Site title is "Home"

But it still ranks #3 in google

[Hardwood Guy]

Popular two word phrase in the indusrty I am involved with and this particular site has very little content; only ten pages. My eight year old could make a better site. How in the heck does this site rank so high?

[ciml]

Google takes into account quite a few factors, of which the words on the page are only one part. Exit is quite a popular word, yet the top few listings aren't optimised for the word in on-page factors.

This can lead to some results being out of date, (eg. searching for bill clinton still brings up with White House at #1), but the off-page factors help Google to give users what they expect to find.

[Hardwood Guy]

Interesting:

Thanks for the reply. It looks like I have some work ahead of me. It's been bugging me that so many sites are ahead of me with a few important key phrases. Mostly manufacturers, but I also find classified advertisements. Incidentally, I don't use any fancy graphics on the site itself that shows the site title, figuring the search critters can't see it anyway unless an alt tag is used.

Perhaps I should just change the text title on every page to optimize for that big two word phrase I need? Could that have an effect on rankings?

Thank for the reply:)

[EquityMind]

HardWood Guy:

The site you are referring to ranks well for that term because of off the page factors such as inbound link text. the name of the company happens to have that two phrase keyword within its three word company name so that when other sites link to it, many that I checked refer to it as "kentucky keyword keyword" so the inbound link text of the site linking to it make that site an 'authority' on the subject because enough sites are referring to it with the keywords pointing to it that Google will rank the site well.

What you need to do is place your keyword within your own title tags, a Heading tag, and within the content of your own page and then list your site with directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo and hopefully get a title such as "Sitename keyword keyword" so that the inbound link text pointing to you also has those keywords pointing to your own site. I would also check the backlinks of the ketucky site and list your site the same way in those directories since they are niche and therefore theme based which will give your site more relevancy.

EquityMind

[Hardwood Guy]

Thanks EM:

I've made some changes in the title tags by adding two key phrases over the last few weeks and optimized the many images I have with alt tags( important from my understanding). As far as other items; my site has become branded IMO and I can't shake it. Branded with phrases that rank #1 but aren't used as often.

I suppose I should sit tight for the time being and wait for the google gods to do their thing.

Again. Many thanks.

[ogletree]

If you do a search for home in Google the 5th result is the US Senate and the word home is not even in the Title or description. I guess this is an example of anchor text. They must have the word home pointing back to this page. I guess anchor text from within your own site can help too. Funny thing is the snippet is from the alt tag on the seal. I guess a lot of weird things happen when you have a PR9.

[Powdork]

HardwoodGuy,
Google is only indexing alt tags if the image is a link. It doesn't mean alt text isn't important, it is. Just not so much for Google anymore.

[Powdork]

Funny thing is the snippet is from the alt tag on the seal. I guess a lot of weird things happen when you have a PR9.

Nothing funny about it. The alt text for the seal is the first indexable content that appears on the page. Since 'home' isn't on the page, google will return the meta description. Since the page has no meta description (nice work guys) Google uses the first content it can find. Incidentally, using layers can help to move your content that you want to show up in descriptions to the top of your code, regardless of where it shows up on the page.