SEO on PR6 site home page

Kinda newbie Q

[johnser]

I've a PR6 site with 600 backlinks.

I optimised the home page as usual on Friday. The changes are now being reflected in the SERPs.

The ranking of the site for <blue widgets> went from nowhere to #75. NOT a very competitive kw btw.

SERPS #1 is PR7 with 300 links.

I presume I just have to wait till the next update to get into the top 10?

Kinda seems strange that I can get boosted to #75 but no higher when I should be with my PR6, 600 links & optimised page?

[Susanne]

Maybe the other site with PR7 and only 300 links has much more content than you?

[johnser]

Thx Susanne - Nope. Its definitely not that.
Its an internal page on a well-known site but only has 3 lines of non-optimised text.

In any case, loads of the listings above mine have far less text, PR & links.....

[Susanne]

You're welcome. ;) What I meant was: if looking at the whole site, maybe they have many more pages than you? And maybe MOST of those pages have plenty of content? Example: I have a site that does well for my targeted keywords. But it also does very well for un-optimised words and phrases that only appear once or twice in the whole site even though there's quite a lot of competition for those words.

If the other site you mention has only 300 links but still has a higher pagerank than you, that means other sites with high rank have linked to that site. So according to Google, they are more important than you because they have a rank of 7. And that's how they might have made it to the #1 spot for a keyword they haven't even optimised their site for. Is the keyword in question very competitive?

Something else: their incoming links might be more relevant to their site than your incoming links and they are given a boost because of that. Much of this is speculation! I suggest you first wait until the next Google update. Then see how you are ranking. You said you optimised the home page. Make sure EVERY page in your site is properly designed and optimised. Work on adding as much content as you can possibly think of, and never stop doing that. You will be rewarded. Cheers!