links to your site and from various sources. If possible study your competetion by comparing your relative web graphs over Here [touchgraph.com] This is just a tool which sometimes help you spot somethings which we normally do not spot. And agree with others that keep adding content. Analyze your logs and look at the Keywords people use to enter your site :) Good work BTW :)

[adfree]

O.K. – here is something I don’t read very often here and I was wondering why.
Keywords in their utmost meaning to your site’s success represent your products and services you want to sell, be found etc.

So, if you apply a thorough classical marketing technique to your keyword efficiency research you should be able to tell about the demand, supply and value propositions of the chosen keywords, on top chose additional keywords that represent your content even better and achieve maximum density (due to the supply/demand results).

Why is nobody talking about this in detail? I would really like to learn about how you guys develop your keyword strategy (which should by definition be something to be repeated on all key pages frequently).

Grateful about some additional comments. If you want me to open a new thread on this, just yell out, cheers, Jens

[mil2k]

Hey jens,

Have you read threads in Keyword Discussion forum [webmasterworld.com] You start a new thread there after reading some old threads and you will get a better understanding of the whole process. HTH :)

[caine]

Powdork

forget about PR, you want visitors. Keep building content, keep getting in links, show G that your site deserves that number 1 slot, by feeding the bot month on month new food to crawl.

[Powdork]

Howdy folks,
From the original post.

I'm specifically looking for number one here for this keyword since its the one all potential clients check to see who they should list with.

I know I should also be
Adding new content to focus on more related searches.
Adding new services so i can add yet new content and more related searches.
Adding traffic from various other sources bot se's and non se's.
Improving user friendliness and retention
etc

That part was included to keep this from becoming another "Diversify" or "don't focus so much on the main keywords" threads. We've been there.;)
The reason the main phrase is important is only partially for the SE traffic it brings. My site is a niche paid directory. When deciding who to throw their advertising dollars at, potential clients place a huge emphasis on the SERPS for this phrase. The day I moved to number 1 the inbox was full and those that were previously tightwads opened their wallets. Once they sign up then it is the traffic and conversions that matter. But this keyword IS the source of new business.

[vitaplease]

In general a look at the quality and quantity of the backlinks of your competitors relative to yours will say enough.

A bit far fetched, but one way of finding out is trying to get a second page of your site listed as second indented in the SERP's.

You can go a step further and check aol.co.uk and see your site's third and fourth page's rankings relative to your competition's.

[Powdork]

Thanks vitaplease,
Those are exactly the types of hints I was looking for.

I especially like the indented result idea.:)

[vitaplease]

Regarding the indents, you might want to take Jesserud's refinement tip into consideration though: [webmasterworld.com...]

[g1smd]

>> Here's $100 that says WebmasterWorld.com doesn't have a single phrase, other than webmasterworld, that generates more than 5% of its SE traffic. <<

I'll bet that people arrive here from literally thousands of different keywords. I have a one-page site that has over 35 words that people use to arrive there. This site has thousands of pages.

The one page site only has limited stats so I can see information about the last 100 visitors at a time.

For the last 100 today, the keywords I targetted give 12%, 7%, 6% and 4% of the hits. The site even does well on a two-word phrase that is often used by Adult searchers (with a third Adult word). The site is not an Adult site but does well in that search; so just by chance I'm (unintentionally) "spamming" a non-adult site in Adult listings.

About 3% (per word) of the hits each come from another 5 words. At 2% of the hits there are another 6 words per hit. At 1% visitors another 10 words. The rest are under 1%.

I haven't kept a record of all of the words that have appeared in the list over the last few months, but I am guessing that it is well over 75.

[DavidT]

25% of my se referrals, counting all se's, comes from just 3 two-word phrases for which I am ranked #1, #3, and #3 (on Google, similar on others).

Is this common and should I be worried?

[daamsie]

Powdork, I think the best thing is just keeping on building links with the keyphrase in anchor text as others have said. I wouldn't imagine you would want to mess too much with on-page text at this stage, for fear of losing the ranking, so new incoming links is the safest way to go.

You could always start another site competing with your primary one (I don't mean duplicate) and try to get that to number 2 just for good measure ;-)

Incidentally, for my site I don't get more than 1% for any single keyphrase.

[Powdork]

25% of my se referrals, counting all se's, comes from just 3 two-word phrases for which I am ranked #1, #3, and #3 (on Google, similar on others).
Is this common and should I be worried?

It is common. It's not necessarily something to be worried about. It is an indication that you may not be 'being all you can be'. The worry would come from what would happen if Google were to drop you for any one or more of those phrases. Would it severely hamper your ability to stay in business, if it is a business?

[bolitto]

>How far ahead am i?

Lemme see. You have 1035 posts at this time tonight.

Considering 1 to 3 minutes per post you're pretty far ahead of me - that's for sure.

>and how do I stay there?

I'd help you with that, but that'd make my post 1 minute too long.

[Powdork]

Considering 1 to 3 minutes per post you're pretty far ahead of me - that's for sure.

1 to 3 minutes! Sounds like you're spending waay too much time thinking.;)

So the current synopsis would be
Keep building backlinks.
Don't mess too much with on page factors.
Get another page up top just in case.
Use num=1 (or AOL.co.uk) on important search queries to get a better idea of exactly where you and you're competitors stand.

The backlinks seems obvious but I did get thrown off that horse during Dominic and Esmeralda. It was hard to know who was safe and who wasn't. I'm coming out of that fog now.
The lesson- Don't wory about toolbar PR when looking for backlinks. It is often inaccurate and quite possibly intentionally inaccurate just for that reason.

[mil2k]

Did you analyze your site and your competetion site's webgraph using Touchgraph?

Maybe msg 11 got lost in the stream of helpful posts ;)

[Powdork]

Thanks mil2k, somehow I did miss #11. It's been awhile since I've checked out the touchgraph (I think I was at 95 for the phrase in question then. It'll have to wait 'til the morn as my eyelidz are about touching now...zzz

[Pricey]

I don't know if this plays part in in it, but Since I got to #1 I have been adding monthly updates to my site, with news on how my products and sales are doing, or If I get a big job/client that is worth talking about.

As I said, I dunno if its that or not but I held my position for aaages :D

[dickbaker]

Here's another question for this thread. I just did a search for my main keywords, and just about all of the pages for those keywords are coming up in the first ten results--anywhere from #1 to #6.

I noticed, though, that the search results show a date of July 26, 2003. Other sites that appear on the first few pages don't have dates on them yet.

Could this mean that, once other sites are updated in the index, I'm going to lose my golden place in the searche results?