Can you beat a top level domain

[sji2671]

For the likes of google, our target keyword is one word, the leader in the field has a rather poor website and a pr of 5, I wondered if a higher PR could ever beat this .com domain

If I am thinking of spending money would a buy-out be a better option rather than trying to beat them, I doubt they would sell the domain but I did wonder if they could be beaten with a higher pr, my site is larger with more quality back-links and more informative so I just wondered if there was ever a chance in your experience of beating the domain.

The keyword in question is their domain name, ie widgets.com

Scott

[siteseo]

Absolutely you can beat them. SEO optimize your entire site, especially your home page, get lots of text links to your home page that contain the keyword/phrase, optimize your title tag for that keyword, and analyze his keyword density using a tool such as keywordcount.com - then adjust your density to be slightly higher or lower than his until you find the right amount. Also create a subpage immediately off your homepage that has the keyword in the title (Eg. www.domain.com/widgets.htm), optimize it, text-link to it, etc., and you should be able to displace him eventually. In other words, having a top-level domain IS an advantage, but it's not a silver bullet, and you can beat them out using proper optimization techniques.

[sji2671]

How much would it cost to get an SEO to compare and advice on a strategy of changes to make my site more of a competitor in the keyword I am after, I have a nice site, good content and the domain/website is 4 years.

I am relying more on advertising now than I had to a year ago.

Thanks
Scott

[dertyfern]

Totally you can beat them. I've done it quite a few times with very competitive phrases. Actually, you may have an advantage as many .com domain owners don't optimize or feel that they need to optimize to the degree that others would.

[sji2671]

The top site doesn't even have a Description tag, but mentions the keyword 40 times due to the fact they sell advertising links to other websites so that makes up a large portion of their keyword density.

I am a website owner but not that SEO knowledgable, I have read lots of info and tried lots of things but I am running out of steam/luck/results and would be looking to try and get someone to run the rule over my website and advise a course of action and changes.

[dertyfern]

sji2671

many times success comes when you're on your last hope. the collection of failures you've experienced contribute to your knowlegde about what *not* to do, thus increasing your probability of success. sure, hire someone with knowledge to guide you (basically a teacher). but, don't give up dude!

[sji2671]

Thanks for the words of hope, I guess everyone feels against it at times, the thing is just now I pay every month to advertise on my competitors website, its more a hobby/interest genre so were competing for the traffic more than sales.

Are there any good companies/folk that would look through my site and advise on how to compete better, all I can ever find are dodgy looking sites that guarantee results (thats google serps for ya) and I dont trust any of them, I am building more content all the time and for the first 3 years I was successful but the last year I am just dead in the water and have watched some really crap sites doing well in the serps, well crap content but obvioulsy well optimized I guess.

Cheers

[yowza]

Yes you can beat them.

With the way that Google is weighing links right now, maybe you should be concentrating on buying some quality links instead of advertising.

Take a look at this:
[webmasterworld.com...]

or build them yourself:
[webmasterworld.com...]

I made these suggestions because it sounds like your on-page factors have been optimized, but you haven't optimized for off-page factors.

Also, as someone else already mentioned, make sure that your inbound links have the keywords in them.

[sji2671]

Thanks for the links, I guess with the content I have and will be adding the only main difference I can make is incoming links which I could certainly improve on. Most of the websites in my genre try and make a little cash from things that I do very well and to a greater extent, so wouldn't be particularly happy to trade links, I have found it a case of asking with few results so I may have to think outside the box a bit and be a little less specific from the type of sites I want/need links from.

Thanks for the pick-me-up maybe I can beat that goddam lazy website with the killer domain, they have been no.1 for the last 6+ years and it would be sooo cool to rock their boat a bit. I wouldlove to be their Florida :-)

[bhartzer]

The TLD doesn't matter. The search engines don't care if it's a .com, .net, .org, or whatever. But some will say that .EDUs get preference. I'm not sure about that.

As long as you have the content on your site and the links, the TLD doesn't matter.

[sji2671]

I just think that cannot be right, my keyword that my competitor has as his domain.com is one of the top searched terms, within the top 50 I think.

The website is poor, I aint no expert but its not SEO optimised, it has 157 backlinks with a pr5 and its been no.1 for years n years.

It has javascript errors on its homepage, no description and for site:domainit has 698 pages
I have more pages, better content, my backlinks are only 80 though that are showing just now, so its either the domain or backlinks.

I will have to strive to improve backlinks, it is either the golden egg or his domain is a royal flush because the website shouldn't really be no.1 but for the fact his domain has the top level domain.

[nuevojefe]

It's probably doing well for a number of reasons, so be prepared to put in some effort.

For one, check backlinks in yahoo, not google. Google will not show you all the links they use to rank the site.

Secondly, if your competitor has many outbound (advertising) links to relevant sites using the targeted phrase and those sites use that phrase generously it gives the site a significant bonus.

Also, the fact that the site is clearly not optimized may be helping it (believe it or not!) by keeping it's ranking criteria points below a certain level.

You should check the quality of their backlinks too. Are there many .edu, .gov, homepage links, high level or content page links? -(as opposed to buried links, links on link pages, etc)