SEO question, can this be done

Depends. I have done it.

If they do no SEO on there site or little, then you can with enough effort (or not much).

If Google see it as a authority site for that term, then it is not likely that you would be able to.

I would study that site carefully to see there on-site SEO and links

It's hard to say with your example because you've made up the domain name. I'd say the answer depends on the number of competing pages you're up against and the popularity of the kewords in the actual niche.

If it's a fairly popular niche with common keywords it might be a challenge. If it's a micro-niche without a lot of competition for the keywords, you've got a much better shot. Good luck!

i had to make up the domains so nobody would see what i a doing and i what niche. But the theoretical situation should explain what I am trying to do.

It's possible, depending on how well optimized bobswidgets.com is for that phrase.

You'd have to make sure to have all your onpage SEO tip-top (title tags, keyword phrase in content, meta tags, description tags, category names, post titles, etc.) without going too overboard and honking google off.

But maybe one of the biggest things I'd look at is the number and type of backlinks to the site you want to beat. I'd look for the following: quantity, target phrase in the anchor text, dofollow backlinks, any .edu or .gov, PR of the sites providing the backlinks and relevancy.

I think the backlinks will tell you a lot about how strong bobswidgets is positioned.

Good luck with it!

Cindy

It really differs on a site by site basis. If you look at "Real Estate Clear Lake" there are a lot of PR 1's that have out ranked Realtor.com which has a high PR. So I say yes, relevance is a huge factor on the search engines. Try to make your home page(the page you want ranked) a compendium of the testimonial page and the about me page and make sure the content is optimized(and you want it to be good sales copy too, of course).

Unfortunately, once they see you over take them(if it's a site that is actively trying to rank for "bob's whidgets" and they have a higher PR, you will lose the Search Rank battle.

The other option is to do an internal link building campaign. The guys over at stompernet have really turned me on to that and I've been doing that for clients when on-page optimization is just not enough and the results are incredible(you can boost your PR pretty significantly with this--if you're planning on making a lot of money if you hit the #1 spot, pick up Brad Fallan's SEO book or Aaron Wall's book to learn effective internal link building strategies).