2 sites selling same product-one ranked higher

how can this be?

[stiksandstones]

Ok, I own a site selling widgets, my competition does too. Both use a PHP shopping cart system (OSC).

When you type in google the brand name "Ywiggy Ywidget" my competition comes up #5 while I come up #9.

My site has been open for business online for 3 months-the competiton been open for a year. For this certain brand "Ywiggy Ywidget" I sell 12 different styles of that brand, while the competiton sells only 2. and the competition just began carrying this brand about one month ago. The competiton has about 4 linkbacks (link: www.competiton.com) while I have about 30 linkbacks (yeah, I know-we stink). (OH, PS, In MSN Search the comp is #2, I am #6)

SO how the heck is this happening? I am new to all this so forgive my ignorance, but here are some variables that may or may not add to the competitions better ranking. The comp has an add on in their site that turns the dynamic URLs into names of product (comp.com/Ywiggy_Ywidget.html) while my pages are totally dynamic (php?...).

Not loosing sleep over this detail, I am just curious. Thanks for reading.

[stiksandstones]

did I post in the wrong section?

[OCSupertones]

Their site is has been around longer. the search engines place a value on that.

Get more backlinks...you should be able to submit to some directories for quick easy backlinks.

[voices]

A large and sudden increase in backlinks can backfire on you. Be careful

[rj87uk]

Looks like he could be using a mod rewrite to make the pages static. In general search engines will value static html pages over dynamic URLs.

[rj87uk]

voices: I know a lot about links and by the sound of things he wouldnt be able to get that many links. I would say an increase of more than 30 a day would be a little more dangerous - you would benefit more from getting one or two new links a day.

Find more about links and linking over in Forum 12, Link development.

Ps. Also change your anchor text every so often so it looks more natural.

Have a nice day :)