Forum Moderators: open
I have a web site that rank very high in the results for my keywords, but now it's drop down to page 3 and many of the results before have alot less links then me, some have just 2 incoming link.
And most of the ones before me have 4/10 PR and I have 7/10 for my keywords.
1. Remember that Google's link count does not show all links. Your competitors may have many inbound links that are not shown but still count.
2. It's not just about number and PageRank of links. Anchor text in the links and text near the links also count.
3. On-page-factors count too. Perhaps your competitors' pages are better optimised to Google's algorithm than yours.
And most of the ones before me have 4/10 PR and I have 7/10 for my keywords.
PR has no relationship whatsoever to keywords. Note that the Google toolbar shows you the PR of a page (if it's available) regardless of whether you found that page by searching for it with keywords, or by following links, or even by typing in the URL directly. And you get the same PR regardless of how you reach the page, except possibly for random fluctuations caused by connecting to different Google data centers whose data isn't completely synchronized.
It's not just the single event inbound link and all that goes along with that but the sequence of connections beyond that single event that influence things..
remember we are in the www "world wide WEB"
And as for on-page stuff I totally re-designed my page, it looks nothing like it did before, but this didn't change it's ranking.
It only processes the text. And if there were no "significant" changes in the text on that page -- if it was just shuffled around, and more null words added -- you'd expect no changes.
However, if Googlebot's algorithm was tweaked a bit, then you would expect to see a change in any page's rank. And it might not be about anything on your page itself, it might have to do with over-optimized text on links to your page -- with Google using and testing literally hundreds of different factors, it would be very difficult to figure out which.
But I totally re-wrote the text.
Once Google "figures out" that you may be writing for the bot instead of a visitor base...well there may be a penalty...I know...a bunch of folks here may disagree with this...but I firmly believe that Google and others are constantly think usability for their users...
Isn't a search engine just really a grand experiment on usability...how to deliver the right information to someone searching for anything at that moment in time...?
Just a thought from someone who writes and structures content/sites for particular audiences...
I have a very similar situation - It seems the sites ahead have no optimization, maybe that is the answer
Maybe...
I am just embarking on developing a large (ish) commercial website and will not be carrying out any onpage SEO at all.
Will have to see how it goes.
It will be an interesting one seems as though the client has requested no SEO. Will be even more interesting if the site ends up ranking well without it!
T_P
Why don't you post your url and target keywords, so that we can take a look at your specific situation. Right now, we're all just shooting in the dark.
Because that is against the forum rules and WebmasterWorld Terms of Service.
