Newbie Question - Tweaking For Position

[zwingo]

Let's say I have a page that ranks #14 on Google for a particular keyword phrase and I want to try to bump it up to the top ten position. What should I be looking for on the first 13 sites that rank above mine? What can I do using whatever I can learn from the first 13 sites to get my site to rank higher? I realize this is a broad question.

Anyone care to comment or know of any articles or previous posts that deal with this topic?

Thanks

[traffik daddy]

Firstly check how clean their site is. Check if they use CSS and have no errors in their HTML. See if all of their Javascript, etc scripts are external otherwise the validator will pick them up as errors.

Check who he links to and who links back (including the quality of the site).

Check his keywords/phrases in his <META> tags and see how many times he uses them in his site (keyword vs content ratio).

Check the use of the <H1> tags within his site and where he puts them and the keywords he uses in them.

Check all his <META> tags in general (although not many rely on keywords in Google), but its worth doing anyway.

Check his title of his website and the keywords he uses.

Alt all of your images but don't pack them with keywords - spamming doesn't help. Check their <ALT> tags to see the differences.

Check if he links his keywords. I'm not entirely convinced about bolding keywords but it looks scrappy anyway if you do this.

Most of all, look for things they do different to other sites - this is a must! Its just all trial and error.

Better these and you should be okay. There is more but I'm finishing work now and am ruishining thissss meassage =)

See ya (and good luck)

Terry

[zwingo]

Thanks Terry!

[Fractal]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new here, have been reading alot of threads, just never felt I had anything worthy to contribute too. I'm learning alot though, and I thank you guys for being of great help to the rest of us that need some good direction with our SEO formulas.

I have a question for Traffik Daddy, and anyone else who is qualified to answer this question.

When you say
"Check his keywords/phrases in his <META> tags and see how many times he uses them in his site (keyword vs content ratio)."

what is the ratio for content to keyword. Is this based on a keyword density report.
Eg. If my entire page has 500 characters of copy, how many times would you say we should use the keyword we want to rank well for within this body copy?

Is there a ratio?

Also, When using H1 tags inside a webpage, is their a limit to how many times you can use an H1 tag per page?

Thanks

Fractal

[anime_otaku]

some say ideal density is 1%-10%, although I seen pages get away with 20%. for body text definately keep it low (closer to 1 than to 20 that is for sure). For title and Hx higher density is better, closer to left side is better. as for ranking better, 'good inbounds' (who knows what that means nowadays) and clean code (no hidden text via css, no spammy paragraphs, no stuffing alts). the top ten are usually PageRank dominated though with 'related' links. It never hurts getting honest inbounds.
0.02 (don't let florida scare you with link trades etc., better off with good targeted traffic than nothing)

as for H1, please, only once per page is enough. multiple h1 tags in the same html document may be viewed as spam.

above all else, tweak, tweak, tweak. (and see what works) :-)

[bzprod]

Right now, keyword density and <H1>, etc. seem to be all over the place. At this point, I wouldn't say that there is a definitive answer to this.

[Fractal]

thanks for the insight guys!

Cheers!