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Google Organic Results Baffle me sometimes - Comments Wanted

by kflanagan28
1 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Sometimes I am just amazed by some of Google's results. They make no sense when you know what should go into top placed ranking.

For example, in a market I am looking at, there is a site ranking 1st for a competitive keyword. It's not even the home page of the site, it's an internal page i.e. www.example.com/page_1. The page does not have much link equity, there are maybe a 100 links pointing to it. Not one of those has the competitive keyword as anchor text. The keyword is also not used anywhere on the web page or in any internal links pointing to the page.

The site has an overall PR of 6 and this page also has a PR of 6 (this also surprises me).

The site in second place has their home page optimized for the keyword, has the keyword in all the right places, on page, in internal links and has way better external links using that keyword. It's also a PR 6.

Basically, the site ranking first is not optimized for this keyword and there is no indication of how google is deciding to rank it for that keyword. In all my time doing competitive analysis, I have never seen anything this strange...

Oh, I can't show the site I am afraid !!!
#baffle #comments #google #organic #results #wanted
  • Profile picture of the author Lucid
    > They make no sense when you know what should go into top placed ranking.

    Well, obviously, Google has a different opinion than you of which sites should be ranked at the top.

    > It's not even the home page of the site

    Why would it be? The home page has no special significance which seems to be what you are implying.

    > The page does not have much link equity

    I'm no SEO guru but it seems people are putting way too much value on this.

    > The keyword is also not used anywhere on the web page or in any internal links pointing to the page.

    That would seem strange to me too. Must be other factors affecting the ranking. Is the theme of the page related to the keywords used?

    > The site has an overall PR of 6

    This I know people are putting waaay too much value on.

    It also occurs to me that maybe you clicked on a sponsored result that appears before the SERPs. Sometimes they do look much like an organic listing.
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