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HOW ON EARTH can this site outrank me?

by GeorgR.
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
For some months i am shooting for a pretty competitive KW, here some stats:

6700 searches/day 553k SEOC 130k SEOTC



My site is not ranking for that specific term (its ranking for a longtail derivative for that KW)...but HIS site has BARELY 20 backlinks.

His site doesnt even have H1 tags (it doesnt have ANY relevant H tags actually) and its indexed with ONE single page in google.

My site has a website grade of 84 and i have all my tags right, i also have 300+ backlinks, both sites have PR1 and i do have a blog and RSS. He does not. My site has more articles and, scuse me, looks way better. His site is an utter joke in any way and ranks #8 or #9 on google for that term with his 20 backlinks. He has www. KEYWORD.NET but i have www. KEYWORDinfo.com

How on earth can he rank for this keyword??? I am totally stumped.
#earth #outrank #site
  • Profile picture of the author RebeccaL
    Its not number of backlinks, its quality of backlinks.

    One ultra quality backlink can give more benefit than 1000 low quality links.

    Along with about 500 other factors.. domain authority, history and age just to name a few.
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  • Profile picture of the author carlos123
    Ahem...cough, cough...not surprising actually. Without knowing exact site URL's let me just say that with some of my sites, I have outranked an absolute ton of web pages with more backlinks than me by writing excellent content, having the exact keyword phrase in the domain, and one way linking out to relevant high authority sites using anchor text of my own creation to mirror what one finds at the high authority sites.

    No title tag, no meta tag, no and I mean NO backlinks whatsoever, and no other on page or off page SEO techniques (though I start in on those once my one page site gets into the top hundred).

    While I think that good quality backlinks are very important I don't think they are the only factor Google looks at (though some IM'ers seem to almost think they are).

    Not to mention that not all backlinks carry the same weight with Google. An in body, text link with appropriate anchor text from a related web site will beat out the usual internet marketer type backlink from ezine articles, blog comments, and such any day.

    Google isn't stupid.

    They know that internet marketers use these typical backlink methods to get backlinks and they probably discount such backlinks a lot. As you probably know...it's not just a matter of how many total backlinks one has.

    Oh..and I don't rely on software like every other internet marketer relies and is looking at either. I go straight to the source using just the Google keyword tool, Yahoo, and my own scripts to pick out whatever information I want accessing Google through the Lynx browser (a browser that allows me to access Google without violating their TOS while also being able to pick up what Lynx "sees" using my own scripts).

    One other factor to consider is the "authority" of the domain the page is found at. Some pages have almost no backlinks but are found on a domain which has very high authority with Google. That might also be a factor. Don't know.

    Carlos
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      A couple of other thoughts that crossed my mind as I re-read your post.

      The appearance of the site means absolutely NOTHING with respect to ranking.

      Sure their site might look terrible but Google does not care one bit about that.

      They don't "see" sites like you and I might.

      They mostly "see" text and even then they see this text in the context of the source code. In other words Google reads the source code. Not the text on the page that appears to you and I.

      Photos, nice formatting, readability to humans, nice colors and site layout mean almost nothing if not nothing to Google.

      Google eats words. Words, words. Despite all the nice flashy and fancy stuff these days...Google still eats mostly words.

      Maybe their LSI word choices are more consistent with the topic they are writing about than your site pages are. Maybe they hand wrote and carefully researched their site articles.

      Maybe you did too much article spinning, ghost writing, or rewriting of content written by someone else (if indeed you engaged in the usual internet marketer techniques).

      Personally I can run circles around most internet marketers by writing my own articles. They take much longer but they rank a whole heck of lot better I think.

      Carlos
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    I am examining his 20 links right now..yes they are ALL very good, related to niche.
    Oh and he has one on ehow.com <--
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    • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      I am examining his 20 links right now..yes they are ALL very good, related to niche.
      Oh and he has one on ehow.com <--
      It sounds like you might have discovered what I've been saying all along, it's all about the links.
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      • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
        Originally Posted by bgmacaw View Post

        It sounds like you might have discovered what I've been saying all along, it's all about the link quality.
        Corrected

        As we have just proven..20 "quality" links outrank my 300 paul/angela links...i think the best one he has is the ehow.com link...he also has a few forum links related to niche. Otherwise i dont see anything too exciting about his links. (Except that they're related to his niche)

        Just proves that Angela/Paul is worth squad...seriously, this contradicts a LOT i "know" about SEO...eg. how important number of backlinks is supposed to be etc..etc... again: He has barely 20 and is on page #1 in google for a really good KW.
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        • Profile picture of the author RebeccaL
          Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

          Corrected

          As we have just proven..20 "quality" links outrank my 300 paul/angela links...i think the best one he has is the ehow.com link...he also has a few forum links related to niche. Otherwise i dont see anything too exciting about his links. (Except that they're related to his niche)

          Just proves that Angela/Paul is worth squad...seriously, this contradicts a LOT i "know" about SEO...eg. how important number of backlinks is supposed to be etc..etc... again: He has barely 20 and is on page #1 in google for a really good KW.
          Just think of it this way... would sites like smashingmagazine, mattcutts.com, tripadvisor.com etc etc (just naming a few random highly popular authority sites that started from nothing), go out and create fake profiles on random websites in order to post their links? No.. they get linked to because they are great sites.

          I always think "would such and such authority site have bothered to get a link like this?" - most of the time the answer is no.
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          • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
            Originally Posted by RebeccaL View Post

            I always think "would such and such authority site have bothered to get a link like this?" - most of the time the answer is no.
            Most of the time the answer is that they didn't need to because they leveraged previously existing personal, organizational or corporate authority/popularity/associations or spent a lot of money upfront advertising.

            So, the question is, assuming you don't have a huge advertising budget or are not 'well connected', how do you get the leverage you need to promote your site?

            There are several different valid answers to this question and many of the methods work with varying degrees of success. Profile links are one method and getting authority links are another but I've found it best to have diverse link building methods to build long term success.
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      • Profile picture of the author emigre
        Originally Posted by bgmacaw View Post

        It sounds like you might have discovered what I've been saying all along, it's all about the links.
        And it might also show that nofollow links on authority sites are worth getting.
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  • Profile picture of the author zachary0611
    Dont forget age of the domain. I have a Pick Up Artist blog with probably 10 crappy back links that is number 1 for a popular pua instructor because I was one of the first ones to write about him.
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