One of our competitors sites has had No1. and No.2 rankings for the last few years with google.co.uk under the most key phrases. http://www.roofrackshop.co.uk Iv'e noticed that at the bottom of their page there is a small purple box that links back to their home page again. Is there any relivance to this?

Also, on every one of the pages their is the title displayed again at the bottom which again, links back to their home page. Is this causing any relivance in page rankings??

Many thanks in advance

the purple image won't help in relevance.
They are just using anchor text to very good effect Quite honestly the whole market place (for the few searches I did) looks more like "accidental optimisation" than any deliberate SEO work.

This is a great example that you don't need cloacking pages or hidden text to get high rankings on Google. All the methods used look fine to me and the quality of the text is the reason of such google results.
This just shows that cheating does not pay

Originally Posted by glyn

This just shows that cheating does not pay

No, this shows that in this case, the person who created the website has been rewarded. It doesn't indicate anything about cheating.

'Cheating' still works, unfortunately.

I can hear the chorus now: "yehar, cheating still works!"

cheating works...but only if you cheat well enough to fool google

it's not necessarily cheating, just smart optimisation

So you would recommend using more relivant text on the page??

Ours is http://www.autorack.co.uk

Hello,

Try http://www.silktide.com/ and perform a test on your website it can help you out a little.

Regards

Robert

Originally Posted by eUKhost

Hello,

Try http://www.silktide.com/ and perform a test on your website it can help you out a little.

Regards

Robert

I dont know how reliable that little thing is I mean it uses your Alexa ranking wrong...It says your site is Ranked (insert alexa number here) in the world...which we all know is not true and the alexa ranking is even more of a joke than a google PR....

Why cheat, do it the proper way, you have more chance of getting where you want without cheating, the link at the bottom i think is pointless

On your links page 2, you link away from your site. Google doesn't like that...

fosters

Originally Posted by fosters

you link away from your site. Google doesn't like that...

What!!!!
Now that just goes totally against all common sense. Where on earth or how on earth does that little gem of mis-information come from?

Sneaky, it may help to keep the crawler at the site longer.

Nope, SE crawlers don't follow links on sites, they only grab the source and store it in the database. Each time they visit a page they are sent out from the datacentre.

Guys i think you got it wrong.
The bottom of the page where the small tiny image is. Is NOT only an image. There is a script down there with a link to the main page. The script is javascript and it is used to track the number of visitors in a site. A counter.

There is an image. But the image is ONLY shown if the user has javascript disabled. Otherwise a little blue/purple box appears, and it appears because the web designers of that website... FRICKIN SUCK.... and use frontpage, and know nothing about HTML, other than the basics.
They dont even know border=0 i guess.

Secondly i doubt it has anything to do with SEO. The reason is , because then you could have your LOGO link back to your main page too, and it still won't make a difference, every site has a link back to the main page.

I find it to have no relevance. I think the reason they are high ranked, is because they have been on for a long time, and that the competition is low (honestly how many people sell rooftops or whatever). And the fact that they put their whole website in one page. So there is a lot of keywords. And well-formed keywords.

Am i wrong here?

They done the one thing that all search engines want.

Built a site without real thinking about search engines, it's as simple as that.

Of course it's relevant. they sell roof racks etc how can it not be relevant to searches for the things they sell?

i said i find the little box on bottom of the page irrelevant to the PR

Aha! apologies It wasn't 100% clear that you were still talking about the image there.

(and brain still ringing after seeing the White Stripes live )

if you're trying to do : \00/ or \m/ with your smiley face, you can only do it for metal bands, not for rock bands

I suggest you to report any guy to Google who in your opinion violate Google terms.

Why should they take first place in Google if they use unfair means?