Help please - Trying to rev. engineer a competitor...

[midwest1]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me why this domain -

www dot maxcareclean dot com

places first in a Google search when it has less backlinks, etc. than everyone else. It doesn't make sense.

The search made in Google is carpet cleaning springfield mo

I would really appreciate a 'clue' on how to compete against this mystery.

Thanks!

[MarkSherris]

give me a minute :-)

[midwest1]

Originally Posted by MarkSherris

give me a minute :-)

Thanks Mark, you're the man.

[MarkSherris]

It has a good page authority and domain authority which is generally higher than all the other competitors.

Remember it's quality of links not quantity, also a page may have slightly less links but if it has a been on-page optimisation rate it may rank higher.

The no.1 position has slightly more links, however the title is much clearer for the #1 result.

Hope this helps, let me know :-)

[MarkSherris]

has a better on-page optimisation rate**

[midwest1]

Thanks Mark. How would I bring this one up?

www dot stmpro dot com for carpet cleaning springfield mo

I built this (and still working on it for him) I'm just struggling to get over that hill.

Thanks again!

[MarkSherris]

Yeah, I'll give you a reply in a few mins, I'll just take a look :-)

[MarkSherris]

What page is the site on now?

[cashcow]

better on page SEO and a PR2 link would be my guess

[midwest1]

Originally Posted by MarkSherris

What page is the site on now?

It's on page 3

Thanks again Mark. I'm just learning SEO. I've social bookmarked on about 7 sites, keywords on main page (have to do others). Maybe I just need to post articles to several places, etc.

[MarkSherris]

Found the site, looking at it you've got a much clearer / better title than the person ranking at #1, so no need to worry about that, it's just a case of time + links.

At the moment the site has a page authority of 14 and a domain authority of 7 , whereas the #1 website has a page authority of 35 and a domain authority of 38.

You just need to start building links to the website and before long it should rise significantly up to the top positions, as I haven't done any extensive research into the competitor sites I can't tell what their back link data is like however when you build links try to make sure the anchor text of your links is the keyword, so "carpet cleaning springfield mo".

Do this and it'll be just a matter of time until you take that top spot from maxcareclean.

[MarkSherris]

Yep that will help, you can utilise various websites to get back links, I get back links from this forum as you can see in my signature above :-)

I'd say as a starting point the easiest way to get some back links is 1) forum signatures, 2) forum profiles, 3) blog comments, 4) articles

[midwest1]

Thanks Mark. I can't thank you enough. May I ask how you could find out so much info so quickly? Market Samurai? Also, I do graphic design -

www dot chrisswafford dot com

I haven't updated the site in many years as I work in the newspaper industry mainly. But now I'm getting more online work. Anyway, if you need anything designed please let me know (on the house of course). I appreciate the tips you're giving me.

[MarkSherris]

I use the MozBar SEO Plugin for firefox by SEOMoz, it gives me all the data I need as soon as I land on a website, and also it shows all the data in the actual search results so it's really useful for quickly analysing stuff!

Thanks and no problem for the help, if you need anything else just send me a private message :-)

[midwest1]

Thanks Mark. I'll write later tonight. Thanks so much.