when i see this. i lose all hope. what good are backlinks? is seo all bs? take a look

What sticks out immediately is for #1, they have the keyword in the URL and the title.

Looks like the Keyword used in the URL, Title, and Header is what put it over the top. I think it shows the Power of having your Keywords as many places as can be. Especially the URL and Domain. And out thru my own experience I found that you can get Ranked higher and faster with the Keyword in the URL/Domain. This is NOT a myth like some people think !!

People, listen. Google doesn't count the number of backlinks and do a simple math problem to decide who is first and second.

Google has over 200 variables in their main algorithm. 200! It is far more complicated than just the amount of links.

You should not count the number of backlinks, you should analyze where those backlinks are and where they are coming from! I would predict that most of his links comes from high quality sites, where the link is located WITHIN the content, not outside the content.

Look for a good internal linking structure from within the content, that can also drastically increase his SERPS.

Also, if the keyword is in the URL, it is a HUGE boost. I have seen this effect over and over again.

Emakina, this is good news for you. Use SEO Elite to get the URLS of all his backlinks, and place your link at the same websites, if possible. Learn from that guy because it seems that he knows what he is doing

Your question has been answered in your own post.

emakina, what software do you use that allows you to see these comparisons between websites and their ranking, and the backlinks and so on?

thank you in advance

#2 exists much longer. May be that´s the problem. People´s search behavior changes over the years. The are using somewhat different search terms nowadays, than they did a few years ago. May be #2 doesn´t fit in that good anymore.

If you would make 2 websites for the exact same keyword and use the exact same backlinks, one would always rank higher than the other.

People surfing on the internet do not only use the search terms you see in Google´s keyword tool. Lots of them are broad variants of that keyword. Search terms that Google has not sufficient data about. Even though Google has only insufficient data about these keywords, they are responsible for a large part of the traffic in the given niche. If you keep digging in the keyword tool at a certain point nearly all search terms have insufficient data.

These kind of search terms change in time. May be the content of#1, even though optimized for the same main keyword, tends to be more relevant for today´s search behavior.

Could it have anything to do with the site ranking #1 being much larger and having a better internal linking structure to that keyword page? Just a thought because I also find it hard to wrap my head around the on page SEO outweighing the thousands of backlinks of the other guy.

Lee

RE: The latest example... can you say: link farm? In fact, I probably know exactly which link farm that one is (cough, cough, see the DP forums for the answer).

so ...what happened ? I would like to know myself...no keyword in the headline, or anything?

maybe the software who is doing such analysis gives you wrong data?

I took another look at your first post. It appears that #2 is not optimized for that keyword. Nor has it the keyword in the title, the head or in the url. Only in the description. The site is probably only at this particular search page due to it´s high PR. With a high PR web pages also start ranking on less relevant search terms.

i have a site on #1 where i never bothered putting MANY articles up (as i usually do with my other sites). I had some articles written and submitted...thats it and then stopped putting content on it. The site has barely 20 pages.

The site is on #1 outranking wikipedia and squidoo for the main keyword.

This just to "prove" that sometimes those SERP rankings can be unpredictable.

if they are unpredictable and random sometimes, why bother?

Yes, that is simple, If you check the ONSITE SEO, Site 2 is strong and if you consider OFFSITE SEO, site 1 is storng, So, Site 2 had beaten site 1 and got the 1st place

Hi emakina,

You must not buy into the common SEO myths that just aren't true.

Relevance always trumps all other factors. It's not the number of backlinks that are important, It's how those backlinks effect relevance that IS important.

The PR of backlinks has no bearing on the quality, that's just a myth. The TLD has no bearing on the quality of a backlink, just another myth (execpt when considering geo targeting).

One good backlink can be more valuable than 10,000 backlinks of lesser value. Focus on factors that influence relevancy and you will be head and shoulders above your competitors. Links can have a major impact on relevancy but the number of links and their PR has a lessor importance on SERP ranking.

Search Engines do not want to display irrelevant results just because they have backlinks with PR. Relevance always trumps other factors.

PR manipulation seems to be the basis of many SEO strategies and those folks are often confused when they see other pages outrank them with significantly less effort. PR manipulation has not worked for a very long time, yet so many still pursue it in vain.

You need to consider that much of what you have been taught is simply no longer valid. The path to higher rankings is not in PR manipulation, the Search Engines will always look for indicators of manipulation and discount those factors.

The true path is quality content, properly structured and presented along with solid promotion, including relevant backlinks from authority sources. If you follow this path the Search Engines will always be tweaking their algorithms to find and rank your pages the highest while filtering out the pretenders and manipulators.