Confused: research for offline client show competitor ranks higher with 5 backlinks??

See this post: http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-marketing-discussions/390136-what-resources-do-you-use-search-engine-optimization-local-businesses.html

What you don't see are the conversions they probably have. Those mean more than anything else because after conversions, the rest follow anyway. Traffic will be sent just based on keeping visitors happy and that means finding what they search for on your site. If they don't convert, they are not happy according to Google. Conversions also include free downloads and white papers, not just products in shopping carts.

In spite of what you may read in some sales letters, back links are not the sole criteria for ranking. On page factors, like Title tags, descriptions, good content, sitemaps,robots.txt files, KML files all play a part and off-page includes more than just backlinks. Get your client some reviews, citations, videos, articles and yes, some backlinks (especially get more than 5 solid backlinks from authority sites. The sum total that best fits Google's algorythm ranks higher. Good luck.

Hi Tara,

I've seen websites with only a few links outrank sites with 100 backlinks

Google looks at sites that have the greatest amount of the EXACT ANCHOR TEXT in the link.

So for example, lets say Website A is a site that sells coffee machines but only 1 brand (Delonghi brand). They have the 1st listing in Google when you type in the keyword "Delonghi Coffee Machine" because they probably have this KW as the anchor text on all 5 of it's backlinks pointing back to it's website.

Website B on listing 2 on the other hand sells different brands of coffee machines and probably has 100 backlinks but probably less than 5 backlinks with "Delonghi Coffee Machine" as the anchor text. The rest of the backlinks are probably "Krups Coffee Machine", Hamilton Beach Coffee Machine", etc., in the anchor text.

This goes back to the classic Adobe example. If you enter "Click Here" in a Google search bar you will get Adobe.com as the 1st listing. This is because you have thousands of sites pointing back to Adobe with the anchor text "Click Here".

Of course, sometimes there are other factors.

I hope this makes sense.

Hey Thanx! I am learning a lot in this thread! The knowledge displayed here is an eye opener... Book Marking this thread now!

Tara

I just found myself checking on a similiar situation. The competitor had a VERY old (12 years) domain, a good PR of 3, was DMOZ and Yahoo Directory listed, but very few backlinks...

Post-Panda (Farmer) I'm starting to think some of those 'old-school' indicators are more important than they were last year.

As somebody else said above, anchor text too of course.

I also wish to add here.

There is a possibility if the page rank of those sites linking to this site is higher.

You need to get the links from more high page rank sites like mtv dot com or mtvu dot com. They are PR7 sites and you'll get a profile link.

Moreover you need to check the ON-page optimization for the keyword you need to rank for and also please note that the keyword density should not pass 2%. To find out that, you can download a free software called dupefreepro here. Not an affiliate link.

Just follow the seo steps, you will be good to get there.