I have noticed site with lower PR getting higher rank because of this stuff.

The key to success in SEO is to study the sites at the top. Lets now all go and study and reply back to what you find. More brains is better than one.

SEO success!!!!

You want all my secrets!

I am still trying to figure out just why some sites took big hits after this last update well others held there positions.

At this point I am proceeding as usual but do reduce the amount of on-page optimization a bit.

Before the last update and maybe still, incoming links and anchor text were the key to top rankings for competitive terms.

It may be useful at this point to try and vary your anchor text though for your top keywords just incase Google in trying to penalize sites that seem to have an unnatural linking structure.

Originally posted by techguru
The key to success in SEO is to study the sites at the top. Lets now all go and study and reply back to what you find. More brains is better than one.

Agreed.

I realized that back in October and did some research.
The results and raw data are here (as well as my opinion of
SEO's and most webmaster forums):
http://webmaster-link-swap-tools.com/top100.html


For those that choose not to view that page, here's the
basic results:

For the top 100 'mail order brides' search results, here are the statistics:

82% are not listed in DMOZ
45% do not have all three keywords in Title
70% have less than 50% keyword density in Title
75% do not have a <h1> tag containing at least one of the keywords
88% do not have a <h1> tag containing all three keywords

If these things are so important, how did these pages get to the top 100?

My personal conclusion is that most of the webmasters in the
top 100 for 'mail order brides' are not applying the common
page specific optimization techniques.

Links will get a page to the top, no matter what shows in the
silly little PR bar.

Bompa

PR, in and of itself, will not get a page to the top.

Look at these PR values of the top 10 sites for 'mail order
brides' on October 15, 2003.

5
5
5
5
6
5
5
4
4
6


All those PR5's beat the PR6 that came in 10th and even two
PR4's, (#8 and #9), beat the PR6 in tenth place.

Even Google says that PR is useless if the page doesn't
match a person's search terms.

PR is a measurement of a page's importance. It takes importance
and relevance to get to the top, imo.

I believe the greatest measure of relevance is anchored text.

To demonstrate this, take a look at mailorderbride.com, it's currently #3 in the SERP's for 'mail order brides'.

It does not have 'mail order brides' in it's Title.
It has no <H1> whatsoever.
It has a PR of 5.
It is not listed in dmoz.org,
and 'mail order brides' does not appear any where on the page.

Apparently, this webmaster has never even heard of web page
optimization, hehe, but he's got his page at #3.

If you follow the page's backlinks, you'll see that they are all
on the other site's homepage, (greatest PR), and they all have
'mail order brides' in the anchored text.

Of course, this is just one site, it could just be fluke.


Bompa

PS: If you think that he's number 3 cuz the keywords are in
the url, nope. Do a "allinurl:mail order brides", without the
quotes, search and the page does not show up at all.

Looks like you are doing some good research Bompa.

Keep up the good work and eventually you will see the rewards.

It looks like you are having most people link to you with the URL filipina-sweethearts.com instead of www.filipina-sweethearts.com because your PR is a lot higher on the first. You should usually just use one or the other, but I recommend using www.URL.com always.

Also, having your keyword in the on-page links (not all of them of course) in the past always helped. You link back to your homepage using "Homepage" as the anchor text. You normally would want to change that to your main keyword. If Google sees that your subpages are all linking back to your homepage with a certain keyword then it thinks that page most be more relevant to that keyword (of course it is just one think that in the past always seemed to help).

For example, on our links directory I used : "Webmaster Forums Home" which link back to our index on everypage (it does not necessarily have to be an exact match). http://www.webmaster-talk.com/Resources/

Originally posted by TimSchroeder
[b]Looks like you are doing some good research Bompa.

Keep up the good work and eventually you will see the rewards.

Thank you.

It looks like you are having most people link to you with the URL filipina-sweethearts.com instead of www.filipina-sweethearts.com because your PR is a lot higher on the first. You should usually just use one or the other, but I recommend using www.URL.com always.

I have not used the www. since day one. I don't think anyone is linking to me using it either.

Also, having your keyword in the on-page links (not all of them of course) in the past always helped. You link back to your homepage using "Homepage" as the anchor text. You normally would want to change that to your main keyword.

That's a good point.


Thanks for taking the time to look at my site and for your comments.


Bompa

Great research Bompa. I think that you're on to something here. It looks as though your theory has pretty good grounds. I'll do a little digging and see what I can come up, but I'm sure it's nothing that good. Let us know what you come up with!

Really interesting..

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the top 100 'mail order brides' search results:

82% are not listed in DMOZ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Btw, I checked the keywords "health insursance" for a friend
and found that 60% of the top 100 pages are not listed in
dmoz.org.


This is one of the easiest things to research. Anyone can use
the tool over at top25web.com to get a numbered list of the
top 100 search results with their own keywords. Then just scroll
down the page counting the pages that have a "Catagory" line
like:

Category: Society > Relationships > Dating > Personals >


Every result that has a line like that at the bottom of it's
description is listed in dmoz.org.

Together we can either dispell the myth or confirm the fact
that dmoz.org is super important.

If you do this research and post your findings here, I'll create
a "Google-Dmoz Research" (or whatever), page on my web
master site and post all the results there. I'll even link your
findings back to your site and you don't have to link to mine.
How's that for a deal?

Thanks,
Bompa

Many good points are raised here, however DMOZ is still an important directory in that it has relationships with many of the top search engines. Take a look at this search engine relationship chart, http://www.bruceclay.com/searchengin...nshipchart.htm , it clearly shows DMOZ as being the center of the search engine universe.

Having said that, I wish it wasn't the case. DMOZ listings are very difficult to obtain, I would love to make it a non-factor.

Regarding the Google PageRank and the latest indexing which has caused such an uproar of late ... there are many rumors floating around as to what happened to Google. One which I tend to believe has to do with the Google "patent" on PageRank. Everybody knows that Google has its eye on an IPO for early 2004, but one of the conditions in going public is that the company must be a self-contained (proprietary) system, with no outside control over structure, code, systems, personnel, etc.

This is Google's issue because the PageRank patent actually belongs to Stanford (the school at which the creators of Google went). Because of this issue, Google cannot get its IPO, so the rumor is that Google has dumped PageRank from its algorithm. If that is the case then the chaos that this change in the algorithm has caused proves the impact that PageRank has (or HAD) on Google rankings.

Something to keep an eye on for sure.

Originally posted by searchlancer Many good points are raised here, however DMOZ is still an important directory in that it has relationships with many of the top search engines. Take a look at this search engine relationship chart, ..., it clearly shows DMOZ as being the center of the search engine universe.

That's a very pretty graphic, but it doesn't mean doo diddley as far as the keywords that I'm targeting. What does mean something is an actual count of sites in the top 100 for my keywords that are either listed in dmoz or not and the fact is, 82 out of the top 100 are not listed in dmoz. So, for me, it is a non factor.

A non-factor regarding SERP's with Google, but it is an important directory for getting traffic; for some sites so your point is well taken.

Having said that, I wish it wasn't the case. DMOZ listings are very difficult to obtain, I would love to make it a non-factor.

Why don't your just research your own keyword search results and see how many of the top 100 are listed in dmoz??


Bompa

Big clue, folks - links, links, links!!

I've just been playing with this, but for the band aftergrass, i've found that their position for "colorado jam band" went up when I changed external links to their site from "aftergrass.com" to "colorado jam band - aftergrass" Not sure if this is just coincidence, or if changing link text on other sites with good PR will help.... Either way, aftergrass is ridin pretty high for "colorado jam band"