am i competing against a website or a webpage?

[matrix1989]

hey guys,

so im doing a little keyword research and i found a keyword phrase i want to target and i googled allintitle: keyword

and roughly 500 results appeared.

so if i want to rank for that keyword, am i competing against the websites which those pages are on or am i just competing against the webpage which is on the search results?

if the #1 google result for my keyword search is a page that doesn't have a lot of backlinks or SEO done (just enough to propel it above the other weak competition) can i simply do some off-page and on-page SEO for the webpage i created to rank for my keyword or am i competing against their whole website?

[jaggyjay]

To be sure, you're competing with other pages. As far as G is concerned; they call their rank algorithm "Page Rank" not "Site Rank".

You can do as you already have in mind and see what happens. From what you say, it doesn't seem like the site you're targeting will be tough to beat.

Best of luck.

- Jay

[matrix1989]

Originally Posted by jaggyjay

To be sure, you're competing with other pages. As far as G is concerned; they call their rank algorithm "Page Rank" not "Site Rank".

You can do as you already have in mind and see what happens. From what you say, it doesn't seem like the site you're targeting will be tough to beat.

Best of luck.

- Jay

thanks Jay,
i noticed that PageRank doesn't necessarily equate to SERP. i see a PR4 ranked at #2 while a PR 3 is at #1 so is there something im missing?

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by matrix1989

thanks Jay,
i noticed that PageRank doesn't necessarily equate to SERP. i see a PR4 ranked at #2 while a PR 3 is at #1 so is there something im missing?

Not missing anything. PR does not equate very well to SERP rank. Now keep in mind that things like good authority backlinks can cause a site to get a decent PR. But, the reason that site is ranked well is because of SEO, including those authority backlinks. The site is not ranked well because of its PR. The PR is just a by-product of other factors which area really what matters.

I have PR 0 sites at #1 ahead of PR7+ sites. All comes down to SEO.

[bid357]

To put it very simple sites with more pages tend to rank better, in the SERPS and thats because the page that is ranking has a stronger foundation of internal links supporting its position.

But to answer your question, you are competing against both. The page you are trying to get ranked is competing against the page you are trying to beat.

If you have a weaker foundation, smaller site and less links to your site then it will be much harder to beat that page with a stronger foundation of internal and external links.

If you find that no matter how many external links you get to your page you still can't beat the competition, try adding more pages to your site with a link to the page you are trying to rank. That just might do the trick.

Hopefully this helps.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by matrix1989

hey guys,

so im doing a little keyword research and i found a keyword phrase i want to target and i googled allintitle: keyword

and roughly 500 results appeared.

so if i want to rank for that keyword, am i competing against the websites which those pages are on or am i just competing against the webpage which is on the search results?

if the #1 google result for my keyword search is a page that doesn't have a lot of backlinks or SEO done (just enough to propel it above the other weak competition) can i simply do some off-page and on-page SEO for the webpage i created to rank for my keyword or am i competing against their whole website?

To be honest, its in between. Your are not just competing against the webpage, but you are not competing against the site/domain 100% either.

Example...

You search for "blue widgets"

#1 on Google is a page on Amazon about a specific blue widget it is selling. The homepage of Amazon is PR9, with like a billion inlinks. This particular blue widget page is PR0 with zero inlinks (from external sites).

Don't fool yourself into think that this blue widget page on amazon would be as easy to beat as a subpage at joe schmoo's PR0 website, which discusses blue widgets as well. So, in that sense, the underlying domain/site does matter.

That being said, with good on-page SEO and with some decent backlinks, in my experience it is very easy to beat out Amazon despite the fact that the homepage is a PR9. That's why I cringe every time I hear people on this site say you shouldn't tackle keywords if you are up against pages on on domains where the domain has a PR over some arbitrary number (I hear PR3 as the cutoff alot). But, that's just bad advice.

I don't care what the underlying domain PR is as I am competing against that particular page, but, my page will have to be better (how much better is case-by-case) in order to beat it because it is on amazon's site.

By the way, this is my experience with all of the shopping type sites: amazon, ebay, nextag, shopping.com, etc.

Hope that makes sense.

[matrix1989]

AHA!!!

its clicking for me guys.

i plan to do heavy backlinking for my 15 webpages on my actual website, and use my blog (which is installed on a subdirectory) to help me buildup a lot of pages.
thanks guys

[uzomaeze]

get on with it and see your self with some power SEO on your web page and to be honest you will definitely be at the top